In Which Murgatroid Suffers The Blues

What Ho Proles!

I feel that my usual tank of good humour has finally drained, leading me to have what is commonly known as ‘a bad day’. I’m well used to having blank sheets of paper I doodle upon before casting them aside, but rarely do I have a day that fits the same purpose.

It’s not that I’ve had a day of things being spectacularly bad, you understand; it’s more in the air than that. The sky has not cleared since dawn and the day has been in perpetual gloom. To my mind, this is also the first day of the New Year given that I’m now unable to look back at holidays but find myself pushing on into the old pattern of business weeks devoid of celebration, decoration, and inebriation.

I also begin to wonder if My Man’s despair has spread, and that his failure to register in that damn drama competition has become contagious. I feel sorry for the poor chap. There must come a point when effort that goes unrewarded becomes unbearable. He tells me he wrote what he believed to be a comedy and I suppose that only doubles his depression. There’s nothing more unfulfilling than the silent response to a joke. And humour is such an underappreciated form of art. I've insisted that the next time he enters one of these competitions, he writes a tragedy full of middle-class angst. To be honest, I don't know what he was thinking...

Yet I also wonder how one goes about measuring spectacular failure except by comparing it to other people’s spectacular success? Which leads me to note, in passing, that Jeffery Archer is to publish his own version of Judas’s tale. One has to admire the chap’s ambition. But that’s the way of we Tories: we do not accept a ‘no’ from the world, irrespective of how mean are our talents.

As for myself, the Memoirs have come to a halt, though I did press myself to write a few hundred words today. There is a narrative mess going on in my mind and I can’t clear it. I find myself dwelling on words not paragraphs, sentences not narrative arcs. I must stick to the facts and describe those dark days of the last election. Forgive an old Tory if this is one of those odd posts when I don’t try to make sense of anything.

Yet in the spirit of trying to buck up, let me congratulate Momentary Academic who I see posts her 500th entry today. Blogging is such a strange sport, is it not? It is a race with no end, a poorly-defined middle, and, quite often, a half-hearted beginning. Nevertheless, as one who has yet to post anywhere near that number of posts, I tip my top hat towards the States. Here's to another 500 posts.

In the undoubted belief that I’ll be better tomorrow.

I remain, your humble servant.