Lunch

Cheese on toast and gin and tonic. An odd but good meal for any traveller almost in any mood.
Like one of the strange meals in Iris Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea.
Dessert would be tinned peaches if I were in that novel. With shortbread, probably. Have neither

'Details' and a day when an umbrella is essential

"Why pile up a jumble of 'details'? When you start really imagining something you have to forget the details anyhow, they just get in the way. Art isn't the reproduction of details of oddments out of life."  The Black Prince/Iris Murdoch

Large atlas of Bible Lands on the table in the library: the tribes of Israel. Judah. Ancient delineations.
A discussion about the wall at St James's. "Apathy creates walls. Was that the message?"

People are translating the Old Testament by the fire, tentatively reading from the Greek. "I always thought that Christ came from a poor background."

Earlier: The Adoration of the Kings (Jan Gossaert) is impossibly bright and pristine. Stop to look at it in the National Gallery during my lunch half hour.

The pest control man visiting the office in the morning says that he collected 50 dead rats in total this week from the University of Westminster on Regent's Street, just down from Portland Place. "Some get caught in the traps.... but you never find them... you see a leg, or a piece of fur. Because once they're trapped, the other rats eat them alive."

It is a wet, cold day. Forget an umbrella at your peril. The tubes are crowded even quite late. An aura of bad temper post holidays.

The first daffodil leaves are emerging in the flowerpots by the front door.

Like faces in a crucifixion crowd

"I saw the two faces very clearly, like faces in a crucifixion crowd who represent the painter and his friend." The Black Prince/Iris Murdoch

Airing cupboard door half open, revealing too much, shelves piled haphazardly with clothes, towels and other folded items, stuffed in at angles.

Heavy wood polished floor. "I think it came from a gym somewhere."

Black and white photo of a wedding, in the 60s, she half hidden behind her parents, beautifully dressed in a coat and dress, large lapels, brooch on the lapel. He in profile, holding out his hands, talking, gesturing, more handsome than any Hollywood star.

"I don't look bad, do I?" he says, a bruise on his forehead, a beard as he has not shaved or let anyone shave him.

The rugby coach from Hayle clips the skin flaking from his swollen red feet and his thick yellow nails, curving in age and diabetes.

He holds up the bottle, silently, then says. "I'd like to share this with Susan." It is 1030am. "We thought you'd forgotten us.... Never forget your roots."

"The room had the rather sinister tedium which some bedrooms have, a sort of weary banality which is a reminder of death. A dressing table can be a terrible thing." The Black Prince/Iris Murdoch

Facing down the demons

"I know that i could never do nothing."

"I think you'd better start getting rid of that frame of mind as soon as possible ... otherwise....it's all right to want to do something - but it's not all right to do something just because you're afraid of doing nothing."
Losing self, identity and ego:
".... emptied himself, taking the form of a slave."
To what extent is ego necessary? Iris Murdoch thought the ego was messy - and hampered clear vision and perception of truth. Need to read more about her idea of 'unselfing."
But perhaps politicians need ego: perhaps activists do.
Three days until Christmas: the tree is cut.

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