Thursday, 29th January
I don’t know who you are, but I’m glad you’re here.
My name is Oswin Blore. I have a bric-à-brac shop called The Resurrectory along Silver Weir Lane in Tarnleigh, not far from the Durham Road cemetery. I stock well-read books, posh porcelain, old clocks, toys, wands, forgotten curiosities, and many other oddities. I’m currently over-stocked. The shelves in my shop sag beneath a legacy of ordinary lives. Some of the stuff has been bequeathed by those who now lay hidden in the cemetery. Maybe it’s their way of staying close to the objects they loved, the objects that are now what remains of their lives.
Friday, 30th January
I didn’t get to finish my first diary entry last night. Edwina Sponge turned up with a slice of key lime pie and a dead canary. It took us three hours to identify who it belonged to. Mr Schneider, who lives in the old house on the cliffs, the house that most people imagine is condemned, has a caravan full of canaries. He breeds them for the miners who continue to work the shafts at Blackroot Mine. I think Edwina is going to visit him today. She’s going to return ‘Flighty-No-More,’ the stupid name she gave to the canaries’ carcass, to Mr Schneider so that he can give it a ‘proper burial.’
I will now continue with what I had planned to write yesterday.
This diary came to me last September. I remember the day clearly. It had started with clouds and light rain. Just before lunchtime, small pools of blue began to appear in the grey skyscape. I was busy waiting for customers. An old man with a long, grey beard, parked his Morris Minor Traveller in front of the shop. I had just started eating my packed lunch – cheese and pickle sandwich, fruit scone with butter and a flask of tea.
The old man came in, looked around and then asked the way to Durham. “That scone looks nice,” he said. I offered him half. He nodded his head as he took the scone from my hand. “It’s all about stuff isn’t it,” he said, just before pushing the entire half-scone into his mouth.
Before leaving the shop, the old man gave me a book. On the well-worn, leather cover the words Liber Communis were engraved. “Here, take this, it’s a diary. Write in it when you can. Whatever you write in it, I’ll be able to read. It’ll keep me up-to-date with what’s going on in your part of the world.” He winked and chuckled. As he was leaving the shop I called out. “What’s your name,” I said, “I need it for the leger.” He waved his hand in the air. “Godfrey,” he laughed. “Godfrey Fisher. My friends call me God.”
After watching Mr Fisher drive away, I opened the Liber Communis. It had been used before – many times. The pages were blank but the indentations of many years of writing could clearly be seen. It’s as if someone had erased whatever had been written. Only four words had been left, at the top of the first page. THIS WONDERFUL, PRECIOUS PLACE had been written in capitals in blue ink.
I spent the entire afternoon thinking about the diary and the old man who gifted it to me. He was in the shop no more than about ten minutes. I’m no stranger to people handing me things and demanding no money. Often they just want the object they’re donating, to be used again.
The next day I was given Lilly Palgriff’s urn, which she still occupied. Her daughter Cheryl said she couldn’t cope with it anymore and asked me to “do something with mum.”
Lilly had always been good to me.
Anyway, I forgot about the diary until the day after Christmas. I woke up with a pen in my hand – a wooden pen that had been given to me years ago by Lilly Palgriff for having looked after her poodle for a week. I think my body was telling me to get on with it.
That afternoon I came across this quote.
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.
So, from today, I begin a new writing adventure in a diary given to me by a man who called himself God. (I’ve always had a feeling that the divine must spend a lot of time in human form playing tricks on people like me. People who are constantly leaning over the edge of reason, looking out for something magic to happen).
I have some fresh scones.
Saturday, 31st January
I have run out of toilet paper and jam. I also fancy one of those nice Quiche Lorraine’s that the corner shop has started selling. They’re home baked and taste wonderful. I also want to take some photos of frost. The resident garden robin has been watching me as the feeder is empty so I’ll need to get some seed too.
I want to write a poem.
8:15pm
How strange. I fell asleep in my armchair and dreamt I was on a carousel in Paris. The Eifel Tower looked small. Godfrey was playing guitar in a café. All the buildings around began to crumble – but the dream remained peaceful. Something new was coming, something exciting. In the dream I knew what it was but not now. Words were a thing of the past. I sensed that they weren’t needed. People smiled at each other and that was enough. Just before I woke up, a heard of cows appeared and one of them began licking my face. As I woke I remember thinking that at last I was in the right place.
