Monday 23 September
I did some errands in heavy rain, and got soaking wet and cold, by the time I got home my trousers were soaked as high as my kneecaps. After putting on some dry clothes I got to my desk to work on the Biography. Gerard is in Cambridge for an examiners’ meeting, I didn’t go with him this time as I wanted to get on with writing, so of course the minute I sat down I couldn’t settle to it. Eventually I did find my concentration and got something done.
I ate rubbishly, couldn’t be bothered with food, unless you count chocolate biscuits and iced buns. In the evening I got as far as preparing a meal, forked in a few mouthfuls, then lost interest and watched Apples Never Fall instead.
Tuesday 24 September
I started reading Evelyn Sharp’s Unfinished Adventure, a memoir of her travels, very interesting.
I worked on the novel and then the Biography.
Wednesday 25 September
I was up early and read a bit more of the memoir of Henry Sidgwick by his brother Arthur and wife Eleanor. It’s very interesting, though very hagiographic, Sidgwick being such a prodigy and genius and all. Henry Sidgwick helped found Newnham College, Eleanor Sidgwick was the second Principal, and just as interestingly both were in the Psychical Research Society and investigated mediums. Now that’s what I like.
I enjoy visiting the College when I’m in Cambridge, especially if the weather’s nice as there’s a café and you can sit outside to drink your tea, and too it’s one of the settings for the novel so I can call it research.
I did a bit more on the novel and Biography.
Gerard got back.
Thursday 26 September
Another quiet day. I like these quiet days, reading, writing, going for one of my short walks. Streets, houses, other people’s gardens are endlessly fascinating, and of course there’s the Downs, looking autumnal and lovely.
I love these stone lions, which I often pass when I’m out on a walk. They’re on the columns on either side of the entrance to Cambridge Park. Years ago I heard or read a legend, or it may have been someone’s dream, or perhaps it was my dream, I can’t remember, but anyway the important fact is that on bright nights the lions get up and walk along the moonbeams.
I’m nearing the end of the first book from the ones I bought at my Mr B’s Book spa, The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, Shannon Chakraborty. It’s abso-bloody-lutely brilliant, though I can hardly bear the tensions and dangers as Amina – I don’t think I’ve loved a heroine this much since Ripley – tumbles from one peril to another. Pirates! Monsters! Fights! Villains so wicked they haunt your dreams! I’m in awe of anyone who can write such a wonderful book.
Can I justify buying more Shannon Chakraborty when the reading piles are falling over?
I think so.
Friday 27 September
Another quiet day working on the novel and Biography. Poor old Gerard on Teams all day for another examiners’ meeting.
Saturday 28 September
More Teams for Gerard but he finished at lunch time.
I jotted down some ideas for a Christmas short story, and some notes on an idea for a fantasy novel. I’ve wanted to write a fantasy for years, I did write the first book in a possible trilogy some years back, even worked on it with an editor who was very encouraging, but in the end I didn’t think it was worth going on with in its then form. Dismantled, now, there is something of interest in it...and still the dream haunts me – though when I read books like The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi I wonder how I dare even consider it. Well, I won’t be writing anything like that. Even so, I’d like to have a go and I’ve been carrying a notebook around with me for a while now and writing in it ideas and queries and difficulties (how will they… when does it… is it plausible that…).