Today, Christmas Eve, is my birthday. It is low key, as it has always tended to be, being the day before the winter feast. I am happier in media res than on a bank looking at the rushing stream, or, rather, meandering trickle. The other day, through the efficient business of astrology, I learned more about my character. It said I ride roughshod over other people sometimes, due I think to my moon being in Libra. This was the first time this had been suggested to me. Normally they tell me my moon is at home in Libra, whatever that means. Astrology, despite being nonsense, suggests things to you, and once they have occurred to you, you think about it and sometimes locate that element in your behaviour. Because I can ride roughshod. In fact, I did it the other day in a card shop where we were buying wrapping paper. We couldn’st decide between a red one and an ivory coloured one with mistletoe on it. We asked an elderly gentleman what he thouight. I can’t remember what hi opinion was because we didn’t want it really, just a chat. In the ensuing conversation we used the word misconstrue and then looked for its noun and came up with the word misconstrual. The elderley gentleman, in his half of the converstaion, came up with the word misconstruction. I need to check which one is right. And then, trying to move the converation on, I did my roughshod work and said. you’ve got a rubbuish card there to him. He didn’t seem too offended and there was a little conversation about the dogs on the card. It was for his grandchildren, I think. What I am trying to do is hurry a conversation into a more interesting zone, so I admit I can sometimes jog it on a bit by pulling on the equine bit of the vehicle. Sometimes the horse neighs in pain and my intention is misconstrued (the verb is right). This time it passed off without rub. Still, nice to see there is progress in my understanding of my personality.

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We made a cake and gave a piece to Number 5. Normally we only give a piece to Number 2 but we opened it up. The first cake was a honey cake. I shuffled across the courtyard and knocked on Number 5. I gave him the cake on a little plate. Amazing! he said. And when I saw him again he said it was amazing. To be fair, he calls most things amazing. The other day I was taking the rubbish out. He said what are you doing? I said taking the bins out. He said Amazing. So I take it with a pinch of salt. A couple of weeks later we made another cake. Pear Upsidedown cake. I shuffled across and gave him the cake on a plate. He said it was amazing. The thing is, we weren’t getting our plates back, so we bought Number 5 a little lavender plant from Columbia Road Market. The idea was to give him that and mention the plates. My friend shuffled across to do the deed but she forgot to mention the plates. She said, you just go round and ask him. I said, you can’t do that because you’re putting him on the spot. The plates are probably all mixed up with his plates. We have never been inside Numbher 5. I suspect it might be ancient chaos in there. No, I said, what I’ll do is when I bump into Number 5 next in the courtyard I’ll say: Hi Number 5. We’ve got another cake coming up soon (Amazing) but this time I’ll give it you on a piece of tissue because we’re running out of plates. I’ll deliver this as a kind of joke. We’ll have those plates back in our possession in next to no time. I am confident this will work.

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After the Falklands war a British civil servant was put on trial in the UK for leaking information to the press about the sinking of the Belgrano, the Argentinian war ship by British forces. It had been given out by the governmnet that the Belgrano was imperiling British ships, whereas it appears that the Argentinian war ship was in fact sailing away from the exclusion zone at the time. The civil servant, Clive Ponting, was put on trial for an offence against the official secrets act. At the end of the trial the judge directed the jury to find Ponting guilty. In fact, the jury chose to ignore the advice and find him innocent.

It’s a nice story of an anti-establishment verdict being given by a random group pf twelve individuals seeing through a self-serving establishment. It was nice to read about this the other day.

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In my recently revamped Tesco there is usually only one till open. This is the large Tesco between Vauxhall and Kennington in Central London. The queue stretches out to the crack of doom. I, being as you know an infamous complainer especially in Tesco, try to collar a member of staff and make my views known. The week before two tills were open but only one took cash and all the automatic payment machines now only take cards. The cash till stretched beyond the crack of doom. Baudrillard would call this social triage, a queue where you are chosen, not one that you choose. It reminds me of the days when I used to take the night ferry on the channel crossing before the channel tunnel was built. In the middle of the December 23rd night in the snow and cold you were made to assemble outside for the passport and customes control. It was willful parading of people who couldn’t afford to take the plane and was normal in those days. That was the British and French state in action, each as bad as the other. It looks like the private sector is returning us to this kind of social bullying for its own social engineering scheme..

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I had another mundane dream again last night. I was trying to push enormous plastic coins through a slot into some kind of plastic box but was unable to squeeze them in. This is a good example of the kind of nightmare I experience a-nights. It is a variation on another classic dream of mine when I am trying to compose a number on an old fashioned telephone dial but keep putting my finger into the wrong digit hole and am forever having to start again. They are dreams where the principal sentiments are mild frustration and trivial irritation. Blocked off from me are dreams of bliss and joy, horror and dread, pathological compulsion or ecstatic delight. No. My dreams are obsessively quotidian, bland and vapid, banal.. If they were a colour they would be a matt grey; if they were a sound they would be a middle-aged man clearing his throat. Does this reflect poorly on my inner life? After all, there are no dark quests through expressionist townscapes; few purple nights and crimson days; little in the way of daggers and poniards behind a velvet arras. Though the other night, in my sleep, I was apparently wincing in great existential angst. What was it that tormented me? A fall from the balcony of some great monochrome cathedral? Bitter tears shed in a poisonous night garden? No. Just another plastic coin that wouldn’t fit into its slot.

