a booklover’s summer in barnes

C is suffering one of her sepulchural summer coughs, from overwork & smoking too much. She walks round the house hooting mournfully. She sounds hollow and distant, I tell her, even when she’s close. “Thanks, Mike.” Meanwhile the cat has been in a fight. His face swollen up almost perfectly round, he lies in the splatter of morning sun at the base of the bay tree, waiting patiently for the antibiotics to work so that he can get back out there where it counts. Maybe he’s too old for this. Or maybe he can still make a difference. & I’m having the kind of dreams I have when a book is trying to tell me who to be so I can write it. Not the kind of dreams I could slot into Viriconium unmodified–much more realistic & literal, like the ones behind “Gifco” –but still eye-openers. I get up early, wincing away from them, feeling both manic and depressed. I feel exactly like Mrs Keilar, one of my alter egos in Nova Swing: “This morning,” she said quietly, “I sat here for an hour without moving. I ache. I’m waiting for something to happen, and I don’t even know what part of my life it will approach from.” Always write what you know. The book will tell you what that is. Eventually.

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