05-07/02/13

In my experience, library computers, not least in the local Haringey Borough libraries I frequent in north London, are too slow to be worth taking seriously from the standpoint of one's work. They tend, I find, to be a sheer waste of time, jamming up at frequent intervals.

The wind blows and sweeps and growls and howls and rasps and rattles and chokes and croaks against and around the walls of my attic bedroom, tirelessly ravishing the slanting figure of a roof which has no defences to protect either itself or me from the ravages which daily befall it, turning my dream into a nightmare and my night into a storm of dread whose demons send shivers of fear down my spine and through my limbs as the gusts of wind continue to blow and to growl and to prowl and to stalk the night air with a vengeance that smacks of the restless torments of a mind betrayed, abandoned to the whims of a vicious winter under the godless blasts of which life retreats into itself as into a shell, a void of contempt and resentment for being at the mercy of elemental forces beyond its control.

She said: “He is so far up his arse that he's almost inside out,” evidently on account of his thoughts being exposed to the public notice of persons who, in their vacuous objectivity, would not hesitate to cut them down to size and further blacken his reputation as an anti-social being who prefers his own company and the companionship, à la Nietzsche, of his thoughts to the chatter of others!

Now you see it, now you don't; the devil's tail cursor flits haphazardly across the computer screen with what seems like an enigmatic mind or, rather, will of its own which it can be exceedingly difficult to track down and somehow master, keeping it firmly under control. But master it one must, if one is not to explode in a fit of rage or, in my case, implode from mental exasperation, and simply stop using computers altogether.