I used to weep over a nineteenth century American song about a young flower-seller -

'There are many
sad and weary in this pleasant world of ours,
crying every night so dreary,
Won't you buy my pretty flowers.'

It was "this pleasant world" which got to me. I don't think it was meant sarcastically. Seventy years later, I refer to our world as The Planet of Pain.

It has a haunting tune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzVVWaIdl8s

'While the thousands pass unheeding
In the evening's waning hours;
Still she cries with tearful pleading,
Won't you buy my pretty flowers ?'

Since then, other songs have affected me, amongst them Stephen Foster's Poor old Joe, Cyril Tawney's Oggy Man, and Schubert's and Müller's Der Leiermann. I was a sentimental child, and was very disturbed when, aged five, I discovered that other people were less comfortable than I was. Of course I knew nothing about the terrible aftermath of World War Two, nor the Shoah, nor would I know of the appalling results of the partition of India following on two centuries of colonial atrocities in the sub-continent.

When I first went to school there was a boy in my class called Robert Cowan. His head was shaved, because of ringworm. He had a glass eye. He lived in a Nissen (Quonset) hut. He was not at all clever, but he was friendly and laughed a lot. He fascinated me. I went collecting tadpoles and sticklebacks with him. Then he disappeared. Maybe he went to a 'Special School' or maybe the family was re-housed in a different area - or both.

Before I heard the sad song about the little flower-seller, I had wept over Hans Christian Andersen's Little Match Girl, which chimed with my sentimentality (later to become my symp-apathy ) more than The Little Mermaid.

How much more would I have cried had I known of the appalling history of matches, so aptly called Lucifers, and the terrible effects of bone-devouring phosphorus in match-factories, where children as young as seven worked, and died in the middle of puberty from the excruciating horrors of phosphorus poisoning!

Otto Dix: The Match-seller, 1920.

I hated school so much that for a while I would climb out of my bedroom window and stand naked in the winter cold upon the roof of the shed below, hoping that, like the little flower-seller, I would get pneumonia or rheumatic fever.

Since Robert Cowan I have always been attracted to the underdogs, including dogs, of course. My upbringing led me to make middle-class friends, but after I dropped out of university (at least twice) I sought less hypocritical and smug friendships from the 'lower orders'. Unfortunately, they had their own class-drawbacks, mostly in the form of chipped shoulders and general resentment. But I persevered, and eventually found Malcolm, working-class but with a BBC accent. More recently, in France, I have found Clive, a passionate lover (and ex-trainer) of dogs, an endearing English anglophobe, who has a problem with forms, speaks very poor French, and survives,with rotting and painful teeth on the minimum dole. He has a pathological fear of dentists.

1. My "mystical experience" has been (to quote John Horgan in 'Scientific American') "...a jaw-dropping astonishment at the improbability of existence.
   [...]
   Like an astronaut gazing at the earth through the window of his spacecraft, the mystic sees our existence against the backdrop of infinity and eternity. This perspective may not translate into compassion and empathy for others. Far from it. Human suffering and death may appear laughably trivial. Instead of becoming a saint-like Bodhisattva, brimming with love for all things, the mystic may become a sociopathic nihilist."

Or - more likely - a disempassioned observer like myself marvelling at the insanity of human life, if not the bizarreness of the planet.

Puzzled by my own bizarreness. For example, I never liked kissing people. I could kiss a dog, but not a human. This might be related to my horror of noticeable red or pink lipstick - though black or green is OK because it's "ironic", a self-referential joke. I have a vision of a horrible painted face approaching me...but maybe I invented it. I never liked clowns, let alone the other gaudy and cruel things in circuses (which were invented, of course, in England around 1750 like so much else that is grotesque and oppressive).

Children don't often kiss in their sex-play - they are much more interested in the curious sexual parts which can be looked at and touched. Kissing is often oppressive.

Many sex-workers exclude kissing from their services. For them, it is too intimate - not dispassionate enough - too soulful. French sex-workers do not expect their clients to kiss them, they say that only the BritIrish do.

In some societies kissing is or was considered a means of stealing a soul. This would be especially true of breathful kissing, during which the breaths are co-ordinated so that one person breathes out as the other breathes in. I find this form of kissing especially wonderful, not least because it's possible to do it only with a partner one is very (if temporarily) attuned to. Even better if there is an exchange of marijuana smoke! Better still if it is accompanied by mutual nipple-tickling.

