... and start all over again

THE BLOGGER’S RETREAT “I really like this pub,” said Plutarch and it was that kind of day. Elegiac, talk of families at the end. The pub has a name which Plutarch uses; for me it’s The Pub in Roupell Street. These days we repair there after the BR curry but decades ago we used to drop in on our way back to Waterloo station and thus it became a source of minor marital strife. It’s real-ale, plain, clean, has no music and the all-male clientele resembles us in the seventies: noisy, released from work.

We also talked of writing. Plutarch flattered me by recording an utterance so it was salutary to return home and find a letter from my agent turning down Gorgon Times (“original theme… has something to say… current climate for fiction is so dire… sorry for such a cheerless response.”) Mrs BB was sympathetic but, to tell the truth, my mind was and is on The Love Problem (77,232 words).

EVERYDAY MAGIC It’s obligatory to slag people using mobile phones. But consider this. To attend Diane’s funeral in Folkestone we picked up Younger Daughter who lives en route. Elder Daughter took a bus from Luton to Heathrow and walked to Terminal One. I mis-steered at Heathrow and ended in the cab rank. To which Elder Daughter was guided via mobiles. Impossible any other way.

THANKS Reading about Diane’s death HHB recommended Diana Athill’s Somewhere Towards the End, a brisk look at life (ie, gardening, sex, family relationships, appreciating painting) from old age. Excellent. On her late talent for writing: “I never knew (and this is literally true) what the next paragraph I was going to write would be.” Me too. It’s the act of faith that something will occur that keeps you alive.