Cover

PART ONE

PART ONE

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Jomier broods. He broods about the present. He broods about the past. He types his gloomy thoughts on to his computer screen – a digital journal. At one time his journal was handwritten in notebooks with canvas covers. Now, when he has nothing more to say about the present, he returns to the past, copying the entries from the old notebooks on to the hard disk of his computer. There remain ten years still to go but one day the transcribed entries will link up with the new digital entries and his entire life will be contained in a single document. It will join digital inventories of his letters, books, CDs, DVDs, furniture and objets d’art. Everything there is to know about Jomier will be contained on a single CD, or a memory stick the size of his thumb.

Jomier does not envisage publication, despite the felicitous alliteration in the title: The Journals of Geoffrey Jomier. The project is to fill the empty days of his retirement; to create order out of disorder; and perhaps reach some understanding about what went wrong. Were his journals to be published, others might benefit from his experience and avoid making the same mistakes; but Jomier does not care enough about others to expose himself in print. To risk rejection. To admit to the banality of taking up writing in retirement. Jomier has half a dozen friends who are writing books. It is a rite of passage for men of his age. But no one wants to publish books by old men because no one wants to read them. Not, at any rate, if they are white and middle class and live in London. They want books by Asians and Africans. Or by women. By women, for women. Chick lit. Aga sagas. Women are inexhaustibly interested in themselves. Men are more wary of letting an author into their head.