11:15pm
I can’t sleep. I want to be in love again. Last week my grand-daughter Maple, asked why I lived on my own and why I keep so much junk. “They’re the bones of my world,” I said. She’s only seven years old and didn’t understand. I hope she does one day.
Just before Christmas I took Maple to Grasmere. We walked up to Easedale Tarn and got very cold. We drank hot tea from the flask and ate a sourdough sandwich. “Do you do this a lot granddad,” she asked. “As much as I can,” I said. I explained to her that as she grows she’ll begin to build herself a bigger world. I told her that she must include places like Easedale Tarn.
Tuesday, 3rd February
I’m having a lot of powerful dreams at the moment. Last night I dreamt I was trying to pull someone out of a deep, muddy hole. I’ve always scribbled in notebooks but I’ve never kept a diary. I’m going to change that. Why? I feel I live increasingly on the surface of things – I barely touch reality. I’m far too immersed in the human narrative, which is becoming increasingly materialistic. I’m now committed to re-engaging with my imagination and to embracing the natural as I used to. The power of words is that they can show us the way back. A diary is a path back into ourselves. Something is moving in that deep, muddy hole, and I think it belongs to me. This diary will be my way of pulling it out.
I don’t pretend to understand much of what I’ve read in The Journal of Speculative Chronophysics. But it does help me to get to sleep. I’ve tried counting sheep, playing mental scrabble and knitting, but nothing gets me to sleep better than a bit of abstract theory.
The quote above is particularly interesting. What would happen to time if it was digested? It would be fascinating to find out.
Yesterday I found Mrs Kettle standing in the cemetery in front of an empty, freshly dug grave as if she was waiting for someone to push her in. She spends a lot of time wandering alone amongst the graves since her son died. About two inches of snow lay on the winter grass and on the empty branches of the trees. I stood a while watching her. Blue sky began to appear as the clouds swirled apart. I could see her breath leaving her slightly opened mouth. I found it all so beautiful.
I’ve been looking for a novel I wrote twenty-seven years ago. I found the Olivetti typewriter I used. How much of our life is kept in boxes? I’ve always felt the need to write. Speech falls like rain. It appears and then flows away to join the great ocean of indivisibility. Written words linger. They gather together into small clusters of meaning – like friends around a campfire.
Wednesday, 4th February
My third wife got me the curtains that hang in my bedroom. They were in the loft for years and would have stayed there. But the day before yesterday, when I went round to clean the gold-fish pond, my only post-divorce responsibility, she told me that she wanted me to move back in with her. We divorced after I painted the front door pink. “Do you remember our cheese-on-toast soirées?” she said as I was leaving.
8:30am
There’s mist on the hills. The clock’s tick tends to be more clunky when it’s damp outside. It’s tock seems unaffected. It’s a very old timepiece and has arthritis in its hands. It’s pendulum has problems too. It has to have three drops of steroids administered to its swinging mechanism every month. I hide the steroids in WD-40 so the clock’s none the wiser.
February isn’t my favourite month.
Yesterday I went to the dentist. He was taller than I expected. He had an Irish accent and was playing Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony on an old record-player as he scraped bits of calcified plaque from between my teeth. He drew blood. I could taste it. I could hear trains rumbling over the viaduct that passes just above the dentist’s extensive premises.
There’s a new Tesco hypermarket opposite with a carpark, carwash and a collection of recycling bins. It’s quite a busy corner of Durham.
“I’m Seánóg,” the dentist said, just moments before he invited me to sit in his leather lounger and began tutting at my teeth. “Your teeth are older than you, by about ten years,” he said. He looked up at his assistant. A woman with naturally grey hair and a slightly crooked nose. “We’ll need to keep a close eye on his premolars.”
The woman wrote something down on a scrap of paper. “The computer’s still not working,” she moaned. She placed a piece of pink gum in her mouth and then smiled at me. It was a nice smile. Her teeth looked quite young. “It’s alright,” she said, winking at me. “I never forget anything. I’ve got an elephant’s brain. Isn’t that right Dr Delaney.”
