Ten months

It's now ten months since Kelly died. The 11th of each month brings its own special difficulties. I seem to have fallen into a depressive pattern, culminating on the 11th of every month. Though next month is her birthday and the following the anniversary, so it will be interesting to see the impact that those variables have on my mental state. Morbidly interesting no doubt. I haven't been to the doctors. As predicted. I meant to go today but couldn't drag myself from my bed. A rare lie-in as I continue to sleep badly. I'll go on Monday. Can't wait.

Have been reading C.S. Lewis' "A Grief Observed". It's his own grief he's observing, his nose rather pressed against the glass. His wife, the writer Joy Gresham, died of bone cancer after just four years of marriage. It's numbed and raw in turn, shot through with his trademark Christian apologetics. In fact he takes no comfort from his religious beliefs: "go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence.” Surprisingly, he didn't lose his faith, which because I suppose it is just faith, abides without proof. I found an ugly emotion in myself while reading the book: I was pleased that his religion couldn't help him, I wanted his bafflement, his loss. Because I have no faith, no metaphysical big brother kissing my grazed knees better and telling me I'm going to be alright. I've looked for it, I've tried to will it into being, I know the subject and I've put the hours in; I was an altar boy! But it's not there, I'm missing the god gene, the most selfish gene of all. The selfish genie.

His grief is not like my own. He is punch-drunk, concussed. He was dead himself within three years of Joy's death. I don't think I'm about to die, except by the slow, assisted suicide measured out in convenient pint sized units. Mine is an angry grief, it gives me energy. It stops me sleeping, it makes me work for the first time in my life. Yesterday it was nine months since my favourite person stopped being here. In the first few weeks after her death I wrote about 20,000 words about her, a stream of consciousness about how I felt, the pain, the bewilderment, the dislocation. I wanted to remember the pain. Well, I still feel that pain. There is nothing to remember. I stopped writing because the book was all about me. It should have been about Kelly. I'm still here, boring and annoying everyone, she's gone and I really, really miss her. The odd thing is that I now know people in Belfast who never met Kelly. It seems insane that there could be people in this city who never knew her. I think maybe now is the time to revisit what I've written, to see if it has any value, whether there's any of her in it.

Just one more thing

Kelly loved Columbo. Columbo engaged with her on almost every level: he was a crumpled and creased outsider figure; a committed pacifist who never carried a gun. He was a working-class stiff who tussled with the upper classes and consistently out-performed them, dazzling them with a dizzying intellectual gavotte, turning on a dime with a tasty kick-flare and a “just one more thing…”

Then there was his clear lack of interest in materiel possessions: his shit-brown European car, his antiquated rain-wear, the perfect blue of his five o’clock shadow. Hell, any time is shadow time for Columbo, I doubt he even had a watch. If he did it would be one with only sentimental value, an elastic strapped piece of junk that required a slap before coughing up a grudging “Tock”. The tics were model’s own. It would have been given to him on an early date by his invisible wife and won on a Coney Island ring toss or shooting gallery, in preference to a kewpie doll. He would never part with it.

But there was also something in Columbo’s methodology and the easy, lengthy sprawl of the episodes. They are glacially slow and, significantly, front-loaded. The murder takes place at the beginning of the show, in camera. There is no “whodunit”, no mystery, just the slow attrition of a blue-chip stock-broker or the sinking of a captain of industry. Columbo’s approach is to instantly and magically latch onto the murderer and just hassle them for two hours. He is a “Detective de Cons”. Deflating hauteur is his chief weapon; he flaps the unflappable and he ruffles the feathers of swans. He is always spookily, uncannily right and we know it – we were in on the murder! This puts us in an unusual position; we start to sympathise will the murderer. This seems strange. The killer will be stiff-backed and arrogant, superficially charming and eloquent and invariably played by Patrick MacGoohan (in fact he only appeared in four episodes but if you do ever catch one on TV, by chance, which is always the best way to watch Columbo, it’s always one of his. Or the one in which Leslie Neilson gets killed under a pier, by, I think, Robert Culp).

What you’re watching is a programme that is nominally about a policeman named Columbo but in fact the structure conforms to that of a traditional comic double act: McGoohan’s suave, clubbable persona is continually undermined by Falk’s ego-pricking bits of business. The average Columbo film, and they’re all average in a non- pejorative sense, is a long form episode of Cannon and Ball, the golfing smooth and crisply slacked tripped up by the crumpled and shabby.