There was no kissing in my adolescent same-sex fumblings, experiments and mutual masturbation. Nor later on, after my heterosensual love-affair/infatuation in Denmark, during which I discovered the delights of lips and tongue, as well as spiced pickled herring with sour cream, beer-and-ryebread soup (øllebrød). My mother was surprisingly non-tactile, though her sister, Marcella, was very touchy-feely but felt she had to rein herself in - until her old age, when touchy-feeliness became generally popular and the "stiff upper lip" began to tremble. I guess in this respect also I took after my mother. My sensuality is directed at or attuned to anything but other human beings - except in an erotic context. Sex and plants and animals - but not sex *with* plants or animals!

I never kissed Jim, who adored and masturbated me for seven years. It was Gregorio, the Tex-Mex who awakened me to homosensuality with not one, but several hundred kisses. Up to that point, sucking or licking a cock was possible, while kissing was not. Now, for me, mouth to mouth and tongue to tongue is firmly eroto-affectionate, while feather-kissing on the mouth can be erotic or, purely affectionate as with Malcolm. I like the cheek-kissing that is normal greeting in southern France, sometimes amongst men, too.

Gregorio was bearded and moustachioed. He was the first man I kissed, and the first bearded man I had cruised and subsequently fondled. Suddenly kissing became big in my life with men whose mouths were surrounded by hair - as indeed were the lips of of my Danish passion's vagina. (Why don't we have a reasonable word for it in English - a first name such as we use for cock: dick, peter, willy ? Maybe millie or angela or tanya or betty...)

When I first cruised in a gay-accepting pub (The Champion, Notting Hill, London) I was very straightforward. Never being a bar/pub person (partly because drinking for the sake of it has never appealed to me, partly because I never liked male conversation and especially not 'banter'), I regarded the venue as a cruising rather than a drinking place. Ever-frugal, I would rarely buy more than one drink, because I did not hesitate to cruise whomever I thought desirable and available. I could make one Irish whiskey last an hour.

The secondary sexual characteristic of a beard was to me as are the secondary sexual characteristic of breasts to a heterosexual man. (Looking at beards erotically, however, is not so obvious as looking at bosoms.) But eyes and set of mouth were important, too. Glum or bitter looking people are rarely attractive. Few other factors were significant. Whether he was fat or thin, tall or short, crippled or dwarfed were minor considerations - though, come to think of it, the rare examples I came across of physical handicap, maiming and dwarfishness were a definite plus. (See above and earlier!)

This memoir is boring me. How much more boring it would be if anyone were to read it. There is much else I'd like to add to this somewhat self-serving text...but although I have been writing for sixty years, I don't have a talent for it. The world has thousands of good writers producing wonderful novels (after much toil and trouble), but I am good only at writing letters !

I won't be able to face the revision process; it's tedious enough writing straight from my head onto the screen. I need to cut out the guff and liven it up with my exciting and laconic diary entries over the years. However, the thought of having to pull them out and read them, select bits and transcribe them makes my heart sink. I would even rather take out the vacuum cleaner or change the sheets - which I bravely do, with a heavy heart, as often as every two or three months.

(Now I finally get round to attaching the only one of my several diaries from 1966 to 1975 to survive. The others were destroyed.
I don't actually remember much of what is written in this Pooterish journal, here edited and annotated.
In the 1980s I jotted accounts of my sexual though rarely very sensual encounters into little pocket diaries,
and extracts of these will appear later in this badly-edited narrative.)

DIARY 1972

Saturday January 1st

Beautiful night with Jim (delicious profiterolles!). He left 12.30 pm.
Organised myself for tomorrow's (costly!!) trip.

Sunday January 2nd

Managed to get stand-by flight to London (£7.50). Unpleasant flight: flabby people. Spent most of the journey despising them (& feeling too hot). Met at the terminal by Hugh [Brody] and Chris[tine, his partner at the time].

Fine meal at 'Apu' Indian Restaurant. Fine presents from H & C: Innu prints & book 'Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee'.

Monday January 3rd

Up 9.45 am. Leisurely breakfast with Chris and Hugh.
Colin Turnbull 12 noon. With him to Turkish baths.
Back to the flat. Nice dinner with wines. Learned a great deal about Ituri 'pygmies' as well as Inuit.

