Twelve Days in the Year: 27th May 2024

Not a great night; I’ve fallen into a pattern of sleeping more or less soundly until around half three or four, then start to feel myself emerging from slumber, and struggle to stop thoughts of work – the terrifying piles of things not yet done, the diminishing time in which to get them done – taking over. It doesn’t help that, coincidentally or not, this tends to be the time when Olga wakes up and decides to go and stare at Buddy, who still mostly sticks to his safe space in the study and objects loudly to being stared at, which makes it harder to stop myself waking up and then much harder to get back to sleep. In this case, it’s not helped by fact that I have a pain in my back so can’t get comfortable, and am feeling too warm.

Doze; recite the song lyrics that sometimes help me drift off, but don’t this time; try lying very still and doing breath exercises. This latter is a mistake, as A. picks up that I’m not moving and asks if I’m okay, which as ever wakes me up completely. It’s now half five, so the radio goes on; shipping forecast, news and papers, a truly dreadful prayer for the day that seems to be trying to work in football results, then Farming Today. By this point I’m drifting in and out, which doesn’t unfortunately block out the interview with Anne-Marie Trevelyan about the government’s absurd national service plan – the garbled recitation of prepared soundbites (“the world isn’t safe… young people need to contribute to the community… greatest country in the world… which isn’t safe… freedom isn’t for free…”) reinforces the sense that this plan is desperate, floundering gibberish.

We get through to eight o’clock, when I get up to make tea and do the dishes; let out the younger cats to patrol the garden, which means Buddy can come onto our bed for a while, alternately purring and grumbling. It has been only three weeks since he came to us, so he is actually making good progress – but still clearly not happy with being one of several cats rather than the centre of the universe. He settles down beside me but with a lot of tail-twitching, as clearly he’s awaiting the return of the others; after ten minutes or so he hears the catflap and takes himself back to his den.

Extended lie-in, drinking several cups of tea, reading, and listening to the radio until A. gets especially cross with one of the interviewees. Leisurely breakfast – look, it’s a bank holiday, I’m allowed to do this, I tell myself – and then an extended litter tray clean. The plan is then to get out into the garden, to pot up plants and pick gooseberries, but the heavens open, yet again; it’s a matter of waiting for dry spells between showers, as the forecast really isn’t promising. Idle conversation about the workings of Masterchef; if the contestants all finish cooking at the same time, doesn’t that mean that some dishes are eaten stone cold and past their best through no fault of the contestant? Or is it all staged? Obviously, I suggest, I need to enter the competition in order to find out…The rain continues.

Rain stops; I bring the bags of potting compost up from the car into the porch, getting the last one in just as the rain starts again. Rain stops; I get the bags down to the greenhouse – and can now press on with potting up chillis and aubergines and sowing lettuce seeds even when it buckets down. It then brightens up enough to plant out bean plants and sow radishes and spinach, and to pick some gooseberries to thin out the fruit – and to make sure we get at least some before the badgers do. Garden is looking very lush, and rather soggy. Check the pond, and four dragonflies have attempted to emerge overnight despite the rain; one certainly didn’t succeed, as the remains of its corpse are drifting on the surface and being nibbled by newts, but in the absence of evidence to the contrary I can imagine that the other three made it.

Back into the house to get cleaned up and have a late lunch of leftover salads; put the gooseberries to stew, and put the oregano that’s been drying in the dehydrator into a jar. Brief trip out to supermarket to buy soya milk, cat food and other essential supplies, dodging the large puddles on the road; back for a cup of tea. Supper was very quick to make: cold cuts of beef, chips and salad, plus gooseberry fool. Spent half an hour upstairs with Buddy, who demands fuss for ten minutes and then goes back to sleep, allowing me to make a bit of progress with latest jazz composition homework (imitation Ornette Coleman, composing a piece without any harmony instrument). Downstairs to read and write up this diary.

For the final entry in this series – at any rate it’s the twelfth month after I started this, and I haven’t decided yet whether or not to continue – a pretty uneventful day. Which is what we both needed; things are otherwise so hectic at the moment, especially as I was off giving a lecture abroad last week and am off to give a paper at a conference later this week, which hasn’t been written, and I’m trying not to think too much about everything else. I have to keep reminding myself that we’re still in May and all my deadlines are in June – knowing, of course, that there simply isn’t enough June for this to work, but panic and/or insomnia will simply make things much worse… Positively, I continue a slow progress towards feeling more myself, and I’m sure that this regular writing discipline helps, however tedious it may be to read.