x and y

I went into town with Lindsey and we wandered about the shops doing nothing in particular, Up Ledwell Street we bumped into Shelley and her younger brother Tim; they’re off to Greece this summer. Shelley has moved house again; she is living with David and co.

Lindsey holds a low opinion of Shelley's friends (“she seems to enjoy demeaning herself in front of them, acting like a little girl. It’s sickening”). We didn’t stay in their company long and I bought a bottle of Mosel wine and we went to the pier; while I got drunk, Lindsey went off to work at the Admiral and I came back to Westdorgan Road and slept off my muzzy-headedness for a couple of hours.

I’ve done nothing with myself the past few days, and increasingly I sense time slipping away from me. A month has gone by and I’ve achieved little. The plans I laid down towards the end of last term have been defeated by simple aimlessness, not through any lack of money or impracticality. My life lacks substance.

I like to blame this on living here, but that’s been my (inadequate) defence ever since the Jervis Terrace days. Now I feel I’ve even a less grasp of the essentials than I had back then. Something eludes me, and nowadays I don’t even have a very clear idea of what it is I’m doing wrong or ways that I could improve the situation.

Words! What little they actually tell.

All this sounds alien when I reread it, mainly because I’m so unused to writing about or thinking about myself lately. This journal is filled with talk of others: “x and y went so and so, did this or that . . . I spent the day with z,” etc. . . .

I hardly ever read nowadays.