Monday
I spent much of my spare time last week reading Unreconciled, a collection of Michel Houellebecq’s poetry, for the Digested Read. It was one of those rare occasions when I could have just reproduced the original and most people could have easily mistaken it for parody. Take Love, Love. “In a porn cinema, wheezing pensioners / Discrete, secrete, excrete.” I’ll leave you to work out which bit was me. It’s possible that something got lost in translation, but most of the poems read like a piece of typical Houellebecq contrarian prose arbitrarily cut up to look like poetry.
I’ve nothing against people writing bad poetry, it’s just that I’m not sure why so many famous writers choose to have it published. It must be a vanity thing. As if they feel that poetry is the highest form of writing and they can’t be taken seriously until their verse has seen the light of day. Harold Pinter was another serial offender. It wasn’t enough for him to be one of Britain’s finest ever playwrights and a Nobel prize winner; he was also desperate to be a poet. With mixed results. His was the last poetry I digested before Houellebecq. “Without you at my feet / I am incomplete / Just like the widows in Baghdad / Whose husbands have been murdered / By that fucking war criminal Blair.”
Tuesday
If Yvonne Carmichael – the pioneering geneticist played by Emily Watson in the new BBC Sunday night drama Apple Tree Yard – seemed curiously uninquisitive about the bloke who picked her up in the House of Commons, she wasn’t the only one. The House of Commons security staff also appeared to be having a singularly off day. Not only do people who have just given evidence to a select committee normally get escorted off the premises, the security officers don’t just fling the keys to the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft in the crypt of Westminster Hall to anyone who fancies a quick shag in its broom cupboard. Especially if that person, like the mysterious Ben Chaplin character, isn’t wearing a Commons pass. I tried ringing the office of the chaplain to the Speaker to find out who, other than the tour guides – and Ben wasn’t dressed like one – would be granted immediate access to the crypt without providing proof of identity, but didn’t get an answer. But I’d be willing to bet that even MPs have to book the broom cupboard well in advance. If only to make sure they don’t end up cramping each others’ style.
Wednesday
I’m getting slightly worried about my hypochondria. I feel I’m far too settled in a comfort zone of familiar illnesses. Or illness in particular. Cancer. Whatever my symptoms, it always comes back to possible cancer. A cough? Lung cancer. A headache? Brain cancer. Stomach upset? Bowel cancer. For some reason, I never seem to worry about having heart disease, Alzheimer’s or other fatal conditions even though I am as likely to end up with one of those as cancer. This week, there have been signs up all over London warning people to beware of high levels of air pollution in the low-lying fog that has been hanging over the city and yet I have remained totally unbothered since chronic lung disease isn’t on the list of illnesses I worry about. There has to be something wrong when I feel immune to a genuine health risk while lying awake worrying about ones that – so far – have proved imaginary.
Thursday
The news that Barack Obama has been spending the week playing golf doesn’t feel quite right. He should be doing something more active than driving a cart up and down Caribbean fairways. But then, I’ve never really got golf. I associate it with retirement. I play once a year on holiday in Cornwall on a nine-hole course and that cures me of the desire to repeat the exercise for another 12 months. Friends say there’s a chance I’d improve if I played more but I’m not prepared to put the effort in to find out. Though the time may soon come when I have to. Prozac aside, exercise is the only thing I’ve found that really helps when I am gripped with anxiety and depression. Pushing myself to the point of near collapse several times a week is the only way I can guarantee time out from myself, when the pain of physical exhaustion blanks out everything else. Only now that I’m getting older, I’ve noticed my recovery times are getting longer and that my metal knee is beginning to find even the cross-trainer hard going. Maybe golf isn’t so far away after all.
Friday
T2: Trainspotting sees Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie reunited 20 years on. Lucky them to all still be alive. When I was in rehab 30 years ago, a counsellor warned our group that it was statistically likely that half of us would be dead inside 15 years. At the time we all laughed this off as scare tactics, but with the benefit of hindsight she was near enough spot on. Over the years all too many people I know have died, either from going back to drugs and overdosing, suicide, Aids or other causes. The instances of cancer and heart attacks among my friends who had drug and alcohol problems have been far higher than among those who didn’t. Far too many of my friends have also been seriously ill with hepatitis C for long periods of time, though thankfully new drug treatments have meant that some of them are now cured. So far, I’ve been lucky to escape with just having major mental health issues. So, call me a kill-joy, but I think I’ll give the Trainspotting reunion a miss.
Digested week: Theresa’s blind date.
