Sunday Night is... The Four Seasons

Last night I finally finished the redraft of the Márai. Off it goes to Knopf with my blessings - just as soon as I've finished this post. The very last part of the book had been redrafted two or three times already so I felt I could pre-celebrate with some music while checking through. I just picked something out of one of the CD drawers and it happened to be The Four Seasons. I was typing and wanting to dance at the same time, so I did stop and dance a little, then sat down again. Then got up again and sat back down again. The harmonies are like the Beach Boys but it's the sheer bursting simplicity of the music that's such fun. I felt I needed some fun. Then I finished the redraft of the redraft of the redraft and sent it to myself by email lest some dreadful accident befall the computer before it gets to the USA across the troubled waters of the Atlantic. I slept well and deeply and didn't wake as early as usual.

Sunday morning is the time my father used to ring for a chat. I woke remembering that, as did C beside me. The sun was brilliant. I sat down to write a poem, one of the series based on postcards front and back that I am writing as part of the art-writing collaborative project with Caroline Wright, Helen Rousseau and Phyllida Barlow. I have three poems so far, of two parts each. I have found both the earlier ones exciting to write, then everything stopped. Now it started up again. The new one too excites me. Having produced a draft I had the urge to go to the sea and asked C if she wanted to go. But it was lunchtime and clouding.

A sudden wave of depression washed over us both. I sat down to watch the football on TV and slowly cheered. The match ended. The sun was out again, so we went for a walk. The light was unearthly beautiful - to call it golden is to insult it. It was clear and long and dazzling, everything extraordinarily luminous. Goldfinches again, maybe a greenfinch. And a tiny flittering, zipping bird across the river we couldn't follow. Perhaps a kingfisher? There are kingfishers there. And back by the abbey, the towers pure Samuel Palmer, visionary period.

I have not done a single practical thing today in respect of my father's accounts and savings. One day off. Tomorrow it's university then, in the evening, I give away some prizes and read a few poems. More work in store - plenty of it to come, of all sorts. I read in Cambridge on Thursday night - at Trinity College.

And I see Wayne Bridge did not break his leg but played very well. Not that his team won - no, they play again against friend Stephen's heroes. I rather fancy the Stokies to win.

The YouTube here isn't particularly good - lipsynch- but it's OK. It will do.