11. London: Me and My Girl

Thursday 14 November.  1:40 p.m.  Am working on my idea of place, using Flintridge as a sort of yardstick to measure other places, but not quite sure how to develop it.  Aside from the themes of east/west, society/natural world, I'm not sure what way to go;  back and forth?  First frozen windscreen (windshield).  Cathy to Debby's in the morning.  Working at my desk.

4:37.  Glancing through my notebooks for poems, I pass, unsuspectingly, through my goals for the year: a play, two books of poetry, book of essays, etc.  Lately I have been disappointed in what I have done.  Feel like Eliot's Prufrock, not daring enough, my efforts simply weak attempts which make no real effort to rock the boat.  Then I work a little, put aside what I've done before and try something new.  I now have five things going without any feeling that I'm on the right track.

Perhaps I should simply get on with things.  I can't forever put off finishing something or carrying it forward because I'm afraid I'm not on the right track.  I simply need to buckle down and workmanlike pursue the efforts I have begun.

It is true that I was impelled to work on my autobiography by a need to explore myself, but also a need to escape!  Now that I have escaped, I must be more realistic and realize that everything cannot seem divinely inspired, some must be the result of hard work.

Saturday 16 November.  8:26 a.m.

Friday morning I took a long walk through Pound Walk and back through Birdy Farm.  Reviewed my poems.  Listened to Dylan tapes.  Cleaned house.  First gardener visit?

Today, British Rail from Audley End to Liverpool Street Station.  We have lately been noting dead pheasants on the road.  To go back a bit, we began noticing a lot of pheasants in the fields in October.  At first it seemed it was only in the morning or evening.  They usually stay close to the hedges and thickets at the corners of the fields.  Then we started seeing more and more of them, often as many as ten or so, pecking the ground, eating.

It seemed that the number of pheasants diminished after our return from Ireland, back to a few in the field corners in the morning and evening as before, or so it has seemed.

 Returning home from school around 5 o'clock on our anniversary, October 14th, on the Littlebury/Audley End Road, we made our star spot: two deer bucks and a doe standing near the road across from Audley End, plainly visible in the dusk.

 Thomas now says "smoking," a recent advance over "moking."

 Anyway, over the past two weeks I have noticed several dead pheasants in the road and am curious to know why they now appear on the road, as if they had a sudden compulsion to cross to the other side.  For what?  More food?  Urge to see the other fields?  Are they children whose nature urges them to set off and find their own stomping grounds?  Very curious.

 Saturday – Sunday, 16 – 17 November.  London.  A second Saturday off for Robert.  We take the early train on Saturday, check in at the Waldorf, then joint the hour and a half double-decker bus ride of London.  It is cold on the upper level outside!  We have a lovely lunch at Bertorelli's in Covent Garden.  Cathy and I leave the children at the hotel, do a little shopping, then meet up at the National Portrait Gallery for a half an hour visit.  In the evening we all attend the 8 p.m. show of "Me and My Girl" at the Strand.  Everyone enjoys it.  On the walk from the hotel to the theatre, we notice the homeless settling in for the evening in the doorways.

 Sunday I go for a 30 minute run on the Embankment and down Whitehall.  We have breakfast at the Waldorf, then attend the 11 a.m. Latin mass at Corpus Christi on Maiden Lane.  Afterwards our day is filled with a visit to Covent Garden, Picadilly, Regent's Park and the Zoo.  We grab a cab to hotel, have dinner at the Brasserie (with Thomas asleep).  Finally, we take a taxi down Oxford and Regent streets for the Christmas lights, which after rain in the early evening are quite pretty streets.  6:41 return train.  Home by 8.