Colin T. stayed overnight. Comforted him tentatively.
Jim rang in the evening. I love him achingly!

Tuesday January 4th

Up 9 am. Jim rang again - is not coming to London. So I'll leave on Thursday.

Another leisurely breakfast.
Farewell to Colin who will get academic backing for me from his University.
To British museum & pubs & Covent Garden with Hugh. Thence on my own to get book (by Colin) on Tibet plus records.
Spent evening on my own in flat, acclimatising to the horror of London!
I miss Jim! Colin impressed & was impressed by Hugh & Chris, & will be of assistance to Hugh in NY.

Rang Mattie [my mother whom I thought until 1981 was 'only' my adoptive mother].

Wednesday January 5th

Nice meal of sautéed celery, pork chops, and cauliflower au gratin. Slides of The Arctic until 2 am!

Thursday January 6th

Up at 11. Another nice breakfast.

Taxi to Inshop to get another record - & on to Victoria - kindly paid for by Hugh.
Back to Belfast by Caledonian/BOA (much nicer & less crowded than British Airways)- at Clonlee Drive [home of my mother and aunt, and where I was brought up] by 8.15 (having left Victoria at 4.06).

Friday January 7th

Jim came to bring me down to Kilnatierney [a damp, stonebuilt, coastal cottage 1 mile N of Greyabbey, county Down where I lived from 1970 to 1980]. Wine arrived. Sent a bottle of my own [excellent dry damson] wine to Chris and Hugh : was ordered to take it out Supplementary Benefits [Dole] place - another row with Authority.
Back to K with Jim - to bed! Jim left 3.50 returning at 7.50.
Marvellous wine for dinner - Chateau Panet 1967 (St Émilion).
Smørrebrød & Xmas pudding to Schubert Bb Sonata.
Beautiful input with Jim.

Sunday January 9th

Mattie & Girlie 11.15 am. Girlie stormed off in a huff at 11.30 [because of my Bolshie attitude to Social Security people & my pro-Republicanism]. She walked the 7 miles to Newtownards & took the bus back home. Very commendable [at her age: 68]
M & I opened bottle of Samos - superb. [My 'aunts' came most Sundays. We walked through Mount Stewart estate (without permission, from the very end of it opposite the lane down to my house near the shore of Strangford Lough. After lunch we generally played board games.]

Tuesday January 11th

Jonathan [Bardon] in the evening -bringing a record and wine. Very windy.

Thursday January 13th

To Belfast on 9.50 bus.
With Jim & Mattie to Museum to see Jack Yeats & Concrete Poetry exhibitions [including my own piece "IO" which was very concrete indeed, being the letters I and O arranged like a record and a player-arm, with the O containing texts including I owe, One-Zero, Eye-Oh, Goddess of the Dawn, Io (Italian for 'I') and so on...]

Friday January 14th

To Newtownards with Jim where I got two weeks' money from the dole office.
On to Kilnatierney. Jim left on 16.10 bus.
Tom [Matthews, best friend and poet, bearded] arrived 16.20. Jim returned on 20.30 bus.

Dinner of Fried rice with red cabbage, mango chutney, tomatoes, onions & apples.
Baked egg-apricot custard to follow.

Lacrima Cristi - dry & plummy, quite distinctive.

Lots of music played.
A beautiful evening and night.

Sunday January 16th

Tom left on 18.30 bus after a good musical/literary weekend. Light dinner of watercress omelette, warm bread & apple tart. Crisp Niersteiner Domtal.
Jim arrived about 21.30.
A candlelit Bath Party with demi-sel & watercress on wheaten bread with Niersteiner Domtal.

Monday 17th January

Jim left on 12.05 bus.
Rewired bathroom heater & put new outlet socket from radio & record player in bathroom.
Paddy [Walsh, erratic, married, almost-best and beautifully bearded friend, collector of my paintings] arrived 9 pm from Dundalk. To stay overnight. Opened a bottle of Château de Bellevue 1967.

Friday January 21st

Jim on 20.30 bus. Meal of soup (from tomato juice, red cabbage water etc.) Kebabs (quite delicious) & zabaglione.
Horrible crisis with Jim - partly because I was nasty & partly because of his sleepless exhaustion, since he works at night and comes so frequently to my house in the daytime.