Dr Delaney rolled his eyes. “Your skull’s not big enough for an elephant’s brain. The pachyderms’ encephalon is three to six times larger than a human’s and a lot heavier.”
I was unable to comment as three of the dentist’s fingers and some sort of implement, were in my mouth. I was beginning to salivate and began to worry about drowning. Can you drown on your own saliva? I didn’t want to swallow for fear of biting one of Dr Delaney’s fingers off.
The oral ordeal ended at about the same time the record-player finished playing the last movement of Beethoven’s symphony. I’ve always loved Beethoven. I love classical music. I was pleased to get Dr Delaney’s fingers out of my mouth.
At one point I remember asking what had happened to my usual dentist, Mrs Ditheridge. “She has eleven whippets,” Dr Delaney replied. I’m not sure how that answered my question but the dentist said nothing more on the matter and the assistant just shook her head and mumbled something like, “I can only afford three.”
On the way home I stopped on Waldridge Fell and watched several grouse roaming amongst the heather as if they were looking for something. I kept the car’s engine running. A passing hiker stared at me angrily and then tripped on a stick. This startled the grouse making them fly away in three different directions. The hiker began swearing at the stick. He picked it up and threw it. Due to its curved shape, it returned to him like a boomerang and hit him on the head. I wasn’t really paying attention to the hiker’s misadventure as I was busy trying to remember cheese-on-toast soirées with Harriet, my third wife.
I had pizza and chips for tea. With some marrowfat peas.
I struggled to sleep again. I dreamt the dentist was a famous pianist. He was performing at the London Palladium in front of the King and an audience of attractive women of varying ages. A grouse suddenly appeared out of the piano and woke me up. The other day I dreamt that Harriet’s curtains were magic carpets. They flew myself and Harriet to Sinbad’s cave. The tea he served was disappointing. I remember that.
The typewriter needs servicing. I think the novel I wrote twenty seven years ago is in the tin box in the shed. I hope mice haven’t eaten it. Not that it was any good. But I’d like to read it.
Thursday, 5th February
I only needed to read three pages of The Journal of Speculative Chronophysics, before falling into a deep sleep. I found the journal down the left leg of my pyjamas this morning. It had torn them quite badly. Maybe Harriet will repair them for me?
I circled this quote before dozing off:
Bonum Diem
Should I buy new pyjamas? I’m going to phone the ticksmith this morning as I’m growing increasingly concerned about the clock’s arthritis. It may need a higher dose of painkillers. The shop’s ceiling needs repainting too. The worst job of all. I hate painting ceilings – nothing messier. I’ll go with white again.
Talking of white, it was snowing when I pulled the curtains open this morning. I saw Edwina Sponge pushing a pram full of logs along the road. She waved and shouted. “I’m off to the doctors today, for a blood test, and then I’m making cherry tart, come round later, I need help with my emails.” I’ve become her computer technician. I don’t mind. She has a Chameleon called Heraclitus. It likes to sit on my shoulder whenever I’m round sorting out her technology.
2:45pm
I want to be happy again. The kind of happiness that comes from inside and not the kind that comes from purchasing something exciting. I fear the rising darkness in our world. We are, most of us, mere footnotes in the great and voluminous BOOK OF LIFE. And yet those of us at the bottom of the human pile, often bare the heaviest burdens.
Mr Taylor, the ticksmith, broke a saucer. He appears to be clumsy with big things but incredibly skilled with small, delicate horological mechanisms. He prescribed a higher dose of steroids and a little morphine for the clock’s ‘sweeping hand.’ He said not to worry about the clock becoming addicted to morphine as it’ll only make for a more chirpy tick-tocking. He also talked about eventual amputation but that doesn’t bear thinking about.
I haven’t been over to the shop for days. Sometimes it’s good to take a break from standing at the edge of expectation. I sometimes feel like the manager of an orphanage waiting to sell his children. It is an odd thought.
The snow has turned to rain and is falling quite heavily now. I’m drinking Pinot Grigio before going round to Edwina’s house. I might translate another chapter of The Flower tonight. Edwina will want me to take her to the What-Is-It Fair in Blanchland this weekend. Also known as the Odds & Oddities Emporium. It’s just a market aimed at people who don’t do markets – sellers that is. The poster says it’s a market ‘for things you’ve never quite known what to do with.’ It encourages people to search their lofts and cupboards for that bit of ‘unwanted treasure.’ I was thinking of selling the Mug You Can’t Throw Away. It was a gift from Harriet. It really is getting tiresome. Quite how it works I don’t know, but if you put it in the bin, bury it in the garden, throw it from the car at 70mph, (I’ve tried all those things), it manages to be back in the cupboard the next time you go to make yourself a cup of tea or coffee. I’m hoping that selling it will transfer ownership to another person.
