Doomed and unrequited

The Swain as midwife

2012-02-02T21:32:00.001Z

I haven't written here for nearly two years, but sometimes things have to be written, and there's nowhere else to do it. It's only a dream I had; I still dream about L, not often, but often enough. I suppose this blog was always a place to write about dreams and other impossible things.A woman was giving birth, standing up. A group of us, including L, watched. It was a very short labour, and

This is not a new obsession

2010-03-04T21:15:00.001Z

Absolutely not. The powerful recurring dream, the one in which K and I, naked, make love on a sanded wood floor, with the odd cushion covered in a fabric based on a De Morgan design, while a cellist, perhaps Casals, plays the sarabande from the fifth of Bach's cello suites, the one in C minor, is of no significance whatsoever.Who is K you ask? I cannot tell you.

Half a pound of tuppeny rice

2010-02-20T15:34:00.000Z

I wasn't going to write here again, but if I can't break my own rule, whose rules can I break?I went to another job interview the other day. I knew as soon as I entered the room that it was not going to be a success. Two of the panel of three looked at me with hostility the instant our gazes met. I stayed in there for an hour or so. My presentation, which had seemed so convincing when I rehearsed

Sexually, I'm More of a Switzerland

2010-01-28T22:20:00.001Z

I come back here to sign the praises of a new book, Sexually, I'm More of a Switzerland. In my time with, or rather without, L, the first volume of personals from the London Review of Books, They Call Me Naughty Lola, was a great solace. Now there's a new collection.

Codetta

2008-06-10T21:45:00.001+01:00

There have been kind comments, and I'm grateful for them. But this blog is now purposeless. I could write a thousand more things about L, about ageing, about the Burra Mem and the Swainlets, about the world's sadness, about the Mills and Boon centenary...actually that last one is not such a bad idea. M&B fans divide themselves strictly according to genre. The doctor-nurse romance, some argue, is

Wedding

2008-02-29T12:21:00.002Z

It's dull and conventional to end a story with a wedding, but I must, for L tells me she is to marry someone, not me, of course.I shall not write here anymore. I will leave it for the entertainment of the young and as an awful warning to other middle-aged men.Finis.

Post 14th February post

2008-02-15T09:13:00.001Z

I don't have the stomach for this. I can't summon the energy even for the necessary denunciations of yesterday's VD nonsense.One part of the myth though seems to me worth attention, the belief, perhaps Chaucerian, that on 14 February birds choose their mates. Yesterday I saw seagulls eyeing each lasciviously and squawking invitations to rough seagull-sex. This means little seagulls in the months

Party going

2008-02-08T21:50:00.000Z

At a party, L and I sit at some distance from one another. I buy her a drink; we pass commonplace remarks to one another across others' heads, yet still each platitude seems to me to have extraordinary significance. Someone else is there, who, saying goodbye, kisses me fondly. In my arms this woman seems light, as if her skeleton were as hollow as a bird's, and as delicately warm as a pastry

Aversion therapy

2008-01-25T20:55:00.000Z

I see a lot of L these days. It will not last, but for the moment it is very agreeable. She chats away to me. Innocently, she tells me about her weekends away with the current boyfriend, who can boast of holding that title for the second time round, They go to snug hotels in agreeably pretty parts of the English countryside.I thought I could take it. Then I had a job interview, and was grilled by

Voluptuousness and sordid uncleanness

2008-01-09T15:34:00.000Z

You may wonder how I have been passing the time. I have been emulating the life of Sardanapalus, described thus by Diodorus:Sardanapalus, the thirtieth from Ninus, and the last king of the Assyrians, exceeded all his predecessors in sloth and luxury; for besides that he was seen of none out of his family, he led a most effeminate life: for, wallowing in pleasure and wanton dalliances, he clothed

Swain escorts

2007-10-23T21:29:00.001+01:00

I spent a day with another man's wife. I took her to the town I was born in; we ate an intimate lunch by the river, as she enthused about the romantic surroundings. We sat close to one another. We saw a play, and afterwards had a drink. I could not take my eyes off her.I have known her for some years. 'S, the pretty one', is how a friend describes her, and she is indeed pretty, but more, there is

The afternoon men

2007-10-11T22:01:00.000+01:00

I was in a wine bar, near somewhere I worked over fifteen years ago. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, on a working day. I had just been to see Julie Delpy in Two Days in Paris. By definition, everyone there was superfluous. No one would haved noticed or cared that they were not at their posts. In the centre, a trio of upper-middel class men brayed. One was drunker than the rest, and gave us

Come landlord, fill the flowing bowl

2007-10-04T22:05:00.001+01:00

I have given up strong drink. Not, I repeat, not because I think I might in any sense be dependent on the sweet glasses, bubbles winking at the brim, the gorgeous light shining through a glass, perhaps of red wine or whisky. No, I have no drinking problem, except when I can't get a drink, ha-ha.Anyway, i hoped that, if sober, relations between the Burra Mem and I might improve. They did not. A

