Wisdom of the ages

A day of tutorials: one was cancelled, the other bluffed through as I hadn’t looked at the reading. Despite this I managed to sound as though I’d worked at least a little. Lindsey asked me if I wanted to go to a SWSO meeting on Ireland but I declined, knowing that to do so would be a gross deception on my part. I doubt I’d have made the slightest effort to go on my own. I met Stu in the library and came home.

Lee said his tutorial went well, and that his tutor declared the spray-paint plaster experiment “phenomenal” (!). Lee was very pleased, and in a boisterous mood all night. I must find another means of expression apart from this turgid litany, which is already three-and-two-thirds years old. Attaching the word ‘diary’ to this endless verbiage makes it seem insignificant, and it pricks me to hear Lee and Pete and Barry say “Oh, he’s writing in his diary,” as though I pass my time with “Today it rained,” “I had chips for dinner,” etc. I harbour greater aspirations, but ‘journal’ sounds too formal, although (regrettably!) it’s perfectly applicable to this thing in its present state. I am very self-conscious here.

I feel horrible sometimes, horrified at the thoughts of slinking through life, storm clouds of doubt, indecision, futile hopeless doubts forever in my head. A face at the window, forever staring out/in at things that are not to be, at other means and other schemes which seem to fit friends and people so much better than my haphazard, heartless struggling.

I don’t intend getting a job after Uni., nor all the badges Mum and Dad would have me earn, a decision that will bring a lot of upset. ‘Responsibility’, ‘Duty’, ‘Obligation’, ‘Maturity’: they’ll heap those words on me, and they’ll sting; my armour isn’t thick enough to prevent that yet, but I’ll recover no doubt. I keep intending to collect suitable aphoristic quotations to throw in their direction: ‘wisdom of the ages’, ‘history on my side,’ etc., etc.

CND, RCP, SWSO

The day has gone by innocuously enough; Lee atoned for the last night by rolling up at one and we went into Watermouth with Barry. An unpleasant Saturday afternoon near Christmas, the town awash with people. Around the Attlee Square clock tower a large group of students had gathered in the road and were singing in aid of peace. Crowds of people thronged around them—contempt and amusement from some—the traffic tailing back in several directions. All the University SWSO crowd were there: ‘dog-faced’ Mickey with the mohican, Martin Hegarty, Guy’s friend Felicity . . .

Lee and Barry and I were full of scorn for them—as if ANYONE will listen; it’s like preaching peace and morality to a psychopath with a machine gun. Sitting in the street is useless. When Heseltine had his face splashed with red paint on a recent visit to Manchester University, the CND bureaucracy predictably condemned the act as “intolerant.” CND will go on singing and linking hands until the fateful Day itself, all their undoubted commitment and sincerity smashed to pieces against the brick wall of the State. And I suppose on this point, I agree with the RCP.

I was spending money “like a man with no arms” as the saying goes, and somehow I’ve got through a little under £40 in two days. I’m now £150 overdrawn. I wrote to Mum and Dad about the year abroad, and in my letter I hope I made my position clear. I also wrote a typical sort of letter to Claire.

Michael P. had stayed at Lee’s halls watching a Jimmy Cagney film and was summoned by a telephone call. We met him in an amusement arcade near the seafront. I’ve only met him once before, a brief moment at Easterby Art College when I paid a visit with Grant last Easter. He had long hair down to his shoulders back then, but now wears it slicked back with a parting down the middle, ‘twenties fashion. He’s thin and small and looked quaint in a black tuxedo jacket, grey waistcoat and white shirt and bowtie. He doesn’t speak much, but when he does it’s with a heavy Easterby accent that’s music to my ears.

We walked home.