Ivor Index

PROS: Marilynne Robinson replied to my fan letter. If you seek good chocolate, Hachez edelbitter is 64% cocoa. Feodora is 60% cocoa. Have stopped listening to music. Listen to the wind in the chimney. It=s subtle, wild and thoughtful - and doesn=t hurt the ears. So many brilliant women novelists. Been dishing out >Campaign Against Arms Trade= leaflets to cheer myself up.

CONS: I reckon that on average, you get one good teacher per school. Sold half my library - outgrown them. What happened to democracy right in front of our eyes? Haven=t met anyone inspiring in a tête-a-tête. Help!

It was the one where they promised not to put any music on, and halfway through the evening a person came in, a person fearful of silence and people talking to one another. He turned some music on, and I got the hell out, the hostess mocking my discomfiture because it was so predictable. I=m a life member of the Noise Abatement Society.

Alone under the covers willing, my teeth gritted, Christmas to be over. It=s become something phoney, all the conspicuous consumption. As for the religious part, if you consider that most wars in the world were caused by religion, it wouldn=t worry me none if religion disappeared up the road and made it possible for humans to develop.

I don=t know what it meant to you! Oh me, I see . . . a greater awareness of ecological needs and a growing awareness of the flintiness of the Prime Minister=s [Margaret Thatcher=s] heart and what seems to me to be the tremendous hypocrisy of her going to Northern Ireland for Enniskillen and going down to King=s Cross for the people that got killed, and all the three or four million unemployed getting a fairly chilly blast. And the evil of getting rid of free school milk, resulting in rachitic children.

Sufficient of a kind of pill for an easy suicide - one would do - that would allow me quickly and without pain to depart this mortal coil. I wouldn=t take it, but keep it by my bed to gaze at in the small hours. That sounds a bit doomy and gloomy, doesn=t it? But I am a humorist and you don=t get to be a humorist without having such thoughts.