Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

7/7

For what it's worth, which is, I suspect, very little, I shall now transcribe my diary entry for the seventh of July, 2005:

Tanabata and L---'s birthday. Mixed rain and sunshine.

Shortly after I arrived at C--- House, before beginning my first lesson, I heard ----Sensei mention something about explosions on the underground. Or was it beween lessons? Anyway, during my second lesson he came in and said that due to explosions on the underground transport might not be running today.

After lessons had finished I asked if there were any news. The Japanese staff put on the radio and we stood around and listened as it became clear that a number of bombs had been exploded in Central London - one on a bus and the rest in the Underground. The staff busied themselves in phoning students and telling them not to come in for lessons today.

It all felt a little as I would imagine life during wartime to feel. I received a text message from M--- asking if I was okay. I had no way of answering, since there was no money on my phone. I thought, however, that if there was no transport, I might try and walk to M---'s home in G---.

I had lunch in the canteen area downstairs. The black lady said she now knows I don't like tomatoes. I had left all the tomatoes out of my salad last time. This time she made sure there were no tomatoes in my salad.

I sat down with some of my students. ----San showed me a book of vocabulary she was collecting from her lessons, and perhaps elsewhere. It was full of expressions such as 'yob', 'chav', 'ASBO' and so on. Her favourite expression, however, was 'butterflies in the stomach'.

I finished my lunch, and it seemed the rain had stopped. I rose to leave.

I walked down to the station. There was a notice board next to the ticket office saying that due to "power surges" on the Underground, normal services had been disrupted. I was going to ask the man in the office why the sign said "power surges" rather than "bombs", but instead I simply asked if I would be able to get back to Twickenham. It appeared that I probably would. Indeed, I have.

I have had a number of e-mails from people checking if I'm okay.

Apart from the obvious strangeness, it's been a quiet day. I was very tired and slept on the train a little, I think. I also had a nap when I got back.

I wrote two pages of Domesday and one of Antiquarian - not in that order. Also, I have finished reading The Passion of the Western Mind. It's quite possible that it will change my life.

On the train, thinking about this, and perhaps about the bombs, too, I had an idea for a story called 'The Agent'. I must write it down when I get some time. Strangely, one part of that idea appeared in the end of Dean Koontz's Sole Survivor, the last forty minutes or so of which I watched on video this evening as I ate my dinner. The idea as it appeared in the film was the necessity of the fear of death. I wonder if spiritual well-being will destroy my sense of purpose?