Wednesday, 25th March

I’ve been to the shop today. Mr Taylor popped in. He asked about the clock and I told him about the new noises. He shrugged his shoulders. He was excited about something and not really listening to what I was saying. He said he had a surprise for me. “I’ll go get it,” he said, and then rushed out of the shop. Two minutes later he returned with a rather old suitcase. “I built this robot. It connects to the internet and everything. It has a subscription to Aditus AI which makes it highly intelligent. I want you to teach it how to live. You have such an interesting life. Can you do that?”

Mimsy was very excited and persuaded me to take it. “I’ll help you teach it,” she said. The robot’s name is Gary Gigabit. It’s about one metre tall, made up of a disparate collection of electronics screwed together in human form. “He’s male,” said Mr Taylor. “You have to plug him into the mains. His cable is twenty metres long so he can move around the house, but he does have a habit of tripping over the line.”

Gary said hello to us. He then stood for about ten minutes looking at his finger. I don’t know what Monty will make of him. Harriet will tell me I should have refused. “How bloody complicated do you want to make your life,” she’ll say.

8:30pm

I have unplugged Gary Gigabit. I’m eating crumpet. I’m listening to Shostakovich. Mimsy  said I should never read Tolstoy, but that I should listen to Shostakovich. She’s learnt Russian at school apparently.

When I was a boy my mother used to tell me that I was a ‘nice place.’ She used to tell me how, with each child born, a new place is added to the universe, a new room, maybe even a new universe entire. “Make your place beautiful, make it a beautiful garden,” she used to say. I think she was inspired by her favourite poet – Alaric Venn.

“I was not told to make my place beautiful, and perhaps that is why I learned something else. The place I am has never belonged to me. It arrives with its own weather, its own wild growth, its own unasked-for visitors. I have tried, at times, to prune it into something pleasing – but always it returns to itself. Now I think the task is not to make a garden, but to remain – so that whatever grows here may grow honestly.”
Alaric Venn
People and Other Poems

I always felt that my mother’s place must have been magical. She read so many books. She’d take us on picnics to the Lake District and she’d say, “This is my place at its best.” We would holiday in the Alps and she’d become tearful at the sight of the immense landscapes. “I’m so much more splendid than I imagined,” she once shouted. Now she has her place in the graveyard a short walk from my own favourite place. The Resurrectory.

Mum's Grave

Mimsy was very chatty this morning. She asked me about the novel I’m writing. I explained that I’m not yet in a position to discuss it as I’ve yet to decide where it’s going. I have a habit of becoming very philosophical when I write and easily lose sight of the plot. “It’s an adventure story,” I told her, “and the protagonist is a young man.” Mimsy seemed to like that. She went on to tell me about Samuel Beckett and Jean Paul Sartre. She stood close to me and then gave me another photo of herself. It’s a picture of her sitting on her bed in her bedsit. As she handed me the photo she asked: “Would you like to have lived in the Soviet Union in a Russian Gulag and met Solzhenitsyn?” I think I said I didn’t know. She then swore, laughed and picked up a matryoshka doll and began to unpack it. “Sorry,” she said.

11.20pm

The temps de l’amour is here. I have dirt under my finger nails, greying hair and alopecia on my arms and lower legs. That’s not to say I’m not looking for love. There’s always room for more.

Scientists are wrong. Life is extraordinary.

To Be Continued…