Each episode starts with “the plan” where we are shown the bullet-proof sophistication of the ruse; nobody ever dies from having a tin of paint dropped on them from the top of a step-ladder in Columbo. The plans are delicate clock-work procedures, each interlocking cog neatly placed and always exquisitely far-fetched. This is obviously necessary. There would be no point in Columbo pitting his wits against a shit murderer. This is why, counter intuitively, they never hire hit-men, despite being busy and having the means to do so. These murderers are hands-on alpha males, even when, especially when, they are women. They are also routinely convinced of their own genius. In a job interview situation they would, when asked about their faults, cite perfectionism and an inability to delegate. (One plus would be their excellent time-keeping!) So it is deeply upsetting for them when, after a single meeting, Colombo latches on to them, following them around, contriving meetings, waffling on about his wife, wearing them down. You can tell exactly where you are during an episode of Columbo by the antagonists’ forced smile beneath a Vaseline smear moustache, or how kinked their straight pink partings have become and how much their eyes dart, nervously. Columbo is the beating of a tell-tale heart, his mere persistence unravels them, makes them question themselves; they fall apart in his hands like a sick pet.

Columbo is like The Fall: always different, always the same. And it was this disinclination to fuck with the formula that Kelly so loved about the show. When she was depressed she could sit back and watch the narrative unfold as smoothly and slowly as rolling out pastry. It is two hours of certainty, where the bad guy gets it and the little man lords it over the gentry in every episode for thirty years. Even Scooby Doo can’t compete with that level of consistency. Maybe MacDonald’s can. This security blanket snuggliness was only one part of her, her music taste turned to free jazz as she was no longer interested in verse/chorus repetition, she wanted to be excited and surprised by music. But Columbo represented something else to her: it was somewhere between a power fantasy, an idyll and a duvet.

She loved it and I loved her for loving it.

8 Months

It's 8 months since Kelly died. I spend most of my time constructing weak puns on Facebook and going on crash diets. Actually, that's not true. I'm fiendishly busy. I'm writing three books, I'm illustrating a book for somebody else, I'm making films, I'm doing a theme tune for a film (that doesn't even want it)and I'm still writing reviews and doing articles for local magazines. I'm even attempting to network for the first time in my life. And I'm not that bad at it.

And it's all just to fill up the empty space at the centre of my life. I can't believe you're not here. I can't believe you dont exist. I look at your photos and see that terrible vibrancy, that vividness, that urgency. I can't believe it's gone. I miss you so much, darling. It's nearly a year since I last saw you. Astonishing.

Valentine's Day

It's been a long year and a somewhat hazy one and so I don't remember what I did last Valentine's Day. It was Kelly's last, though we didn't know that at the time, as the doctors were still saying that she could have another ten years. Doctors.

I imagined that I'd cooked a fancy meal, like the Fancy Dan I am, or else we had gone to "Season" on Stroud Green Road, which rather became "our" place in our last year in London.

I look back on this blog to find out what life-hugging, no, LIFE SWADDLING, things I was doing while I still had her in my life. The Feb 14th entry is a short rant about my broadband not working. There's not even mention of Kelly. The 2011 calender, which I've kept, and which as a record of my last seven months with her would be the first thing I'd save if the house caught fire, tells a slightly different story. Kelly had been to the "Museum of Everything" with Anna Asheton over the weekend and demanded that I go with her again for the the Peter Blake curated show. The exhibition contained glass cases of stuffed mice and squirrels in various tableaux, dressed in the manner of Disney characters (clothes on top, bare bums) in school rooms, scrumping apples, fighting duels. The reason that this was so amazing is that I had told Kelly about a tiny museum opposite the ruin of Bamber castle that I used to visit as a child, which had a stuffed animal exhibition. This was it. When the museum closed the collection was broken up and Peter Blake had bought up most of it, inveterate collector that he is. Kelly had remembered this and brought me here without telling me. That's romance. Not complaints about your internet provider.

Re-reading the stuff I wrote on her back then I'm surprised by the energy, the anger, the jokes. I wasn't sleeping at all and I was drinking a hell of a lot* and yet, I'm bouncing off the page. And there was a lot going on. And it's all because of her. She was so funny and clever and crabby. She kept me on my toes. It was like trying to keep up with the smartest kid in the class, it made me try harder. The stuff I write on here now, the endless complaints, the hand ringing, the howl-at-the-moon why-why-whys: it's rubbish. It's nonsense. Thee was something pretty great in me for a while. But it wasn't innate and it died with her. I miss her so much.