Chintz

2007-09-28T21:10:00.001+01:00

On an autumn morning, a gaudily-dressed man pushed a wheelbarrow across my path as I walked to the station on my way to work. On the wheelbarrow was an armchair, covered with a fabric I had not seen for twenty years. It was precisely the same chintz that a previous L had used to cover a sofa and two armchairs. I knew it well, for finding it, buying it, and having the chairs covered had not been

The first conkers

2007-09-21T15:21:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I saw definite markers of autumn: small conkers, shed from a horse chestnut, green shells cracked by their fall to show parts of the brown nut inside.Dusk comes earlier and earlier. I left work on Monday a little after 6. It was cold and dark. I longed to have L next to me, my arm through hers, so much so that I seemed to feel the warmth of her body next to me, and her hip bumping

An incubus

2007-09-09T22:12:00.001+01:00

There is much to tell, including a date with L. But I post now to give an account of a dream, in which a red-headed woman, not L, nor anyone else I have ever known, kissed me on the side of my mouth, a kiss which, though dreamt, still disturbs me with its physicality. Then, as I lay face down in bed, she lay on top of the duvet covering me; I felt her weight on me, then her hand reached inside

Autumn

2007-08-17T16:23:00.000+01:00

On my way to work I pass autumnal flowers in gardens: dahlias, Japanese anemones, nicotiana. The light is changing too. Soon the Proms will end, the bank holiday will come, summer will be over. V, for so I shall call the grey-eyed classically-profiled one, bade me a sweet goodbye a couple of hours ago. She coloured prettily, smiled, waved and, after I had stumbled my way through a few words in

A bewildered Swain

2007-08-03T21:18:00.000+01:00

Oh dear, summer at a university is a bad time for susceptible middle-aged men, especially when placed in what higher education management juju men call 'student-facing situations'. The barbarians who coined this term have never 'faced' a student in their lives, God rot their flaccid pox-blackened genitals, indeed they would not know a student if one bit them on the arse, which would not be at all

Weather cocks

2007-08-01T21:46:00.000+01:00

When a couple can no longer eat together in a civilised way, then that is the end, never mind sexual incompatibilities, infidelities or political differences. The Burra Mem and I ate buffet-style the other night, salads and cold meats, arrayed in the kitchen. Any gallantry I tried to display, any attempt to help her to a dish, or let her choose something first, was rebuffed. Having served our

Nay, not unyoked to wedlock's bed am I

2007-07-23T21:36:00.001+01:00

Thus the marvellous Loeb translation of Aegeus' line from Euripides' Medea, οὐκ ἐσ μὲν εὐνῆς ἄζυγες γαμηλίου.It would have served me so well in answering the status questions on internet dating services. What a wonderful double negative..."not unyoked"Elsewhere chez Swain a beautiful woman researching erotic fiction leaned rather close to me by the photocopier.

Dates

2007-07-18T17:05:00.001+01:00

The subterfuges I have resorted to: I was reminded, while eating a date, of a picnic with L. I brought the lunch and included, for the end of the meal, some dates, in order that I might claim in years to come that I had a date with her.

In which the Swain and the Swainlets enjoy a Chinese meal, and some meditations on bra sizes

2007-07-13T13:29:00.001+01:00

The Burra Mem berated me recently after finding a piece of paper on the dining room table on which were written various combinations of numbers and letters, for example 32C, 38A, and so on. She took them, it seems, to be the bra sizes of the many tarts and floozies she thinks I consort with. They were nothing of the sort, rather the Swainlets’ choices from the menu of a Chinese take-away who

Drinks

2007-07-12T16:16:00.000+01:00

So it came to pass that I found myself at the end of a week waiting in a bar for after-work drinks with L, and others. Circumstances required me to arrive early; I ordered drinks and some olives for the others and sat down with the solitary drinker’s paraphernalia: the Guardian crossword and a book or two.Then, by an extraordinary stroke of luck, L too came early. She sat with me and we talked;

Buxtehude and Brel

2007-07-02T22:53:00.001+01:00

How I wish I could play the harpsichord, I think as I listen to Buxthehude, its plucked strings sounding as sharp and incisive as my thoughts are dull and muddled, or sing as Jacques Brel did when he performed 'Quand on n'a que l'amour', his intonation undermining the trite lyrics, or do anything that could move L.To evoke any response would have to involve pubic performance of some sort, it