[Jim had first come into my life some time in 1971, when I cruised him in a Public Convenience in the then picturesque market-town of Newtownards, which at that time was being trashed by planners and shopkeepers. He worked at night at Harland & Wolff's shipyard as an armature-and stator-winder, so as to avoid his wife, who had a good management job in the daytime. Naturally, he hardly saw his son. He quickly attached himself to me, and I put up no resistance, being sexually confused, and having had almost no heterosex since being (probably wisely) dumped by my Danish "true love" eight years earlier. When he wasn't stressed, he was good company. I didn't realise it, but he fell totally in love with me. Our unliberated (almost abject) sexual activity consisted in him masturbating me while I gently stimulated my nipples (kissing a man was taboo to me). This allowed me to continue in my conviction that I was "almost-bisexual". Throughout our 7-year relationship Jim made no attempt to educate me homosensually, to get me in tune with my body and his. I remained in a strange 'frozen' state until I was thawed and released 8 years later by another 'cottage' encounter - at the cramped men's urinals in the Centre Pompidou - and the joy of kissing a sensual man with a beard. Jim didn't have a beard - until he grew a beautiful bushy one - too late, in desperation after I had managed to dump him.

Before 1980 I found no man sexy - but now I see sexy (bearded) men from 18 to 80 everywhere I go - and although my willy twitches, I have no desire to engage with them in any way!]

Ulster Television appearance announced but not screened.

Saturday January 22nd

Jim in bad state still. Painted 'Jim on Beach at Kilnatierney' & started 'Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you joint the dance', also entitled 'Raison d'être'. Inspired by Rembrandt van Rijn via the dreadful Chaim Soutine.

Monday January 24th

Up at 11 am. A reporter from Newtownards Spectator came to do a piece on me.
With Jim into Greyabbey. Met Fr Murphy on way back - to find Ros McAlpine + another already here! So much for the poet reclusive!!
[Ros was the only replier to a small ad I had put in the local newspaper for a female model (really for a platonic female friend, of course) and we both got on well for at least another 10 years. Malcolm met and befriended her independently in the late 1990s. Her husband was an impossibly shallow and nervy/jittery man, but her children (who had never worn shoes until they came to live near her husband's home town in Northern Ireland) were 'personable'. Ros was something of a sucker for quasi-'spiritual' groups such as the Theosophists.]

Thursday January 27th

Painted 'Two Poems' on driftwood chair seat. [One of the few paintings I ever sold - in 2016 to [email protected]]

Sunday January 30th

M & G bearing gifts as usual (including delicious Brown Betty). Jim in evening..

Monday January 31st

Jim had never had soft boiled eggs before!
Letter from Jim & Diane Gracey ('The Blackstaff Press') accepting 'A Book of Translations' for publication. Hurrah! Weather very stormy.

Sunday February 6th

Jim & Diane Gracey 5.20 pm. Discussed 'A Book of Translations' etc
Dinner of mussel soup; leek/egg/cheese pie leeks in red wine;
leeks with olives & tomatoes (all on bread cold); apple tart. Muscadet & 'Toros'.
A most excellent evening. Jim came 7.20 pm & enjoyed himself too.

Tuesday February 8th

Alan in the evening-with Hirondelle wine. [Alan Crozier, insurance salesman, who came occasionally for sexual pleasure. Jim met him after I had dumped him, and they would live together over 25 years, when Jim died of motor neurone disease.]

Wednesday February 9th

Jim's birthday.

Monday February 14th

Paddy for half an hour at 6 pm.
Jonathan for 2 hours at 8.30.

Tuesday February 15th

Alan in evening - depressed.

Saturday February 19th

John Moulden 12.50 pm [Schoolfellow and later folk-musicologist who introduced me to early jazz, early blues (Ma Rainey etc.) and 'the folk scene' in 1960s Belfast. My only friend to turn Christian, but like all my friends except poet Tom Matthews, married.]

Dinner of cockle soup (me) Leek & potato soup (John); ribs with leeks in wine;
baked apple, John left 9.20 pm.

Tuesday February 22nd

To Belfast on 8.30 am bus.
With Mattie & Jim to Daisy Hill Nursery (via Dromore Mound), Ballymacdermot court-tomb, Kilnasaggart cross-pillar, & on to the Tandragee Figure etc in Armagh Cathedral. [This was early in what would be an all-Ireland gazetteering of prehistoric stone monuments over 15 or more years, culminating in my on-line field-guide on www.irishmegaliths.org.uk. The Blackstaff Press would publish an early version, badly-produced, with few and poor photos and half the index missing - in compensation for which they a little later published my handsome, but slight first collection of poetry, 'Cinema of the Blind', favourably reviewed by Francis Stuart!]

