The Daily Novel

It is about 7 AM and I am sitting at my laptop in the front room of the second floor flat in Savernake Road, quietly humming to myself. Manically happy. Just now a train rumbled past on the North London line. I stood up to get a better view. I can just see it in the gap between the houses opposite through the trees which block the view of Hampstead Heath beyond. The front garden opposite is a riot of colour with pink and white chrysanomens. To the right there is a poplar tree reaching up to second floor height and standing by its side a palm tree slightly higher. On my left, on our side, there is tree that reaches even higher to the attic floor above. It is covered with red berries. I am happy to be here, but even happier to know that in a day or two I am off to the house in Charmouth for a full two weeks. There it feels like being on a perpetual holiday, fulfilling my boyhood aspirations, when in the heart of the Black Country, I longed for a place by the sea. A place where I could walk along the cliffs and across the beach every day. And also do some useful work. My mood has changed radically since I awoke about three quarters of an hour ago. I had dreamt I was at the annual congress of the University and College Union, due to speak next, but with no notes and absolutely no memory of what I was going to say. That reminded me of my failures. Yesterday I was trying to help over the telephone a young woman who is under threat at the university, where she feels there is a conspiracy to get her out. Everyone is against her. They are refusing to accept her view of the problems which have arisen. I can see, that she, like me, has something of a mental health problem, though she is also able to do productive work for much of the time. I have so far failed to get her to see that she is making matters worse for herself by not acknowledging that some part of the problem arises from her own way of dealing with people. And that reminds me of my own failure with this blog, the main imperative of which was to show, via the manic depressive diary, just how it is to have a manic depressive temperament. In one sense I have been on a manic high, since my first stay in the B&B in Charmouth which I now own. Trying to fulfill a grandiose fantasy of having the best of both worlds, a house by the sea and a pad in London. The manic drive, fuelled by a need to stave off the depression and the fear of failure, leaves me little emotional space to really listen to the concerns of the other people around me. I should slow down but I am afraid that if I do, I will grind to a halt.In matters of human behavior it is almost impossible to be certain whether the problems you face are caused by what you do or by what the other people around you are doing. Which prompts me to jump about my other failure yesterday, which disgusts me. For the second day running I failed to get the television working properly. This time I did manage to get a picture, though a very fuzzy one, in time for Midsomer Murders on the main terrestrial ITV channel. The problem is something to do with the aerial. And I ought to be able to cope with aerials, because my father taught me the essential theory and mechanics when I was a boy. Despite that it might be my fault, because I crumpled the wire slightly while inserting it into the aerial plug. Or it might be that the house aerial which I am plugging into is not very good.The most sensible thing to do would be to cut off the plug and start again. But the manic itch is driving me towards the other cliffs I have to scale. I should first finish the two jobs I started yesterday. Dismantling the wardrobe still in the attic at my old house in Roderick Road, which my daughter wants. And taking down three light fittings there I want. All this I want to do before we go to Charmouth, because Alkan’s builders will be starting work on Roderick Road long before we come back. And my dream diary has reminded me that I drafted the change of address cards on the fourth of June, but I still have not sent them out. And I must also give BT some aggravation because they have still not connected the Savernake Road phone and Janet spent fourteen pounds on her mobile yesterday alerting friends in France to our new contact details.It is all too much. Perhaps I should have my breakfast and walk over the footbridge to the heath and spend the morning watching the trains go by.