and then file myself inside a drawer.

It’s peaceful here and I sleep some more.

It’s quite cosy here on this keyboard.

There’s a spot of sun I stretch towards.

I don’t know what he’s shouting for.

Hang on a minute . . . is that a mouse?

The deadline was approaching so it was time I got back down to it. Without my wood-burner, I was reduced to working back in the house with all its cat-induced limitations. Did T. S. Eliot have a shed? If not, it’s a wonder that he was able to write anything.

December

Saturday December 1st

Verb Your Enthusiasm

I remember when it first circumstanced,

this problem that routines with my words:

I was in the kitchen, plating my food,

when my nouns conversioned to verbs.

I friended others with similar troubles;

we workshopped together for days.

Dialoguing in search of solutions,

the long hours flipcharted away.

I now diarise each time they event.

Are they nerbs or vouns? I’m not sure.

The doctors cannot medication me.

Even to poem provisions no cure.

In a World Cup for languaging weirdly

or a verbing-renowned Olympics,

I’d have podiumed – I’m in no doubt –

if it weren’t for those medalling kids.

Dylan was disconcertingly cheerful today. Perhaps, unlike me, he has come to terms with his departure.

He came in brandishing a leaflet. It was for a ‘Motivatathon’: a rolling twenty-four-hour session of workshops for leading business executives to ‘inspirationalise’ and ‘change-manage’ their teams. It is hosted by Stuart Mould, ‘Dream Architect’, and is all for a good cause. On the leaflet is a list of charities, who will receive 80 per cent of the corporate sign-up fee: Save the Elderly, Aid for the Vulnerable, Lame UK, the Guatemalan Orphan Trust and so on.

There was a picture of Stuart on it, gazing enigmatically at a lake. I suggested to Dylan that we ‘graffitise’ his face but he didn’t want to join in the fun. He snatched the leaflet up and put it carefully back into his bag.

Sunday December 2nd

For some unfathomable reason, the disappearance of Toby Salt continues to be of interest to the media, as well as the police. You would think they’d have more interesting things on which to report, like the victim of a splashed puddle or a hat being found in a tree.

In today’s newspaper was an article about the phenomenon of This Bridge No Hands Shall Cleave, which has reprinted six times now since it was published. It’s been recommended in all the Books for Christmas pages of the broadsheets and is set to be the best-selling poetry book of the year. It’s a relief that Toby Salt is not around to see all this, to be honest; he’d be insufferable.

Monday December 3rd