St John's Eve

2007-06-24T11:33:00.001+01:00

I came home from work utterly exhausted, and without appetite. I cooked for the Swainlets and the Burra Mem and took to my bed.I thought I would sleep, but did not. I lay awake, midsummer light outside the curtains, and remembered how, as a boy, I would lie in my bed on summer evenings, listening to the swifts cry as they flew around our house. Why do they utter that odd desolate scream?Here

No J

2007-06-22T18:42:00.001+01:00

J has not come. I expected her today. Perhaps she reads this blog?There are complications. She is from another part of the world and I fear I have misunderstood her, her body language and other signs; what I read as interest may be, for her, no more than normal day-to-day interaction between a man and woman who know one another professionally.I have been caught like this before. I thought that a

Train travel with the Swain

2007-06-21T20:08:00.001+01:00

I like train journeys, especially at this time of year. Generous daylight helps. Though I had a five hour trip to a northern city, where I delivered a brief paper, ate lunch, listed to the other speakers, had a drink in a bar by the station, and caught my train back, I managed it all in daylight. There are romantic pleasures in winter trains too: the darkness outside cuts one and one's fellow

A weekend passes

2007-06-11T21:45:00.001+01:00

After my last post, you expected a follow-up, dear reader, I'm sure. Perhaps you interpreted my silence to mean that J and I, after we met, had taken ourselves off to a hotel, there to slake our lusts on each other for days and nights, and that I emerge now, weak with sexual exhaustion, to write these lines with shaking fingers, her scent everywhere, in my nose and mouth, on my hands, on my

Of J

2007-06-08T15:57:00.000+01:00

ACG asked for a fuller account of my new "interest" and she is right to do so.The first impression is important and contrasts with my first meeting with L. Then, I thought her pretty, nice and clever, but it took several months of closer acquaintance before passion seized me.In this case, with J, as I shall call her, I felt violent emotions the very first moment I saw her. She is strikingly

From The Unquiet Grave

2007-06-02T11:35:00.001+01:00

"Some fall in love with women who are rich, aristocratic or stupid. I am attracted by those who mysteriously hold out a promise of the integrity which I have lost; unsubdued daughters of Isis, beautiful as night, tumultuous as the moon-stirred Atlantic"There could be no one more like Palinurus's or Connolly's ideal than the woman I have recently met. ¹PalinurusThe Unquiet Grave: a word cycle by

Another Negroni

2007-05-29T22:21:00.000+01:00

This one stayed still long enough for me to capture an image

Beauty

2007-05-28T17:16:00.001+01:00

I have a stinking cold. It has lasted for days. By night I sleep, but have the most elaborate and bizarre dreams, and wake hot and heavy; by day, I have a perpetual headache, which neither paracetamol nor alcohol will lift. Believe me, I have tried both. Now it is a wet cold bank holiday, surely the most hopeless days in the British calendar.In our last blast of sunshine and heat, I was sitting

On public and private duty

2007-05-23T22:07:00.000+01:00

It is so flat. Life passes without any sensation other than a taste of metal in my mouth. Improvement is impossible. In public life, I remain faithful to the idea of progress, that revolutionary change can and will come, no matter how desperate the present situation, no matter how deep Blair, Brown and Bush mire us in war. In private life, it is another matter entirely.Past generations would have

On not being able to write

2007-05-17T20:48:00.001+01:00

When all is said and done, I cannot write. I read other blogs, I admire other blogs, all written by women. I shall not link to them, because I think they would consider my admiration sycophantic, but they are:Blog a: the product of the most wonderful and incisive intellect I have ever known. Her posts, though too infrequent, are both discursive and fiercely analyticalBlog b: a writer capable of

The Swain on architecture

2007-05-17T20:40:00.000+01:00

L visited my workplace unexpectedly, brought by a friend. I was delighted, she lovely. Hours later, long after she had gone. I locked up. I looked at the internal walls, the brick showing in the brutalist-modernist manner of the campus architecture. I imagined locking the door with the two of us still behind it, and kissing her against that rough brick.Technorati

A Negroni

2007-05-14T20:51:00.000+01:00

For at least fifteen years, I have invariably, day in, day out, taken sherry as my aperitif, usually the drier varieties, fino, or manzanilla. Then I saw a bottle of Campari in the supermarket. I bought it, remembering les Camparis d'antan, and those other drinks no one seems to have nowadays, Punt e Mes, for example. One day I may tell you of the part Italian aperitifs played in my sentimental

Le regard

2007-05-11T14:26:00.000+01:00

I remember how L used to look at me. I would read all sorts of things into her deep brown eyes, concern, affection, even, I thought once or twice, love. For most of my life I have been wise enough to know that looking at people is a very bad and unreliable way of assessing feelings, particularly in the unlikely event that they might have any for me. Nevertheless, it is possible to make accurate

