But another small mention struck me in his piece, that he bought his copy of The Waves from Woolworths in Cheltenham High St - would that one could now, Mr. Dyer- and he's still got that copy and still not finished it.
Well, having been more of a To the Lighthouse man and 'done' some Virginia years ago, I did recently re-read Mrs. Dalloway and was impressed all over again. But my copy of The Waves, acquired much more recently than Geoff's, has been overtaken by more pressing demands and might be embarking on a similar moratorium. But let's hope not. In her writing, Virginia is the most vividly alive of writers and a hugely attractive prose writer but how at odds that is with her life.
Borrowing back Hermione Lee's biography that I bought somebody else for Christmas twenty years ago, I was well aware of her difficulties but not quite the extent and oppressive weight of them as documented by Hermione.
Modern but still surrounded by all kinds of Victorian weirdness, one feels Virginia's fragility, and how perhaps she only lives through her writing. We have more terms and categories for 'madness' now and perhaps a different understanding, for what it's worth, and it's not the right word for her anyway when genius would do better. I have little appetite to suffer all the diaries and journals and rarely can autobiography and fiction have been quite so fused together. All such lines are blurred, but with a heavy enough load of good books on their way, Hermione's Virginia isn't likely to be put to one side as casually as The Waves has been.
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Still. Is it madness for me to troop into work 5 days a week when it's possible I don't need to or would it be even madder to pass up the opportunity of having somewhere to go in the daytime and expect Radio 3, all the books and records here and bracing walks along the shore to sustain me. I can suddenly understand how madness gets you one way or the other.
Yesterday's Times crossword was a titanic battle, made more difficult by me having put in 'Sight Screen' rather than 'Organ Screen' and it was a good thing I had the internet back or else I wouldn';t have finished it. But that is Saturday excursion that might not lend itself to daily involvement.
I am a dilettante that dabbles, an interested amateur, not an expert or specialist, as is evidenced by my partial careers in various sports and the current hiatus in not wanting to write anything not worth writing. Well, it never bothered me before.
But there is a rare glamour in deciding to describe oneself as a 'failed pop song writer' when Black Lace, Paper Lace and the Starland Vocal Band all had hit parade success.
