In which I confess to an ongoing bout of ‘out of sortism’ (and wonder whether Boris Johnson will come crashing down this week or next)

Since losing the puzzles (which I think I mentioned) and being aware that my annual income has plummeted by pretty much a third, I’ve been feeling a bit out of sorts, though not quite in the way you might imagine. The money was handy, the work, though a bit longwinded, easy and highly manageable, but the important thing was the £8,400 it brought in every year gave me a kind of freedom.

I did not spend it profligately, but it meant I could, if I wanted, buy a flight abroad, hire a car and stay somewhere for two weeks without a second thought. Now I can’t. Now my income is down to my state pension and the money I get from the house in Birmingham. What I get is certainly a little more than some — well, pensioners — and I have ‘savings’ which I could, should I want to, spend. But I don’t want to.

The current plan is (though remember telling God your plans makes him laugh out loud) is that I shall as far as possible not touch a penny of it and give it half each to Elsie and Wesley, which sum should be very welcome as they might then be at the age when they want to invest in a house. Actually, Elsie, now married with a toddler, is already at that age.

The other thing is — and there is no reason for this except that it is self-imposed and for entirely different reasons I am trying to learn a little more discipline (the writing, if you must know, which will start once I’ve got this Hemingway bollocks out of the way), so sticking to my rule of spending a less than comes in is what I am trying to do.

This ‘out of sorts’ feeling, which I wouldn’t want to stress too much, however, means that if I don’t ‘do’ something which is not just filling in time or some kind of mindless activity, I feel a tad guilty at the end of the day. Writing counts very much as ‘doing something’. In fact, to be honest it is the only thing which counts as that. And although it is quite legitimate to do the background reading for the Hemingway bollocks — at the moment I am reading Hemingway vs Fitzgerald: the rise and fall of a literary friendship by a guy called Scott Donaldson — I have to persuade myself every day that ‘it counts’. And I don’t like that kind of introverted internal debate.

Today I might have done some reading but I frittered away about four hours making a short video by editing a BBC Michael Cockerell piece about Boris Johnson, our new Prime Minister. In a sense that is ‘doing something’ because it demands thought etc, but on the other hand I can’t deny that it is most certainly not essential and was purely done to be posted on Facebook. But then I might also now post it here, having now mentioned it. So take a look.

As for the Hemingway bollocks, well, I’m enjoying it, but the task is growing exponentially as I come across more books I might read — and then read — and as, the more I get to know about his novel The Sun Also Rises, the more I realise that my reaction cannot, as it started out, be simply ‘this is no fucking masterpiece and Hemingway is no fucking writer’. That’s essentially what I think, but it is a little more complex than that and I want to do the matter justice — after all this is about ‘learning a little more intellectual discipline.

So new angles I feel I am obliged to tackle include ‘can there be objective literary judgment’ (which will bring in the whole ‘relativity/subjectivity’ thing and that, dear friends, if not handled carefully, could be the kiss of death); taking a look at publishers’ motivation etc — after all at the end of the day they are commercial outfits hoping to turn a penny, honest or otherwise; and, well, the ‘literary scene’ overall (or what I can know about it, which isn’t much). But I have had a good idea for a novel based on H and F.

And now to bed.

PS Boris Johnson is cunt. If and when this is ever read, you will long know from your recent history how he did. I’m not optimistic, but odder things have happened at see.