Staying late to finish my lunchtime sudoku, I told Tomas about the competition-winning computer-generated poem while he was cleaning my officle. He became very animated at the mention of this topic.

‘But this is inevitable! As Wittgenstein would have us believe, the limits of our language are the limits of our world! If we can harness technology to broaden the lexicon of language, how might we reconstruct our words! Just imagine what might be achieved and the things that we might know of ourselves!’ he cried before wiping my keyboard clean of its daily plaque.

There are days when it feels as if everyone is cleverer than me.

Thursday April 12

As if Toby Salt lording it as Judge and Jury wasn’t enough, flicking through my copy of Well Versed, I also encountered an article written by him, entitled ‘How I write’:

I rise by six and head outside for thirty minutes of tai chi under the cherry tree. Once I feel my surge of qi, I head back in to prepare half a grapefruit for breakfast while listening to BBC Radio 3: news and pop music ruins everything. Suitably fuelled, I journey down the garden to my studio which lies secluded behind a magnificent oak tree. I walk inside this cedar-timbered, shingle-clad inner-city haven with its fully-stocked log store and wood-burning stove and sit down at my desk to wait for the magic to happen, having first poured myself a refreshing cup of tea. Lapsang souchong, I find, really helps to get my creative juices flowing.

Is it any wonder he goes around winning competitions and being invited to festivals and the like? If his shed was my shed, I suspect I’d have won the Nobel Prize for Literature by now.

Friday April 13th

Paraskevidekatriaphobia

is a fear of Friday the Thirteenth,

said the doctor, prescribing some pills,

writing the word underneath.

She looked at the note and fainted.

The only thing that made her feel ropier

was her hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.

Friday 13th might be unlucky for some but not for the Man at Number 29 who put out his recycling bags today, on the designated day for recycling. I saw him looking out through his bay window as they were picked up and carried off by the recycling truck. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him looking so calm and collected. Unlike Mrs McNulty, who always spends this day in absolute terror, possibly with good reason. Last year, she ended up in A&E, having slipped up on the acorn she’d been carrying around with her all day for good luck.

In other news, I began to read Wuthering Heights this evening. I’m on page 12 already. It’s rather moorish.

Saturday April 14th

Pipette Dream

He could gauze at her all day,

she was hot,

like a Bunsen burner

with its air hole fully open,

and he loved to watch the glint

of her conical flask

under the laboratory light.

Standing by the lab bench,