Day 198

While I’ve been sitting on my backside most of the day editing and uploading the last three weeks of Radio Stradbroke podcasts, M has been busy and practical and has laid some of the paving slabs at the back of the house so that the cats can comfortably use the new cat flap, and so we’ve got something other than the dust bowl of Kolkata to step on when we come out of the French windows to the extension. All very middle-class and privileged, I know, and I am aware of how lucky we are to be able to do these things. How romantic a visit to the DIY shop is on a Sunday afternoon!!!!

We had originally planned to go to the DIY shop yesterday after my Radio Stradbroke show, but a very dear artist friend, Sarah Luton, messaged me during the show to say she was in Norwich town centre painting, so we went down to see her. M hadn’t seen her for 29 years, and I hadn’t seen her for 10 years or so, apparently, although I thought it was only 5 or so years. We have two very large and wonderful paintings by Sarah in our living room and what is to become the library, as well as probably the most treasured thing in our house, a drawing of M on your wedding day, as well as numerous drawings of the cats who lived with us when we lived in Newbury, and she lived half a street down from us. She’s fabulous, and so very very lovely. Go have a look at her stuff and buy some.

Of course, all M’s practicality has a sort of counterproductive effect on me, because I spend an awful lot of time (too much time) on kicking myself for not being more practical (and that makes me feel very zeta male, although that shouldn’t really bother me), and feeling very lazy. I mulled this while I went round Mousehold Heath on my walk earlier (95% of which was in the shade, because I treat heat and sun with respect). And I do know part of it is because I find practical things very boring – doing of any kind, in fact, being the laziest man on the planet. A very rich patron would be just the job for this poet – ha!

One thing I do need to do more of – and I’ve been meaning to do more of it since 2016 but got derailed by the ridiculous illegal Brexit referendum, since when 90% of my social media activities have to do with politics (maybe I should have been more vociferous before then and it might not have happened) – is to promo my books more. Writers nowadays need to be very active in marketing, which inevitably detracts even more from being creative (and I’ve written about this on many many occasions, so won’t bore you with it all again).

The weekend is drawing to a close – another weekend gone where I feel we’ve not rested enough, not done enough, not lived enough. Same old story. It’s middle-class angst, and the fear of mortality, really.

AGGIE’S ART OF HAPPINESS – CHAPTER 151