In October, Poetry Club will be heading off on our much-anticipated Poets on the Western Front trip. We will be visiting northern France and Belgium to see, amongst other things, the trench where Henri Barbusse was a stretcher-bearer, the hill where Ivor Gurney was wounded, the battlefield which inspired Wilfred Owen’s ‘Spring Offensive’ and the cellar in which he wrote his last letter. Having recently taken over from Mary as club treasurer, I spent the morning reviewing the finances. All subs were up to date; even Toby Salt’s, unfortunately, giving me no excuse to harass him.

As the cat took up occupancy on me for the rest of the day, I took another look at Twitter. Last night, in the spirit of my renewed commitment to social media, I’d shared a poem called ‘The Day My Dog Spontaneously Combusted’:

there he was,

chasing sticks,

doing tricks,

and all that stuff

next minute, woof

Since I posted this poem, my follower count has gone down to seventeen (Toby Salt now has 196). What’s more – to add insult to invisibility – I’ve received a series of angry, foul-mouthed tweets. Initially, I thought that I’d experienced my very first real-life troll, but then I noticed that they’d been sent by the RSPCA.

Monday January 15th

Inbox

Janice is on the war path for my report and I fear for my core deliverables. I spent most of the day holed up in the stationery cupboard following a last-minute, eleventh-hour crisis of confidence. Although initially pleased with my jargonautical exploits (only this morning I had added in the sentence, ‘We need to stop chasing butterflies if we’re to develop game-changing marketecture that will enable us to grab wallet share’), I was seized with a sudden fear that it was utterly devoid of all meaning and content. That all it added up to was a great big warm bowl of nothing.

I managed to slip out undetected at about 6.30pm thanks to some diversionary tactics outside Janice’s office from Tomas, who cleans the second-floor officles, involving a squeegee on a telescopic handle and a 500ml bottle of Windolene trigger spray.

Tuesday January 16th

I phoned in sick in order to regroup myself mentally. As it always does, the act of pretending to be ill made me actually feel ill, and I spent much of the day asleep in bed, stirring occasionally in response to neighbourly sounds of UK grime and Mrs McNulty’s sawing.

But even feigned illnesses begin to wear off eventually, and by the evening I was able to finish off the reordering of my bookcases. I placed the last book – 97819123666158 – on the shelf and stood back, the better to admire my achievement. It was magnificent! To celebrate, I thought I’d treat myself to a couple of stories from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes but, having spent fifteen minutes attempting to locate it, I gave up and went back to bed.

Wednesday January 17th