8:15pm
Edwina Sponge has permed her hair – or at least, her daughter Tansy did. She’s been getting a lot of spam in her inbox recently. Spam is quite difficult to clean up. It gets everywhere if mishandled. She also had problems with her webcam. It connects to random people for no reason. The other day Edwina found herself talking to a Portuguese lady who had just moved to Helsinki. The lady thought she was connecting to her Finnish tutor. Apparently they had a good chat. It turns out they’re both related. One of Edwina’s great-aunt’s of many years ago, travelled to Barcelona and fell in love with a goatherder. The child of the couple became a maid for the Portuguese lady’s wealthy parents. Quite by chance, the maid met a handsome boy at a dance which turned out to be the nephew of the wealthy father – who disowned his nephew at this point. It turns out the nephew, Álvaro Bennett, was a relative of the Portuguese lady. By this point I had lost the thread of what Edwina was saying and Heraclitus was biting my ear. I do remember Edwina telling me that Álvaro died falling off a donkey.
I’ve ordered some new pyjamas. They’re a green, checkered pattern with an embroidered duck-in-a-pond on the top pocket. I’m not sure why anyone would want a pocket on their pyjama top, but I suppose it might come in useful. It seems I will be going to the What-Is-It Fair. She bribed me with her cherry tart. Edwina has several things to sell but I was in a hurry to leave her house, so I never got to hear what.
The novel wasn’t in the tin box in the shed. But I found a box of photos my mum gave me some time ago. Some of the photos are quite old. I think they’re worth keeping though. From what I’ve read in The Journal of Speculative Chronophysics, the invention of the time-machine isn’t that far away.
11:20 pm
I can’t sleep. Ruth phoned and was upset about something but she wouldn’t say what. I told her about finding the photos – many of which feature her. I said I was looking for that novel I once wrote. This made her laugh. “Don’t you remember. You rolled it up and put it in the big jug we brought at that French braderie. It’ll be in the cupboard under the stairs, right at the back I should think.” I asked her if everything was okay. She said I should finish the novel. “You were never the same after you put it in that bloody jug. What were you thinking?”
I had forgotten the novel was called, Will This Man Ever Lose His Virginity? Ruth remembered. It’s set in the 1960’s. The story takes place during a summer holiday in Cornwall. The protagonist, a young man fresh out of boyhood, sets off with his dad’s Eccles Alert caravan and his mum’s Ford Cortina in search of intimacy. He treats it like the holy grail. The novel is a series of letters he sends to his friend in Milton Keynes. It’s epistolary like the novel you’re reading. It has no real plot, except the plot of getting from one place to another with as little hassle as possible.
Monday, 9th February
Monday morning. I’ve had a mixed weekend.
The What-Is-It Fair was interesting. A lot of sellers had driven up from the South of England and had brought with them an array of interesting items, stuff that you rarely see up here in the North East. I had a good amount of cash with me thanks to having found a purchaser for the those bottles of nettle-sting wine I produced two years ago. Percy Preece lives in Stanhope and has always praised my wine making skills and has frequently told me that he’ll buy any excess stock I have.
Edwina was ecstatic all day long. As soon as we arrived at the fair, she informed me that she’d meet me “back in the car park” in three hours, not giving me any chance to negotiate an alternative time or place. She disappeared quickly into the crowd, almost dancing as she walked. I only bumped into her a few times. Once when she was eating a cream bun, once when she was talking to Dr Shadows and a last time when she had her foot stuck in a bucket. I didn’t stop to ask her how that happened. She did tell me on the way home but I won’t repeat it as it was quite uninteresting.
“Si vis amari, ama.” If you want to be loved, love.
– Ovid, Amores
So, what did I purchase with my nettle-sting money? Before I tell you, I just want to quickly celebrate the selling of the Mug You Can’t Throw Away. The purchaser signed the receipt to say that he was taking ownership of the accursed cup. I’m hoping this will be enough to keep it from reappearing back in my tea-cupboard.