Love you, darlin'

*plus ca change.

No jokes jones

Life is hard. That's a truism and a cliché. But surely it isn't supposed to be this hard? I've come to the conclusion that it is me. I must be doing it.

This week I received a letter from a company called "Premium First" (or more properly Creation Correspondence Finance Ltd, they appear to be in a period of transition). Except I didn't Kelly did. It appears to be some sort of insurance finance agreement. They're asking for about £90. I have no idea what it is for. But there are account details so I phone them up and explain that Kelly has died. I hate having to do this. The feeling are still very raw and articulating it makes it very difficult. However, most people, on the phone at least proffer some sort of social nicety, an "I'm sorry to hear that" sort of thing. "Premium First/Creation" don't bother with that sort of nonsense. For the first time ever I'm met with silence followed by an "And how can I help you?".

That got me on the back foot, slightly. I've been on the other side of those phone-calls, not for this company, but for other insurance companies. There is a social contract there, it is a social situation of sorts, whereby, if you're a human being and someone tells you that someone that they love has died you blurt out a pleasantry. You can't help it, as insincere as it is. It's a human response. It's also good business practice, especially in an insurance company.

So I was somewhat wrong-footed. So I carried on. What is this for? I cant tell you. Why cant you tell me? We only claim back the money, sir. We aren't the insurance company. So what you're saying you want £90 but you wont tell me what it relates to or who it's for? It's Data protection, sir. We can't tell you. Well how are you going to get your money? Kelly is dead and doesnt have any money. Are you going to sue her? How do we resolve this? Could you send us her death certificate.

So you're saying that you are asking for money without telling me who you are, what the money is for, you're asking me to send you my wife's death certificate and my incentive to this is to pay you the best part of £100? Why would I do it? At this point the chap terminated the call.

I received another one this morning. Still addressed to Kelly. The amount outstanding has gone up to £111. I ring them again. Again no information, the data protection act quoted, no record of my previous call and when I ask to speak to a supervisor the call is terminated again.

So, am I obliged to pay this? Do they have any legal standing? Can they sue a dead woman? Do I have any relationship with this company at all?

Does anybody know?

Don't even try

In my local JSA, as I assume there is in all JSAs, there is a person called the Decision Maker. The Decision Maker doesn't like me. The Decision Maker has just stopped my dole. Again. Another week without money. The reason is because I went home for Christmas. To see my mum. At Christmas. I had, on the last occasion I signed on filled in a form to say I would be going back to England for Christmas. This was sent away to the Decision Maker and I was sent on a surprise, unadvertised interview with a man who wanted to ask me about my progress and who was very sympathetic when I ranted at him for the best part of half an hour. During that time my original interlocutor reappeared, said the Decision Maker had okayed my holiday, merry Christmas, and got me to sign a form.

That was what happened. What in fact should have happened is the following: the interviewer should have sent me to another part of the building where THEY would have given me the form, asked the Decision Maker on my behalf whether I was allowed to see my mum at Christmas, on approval they would have torn the first three sheets of the form off and given them to me as they contained relevant information, carefully explained that the day after of my return has now become my de facto signing on date and, latterly, sent me a letter once again explaining when I was due to sign on in "clear" and "concise" government prose i.e. rococo gibberish but with the dates clearly high-lighted for ease of use.

Of course, I only found this out today. After my claim had been cancelled, after the fifteen forms I had filled in. After two more twenty minute waits in empty rooms listening to the staff talking about their lunches. After another two philibustering performances that have me railing against the ineptitude of the JSA staff always, without fail, meaning that I suffer, that I'm the loser. Meaning more forms, more pointless meetings. She rang the Decision Maker, describing me as a "very angry Mr. Higgins, I'm sure you are already aware of him" - which instilled confidence in me that I would get a fair hearing from The DM. He cancelled my claim but I was then told he had no choice, given that I hadn't turned up on the appointed date ("but nobody told me to!" "I'm sorry about that!") and hadn't contacted them within five days ("but how was I supposed to know that, I received no letter!" "I'm sorry about that.") he had to close my claim. So why is he the Decision Maker, if his hands are tied? Surely he's just the Rule Follower and has no autonomy whatsoever, I suggest. We don't make the rules, Mr Higgins, we're in the same position as you. I look at her behind the desk. She has a job, she will be paid. Unless she spunks her entire salary on more tattoos, she will probably be able to pay the mortgage she undoubtedly has. We are not in the same position. I let it go. The fights gone out of me. I've been incensed for an hour and it's not fun any more. I leave with another loo-roll of bumf and an appointment to reclaim on Friday afternoon that I'm assured will take an hour.