Thursday February 24th

Planted Leyland Cypress at the electricity pole;
got Fascicularia etc. from abandoned Mount Stewart swimming pool.

Friday February 25th

To Ulster Museum to photograph Ballintaggart court-tomb from café window. Back home on 18.15 bus

Friday March 3rd

Paddy's Birthday.
Lift to Newtownards yet again from Marjorie McAuley [antiques-dealer]. Planted several shrubs at Catholic church in pouring rain.
Soaked by the time reached Clonlee Drive. Thence into Belfast centre - miserably.
On to Jim's (fell through back door in his absence) to see self on UTV programme ('Spectrum') Thence at 11 pm by taxi with Jim to K.!

Wednesday March 8th

Supplementary Benefits slug came to ask if I had earned any money from the TV programme! (answer: no)
Jonathan in evening, with a bottle of wine, & a Choisya ternata

Thursday March 9th

Jim 8.25 a.m. Planted Choisya at wall in corner. [Where it grew very well.]
With Jim to Belfast; late lunch with Jonathan and Jim at Mooney's. To Brian & Lorna's - a pleasant evening in aspirational suburbia.
Hitch-hiked to Clonlee Drive (Brian's car out of order).

Friday March 10th

To N'ards and Kilnatierney, laden somewhat with goodies.
Tom on 4.20 bus. Tea of Mattie's fresh scones. Dinner of ribs & leeks baked in wine.
Jim at 8.40.

Saturday March 11th

SHEP DIED (1968)
Jim left on 2.05 bus. Diane & Jim Gracey at 7.30 pm. Excellent celeriac & potato soup. Rather good vegetable curry: turnip, red cabbage, tomatoes, peppers, apples, onion & lots of spices & vinegar -served with fried mangoes, fried bananas, pineapple chunks & pickles.
Baked egg custard flavoured with coffee and orange. Discussed 'Tide and Undertow' at length and inconclusively. Bed 2 am.

Tuesday March 14th

Made a selection of poems to send to Séamus Heaney for his anthology (simultaneous with 'Tide and Undertow') via Jim & Diane Gracey.
[None of my poems was included.] £10 cheque from UTV.
Warm, sunny day. Tulips, tomasinianus & ordinary crocus in bloom.

Thursday March 16th

Letter from 'Honest Ulsterman' asking for a short autobiography for a feature in the next issue including my translations of 'Nun of Beane',
Rimbaud, etc.

To Belfast hitch-hiking & by bus. With Jim and Mattie [in her sturdy Renault-4] to Legananny Tripod Dolmen, Goward Portal Grave, Kilbroney Churchyard, Kilfeaghan Dolmen, Donaghmore Cross; Daisyhill Nurseries (bought Gaultherias), Clontygora Court grave (most impressive), Clonlum Cairn & mutilated portal-grave, & Annaghmare court grave. Picnic at Clontygora.

Saturday March 18th

Jim left on 8.20 bus.
Composed curious autobiographical note - 'From slime through slime' & sent it, with lino-cuts, autobiographical & humourous poems plus 'Nun of Beare' & 'The Sea in Swell' translations to Frank Ormsby c/o Honest Ulsterman.
(Frank Ormsby).

Friday March 24th

No money from Supplementary Benefit this week because of £10 from UTV.
Another fine day. Jim at 20.45 - dinner of celery soup; Hamburg Parsley & red cabbage cooked with apple and onions, oranges and sour cream; coffee & orange custard.
An evening of Schubert piano sonatas

Monday March 27th

Electricity cut off because of 'Ulster Vanguard' [extreme right-wing, anti-Catholic, anti-Republican, racist 'Loyalist'] protest strike at suspension of Stormont non-parliament. But buses to Portaferry still running - so Jim got a bus into Belfast at least.

Monday April 3rd

Completed 'Gallows Song' one of my best yet poems [binned].
A yellowhammer tapped at the window pane today. Father Murphy in afternoon. Gave me £13 for gardening services rendered to the Church grounds!!! Wrote short story 'Thule, the period of Cosmography'.[later binned]

Friday April 7th

to N'ards & Belfast- had to take bus to Ards! [almost always hitch-hiked]
Planted yet more bulbs at Clonlee & a climbing Hydrangea in back yard.
Into town - bought 'Barber of Seville' which turned out to be unplayable!!!
Jim 8.50 pm: Made a good approximation to Danish Øllebrød with brown bread and Guinness; asparagus baked eggs; baked apple and cream. Muscadet.