Pessimism of the intellect

2007-05-03T16:40:00.000+01:00

A hot wind blows outside the classroom; I can see cow-parsley and the spring-green leaves of chestnut trees thrashing. With a similar movement, the pretty woman next to me tosses her hair as she struggles with the problem we have been set. I wonder why the idea of complete, enduring physical and intellectual union always comes to nothing in the end. I still hope for it, but I know that even a

Heralds of the Red Dawn

2007-05-02T21:59:00.000+01:00

I've been writing a speech which I delivered successfully a few days ago, to a meeting of a body I shall call the Heralds of the Red Dawn. I think it was quite good; people clapped and told me afterwards they enjoyed it. I called for the usual stuff: that the bodies of the aristocracy should swing from the lampposts in Park Lane, that the gutters of the Mall should run red with the blood of the

Stress

2007-04-25T15:43:00.001+01:00

“How’s L?” I asked a mutual friend. It took me some time to screw my courage to the sticking place to ask her this question, for I have heard nothing form L for some weeks, and was desperate for news, but have never been sure how much mutual friend knew about L and me. “She’s fine,” was the reply. “I saw her the other weekend, with her boyfriend.” Did she stress the last word? It seemed so to

Q: What is your name? A: N or M

2007-04-18T22:12:00.000+01:00

Once upon a time, more than thirty years ago, a kind young woman let me share her life and bed. The relationship lasted for a couple of years, and she disposed of me gently and kindly, though there was a trifling incident when she slept with my best friend–I returned from a weekend with my parents to find the two of them, guilty-faced, in our flat. Apart from this Ares-Hephaestos-Aphrodite moment

Epigram 305: anonymous

2007-04-14T18:14:00.000+01:00

Κούρῃ τίς μ’ ἐφίλησεν ὑφέσπερα χείλεσιν ὑγροῖςνέκταρ ἔην τὸ φίλημα· τὸ γὰρ στόμα ωέκταρος ἔπνεικαὶ μέθύω τὸ φίλημα, πολὺν τὸω ἔpωτα πεπωκώς.This evening a girl kissed me with her moist lipsHer mouth was nectar, nectarish the sweet taste of herNow I am drunk, drunk with her kiss, and drunk with abundant love.I post this as a hot evening begins; I am not yet drunk. I have some manzanilla, but no

The Greek anthology

2007-04-13T20:55:00.000+01:00

The Burra Mem is away. L is nowhere to be found, and there is a distinct shortage of "fun loving and deliciously immoral mistresses" (in the phrase of someone who tantalised me once with such a prospect) in these parts.So I console myself with some sauvignon and the amatory epigrams from the Greek Anthology. I tried a translation of one...I may post it.Technorati

Lhude sing cuccu

2007-04-12T16:52:00.000+01:00

It’s unusually hot for April in southern England. People wear summer clothes, and behave as if it were July, lying on the grass outside my office. One couple tuck into a picnic arrayed on a tartan rug in the grand manner, with wicker baskets and shining glasses of red wine. I remember picnics, and less formal times outdoors with L. I could never believe that someone so lovely would want to be

Enter a buffoon

2007-04-08T21:29:00.001+01:00

I found my recording of the St Matthew Passion, but too late for the appropriate day. I therefore played the same composer's Easter Oratorio today and was enraptured by the ecstatically sexual sound of the baroque trumpet, its strangulated triumphant cries not unlike those that L and I might utter if ever we were to find ourselves in bed together.My brother is visiting. He is not very similar to

The passion according to the Swain

2007-04-07T15:02:00.000+01:00

On Good Fridays I try to listen to a Bach passion if I possibly can. I am not a devout Swain, indeed am a militant atheist. I was driving yesterday and heard a little of the St Matthew passion on the radio, fortunately including the crowd scenes, as dramatically fine as any opera. When I reached home, I wanted to hear the whole work on the kitchen CD-player. Though I looked high and low among my

On the Swain's social life

2007-04-04T20:59:00.001+01:00

I prayed to the foam-born Cyprian that I might have an evening with L. My plan was to organise an evening of drinks after work, before the Easter holidays, such as we have had before. L would come and it would be glorious.The plan fell apart almost before I conceived it; everyone was on holiday, otherwise engaged, washing their hair....there will be no evening of L's voice, her wit, her smell,

A glass of riesling

2007-04-02T22:01:00.001+01:00

Keats: "Talking of Pleasure, this moment I was writing with one hand, and with the other holding to my Mouth a Nectarine--good god how fine--It went down soft pulpy, slushy, oozy--all its delicious embonpoint melted down my throat like a large beatified strawberry. I shall certainly breed."For me, the glass of New Zealand riesling [Wairu Valley, Marlborough] I have has much the same effect. It

Visions

2007-04-01T22:23:00.001+01:00

A nun claims writing the late Pope's name has brought about a miraculous cure. I have written L's name, in the manner of a lovesick schoolboy, often enough to cure all the plagues of Egypt.I thought I saw her again today, though far away, with her man. They had arms round each other's waists, returning to his car which had, god help us, a personalised number-plate. She sent me a text.

