home alone

This afternoon I ferried my wife to the station, complete with her bag, which at 23 kg is at the very limit allowed by British Airways for their long-haul flights. Tomorrow she travels to the Levant for a week. So I shall be by myself until I pick her up from Heathrow next Monday, God willing. This should be relatively easy, as I endured nearly 2 months on my own last year while she busied herself in the orphanages on the occupied West Bank. But I cannot say I am completely free of anxiety.

Ever since I lost my son 4 years ago I have lost the ability to remain calm in stressful situations. Even the slightest impingement; a workman turning up late or not at all, a glitch in a utility bill, sends me into a spiral of sweating and overbreathing. Hence my wife has proved absolutely invaluable to my survival, sorting these and other little irritations with efficiency and equanimity. To a huge extent she has made my life bearable.

So I shall go into work every day (though not tomorrow, of course; I'm spending the day with my mother), try to do a little writing and press on my Joyce biography.

COMMENT

I heard last night that John Higgins, the world ranked snooker player, has been caught on camera discussing fixing matches with some Ukrainian plutocrat. I know we've been here before, in cricket, rugby and probably most other sporting endeavours, but this time I have experienced a particularly strong wave of nausea. I find myself asking: well, what would you expect? I mean, the world snooker championship is now sponsored by a firm of bookmakers, who insist on reminding us by plastering their name everywhere the camera looks.

And what do bookmakers do? They encourage poor people to part with their money so that their shareholders may grow fat. And I don't think they care very much about how they do that. Like smokers, gamblers and the companies that encourage them should be made pariahs, gambling made an activity to be undertaken only by, as it were, consenting adults in private, if they must. But it should not be considered part of the mainstream of life, as it is now.