Sat 5th August 2017

My mother was up for a few days, during which I demonstrated my utter selfishness.

We went to see my middle daughter, who has a part in a professional production of an adaptation of a book whose title sounds a bit like Pleasure Thailand. I had to look nonplussed when she said last night that it lasts for three hours.

Its duration isn't the problem -- I've sat (well, lay) contendly through a four-and-a-half-hour-long performance of John Cage's Imaginary Landscapes; it's the fact that Pleasure Thailand is produced outdoors.

In the evenings, there's only one reason to go up there, and it's not sitting on a cushion wrapped in a binliner listening to a three-hour play I can't hear. It's like a re-cast Milgram experiment. "Watch the play." "But the subject is suffering. He's saying his arse and back are killing him and that he doesn't give a shit what happens to the characters." "Watch the play."

I lasted about ten minutes. A set of harlequin-panted actors shouting at each other whilst dancing like chuggers. I made my excuses and sloped off: guilt and relief in equal measure.

I rang Kitty and went round hers. She reminded me that last time I was in her house, a few days ago, she said that if I wanted to stay over (a certain amount of alcohol and another relaxant had been consumed) she'd put my clothes in her washing machine. I promptly stood up, took every single item of clothing off, clasped her to my naked body, thanked her profusely, and took myself to bed.

Every workplace has one person who takes an irrational dislike to you and makes your job as difficult as possible. The Cunning Little Vixen never speaks to me except to criticise me. Glancing up at the cricket score whilst pouring a pint, I am told "keep your eye on the pint." Resting my elbow on the back of the bar for a few seconds has me told to stand up.

She does the rosters, and this week I have been allocated 5.5 hours' work. If I had anything as archaic as a contract it would be constructive dismissal.

Never mind, all will be forgotten soon. I'm off right now, to Glasgow, for house music all night long.

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looby, n.; pl. loobies. A lout; an awkward, stupid, clownish person

M / 61 / Bristol, "the most beautiful, interesting and distinguished city in England" -- John Betjeman [1961, source eludes me].

"Looby is a left-wing intellectual who is obsessed with a) women's clothes and b) tits." -- Joy of Bex.

WLTM literate woman, 40-65. Must have nice tits, a PhD, and an mdma factory in the shed, although the first on its own will do in the short term.

There are plenty of bastards who drink moderately. Of course, I don't consider them to be people. They are not our comrades.
Sergei Korovin, quoted in Pavel Krusanov, The Blue Book of the Alcoholic

I am here to change my life. I am here to force myself to change my life.
Chinese man I met during Freshers Week at Lancaster University, 2008

The more democratised art becomes, the more we recognise in it our own mediocrity.
James Meek

Tell me, why is it that even when we are enjoying music, for instance, or a beautiful evening, or a conversation in agreeable company, it all seems no more than a hint of some infinite felicity existing apart somewhere, rather than actual happiness – such, I mean, as we ourselves can really possess?
Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

I hate the iPod; I hate the idea that music is such a personal thing that you can just stick some earplugs in your ears and have an experience with music. Music is a social phenomenon.
Jeremy Wagner

La vie poetique has its pleasures, and readings--ideally a long way from home--are one of them. I can pretend to be George Szirtes.
George Szirtes

Using words well is a social virtue. Use 'fortuitous' once more to mean 'fortunate' and you move an English word another step towards the dustbin. If your mistake took hold, no-one who valued clarity would be able to use the word again.
John Whale

One good thing about being a Marxist is that you don't have to pretend to like work.
Terry Eagleton, What Is A Novel?, Lancaster University, 1 Feb 2010

The working man is a fucking loser.
Mick, The Golden Lion, Lancaster, 21 Mar 2011

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I hold Kitty to my naked body

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looby, n.; pl. loobies. A lout; an awkward, stupid, clownish person

Rummage in my drawers

The Comfort of Strangers

"Just sit still and listen" - woman to teenage girl at Elliott Carter weekend, London 2006

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