Cleopatra's needle and nose

2007-03-29T18:55:00.000+01:00

First, an addendum to Tuesday's post, for I forgot to mention how, in the psycho-geography of the capital, that area where I waited for a chance rendezvous with L is my favourite. Unlike more affluent districts, home to the deracinated wealthy, this is truly London. There is still evidence of its radical past, it is near enough to universities and libraries to have a slightly shabby air of

Virginia Woolf 1882-1941

2007-03-28T18:51:00.001+01:00

On this day in 1941 Virgina Woolf drowned herself.

Breakfast

2007-03-27T12:25:00.000+01:00

I passed through London, on a short trip away. Being at one of the railway termini with time to kill, I walked a little way in search of breakfast. I found a small Italian-run place and ordered the number 3 set breakfast. My choice was helped by having read, the night before, the excellent London Review of Breakfasts, which I commend to any readers who may find themselves in London and in need of

Mariolatry

2007-03-25T17:28:00.001+01:00

It is the Feast of the Annunciation today. Do not worry, your swain has not added religious mania to his suite of mental instabilities. It is however a religious festival whose date sticks in my mind, perhaps from my choirboy days so long ago.I saw a vision. I passed a group of cyclists, and convinced myself that L was among them. I shall build a small tasteful shrine on the spot. Expect news

An old flame

2007-03-23T18:59:00.001Z

I was footling around on the Internet during a dull interlude at work. I found a web page for an interesting-looking conference. I went from the conference page to that of one of the organisations involved in it. There was a database of collaborators, searchable by area. I searched it. There, to my horror, among a dozen or so names, was that of an old flame, D. It had to be her, for she has a

Patisserie

2007-03-20T17:10:00.000Z

On my very last day, when I left the job where I worked with L, she brought an almond croissant to me at my desk. This was quite unusual; I often brought her edible presents, either home- made or from shops I knew she liked, she only offered me anything on birthdays. Today, over a year later, I passed the shop where she bought it. I remember it as the most beautiful thing I have ever eaten in my

The collective unconscious

2007-03-19T18:53:00.000Z

Every so often a group of L's former colleagues meet for lunch or a drink. I can never be sure whether I prefer the conversation to avoid any mention of her, or to dwell upon her absence. We all miss her. I could do without a particular evening, which several people remember and recite, an evening when she and I left a reception together. More than one person has taken to commenting on how well

From Virginia Woolf's diary

2007-03-16T08:19:00.000Z

"He has all the right books, neatly ranged, but not interesting in the least — not, I mean, all lusty & queer like a writer's books."In one respect, then, I resemble a writer. The disorder that is the Swain's library has to be seen to be believed.

I said the hounds of spring are on winter's traces, but let that pass....

2007-03-06T20:30:00.001Z

ἤρος ἀνθεμόεντος ἐπάιον ἐπχομένοιοέν δὲ χέρνατε τω μελιαδεος ὄττι τάχιστα χράτηραI heard the flowery spring coming….mix a bowl of the honey-sweet wine as fast as you canAlcaeus, Fragment 367The epigraph is the caption of a Thurber cartoon. About a year ago I tried to explain this to L, without visual aids. She gazed back at me, sweetly, politely and beautifully puzzled. Fetch me the krater.

Hallucination

2007-02-17T21:59:00.000Z

I saw her, and I heard her voice, yet it wasn't her. A friend subsequently told me she was about ten miles away at the time.

What I have written, I have written

2007-02-08T18:42:00.000Z

Re-reading one's old writing always disconcerts. Whenever I look again at words I wrote many years ago, whether dull reports for my work, or more personal writing, I feel a sharp sense of shame.Dr Johnson's advice, "read over your compositions, and where ever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out", is hard to live by, but if I had, I might not be so ashamed.

A pair of swans, seen from the train

2007-02-06T12:37:00.000Z

Their attitude suggested courtship. We find comfort in believing that animal relationships are like our own, that animal mate with affection and devotion, rather than in a fierce, rough, muddy copulation. Swans are supposed to mate for life, to grieve when their mate dies and the mute swan, Cygnus olor, to sing only at its own or its mate’s death.Thus the madrigalist:The silver Swan, who living

In the Swain's shopping basket: part 2 in an occasional series

2007-02-01T08:20:00.001Z

Malt whiskyNaan breadThe staff of life and uisge beatha, the water of life. Nothing else is necessary.

