Totleigh 2

Half past midnight. Helen and I have done our readings and chatted and drunk with those in the sitting room. We have invested in a bottle of Jamesons between us and now it is all gone. One gentleman student generously offered me a top up from my own bottle. It was a moving moment.

It is always a weight off my mind to get the tutors' reading done. I generally enjoy reading - reading anything, not just my own work - but the Arvon circumstances are ambiguous in that you are supposed chiefly to be a tutor so you come in wearing a different kind of mask. But I am getting to the stage where I care less about this and just go ahead and do my stuff.

This must be a brief post as I am pretty tired. I took the morning session on imagery, then did almost four hours straight of tutorials (as did Helen). Tomorrow Kapka Kasabova comes as guest. Good. And Helen takes tomorrow morning's session.

Outside moths flap threateningly against the window. Slugs gather on the grass in menacing gangs. It's dangerous in the country. And that's not to mention the cattle wandering around fully armed with horns. Where is a policeman when you need him? Officer, I am making a citizen's arrest of that spider. Deal with him as you must.

Thank you for the kind support re: my brief outsider's flash as Professor of Poetry in Oxford. Let me know if the campaign gathers momentum. I would not want to be swept away by an avalanche. I shall look out for men in bowler hats bearing encomia. That's if they make it over the cattle-grid.