Tin wreath

A day of tutorial drudgery: I got up at eight after just three hours of sleep (reading Ezra Pound’s Hugh Selwyn Mauberly). I had Conflict and Consensus at 11.30 a.m. and Pasmore's American Lit Since 1914 at four. Both the tutorials seemed to depress me and make me wonder what I am, after all, doing at Watermouth University.

The second tutorial especially left me utterly cold and unmoved. There were four of us tutees: me, a brash American (Sam) with the sensibilities of an ox; an American girl from Northwestern and Alice, plump inoffensive Alice, who may or may not be going out with he of the grey Renault and speed. I didn’t say one word. I just couldn’t rouse the effort of will needed to exert myself and so sat there wondering why I wasn’t somewhere else. It’s the old thing of ‘what am I getting out of it’? Ought oughts are ought I know, but still; the work seems so remote and meaningless to me. It dampened my optimism a little.

Torrential rain until after dark. In the North, snow is causing havoc and has already killed a dozen or so people. I rang Mum and she told me that the snow is piled “three feet high on top of the privets.”