The rest is silence

2007-01-31T23:24:00.001Z

I've just seen L, at a party to mark a significant occasion. I should have said something to her, something to sum up everything I think and feel about her. But I was wordless; I think I have reverted to my pre-Swain persona, shy and gauche. In the past three and a bit years, she made me put things into words. Now I can't.The new man was there; I was too quick in judgement, for he is very kind

The Neurobiology of Love

2007-01-30T21:42:00.000Z

Blast, I missed this, the Sixth International Conference on Neuroaesthetics which took place on the theme The Neurobiology of Love and whose host server name deserves reproducing en clair: http://plaisir.berkeley.edu/How can one resist papers on Brain Activity During Male and Female Orgasms, the Biological Concepts of Unity-in-Love and Annihilation-in-Love or From Eros to Agape: Neural Correlates

Of cheese and camels

2007-01-27T18:29:00.000Z

I bought some cheese, a particularly pungent local goat's cheese. On the train home, I started to smell a curious smell, the smell of circuses from my youth, when Bertram Mills or Billy Smart would come to the city I grew up in, pitching their tents on a large piece of common ground by the river.It was the smell of camel dung and lion's piss on sodden straw; but in reality it came from my

Du côté de chez Swain (or Swain's Way)

2007-01-27T18:12:00.000Z

I have seen a great deal of L lately and have had something that comes dangerously close to a social life. I attended two parties at which she too was present, and will go to a third next week. One was even on a Saturday; the last time the Swain went out on a Saturday evening, gentlemen wore spats and carried canes, while among ladies the flapper look was en vogue.The evening began inauspiciously

Mirrors

2007-01-18T00:09:00.000Z

A moment: L and I are in a restaurant, with many others. It is a large, noisy party, and L and I do not sit near one another. She looks both elegant and beautiful. There are mirrors on the walls and in them I catch her every so often. Most the time she is talking to her neighbours; but just once we look into each other's reflected eyes. I don't know what it means.

Passata and gin...

2007-01-15T21:09:00.000Z

...are the only items on a shopping list I started to compile a few hours ago. In the meantime, I offer you this, found in a search for a poem, a Satire on Marriage, which I was seeking in order to illuminate the Burra Mem's latest doings."The cry of Sodom enquired into; upon occasion of the arraignment and condemnation of Benjamin Goad, for his prodigious villany. Together with a solemn

The Swain turns film critic

2007-01-12T21:50:00.000Z

I have always enjoyed the films of Eric Rohmer. They are quiet. In them, people often behave foolishly or selfishly, but rarely with real malice. By the end of one, little will have happened, but the viewer will know the characters intimately, and the characters will have deeper self-knowledge, and far greater understanding of each other, better.I saw a typical one the other day, thanks to the

A corrupt late flush

2007-01-09T21:40:00.000Z

In recent weeks the disturbing idea that I might no longer be in love with L has crept up upon me. No amorous adulteress has supplanted her; indeed I think of her as constantly as ever. We have a rendezvous next week, about which I am nervous, but I have at last grasped that she will never ever think of me with anything more than detached kindness. I’m not sure why I realise this now; a Petrarch,

Remember not, O Lord, our offences

2007-01-04T08:52:00.000Z

Today, nearly four years to the day, I returned to the university where, a couple of months later, I was to meet L; I am once more an employee. I cannot describe its distinctive architecture and setting without giving away my location, so you will not have to wonder whether it might be an Oxbridge college, an urban red-brick institution of the Victorian period or one of the plate glass erections

On my early, middle and late periods

2007-01-01T22:54:00.000Z

I have little to say on the subject of 2007. I have never been a great one for Christmas or the New Year and this year the period seemed even more unreal than usual. I shall not bother readers with greetings, round-ups of the best posts of the year, predictions or resolutions for the coming 365 days.I have been looking back at nearly three years of posting. It seems to me that there are three

Le Grand Meaulnes

2006-12-23T15:08:00.000Z

I was seized by a compulsion to see this film, first seen in 1971 in a now-demolished cinema, this very instant. Is it available on DVD? Of course not. So much for this long tail nonsense.

To his mistress going to bed

2006-12-22T22:41:00.001Z

I promised Ariella an account of those American girls to whom I have been so powerfully attracted in past and present, for L is half American. I started early, at the age of seven, with M. Being brought up in a university town, there was a frequent influx of transatlantic sabbatical scholars, and their children, who were dispersed to the city's schools. M was pretty, and delightfully, almost

A Christmas card to L

2006-12-18T22:35:00.001Z

As I rack my brains for a fitting epigraph for her card, Horace comes to mind:Immortalia ne speres, monet annus et almumQuae rapit hora diemI meet her. She has a cold but, pale and suffering, is a thousand times more beautiful than any other woman. She is "seeing" a man. How I hate that pallid euphemism. Surely she could tell me the truth, that she is having a passionately physical affair, that