Sunday April 9th

M & G in morning. Walk in Mt.Stewart. Mattie's clutch cable broke. Telephoned AA from [neighbouring - 900 metres] Finlay's on Mid-Island.
AA man came at 4.32 to tow car away to N'ards; he gave them a lift home. Jim 7.15.

Monday April 10

Breakfast on back steps. Alan in evening - with wine. Gave me free Fire/Theft cover for Home and Contents for a year even though I never lock my door! Not that anyone will come and steal anything.

Wednesday April 12th

Yellowhammer tapped on windowpane again today. Otherwise a day of gloom and depression. Revised Grethe Risberg-Thomsen translations.

Thursday April 13th

Up to Belfast - to Clonlee Drive [hitch-hiking as usual]. Salady lunch with Riquewihr.
Bus into town; stole 144 sheets Carbon paper! met Jonathan in pub) & to Brian and Lorna's - a nice civilised bits-and-pieces meal with beer.
A liberating walk with Lorna while Brian washed up. O how I lack a woman for company! Overnight in Belfast.

Friday April 14th

Mattie left 6.30 am for London & Iran.
Bus to N'ards & hitch-hiked on home to K. Jim did not turn up - but Alan did, later, with beer.
Translated poems by Lars Huldén.

Saturday April 15th

Letter from Jim to say he had to work last night. [He posted it in the main sorting-office in Tomb Street, Belfast, so it was delivered within 12 hours.] Father Murphy 5 pm - wanted me to put in an Escallonia hedge - £35 worth. Did so in less than two hours. Tired.
Some plants left over due to my poor spacing!

Sunday April 16th

Characteristically, Paddy did not arrive as arranged. Radu Lupu played Schubert Bb sonata on Radio 3 - exquisitely desolating,
Completed new story: Sonata for Meat Machine. Very depressed.

Jim arrived 7.15. My depression deepened. To bed early.
Soon quit double bed for my own...

Monday April 17th

Depression. Mattie-ish taciturnity continued towards Jim (Whose relation to me is not unlike that of Girlie to Mattie).
With him to Belfast, Planted Hemerocallis & daffs. At Clonlee met Jonathan.

Tuesday April 18th

to Doctor for charms and cures against my 6 month (or more) bladder infection (NSU ?) & my smegma. He very business-like.
To N'ards by bus with Escallonias for Judy McClelland [whose possibly-aspergerish son had persuaded her to join the Divine Life mini-cult, presided over by a very fat and very over-indulged child, probably manipulated by his grasping mother].

Thursday April 20th

Dug garden & prepared raised beds with Jim. Ros McAlpine in the afternoon.

Friday April 21st

RENT DUE
Letter from Mattie in Isfahan.
Met Jim at Clonlee Drive. Made nice meal of Smørrebrød on pumpernickel, preceded by celery soup and foillowed by rhubarb crumble.
Girlie enjoyed it - of course.

Monday April 24th

To doctor again for more effective cure for bladder trouble. [This continued, off and on, for years, and has not worsened, despite over 40 years of wear. In fact sometimes now I can go a whole night without pissing more than once, other nights 4 times.]
Letter from Colin Turnbull, impatient with my silly [pedantic] questions [about whereabouts of "Binga pygmies"].
Ordered £23 worth of wine (£8 worth for Mattie) from IECWS. [Wine Society whose wines have always been carriage-free to Northern Ireland.]

Tuesday April 25th

Letter from embassy of Central African Republic in Paris. Binga much more accessible than I thought. Is this A Good Thing or not ?
Letter from Grethe Risberg Thompson [Danish poet]. Transplanted strawberries. Hottest day so far this year.

Wednesday April 26th

Letters from Mattie (in Shiraz) and from Birthe Arnbak [Danish poet].

Friday April 28th

Man from Guinness arrived with 2 dozen Guinness in response to my complaint, plus dozen horrible 'Harp'; nearly £5 worth!
Will use Harp for cooking. Jim at 9.25 pm- by taxi.

