Twelve Days in the Year: 27th September 2025

Wake to find that I’m singing Pulp songs in my head. Strange; not the songs I use as a means of trying to get back to sleep in the middle of the night (Sylvia’s Mother, Famous Blue Raincoat and Diamonds and Rust), no reason for thinking of them. Good news is that it’s nearly seven, rather than around four as it has been for most of the last fortnight. Bad news is that I’m still feeling cruddy, as the COVD or whatever I picked up a month ago has lingered, giving me a couple of days of feeling that I’m getting back to normal and then returning with limited variations – this morning is more aches, puffy eyes and brain fog, less phlegm and slightly less sore throat than yesterday.

After half an hour or so of dozing, A puts radio on and I get up to make tea and let the younger cats out. She superintends Buddy, whose contribution to the last fortnight has been to react to a dental operation to remove his last few rotten teeth – which seemed, briefly, to have improved his life enormously, as he had a few days of charging round the house and wanting to go out – by obsessively licking himself where he’d been shaved, stripping off the fur and making the skin raw and angry; we’ve been trying combinations of cone of shame and a onesie, plus steroid gel from the vet, and the net result is that the skin is slowly healing but he’s depressed and frustrated and not eating properly. I feel for him – one reason I’m not 100%, I suspect, is that I got into a state on Monday after we realised, returning from a weekend away, that he’d responded to the onesie covering the patch on his stomach by attacking his armpit instead. The difference is that I respond to the depression, frustration and feeling of grottiness by eating too much…

A brings him and his basket onto the bed while we have tea – which then pisses off Hector (who’s had a problematic paw this week; it never rains…) as he can’t take up his usual position next to me. We decide to order Buddy a new onesie with long sleeves, as at least then we won’t have to keep taking the cone on and off for him to eat. I get up and shower, then head into town to buy newspaper and breakfast (Cornish pasty for A, ridiculously over-priced croissants for me as I haven’t had the energy to make anything and the cheaper croissants, from a bakery rather than the Australian breakfast restaurant, are invariably soggy). Quiet hour with second cups of tea, food and newspaper – apart from a brief outbreak of fury from A at the Grauniad’s recipe for ‘tofu meatballs’ and the promise that she will refuse to eat them if I dare try to serve them to her under that name. It’s unclear whether tofu balls would be acceptable otherwise.

As it’s autumn, we’ve resumed regular Sunday roast dinners (including a plate for elderly neighbour); but the butcher in town is on holiday, hence we drive out to visit the farm shop of a farm that we’ve been patronising for nearly twenty-five tears, back when it was just a stall at farmers’ markets that don’t exist any more. Occasional light drizzle and a very grey day, but pretty countryside – apart from the fact that The Newt, the local seven-star hotel/park/cider complex/English countryside theme park down the road, has cut most its hedges, very neatly but taking out all the old man’s beard. The farm shop is having a car boot sale in a neighbouring field, so the place is full of idiots incapable of parking properly, and we don’t stay long, just grabbing a topside joint, eggs and some vegetables. Onwards into Wincanton to buy more food to try to tempt Buddy, a couple of bits for this evening, and some fuel for the car. Home for a light lunch.

Social media – followed hours later by the Grauniad, and presumably the other traditional papers – brings the news of the death of Tony Harrison. I’ve never really grasped poetry – I really don’t understand why some of it speaks to me and most of it doesn’t – but his work always made perfect sense and moved me deeply. It’s not just the classical reception strands (though I had great fun teaching it, when I was asked at short notice to take over a module on the Legacy of Classical Literature); perhaps it does have something to do with class and awkward relationships with parents. Anyway, spend half an hour failing to find my copy of his Selected Poems to re-read (it surfaces in an unexpected bookshelf that evening).

I’m feeling absurdly wiped, so a quiet day with minor pottering; putting airlock on the fermenting cider, picking the last of the chillis Rom the greenhouse, having a lie down for an hour, tinkering with some harmonisation for my jazz composition class. Hector, on the other hand, is full of energy today, and we keep getting pings from the app linked to his GPS collar tag to inform us that he’s left his designated ‘safe zone to patrol more distant gardens, to which A usually reacts by trying to call him in again. Clearing the chillis turns into tidying up the pots and removing debris – and disturbing a frog who had been lurking in a flowerpot.

In for a cup of tea and to check sports scores – both my teams are playing tomorrow – and then another hour of greenhouse clearing. Cook spiced mince and make guacamole for tacos, which are very enjoyable. I drink a bottle of Belgian Quadruppel that I bought in the Brussels Eurostar waiting area last month, followed by my own Weißen; both very nice, but one or both lead to a disturbed night, with vivid dreams verging on nightmares until about 2 am and then insomnia. We watch Cabaret for the first time, A having turned form a selection of more avant garde options as being much too anstrengend. It’s a strong reminder of when even entertaining films were serious and quite daring – the use of cutting (most obviously, the scene with the boxing match and the club manager getting besten up) the fact that much of it is in German (I did enjoy “Montag, Tuesdag…”). It expects audiences to raise their game and expectations, and to pay attention. Also enjoyable for the unexpected trivia questions suggested by the cast; Michael York is incredibly Michael York, I was expecting Joel Grey from Buffy season five – but was really not expecting Fritz Wepper, whom I know as the rascally Bürgermeister from Um Himmels Willen (or ‘heartwarming nun programme’, as I will always think of it).

Bed; aforementioned bad night.