Before I continue I want to tell you some good news. As I passed Edwina and Dr Shadows, I overheard them discussing the reopening of Plughole Seminary. I thought I must have misheard and checked with Edwina as we drove home. I had not misheard. The old academy reopened its doors to students last September. For the moment they only have two students but are hoping that with the March intake, the old lecture halls will begin to fill again.
I used to teach Applied Eschatology at the seminary. Part time, Tuesdays and Thursdays. I got the job following the completion of my PhD thesis: The Afterlife of Sacred Objects: Displacement, Deposition, and the Theology of Remains. Apart from my three former wives, my two children and Mapel, this has been my greatest achievement. Here’s a quote from the thesis.
Anyway, and more importantly, they’re going to start some evening classes for the general public. Edwina wasn’t clear about when the classes would start. Most of them sounded remarkably uninteresting, except one. Dry Stone Walling within Fae Jurisdiction, (if Edwina got the name right), sounds like a course I could engage with. I will need to investigate this matter more.
My main purchase is being delivered this afternoon. I also bought a very old Swiss cuckoo clock, a pair of winter socks, seven jars of homemade lemon curd and a poem detector. I tasted a sample of the curd and it was absolutely delicious. “That’ll be nice on my homemade bread,” Edwina said on the way home. I had to agree. I think she expects me to go round in a few days’ time with a jar. “I’ll telephone you when I’ve done some baking,” she said, as I dropped her off.
Saturday was full of rain and heavy cloud with only a very brief moment of sunshine. I need to get out in the garden and do some pruning before spring lands and the sap begins to rise. Last year I forgot and had to suffer the sight of overgrown bushes all summer long. The bees were happy though. The bushier bushes led to an over-production of flowers. A lot more honey was made, I’m sure.
Sunday
The over-excitement of Saturday led to a quiet, contemplative Sunday. I took the car for a drive and ended up at the Derwent Reservoir – a rather beautiful lake a little bit beyond Blanchland. There were several large flocks of geese chanting like Buddhist monks, filling the natural calmness with a most wonderful and spiritual sound. The lake also attracts a good number of fishermen who were standing like reeds at the waterside looking out at their lines in perfect postures of deep meditation. I took my notebook and wrote a few thoughts down.
I love this place. Sometimes you just have to sit some-where that isn’t your usual where. A place that says things in different ways. Trees that have composed a different kind of music. A fence that disappears into lake water. Long, dead grass that’s waving its tall, thin fingers, composing poems in the air. Five sheep are grazing, they’re parked like ornaments on a grassy mantlepiece. Oh, to be in this February spirit, this hopeful spirit, looking forward to spring but not letting go of this driftwood afternoon in winter.
Rain. Quite heavy. What a miracle that everything fits so neatly together. Everything has its reason, its purpose. From the scribbling grass and musical trees, to the rain and my pen and the thoughts that flow through my ink onto the awaiting page.
Sunday night I read some of Ovid’s poetry and thought about love. After three wives I now find myself on my own. Did I do something wrong? The clock has managed to put up with me all these years. I can’t be blamed for its arthritis. I’ve put a jar of lemon curd aside for when Edwina phones. I love freshly-baked bread.
I loved my Great Uncle Ned. He used to drive a Morris Minor Traveller like the one Godfrey ‘God’ Fisher was driving the day he gave me this diary. It’s strange but I don’t picture God reading what I write. I picture his wife reading it though. She’s very pretty for her age. “Look what Oswin’s been up to today,” she’ll say to him. Maybe God doesn’t have a wife. Maybe there’s no Mrs Fisher. Uncle Ned converted to Catholicism after hiking in the Austrian Tyrol. He fell asleep in a chapel and had a vision after being stung by a hornet. He used to say that Daisy, his seagull, was his guardian angel.
I will now go and paint the shop’s ceiling. I’m hoping to get the first coat finished before the delivery of my main purchase from the fair. I won’t tell you what it is yet. I’m excited but also very apprehensive. I’m not sure where I’m going to keep it. It has spent the last fifteen years in its present owner’s understairs cupboard. I wonder what Harriet will think of it?