Saturday April 29th

Letters from Paddy Diane Gracey, and Mattie in Tehran; Gyldendal offering negotiation on translation rights of Tove Ditlevsen's poems! With Jim to Belfast by bus. Train to Dundalk - to Paddy's. Empty. Hung around a bit, then climbed through the kitchen window shortly before Paddy came home! With him to Clontygora court cairn & Clonlum portal grave and Annaghmare en route to Nuremore Hotel, Carrickmacross. Unexceptional meal of smoked salmon, chateaubriand with tasteless veg & a sad Charlotte Russe. Coffee Excellent. Beer OK.
Bed 2 a.m. (overnight chez Paddy)

Sunday April 30th

Made Beltane porridge, bacon, sausage & egg for P's breakfast (! !!) and& washed several days' dishes. With Paddy to Kilnatierney
via Ballymacdermot court-tomb, Derrymore House, Goward Dolmen, and Ballynoe Stone Circle bearing rhubarb & five tomato plants. Jim already at K - swam! Into Mount Stewart. Dinner of celery soup, onion/egg bake & rhubarb crumble with ---- Cave Bel Air- wine very like
my own damson wine. P & J left at 9 pm.

Monday May 1st

Mattie (returned from Iran with gifts of modern minatures on bone, & a ceramic bottle) & Girlie around 3.30pm. To Mount Stewart.Light tea here - boiled eggs, wheaten bread, rhubarb crumble.

Tuesday May 2nd

Letter from Tom
Visitation from two somewhat stupid & overweening detectives from Newtownards
accusing me of cashing a blank cheque signed by Philip (son of Dorothy) Kerr for £80
on the 7th of February. Took me to Greyabbey Police Station to take samples of my writing which has a semblance to that on the cheque. To Dorothy Kerr in the afternoon to inform her of the visitation-she was somewhat surprised. The writing on the cheque is very like hers; & moreover Philip Kerr looks somewhat like me; although nearly all his Northern Bank transactions are made by his mother. The police made comments about my "affluent home" & so on. A most unprepossessing and unpleasant pair -who of course equated "good taste" with affluence.!

Thursday May 4th

Letter from Mikael & Siv [in Helsinki. I had met Mikael some years earlier in Stockholm when I attended the award ceremony for the Nobel Prize for Literature - as a representative of Queen's University - because no-one else would volunteer for lovely Stockholm in December. M and S later came to stay.]
Breakfast to Schubert's eviscerating C Major quintet. Made some lino-prints for Paddy.

Friday May 5th

Tom on 3.30 bus. Jim at 8.50 - & Brian Acheson, unexpectedly. Alan at 10.15 pm.
Showed Ancient Monument slides. Bed 2 am.

Saturday May 6th

Reduced (and improved) 'Quatrains' to 100 with Tom's help.

Sunday May 7th

Jim on 10 a.m. bus. Thrilled to bits to be licked by 3 calves & a cow after a little (motionless) patience.
Francis H. in evening. Played Pelmanism!

Tuesday May 16th

To doctors 10.50 a.m. to get charms and cures against smegma - and now piles !!
To N'ards with prescription & to Ros McAlpine's. Ros absent, but husband friendly. Made his lunch for him & had some of it.
Met Ross and friend Dorothy Kelly while hitch hiking back to K. where they had been waiting for me ! With them to Dorothy's
nurseries near Comber. A pleasant afternoon looking at, watering & selling plants, as well as talking and looking at Dorothy's drawings.
Hitched from Comber to N'Ards in an Alfa Romeo ! Then to K. with Marjorie McAuley.

Wednesday May 17th

Worked on translations of Viggo Stuckenberg's anti-fairy tales, wrote introduction, and sent them to Penguin.

Friday May 19th

Mattie collected me in evening to to organ recital at Ballywalter Parish church. Excellent concert; reception afterwards.
Coffee at Kilnatierney - where Jim was swimming. Mattie left 11.30. Bed about 2 am.
(Handel organ concerti; Bach chorales; Two Noels for Organ by Balbastre
(very witty) & Bach Brandenberg 5.

Monday May 22nd

to Dublin with Mattie & Jim. Called in at Paddy's en route. Photographed prehistoric stones in National Museum, where
people were very helpful (Dr Raftery). To National Gallery (briefly) and North again to Newgrange where we were treated to a tour by Professor O'Kelly. To Paddy's again & back in Belfast at 10 pm.


