I’m looking backwards: old journals, old photographs, old notebooks. What strikes me above all is the vigour and energy I once took for granted. The following little descriptions I found in the same pocketbook. The first is an oddity because I have absolutely no recollection of the action being reported. It can’t be fiction or an idea for a piece of fiction because I relinquished that fantasy a very long time ago. It’s scribbled down in black ballpoint.
‘There’s Sophie and there’s Maddie at the moment. Sophie I met at a poetry reading. “Why are you wearing that tie?” she said. “Are you a bourgeois?”
“Why are you wearing that scarf?” I said. “Are you a Palestinian?”
“The Palestinians are the most oppressed people on earth,” she said. “Tell me about the tie.”
“Tie Rack,” I said. “Liverpool Street station. I like the colour purple.”
“Are you a reactionary?” she said.
“I am,” I said. “Philosophically, I am Eeyore the donkey.”
“Who is your favourite poet, Eeyore?”
‘Picked up Oscar from his pre-school class. He was speechless with solemnity to be met by his grandad’
“Hardy,” I said.
“I thought so as soon as I saw the tie,” she said.
‘When we were in bed she said, “How old are you?”
“Fifty-five,” I said.
She said: “How long have you been having carnal knowledge of the opposite sex? Am I the first? You seem to know absolutely nothing about the female anatomy. I’m going to draw you a diagram. See this thing here? Now you see it, now you don’t? That’s key. All you have to do is touch it.”
‘I resumed operations, taking care like an earnest student not to neglect point A of her diagram. I think I did OK second time.
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