Memories of my Melancholy Whores

2006-12-12T20:50:00.000Z

I cannot now enjoy any aesthetic experience without imagining L next to me, responding to the film, book, piece of music, whatever it may be, discussing it with me. I had two recent conversations in which her name came up: in one it woke me , my previous contributions to the evening's talk having been mere polite formulae, but I became animated for the first time that night, describing her,

Of L and the sea

2006-12-06T20:05:00.000Z

I watched the sea this afternoon, grey, still quite rough after the weekend's storms. I thought of L, of course, who has a new lover. This one seems, in horse-racing terms, a stayer, and she is happy and excited; her ebullience, even in an e-mail, is contagious, and I find myself very pleased for her. I know, when I meet her, which I shall before Saturnalia, that she will be more beautiful than

Textual analysis

2006-11-30T09:36:00.000Z

A kind friend advises me not to be so dependent on hearing from L, to train myself out of the despairing cycle, the hopelessness that grows and grows as time passes after I've sent her a message. All manner of rubbish turns up in my inbox, each time causing Intellectually, I understand that she's right. I would be happier, I might even make some progress in other areas of my life,without this.

Arachnophobes

2006-11-25T11:27:00.000Z

For some reason, nearly all the women I have ever been attracted to have been arachnophobic. Read Jenny Diski's diary in the latest London Review of Books; she also has a blog, Biology of the Worst Kind. However she associates it psychoanalytically with memories of birth trauma. I always supported the more orthodox Freudian view, and have expounded this at length to more than one lover as she

Choral evensong; the Swain speaks out

2006-11-23T22:19:00.000Z

There has been great deal of excitement about the BBC's plans to change the Radio 3 schedules, in particular their proposal to move Choral Evensong from a Wednesday to a Sunday. It may surprise readers to know that I have strong views on this; I am after all a dialectical materialist, a Marxist, a thorough-going militant atheist, whose only regret about hitherto-existing socialist countries is

The Sengerphone speaks

2006-11-18T23:11:00.000Z

From the point of view of the unrequited lover, the trouble with this Internet dating caper is that, when he views his beloved's profile, he, and the whole world, can see precisely how it is that he fails to measure up. Thus I study closely L's requirements in a lover and sometimes see only those that I fail to meet. At other times I long to seize Dame Edith Sitwell's sengerphone and yell to L, "

In which a middle aged swain laments the failure of a younger woman to send him an e-mail

2006-11-15T22:11:00.000Z

Both L and I are both sentimental about the recurrence of significant dates. I have been distracted recently, and missed the fact that it was three years since L held me tightly and promised that, while she could not return my love, she would always answer my messages. That was three years and a few weeks ago, much has changed for both of us, so I should not wonder that she no longer feels she

A fine tang of faintly scented urine

2006-11-14T21:05:00.000Z

Why does the world smell of piss? This morning, the lavatory stank; later on a train I could not ignore a foul, rank smell. Then I went for a pee at the British Library, where the smell had a more perfumed quality, but equally foul. These olfactory hallucinations ended in the jakes at the headquarters of a learned society. A bigwig pissed next to me, copiously and pungently. Asparagus is not in

Untitled

2006-11-09T23:49:00.000Z

And then I'm back to despair and know that love is a callous lie that I tell myself, and that there is nothing to be done.

Get thee to a psychotherapy clinic

2006-11-09T23:48:00.000Z

Yesterday I saw L for an hour. Before we met my guts were knotted tight, my legs shook and my head was hot with fever. But when I saw her, all this was replaced by was the most delightful feelings I have ever known. When I sat opposite her, I hardly dared look into her eyes. She was happy, no, joyful, for she had had good news, and seemed to enjoy my company. I don't know why I wasted any energy

Greenwich Mean Time

2006-10-31T23:02:00.000Z

I had a dream, of L, kind but distant, as she and I stayed in a hotel. The next day I went to London. Now the clocks have gone back, the dark of a London afternoon is triste. I walked around, watched a couple through a pub window, she bored and gazing at her mobile, he lost in his drink.The internet dating proceeds well: no woman, no matter how honeyed my words, has agreed to meet me. One

Which they ate with a runcible spoon

2006-10-21T22:30:00.000+01:00

I have spent this evening cooking, for a confection I shall give to L. It's a pleasant way to spend an evening, while the Burra Mem slumps over her wine glass and some drivel on the TV, and one swainlet is out and the other in his room, IM-ing his chums. There is a lot of pounding and peeling, but it is enjoyable. She once told me about how she liked to cook with glass in hand and company in the

The end of the Swain's internet dating career

2006-10-18T21:24:00.000+01:00

I shall stick to the LRB personals from now on (a marvellous anthology of which is published under the title They Call me Naughty Lola). It all ended in despair, as I might have expected. My profile attracted a few views, but only one contact, from a kind, beautiful and clever woman, an artist. We e-mailed each other. I thought we might have made it as far as meeting for coffee (which seems to be

