A comforting ghost Oddly, considering I woke very early after a short night's sleep felt grateful to be alive, and full of cheer this morning. I was listening to the The End of the Affair , watching the countryside and railway sidings slip by, full of purple buddleia and yellow flowers. I had a vision on the train. Out of nowhere Dave my Grandfather was sitting opposite me and holding my hand. I guess he must have held my hand once or twice as I had a sense memory of what his hand felt like, and he was the same sort of age as I am now. A weird, passing thing, that at the time seemed natural and comforting. It was so real that it brought a lump to my throat and I almost cried. Very odd, like seeing an unalarming ghost. Into the agency, and again rather a thin day's work to the point that I'm not required to go tomorrow, though some work may be briefed in remotely - i.e. I can stay in bed an hour longer, and no commute. The French Bloke gave a talk to his agency like a kind o...
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Poets, astrologers and mindful sweeping Dragged my butt to the quack - who was in a cheery mood, told me there was a lot of it about, and gave me antibiotics to cure The Ears, which are painfully bunged up and howling with tinnitus. My brain is working a bit better however. I printed out my poems and shuffled them about, although I am finding it hard to see the wood for the trees. I also read some Yeats, and Ted Hughes - and quite enjoyed this. As someone who briefly, and not lucratively, cast people's astrological birth charts for a living, I am interested in how astrology has influenced poetry. W.B. Yeats was of course interested in all things occult. For example on honeymoon he forced his wife Georgie to conduct bouts of automatic writing: to go into trances and channel spirits and write down what they said. Bizarrely, the results were used as source material for a book of occult systems called A Vision . A Vision's systems are essentially quite astrological. There are house...
A vision in Villiers Street Up late again feeling a bit groggy. A night of significant seeming dreams. In one I was taking a small toddler, a thought daughter, to the house in Guernsey where I lived as a child. I took her into it, knowing the house to be haunted, and was expecting at any moment something frightening to happen, but nothing did. When I woke up I had a strong sense of a new start. It felt good. Off to work, the train tunnelling through thick fog. Work still busy but not too bad... Snuck off at lunchtime and met the French Bloke for a quick and cheery beer which was excellent. I can't remember the last time we went for a beer. After work I went into Soho to meet the usual bunch of ex-colleagues in the Crown and Two Chairman pub, and then off to eat at the Delhi Brasserie. Usual mixture of industry gossip (this is the closest thing I get to networking) and stories -- Marcella talking about her recent trip to Morocco for example. There were six of us tonight: young James...