Cull

I went with Dad into town at one, he to work,  me to buy Mum a card and a present for her birthday on Wednesday; I bought a copy of Marc Riley and The Creepers album Cull. I got Mum V. S. Naipaul’s Area of Darkness. I have doubts over how she’ll like it.

I packed at a leisurely pace in the evening.

Dover and Belfast dock workers have joined the stoppage and the High Court declared that the government’s ban on unions at GCHQ contravenes “natural justice.” There’s much talk of “banana skins” and “the deepening industrial crisis” etc., etc.

I watched a World-In-Action programme about MI5 ‘molehunts’ in the 1950s, ‘60s and ’70s. In 1955, MI5 broke into the offices of the Communist Party of Great Britain and stole fifty-five thousand files on membership while the staff were gone, copying them all onto microfilm and returning them before dawn. MI5 found that thirty one MPs and numerous trade unionists and “top public figures” had links with the pro-Soviet CPGB, and it was believed that numerous spies of a similar operational status to Philby and Blunt evaded detection. Even the head of MI5 was a suspect based on strong circumstantial evidence!

Doomed

The thought of the term ahead still fills me with weariness, and this is because I now realise wrong choices and past mistakes, and know that it won’t go away for as long as I’m at the University.

I missed my first tutorial of the term today (Conflict and Community with Ian Pugh), but feel remorse only when I think of Mum and Dad’s naïve trust that I’m pursuing my “studies” with a vigour and reward I know I can never muster. I also feel sad that I’m squandering their money—£400 already this year. Doomed.

I promised to go to Calverdale for a week with them in May. At times of mental crisis and EMPTINESS like this I discover a kind of solace in the pleasures of the past.

I went to see Marc Riley and The Creepers with Stu at the Lancaster. They were supported by UT—talentless thrash—and they played aggressive hard Fall-type songs. Riley himself sang and reminded me a great deal of Barry’s friend Patrick—he has the same youthful face and dry Manchester accent.