Today is the 6 month anniversary of Kelly's death. I had intended to say something about her here. But the poison of tawdry quotidian life has stolen in and robbed me of any poetry. I'm going down to Gulladuff, by bus, today. To see High and Kate and to see her grave. I've never gone by bus before and was hoping to get all my thoughts in order. To be fitting. But the dull spark of fury clicking behind my eyes like a fucked pilot light is because of something as stupid as dole money and not about the monstrous injustice of her dying.

I didn't sleep again last night as I could think of nothing but her. How she looked, how she smelt, how she felt. The eyes and the head movements that I occasionally see flashing for an instant on the faces of her family. Just a moment of Kelly, then gone. I miss her mind more, I miss her thoughts, I miss her quickness, her smarts. I miss thinking that I must, finally, be all right because she liked me. I miss her not being around. And I have done every day for the last six months.

I love her so much, uselessly. Because she's not around to love me back.

This last month I've had a crisis in confidence about my writing, mainly because I read some of it and it seemed a bit shit. The one person I trusted to be massively right about everything, whose judgement I trusted, is gone. How does a mind like Kelly's just stop? Where do those thoughts go? What happens to the machinery of that one, unique, impossible brain? Some of her is in me, some of her in everyone she met, she was walking osmosis. But not enough. Never enough.

I'm sitting on my own in a comedy club. I'm two hours early because I was told it started at 8, when in fact that when the doors open. The first act, and I'm here for the last act, doesn't come on till 9. In front of me is an old Belfast Empire poster for a play called "The Black Moth". There is no significance in this. But I choose to see some significance regardless. The last thing in life you would want to be associated with are moths. But there you go - I don't suppose either of us get a choice anymore.

The wind was brutal on my way into town. I saw one of those pinky-party-cowboy-hats lying in the dirt by some railings, its string chin-strap snapped. Sometimes life is so tawdry and obvious it looks like a bad movie. The dog shit parked in the rain outside the job centre the next morning was much more like it.

The Empire is showing "Holiday Inn" and playing Jeff Buckley over the top of it as an appropriate patina of gloom. I feel the Bing Crosby looks, a miserable bastard in a sanatorium. In fact we're of a type: bell-shaped, short-legged Micks with big ol' noggins. He's better dressed than me though, an oily Kramer in a colourful panelled cardy, gull-winged collars and pleated slacks. I'm in my uniform: black shirt, jeans, Doc Martens. There are Nazi-boot boys with a more outré sense of style than me.

Some nice words from my friend, Kathryn.

Our friend, Kelly – the wife of my friend John – was an extraordinary person. Firstly, let me tell you now – somewhat shallow of me, I know – that she was a true Irish beauty, a knockout: long dark hair, a wide smile... But she also possessed an interior beauty. Witty, clever, eccentric, steel in her strength. She was genuine loveliness and true grit. And there in her eyes, something deeper again: the record of a pilgrim soul. We met her when she fell in love with John. They enjoyed marvellous interplay. John’s incredible sense of humour was matched in an ideal partner. They adored one another. But Kelly discovered, not long into their marriage, that she had cancer. She approached her illness with great dignity and courage. I remember her – kindly, but very firmly – swatting my emotion when we shared coffee and pastries one day. She had no time for such saccharin. A true fighter, she kept her paws up. But cancer is no respecter of love or value, and, tragically, in July of this year, Kelly lost her battle. The order of things seemed disturbed. It was incredible that someone young and utterly gorgeous and productive and so important to so many could be lost, and lost so ruthlessly. But it happened. I knew Kelly for too short a time. But she made a big impact. Such is the power of the rare person. You rocked, Kelly.

A mad man in a box

I think it's finally dawned on me. She isn't coming back. I lay in bed last night, in our bedroom, surrounded by all of her things, staring through the darkness until the room seemed light and every detail was visible. It was raining outside and the wind rattled the windows, all the trappings of pathetic fallacy. I was simultaneously hot and cold, my stomach knotted. I was finally, crucially sober. I closed my eyes. I opened my eyes. The same inky shapes blotted back into view. The coat on the back of the door never became a hovering phantom, the clothes bursting out of her wardrobe came no closer, arrested like a frozen tide.

I miss her so much. If there were ever candidates for a "Ghost" style romance, thumb-deep in potter's clay, it would be Kelly and I. We were so in love. We had so little time. She died so quickly.