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Newcastle United F.C. has just been taken over by some arm of the state of Saudi Arabia. Most of the supporters are overjoyed with the promise of incalculable wealth to buy world-class talent on and off the pitch. The fact that Saudi Arabia has a reputation for its unscrupulous dealing with others including well documented evidence of its state sponsored murder of the journalist Jamal Koshoggi seems to worry some but not many. How far is a supporter prepared to go in his undying support for his team? I must admit I am a poor supporter of my team. I refuse to watch Match of the Day if I know they have lost, as they did 2-4 this weekend. I will support them in the good times but not the bad. I support them through the thick but not the thin. Genuine supporters would lambast me, no doubt, but the way I see it is that I sign up to the support thing for fun not for suffering. Is this masochism? If I don’t want to spent 10.30 to 11.45 pm on Saturday night with my head in my hands, why should I? This infidelity to a project has become more general in me in recent times. Time was I would finish a book I had embarked upon whatever, even if I was hating it. Now I’ll give them some of my time, but if it doesn’t please me sufficiently I am unwilling to give the author twenty hours of my life. Why should I? There are plenty of other texts in the ocean swimming around and plenty other football clubs other than Newcastle United, or, in my case, Manchester United. If I am strong enough to disassociate myself from my background which is the reason why I got railroaded into this support phenomenon in the first place, on a strategic temporary basis, then my mental flexibility should be praised not criticised. I’ll come back to Man United when they start winning!

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I was listening to Radio 5 Live and they were talking about an abusive relationship. A man was violent to a woman, hitting her, shouting at her, locking her up. The interviewer asked: did you love him? The abused woman said yes. And they continued talking. We should probably try and get away from talking about love in this way, as if it were a contamination in no way related to your respect or admiration for a person. I remember when Prince Charles was about to marry Lady Di and he was asked Do you love her? She was standing next to him at the time. He made an infamous response which was much derided at the time. Whatever love means, he said. I suppose it wasn’t very reassuring to his poor bride-to-be standing next to him, but it was a fair enough response to a daft question. One can appreciate that falling in love is a kind of virus that you catch, but to be complacent and satisfied with that state of affairs as an acceptable way of defining love is not useful and, as in the case of the radio programme, doesn’t help us when the infatuation snags on unpleasant behaviour.

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We all know a celebrity or two, but the best of us refrain from bringing this random acquaintance, some hangover from school or university or from some job we once did, into the conversation for reasons of discretion and taste. And yet, it can be that one feels compelled to summon up this celebrity acquaintance from the lower depths of ones memory, often for competitive reasons. I know, of course, that it in no way reflects well on me that I have a passing acquaintance with someone who may punctually pop up on the telly or the radio. It would reflect better on me if I just kept my mouth shut and let some other fool trundle on about how Dominic Cumberbatch is a friend of a friend of his sister. But faced with this intense pressure I could well come up with one of my sorry tales: being on Gordon Ramsay’s ridiculous restaurant show about shocking restaurants he turned round or being once seen naked in a shower by Iris Murdoch, for example. I do not feel better when these anecdotes are forced out of me. I feel sullied. I should just tacitly accept my role in the shadows. It would reflect better on me. Let others seek out the celebrity acquaintance limelight.

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There is a poster on London Underground with the message Nothing is Impossible or, rather I think, Impossible is Nothing, which is the highly conventional and untrue message of the contemporary world. It is being drilled into us by celebrities and sportspeople, as well as politicians at all hours of the day. Question: what is your message to the kids? Answer: You can be whatever you want. It is, of course, the great American lie. Anecdotally, the odd fish will slip out of the net and be able to escape the index that their class and upbringing has branded on them, but these are astonishing exceptions, which is why they get the coverage. Anecdote is not data. I’m sorry to be the bearer of this news and such a kill joy, but someone must deliver the facts. Most children dreaming of celebrity success remain in the obscure.

However, it is worth preserving this mantra as an aspiration. What you need is two bowers (Keats has a liking for this word). The bower where you house your aspiration where Impossible is Nothing and the other bower, truth bower, where you face the facts, some things are impossible, Impossible is Something, we do not live in Mickey Mouse world. There are two bowers which we must harbour simultaneously and they contradict each other. It is a kind of Schroedinger’s Cat episode. The bower that helps us get the best we can out of the world and ourselves and the other bower, the one no-one talks about, that refuses to make suckers of us all.

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In many of the paintings of Francis Bacon, especially the later ones, there are what appear to be glass cases or pods that enclose key figures in the drama of the painting. You may see an agonist slumped over a toilet seat or a sink unit, sometimes almost melded into the white armitage shanks porcelain so that they are one with the fixtures, and around them a clinical transparent box. It is something that has come into the world of contemporary theatre. The glass box is now a cliche of metropolitan production. I have seen countless Jacobean tragedies with on-stage murders taking place in a glass case where literally nobody hears you scream. Yesterday I spent the night in an unnervingly ill-conceived Bacon hotel in the town of Bedford. The modernisation of the rooms took the form of the installation into rooms of a glass pod for a toilet, through whose mildly frosted glass you could be observed and heard (there was a round hole the size of a big fist in the door) urinating and defecating. Add to this the fact that I was in the final stages of my recovery from a particularly violent case of food poisoning and you can imagine the fun. The tryptic of Hotel customer with bathroom fixtures will soon be up for auction at Sotheby’s. Reserve price £61 million.

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