EXTRACT FROM JOURNAL - SAT, 18 OCTOBER 2008

I had a most unfortunate day today. I was ill with the dreaded lurgy - a cold. I had wanted to take the caravan to Dunstan Bay, but I found I hadn't the strength to blow up a balloon. I made the mistake of trying to play tennis, which finished me off completely. I lasted until 12:15, playing badly and with my temper in rags and tatters. No-one said goodbye. I came home, opened my post, and found I hadn't even been placed in the Tyne and Esk Writers' competition, either in the poetry or short fiction categories - another fix - that's the seventh year in a row. In a fit of pique, I tore the letter into shreds and flung the pieces across the lounge. The dining room is full of pots and pans as we await the manufacture and fitment of our new kitchen on Monday and Tuesday of next week. I am sure the firm will turn out to be a shower of charlatans and I fully expect to be taken to the cleaners. I took a bath after lunch, to try and ease the aches and pains and the absolute lethargy that had engulfed me. The water wan't hot enough and I started to shiver under it. I spent the afternoon indoors, sorting out a jammed drawer full of old photographs. These showed me with a full Edward VII beard and horn-rimmed glasses. I looked like a petty officer on a third-rate tramp steamer en route to the Belgian Congo with a cargo of molasses. I ate my tea and washed the dishes. I had to evacuate the lounge when the dreadful 'Strictly Come Dancing' appeared on TV. I had been hoping to watch a recording of a documentary BBC4 ran the other night, about the final days of steam railways on British Railways. "BBC what?" my friend Larkins had said when I told him.