But there are no ghosts. And, if there were, this East Belfast house, where she spent two of the worst months of her life, would be the last place she'd turn up. She'd hang about the Ormeau Road or Gulladuff. Or Camberwell, where we were happiest, eating a curry and drinking champagne on New Years Eve. Watching the fireworks over the Thames from our living room window, holding each other.

I don't know why I don't dream about her though. I dream tedious, vivid rubbish every night, but I can never dream about her. I just want to see her again.

I'm left behind. Like her turtle picture. Like the boxes of hats and scarves. As empty as her shoes.

I've missed you so much this week, darlin'.

It's always the stupid little things. Today, as I was transcribing an interview into a word document, I wrote the word "team" and the word document helpfully suggest that I might want to insert the words "Team Spigot" into the text. "Team Spigot" were Kelly and I, named for an Ivor Cutler book. We were as much Team Spigot as we were "Muggins".

There's no more Team Spigot. I'll never get to use the "Smells like Team Spigot" joke again.

I hadn't thought about that in months.

We help light your way

It's 4 months to the day since Kelly died. I'm on the phone to Airtricity who want to take her to court for an unpaid bill of £86. You really do have to sweat the details.

I'm on hold while they cancel her account and invent mine. An aspirational Norn voice claims "we power sport, we power hospitals, we power transport, we help light your way."

Predictably they have nothing in place to deal with the death of a customer. Does nobody die any more? It is baffling how nobody can deal with the death of their customers. Do old people, at risk in the community, no longer use any services?

Miss you so much, darlin. You used to say that we were both shit at doing our admin. I'm proudly carrying on that tradition.

Today is our third wedding anniversary. The leather anniversary, in fact. I should be commemorating our love with a book-mark or a pair of bondage trousers. I can only commemorate now. Three years is such a short period of time and yet it feels like an eternity. It starts with the happiest day of my life and ends with, well this: me, alone in the house we shared for just three months in Belfast. Alone and under siege from the remorseless weather, drumming, drumming, drumming, like a peevish Zulu nation. I miss you so much, Kelly. Today no more than any other day, the calendar is filled with pointed little dates now. I think of you every minute of every day that I'm not blind drunk or asleep. I don't need any leather goods to remind me.

Life is so very unkind. You asked for so little from the world and you received less. The fact that you never had any children seems to break some kind of cosmic law, there's a universe of wrongness there. You would have been a fantastic mum, as you were an incredible wife. All I ever had to give you was love, the cheapest coin there is. But you took it and you paid it back to me with no little interest! You made me the happiest I have ever been in my life and I love you forever, my sweet sweet girl.

Scotch and sober

Met up with the writer and Penal Reformer Andrew Neilson* last night, as he was in town to deliver a lecture to seven or eight malcontents in cheap suits. Andrew has melting brown eyes and the sort of honeyed Scots brogue that would make you want to take out a bank account with him. If he can't sell prisoner's rights they might as well be in an oubliette.

We repaired to the Duke of York, as the John Hewitt was drowning in character fiddle playing, and he sat with his back to the wall, his worried eyes dancing. It was a pleasant night and he's a nice man but I had exactly the wrong amount of booze. Returning home I spent the rest of the evening talking wildly, even angrily, to Kelly. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't do anything but blather away into the darkness. I'm very glad I had no booze in the house and I think that's a pretty good general policy.

Woke up early. Signed on. Bought broccoli. No dreams.
















*his formal title.

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped to the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft

And turn again to what it started as,
A joyous shot at how things ought to be,
Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:
Look at the pictures and the cutlery.
The music in the piano stool. That vase.

So I attempt to close Kelly's bank account. I ring Ulster Bank and ask them how I go about it. Go into town with the death certificate and an I.D. and that's all you need to do. I do this. They say they'll write to me. They don't. I wait two weeks. I ring them again. I say "You were supposed to write to me". They don't know why. I explain. They say the person dealing with that is in a meeting, can she phone me back the following morning. I say fine. They don't ring the following morning. I ring them, again, in the afternoon. The person who was supposed to talk to me has been on the counter all morning and hasn't been able to call me. I say well why did she say she would then? The woman on the phone says I dont know, can she phone me back. I say no, I dont want to talk to her, I'm talking to you now, can you not tell me what's going on. She says can she ring me back. Sighing, I hang up. She DOES ring me back. She tells me that the chap I'd spoken to in the branch has been off ill. I shrug on the phone. So what, I say, I was dealing with the bank not with some guy. There must be a file, I signed a lot of forms and they photocopied all my I.D.s - there must be a file. Someone else can deal with it. Oh she says, so you've signed the forms already? Yes, I mentioned it previously, that's why I went in to sign the forms. Oh I didnt realise, she says. Can I call you back. She DOES call me back. The bank have lost the forms I've signed. You're joking, I say. I take in my passport and my wife's death-certificate, allow you to make copies of them, and you lose them !

