Reconciled!

Friday 6:40 p.m.
Whilst meditating in the secret garden ....

I'll be 59 next month. The reason why I went back after the summer and hacked about in an old novel was partly to do with this. I would like not to have a jobbie despite the fact that I've got a really good one. I've got too much to do to waste whatever time I have left in gainful employment. So I went back to hacking about in the old novel because I could get something out of it pretty fast. Even if the agent decides to represent it (by no means certain), it probably won't get published. Even if it gets published, I'd probably still have keep working.

So I decided that I'd just as well settle for what I've got and be reconciled to going to the jobbie till I am 65.

My old man was a brickie. One of my grandfathers worked down the pits and my other grandfather was a blacksmith in the steelworks. Compared to what these folk had to put up with, I haven't done a day's work in my life!

It's time to give up striving for what I'm not going to get. I'm going to keep working on the Traffic Wardens book, but only as a diverting sideline, not with any hope of salvation. It would take me a couple of years to complete even if I worked like hell on it, and by that time I'll nearly be retired anyway.

I've worked as a full time writer for three months out of the last thirty years, but I've had about eight plays produced and a couple of novels (out of about eight or so) published, so I'm not complaining. But I'm not expecting anything else to happen in that line. Nice to have had some hope from the agent in the last three years, but it's too late now to make much of a difference either way.

What would you have done if you'd made some money and got some time, Hotboy? I would have gone to the Himalayas and visited some of the caves Milarepa meditated in and I would have had more time to meditate myself. But c'est la vie!

In any case, who can tell what the future holds?