Leamington Love/Hate / Mr Logic

Leamington Love/Hate

8.15am Overcast outside, hungover inside! Drank too much last night. My back is hurting with a vengeance.

This is what I wrote last night: Leamington Garret. 10.20pm by Big Ken, or the even more pleasing 22.22 of the computer clock. Joni Mitchell on the boogie-box, Brazil having beaten Croatia, me in shorts, drunk. All is well.

The sky above Leamers is still fairly light. God, I love/hate this place (love the place, hate its people - sometimes).

Talking of which, no sign of John tonight. Obviously avoiding me (which is good). As time goes on, I feel more and more negative about him and his extraordinary behaviour.

Moreover, my back is feeling better – and I am happy. Effing happy! I loved the Brazil game which I saw down at TJ's bar, in Leamington. Boy, they will take some beating. Class turn!

I revised, quite successfully, my new poem for Oliver's Poetry which is OK and could be improved on before publication this Friday (see: Glory Sealed).

What else? Even though it is dark outside, it is not. I can see the light in the dark, and it is so wondrous. I am almost tripping on that light and the booze.

Mr Logic (Flashback to Sunday, 21 May 2006).

9.19am. Lewes Garret. Blustery, wettish and cold, a great deal of loud chirping emanating from the garden below, the roar of the A-road in the distance.

Had a bad night for reasons I cannot reveal. I slept so badly that I awoke at three-thirty, my back in agony, and had to get up to knock myself out with painkillers.

After that, I had a horrible nightmare featuring Mike Parker, my ex-boss at the Daily Star. And when I eventually re-awoke at nine-thirty, there was still trouble.

11.40am. Lewes Garret. It is effing freezing up here, very unpleasant outside; I can hardly see the South Downs through the rain.

I have received a most helpful email from Demon, reading just like something out of the Mr Logic strip in Viz magazine:

'Having read your email query, it appears indicative that you wish to acquire a free or cheap statistics package that you could use with your home page at Demon.

'Unfortunately, we at Demon are NOT in a position to advise you in this regard. Please accept our sincere apologies.'

Yeah, thanks dude!

Met an interesting guy in Eastbourne yesterday – an old bloke called George Musgrave (pictured who runs a 'museum' devoted to his work. This might sound rather egotistical but it was good.

George Musgrave had toy soldiers which he had designed – I remember buying them from Boswells in Oxford as a small boy – and a 40-minute, 16mm film he had made with a cast of 20 in 1949! Also, a birthday card from the father he had never known (killed at the Sommes) and a Penny Black stamp.

I was amused to see my first camera (a Kodak Instamatic) and a typewriter of the sort I had used on Fleet Street, displayed as exhibits! My life is already history, I thought (correctly). George Musgrave seemed a decent cove.

I took a photograph of him. He looks good for 90, I must say. And who can blame him for celebrating his life rather than going to ground and waiting to die in the way so many elderly people do?

8pm. Lewes Garret, Living Room. Been taking my mind off my life by reading Clark's Diaries. Although he was clearly an absolute cad and fairly lazy, arrogant and incompetent Minister, it is compelling reading.

How do politicians cope with the ridiculously long hours? Despite his bigotry, old Etonian snobbery and countless other flaws, so much of what he says rings true.

Like men being able to hold it together between 30 and 45 and then losing it and finding it hard to cope with the constant sexual rejection. And there was those 'two bright boys' coming in on one of his meetings in 1983: 'Brown and Blair'.

I wonder what became of them.

Oliver's Poetry