She says the only thing to do is to go in and repeat the procedure. I hit the roof. I fly at her like Mussolini from the balcony, or like George Costanza, whose line it is. I tell her there is no way I'm doing that.

But the stuff is lost. Sick boy has hidden the stuff so effectively I know I'm doomed to go through the whole procedure again. At the end of the call she asks me I bank with "Ulster Bank"? No I bloody well do not I say. Right enough, she says.

And I grind to a halt...

Losing chunks of tooth as I just have always makes me depressed. They are a permanent, or semi-permanent reminder of the impermanence of life, a ticking death-clock, a memento mori (molari?). And I don't need those reminders. I live alone in a house stuffed full of reminders.

But I was depressed before this. The days have been getting noticibly longer, the energy that had been fuelling my writing, my exercise, my ideas, has depleted. I've sat in front of the TV for the last two days passively watching good French films and tapping away at my computer. Updating Facebook, answering e-mails, updating the tedious and useless but-I'll-try-anything-at-this-point Jottify. Anything but writing.

It doesn't help that it has been raining solidly for the past two days while London has been experiencing an unprecedented Indian summer. It doesn't help that my therapist thinks I'm fixed or cured or no longer hovering over the cutlery drawer with a glint in my eye, and is no longer bothered. It doesn't help that I feel utterly unable to gain recognition anywhere for any part of my work.

And of course I am missing her. What is the point?

Flat. Low. Went into town today. Couldn't think of anything to do. And there was no one to do it with. Came home. Tidied up. Made some food. No texts, no e-mails, no voice-mails. Listened to "The Woman in Black" on the radio. Sat down in front of the computer. Did nothing. Watched an episode of "The Prisoner". Stared at the computer. Did nothing. The grey cat came in, mooched around for a bit and left without a word. Checked Facebook: brief exchange about crisps. Another brief exchange about the Green Lantern. Checked my e-mails. The phone rings twice, both recorded messages about the miss-selling of loans. I listen to Hancock on the radio for about ten minutes. Another two readers on "Jottify". I don't write anything. I miss my wife. Life is so boring without her. I open a bottle of wine for the first time in two and a half weeks.

The wine is boring.

Poor Diem

I'm still on a lifestyle revamp: I don't drink every night now (just Friday's and Saturdays - that was a rationalisation from not drinking at all. You can't not drink and still network - people look at you oddly). I have cut out bread, butter, red meat, wine and beer ( I drink gin and slimline now!) milk, fat and sugar. I eat fruit and some sort of variation on Turkey stir-fry. I walk at least two miles a day, even when it's raining. It has had no obvious effect at all. If anything I look fatter. Never-mind, once I am certain of my un-waged credentials (I have my first two weekly drop in on Wednesday! New bug, I hope there's no hazing ceremony) I shall join a gym. I already have a gym-buddy a 2o something artist friend of mine: it's like the man and boy love club over here.

I have got things done today. I phoned Kelly's bank about her account. I had already done the joint account stuff two weeks ago and two weeks is about as long as it takes to get me motivated to do things again. They're phoning me back as they don't know their own "closing-your-dead-wife's-account" procedure. You would think it would come up occasionally. I then phoned Hotmail about giving me access to the e-mails in my account. Little know fact about Hotmail accounts - if they aren't used for six months they close them down. I've had to go all the way to America with this - all of my correspondence with Kelly from when we first met is on that account. I have to have it. They're going to e-mail me within "24" hours. I also tidied the bedroom. This had three separate effects: I could see the floor again, I wept bitterly having to engage with all of her things ( a Christmas card where she refers to herself as "my girlfriend", her many wally socks, just things...just everything) and lastly I found my passport. This means that not only do I have some i.d. but I can also get off this rock if need be. In a hurry. When they find out the truth about me. I also found a lot of clothes that I thought I'd lost - some of them even fit me!

So that's my day. I also watched "The Spy in Black" and wrote five hundred mean-spirited words on being fat in order to try and get published somewhere over here. That's what they're crying out for: middle-aged men be-moaning their spread.