The giant tortoise of the Galapagos Islands (Geochelone nigra)

2006-10-12T22:20:00.000+01:00

I had run out of manzanilla, my usual aperitif, and had to take gin instead. The moment the juniper hit my nostrils, I was taken back to a moment on a train when I bought her a drink. I chose gin, she vodka. A friend said, kindly, that L and I should never drink together, for we seem to drive each other on to greater and greater excess. You are bad for each other, said the friend. Perhaps that

Marina Warner

2006-10-11T21:46:00.000+01:00

I have just been listening to Marina Warner on the radio. If it were not for L, I could fall in love with her in an instant. Her voice is captivating: fearsomely intelligent, well-spoken and beautifully modulated, with a slight hint of gruffness. I lie prostrate in front of the radio.Technorati Tags: marinawarner

In which the Swain contemplates internet dating

2006-10-04T15:32:00.000+01:00

L comes into my consciousness all the time, but yesterday in a way that reminded me of the extremes of feeling that she can evoke, a nervous shortness of breath, a choking feeling of panic in the throat, trembling and a sensation of being in a high place about to fall.This is absurd. She rejected me three years ago and I still find myself thrown into this confusion by a woman I have never done

An anniversary

2006-09-30T21:52:00.000+01:00

It seems to me I find myself as the sole member of the audience for a play. I do not understand the action. The scenes bear no connection to one another. If I were a critic I would give it a stinking notice.Yesterday was an anniversary; L says she's sentimental about anniversaries, but this one seems not to evoke any emotion in her. It was three years ago since we got drunk together, took a train

A row, 27 September 2006

2006-09-27T21:29:00.000+01:00

There are no Queensbury rules for a marital row. The rhetorical equivalents of gouging, biting and scratching are all permissible. I've never been good at rows. In my younger days I used to imagine that there was some logic to them, that no matter how painfully, through a dialectic of bitterness and hatred, some synthesis would emerge at the end. But that never happens.Tonight the Burra Mem and I

Ghosts

2006-09-24T00:05:00.000+01:00

It is silly to say that I "need' L, and futile to tell her. Nevertheless, I would find it much easier to cope with the current situation if she were here, or if not physically present, then thinking of me and in touch with me in one of the many methods available to the modern lover, all of which we have used to the full in the past.But she is not here, nor in touch with me, so I must cope. Maybe

An absent Swain

2006-09-12T12:33:00.000+01:00

I'm away. There's a crisis. I composed an open letter to L about it that I was going to post. In it, I managed to be simultaneously pompous and importunate. I shall not post it, for it is unfair to her, though I wish she would contact me.Posts will be few and far between until this situation is over

With the flannelled fools at the wicket or the muddied oafs at the goals

2006-09-01T20:42:00.000+01:00

Today, dear reader, I wish to discuss sport, in particular cricket, for I went to a game, at the same ground where L once was in better company. Her view, sent to me in an e-mail, summed up exactly the appeal for her, of men playing with a ball in the sun, of beer, of the leisurely rhythm of play interrupted by short moments of intense excitement, of her man beside her, simultaneously attentive

On taste in the arts

2006-08-30T22:13:00.000+01:00

This seaside town looks as if winter has come, though it is the end of August. I drove one of the swainlets to the fish and chip shop. It was empty. In the Indian restaurant next door a waiter folded napkins and stared hopelessly at us as we walked out with his sausage and chips.In the car I played a CD I bought yesterday, one that I'm sure L would like. All the music she likes surprises me; it's

En famille

2006-08-26T21:30:00.000+01:00

I write from the flowerless rocks of hell. A wedding anniversary approaches, a child's birthday, the third anniversary of the first of very few kisses L and I enjoyed, the anniversary of my father's death. The Burra Mem has a new job (ha!) and has taken some time off before it starts, so we are all, your Swain, the Burra Mem, the Swainlets, at home together, snarling, spitting and fighting like

The lost weekend

2006-08-25T21:52:00.000+01:00

I heard nothing from L this week. I thought I might have had something before the bank holiday weekend. It's three years now, that's roughly 150 weekends, some of them made bearable by contact or words from her, but I have had many when I heard nothing. I crouch over the computer on a Friday afternoon. Today, not a thing.I want to write her name in enormous letters across the whole of the

θάλαττα θάλαττα

2006-08-21T21:57:00.000+01:00

I went to the sea. Swainlet no 1 fished, swainlet no 2 paddled. There was a heavy surf, making an hypnotic noise as it crashed on the shingle.If I asked L to run away with me to France, the other side of the English Channel, I wondered what she would say. I think she might have agreed a very long time ago, but she would not now.I was interviewed last week for a job that would have sent me abroad