Tuesday May 23rd

Lift from Mattie to N'ards. Hitch-hiked thence to K.
To doctor: no treatment known for smegma [except dastardly circumcision!].
Ros & Dorothy at 11.30. Lunch of Piperade & my own wine - excellent. The three of us merry. Took 2 Rhododendrons and 2 Azaleas from K.
to Fr Murphy's & planted them in church grounds. Rest of afternoon at Ros'. Very wet and stormy. Hitched back to K - and got a lift right down the lane to front door!
Maps (large scale)of Central African Republic & Congo People's Republic arrived

Monday May 29th

Nice letter & book of poems from Grethe Risbjerg-Thomsen. Sent her a copy of my 100 quatrains. [Poor woman!]
Radu Lupu performance of Schubert Bb Sonata disappointing - unlike his broadcast which was superb.

Wednesday May 31st

A week of strong winds.
Ros & Dorothy at 11.15 am. with climbing Hydrangeas & Pyracantha (the latter for Fr Murphy).
Cleaned house with vacuum cleaner. [Borrowed. The house had running cold water and electricity, but I had no gadgets apart from electric blanket and sound reproduction equipment including Wharfedale loudspeakers. No fridge. I would never have a washing-machine.]

Friday June 2nd

Tom on 16.20 bus [for a week].
Jim at 20.40.

Monday June 5th

Jim 8.30 am. Tom went to the execrable Northern Ireland BBC to discuss programme 'The Northern Drift'.
Jim left 2 pm. Printed linocuts.

Thursday June 8th

Tom helped to edit short stories, now re-arranged & retitled 'Thule, the period of Cosmography'
Makes an excellent book - quite an original work [quickly junked].

Wednesday June 14th

Hot sunny day - Jim burned!
Made jackal-skin tabard (with tail).

Saturday June 17th

Painted 'Still-life with books & a paint tube' - my last painting. [Absolutely not!]
Windy, wet, cold day.
Large-scale maps of border area of CAR & CPR arrived. Mostly green (forest) with blue filaments of streams, plus Lobaye river flowing into the Oubangui/Ubangi

Friday June 23rd

ELEKTRA died (1965). [My first dog - wonderfully intelligent and beautiful.]
To Ros' via Jim and Diane Gracey; & from Ros' (with her husband) to a party.
Like all parties - totally superficial and pretty boring, though I met girl called Marge apparently interested in Pygmies - who lives at the end of Clonlee Drive !

Saturday June 24th

With M & G to Craigs court cairn - met nice dog called Nellie - & to Ahoghill to see Terence O'Neill's garden! very nice indeed, though somewhat on the Neat National Trust side.
Left Girlie off at Aldergrove for her holiday to Norway.
Back to Belfast & thence to Castle Ward to a Chopin recital by Peter Katin - quite good but not electrifying. [In 1980 I would move to within two miles of Castle Ward, a property whose grounds were largely trashed by the nefarious National Trust. My wonderful and accommodating professor of Philosophy lived there until he was exalted to the truly venerable post of Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge. He left hundreds of empty wine-bottles behind.]

Sunday June 25th
Jim in morning, exhausted. He spent all day yesterday walking through the town - has decided to leave his wife "for good". Fed him and put him to bed.

Wednesday June 28th

To Belfast early, then with Jim & Mattie to South Derry & North Tyrone:
Knockneill court grave; (failed to find Kilhoyle wedge grave - and got a puncture); Boviel & Loughash wedge graves. Clady Halliday court grave & Ballyrenan 'Cloghogle' chambered graves.
Back to Belfast, very tired, at 10.30 pm

Friday June 30th

GIRLIE'S BIRTHDAY
Jim in morning: has agreed to stay with his wife until September, when his son goes through his 11+ exam. Then they will sell the house & separate. [She, whom I met only once and had absolutely no wish to separate from Jim, quite appropriately took the proceeds to buy a smaller home. Jim decided to move in with me, and I (who have always found it immensely difficult to say No! when I can't simply walk away or disappear) acquiesced. He was, after all, very good and enthusiastic company on outings.Mattie was not happy about it, but kept her feelings pretty well to herself for seven years.]

Jim at Tirkane Sweathouse, 1973.

If you are wondering about a cure for smelly and quasi-mycological smegma, I discovered it 56 years later: a simple topical, antibiotic cream !