Saturday January 1st

Beautiful evening with Jim (delicious profiterolles!). He left 12.30 pm.
Organised myself for tomorrow's (costly!!) trip.

Sunday January 2nd

Managed to get stand-by flight to London (£7.50). Unpleasant flight: flabby people. Spent most of the journey despising them (& feeling too hot). Met at the terminal by Hugh [Brody] and Chris[tine, his partner at the time].

Fine meal at 'Apu' Indian Restaurant. Fine presents from H & C: Innu prints & book 'Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee'.

Monday January 3rd

Up 9.45 am. Leisurely breakfast with Chris and Hugh.
Colin Turnbull 12 noon. With him to Turkish baths. Very hot.
Back to the flat. Nice dinner with wines. Learned a great deal about Ituri 'pygmies' as well as Inuit.

Colin T. stayed overnight. Comforted him tentatively.

Tuesday January 4th

Another leisurely breakfast.
Farewell to Colin who promises academic backing for me from his NY University. [It didn't materialise]
To British museum & pubs & Covent Garden with Hugh. Thence on my own to get book (by Colin) on Tibet plus records.
Spent evening on my own in flat, acclimatising to the horror of London!
Colin impressed & was impressed by Hugh & Chris, & will be of assistance to Hugh in NY.

Rang Mattie [my mother whom I thought until 1981 was 'only' my adoptive mother].

Wednesday January 5th

Nice meal of sautéed celery, pork chops, and cauliflower au gratin. Slides of The Arctic until 2 am!

Thursday January 6th

Up at 11. Another nice breakfast.

Taxi to Tottenham Court Road to get another record - & on to Victoria - kindly paid for by Hugh.
Back to Belfast by Caledonian/BOA (much nicer & less crowded than British Airways). Overnight at Clonlee [Drive: home of my mother and aunt, and where I was raised from the age of one] by 8.15 (having left Victoria at 4.06).

Friday January 7th

Took bus down to Kilnatierney [a damp, stonebuilt, coastal cottage 1 mile N of Greyabbey, county Down where I lived from 1970 to 1980]. Wine arrived from IEC Wine Society. Jonathan [Bardon] in the evening -bringing a gift of a record. Very windy. an excellent bottle - Chateau Panet 1967 (St Émilion - from new consignment for high-carbohydrate dinner: Smørrebrød & Xmas pudding. Listened to Schubert Bb Sonata.

Saturday January 8th

Carved a female torso masturbating in relief from a chunk of sandstone. Not bad. [It sits for all to see upon an upper windowsill of my house in Caylus.]

Sunday January 9th

Mattie & Girlie (her sister) 11.15 am. Girlie stormed off in a huff at 11.30 [because of my Bolshie attitude to Social Security people & my pro-Republicanism]. She walked the 7 miles to Newtownards & took the bus back home. Very commendable [at her age: 68]
M & I opened bottle of Samos - superb. [My 'aunts' came most Sundays. We walked through Mount Stewart estate (without permission, from the very end of it opposite the lane down to my house near the shore of Strangford Lough. After lunch we generally played board games.]

Tuesday January 11th

To Newtownards with a bottle of my own [excellent dry damson] wine to send to Chris and Hugh. Went to 'sign on' at dole office. On routine search [for a bomb] of my bag was ordered to take it outside! Another row with Authority. Continued to Post Office.

Thursday January 13th

To Belfast on 9.50 bus.
With Jim & Mattie to Museum to see Jack Yeats & Concrete Poetry exhibitions [including my own piece "IO" which was very concrete indeed, being the letters I and O arranged like a record and a player-arm, with the O containing texts including I owe, One-Zero, Eye-Oh, Goddess of the Dawn, Io (Italian for 'I') and so on...]

Friday January 14th

To Newtownards where I got two weeks' money from the dole office.
On to Kilnatierney.
Tom [Matthews, best-friend and poet] arrived 16.20.

Dinner of Fried rice with red cabbage, mango chutney, tomatoes, onions & apples.
Baked egg-apricot custard to follow.

Lacrima Cristi - dry & plummy, quite distinctive.

Lots of music played.
A beautiful evening and night.

Sunday January 16th

Tom left on 18.30 bus after a good musical/literary weekend. Light dinner of watercress omelette, warm bread & apple tart. Crisp Niersteiner Domtal.
Jim arrived about 21.30.
A candlelit Bath Party with watercress on wheaten bread with Niersteiner Domtal.

Monday 17th January

Jim left on 12.05 bus.
Rewired bathroom heater & put new outlet socket from radio & record player in bathroom.
Paddy [Walsh, erratic, married, beautifully bearded friend] arrived 9 pm from Dundalk. To stay overnight [in spare bedroom]. Opened a bottle of Château de Bellevue 1967.

Friday January 21st

Jim on 20.30 bus. Meal of soup (from tomato juice, red cabbage water etc.) Kebabs (quite delicious) & zabaglione.
Horrible crisis with Jim - partly because I was nasty & partly because of his sleepless exhaustion, since he works at night and comes so frequently to my house in the daytime.

[Jim had first come into my life some time in 1971, when I met him in a Public Convenience in the then picturesque market-town of Newtownards, which at that time was being trashed by planners and shopkeepers. He worked at night at Harland & Wolff's shipyard as an armature-and stator-winder, so as to avoid his wife, who had a good management job in the daytime. Naturally, he hardly saw his son. He quickly attached himself to me, and I put up no resistance, being sexually confused, and having had almost no heterosex since being (probably wisely) dumped by my Danish "true love" eight years earlier. When he wasn't stressed, he was good company. I didn't realise it, but he fell totally in love with me. Our unliberated (almost abject) sexual activity consisted in him masturbating me while I gently stimulated my nipples (kissing a man was taboo to me). This allowed me to continue in my conviction that I was "almost-bisexual". Throughout our 7-year relationship Jim made no attempt to educate me homosensually, to get me in tune with my body and his. I remained in a strange 'frozen' state until I was thawed and released 8 years later by another 'cottage' encounter - at the cramped men's urinals in the Centre Pompidou - and the joy of kissing a sensual man with a beard. Jim didn't have a beard - until he grew a beautiful bushy one - too late, in desperation after I had managed to dump him.

Before 1980 I found no man sexy - but now I see sexy (bearded) men from 18 to 80 everywhere I go - and although my willy twitches, I have no desire to engage with them in any way!]

Ulster Television appearance announced but not screened.

Saturday January 22nd

Jim in bad state still. Painted 'Jim on Shore at Kilnatierney' & started 'Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you joint the dance' also entitled 'Raison d'être'. Inspired by Rembrandt van Rijn.
Visa arrived (in Irish Passport obtained illegally) for Congo People's Republic. [In fact I could have acquired an Irish passport quite legally had I known that Mattie was my mother and born in Ireland before Partition. I had simply forged a birth certificate stating that I wasa born in Belfast. This passport caused me some trouble 10 years later at Dover, when anti-terrorist officers thought I was someone else with a passport forged in my name. But I had torn up my British Passport and sent it to Margaret Thatcher's office in 10 Downing Street.]

Monday January 24th

Up at 11 am. A reporter from Newtownards Spectator came to do a piece on me.
With Jim into Greyabbey. Met Fr Murphy on way back - to find Ros McAlpine + another already here! So much for the poet reclusive!!
[Ros was the only replier to a small ad I had put in the local newspaper for a female model (really for a platonic female friend, of course) and we both got on well for at least another 10 years. Malcolm met and befriended her independently in the late 1990s. Her husband was an impossibly shallow and nervy/jittery man, but her children (who had never worn shoes until they came to live near her husband's home town in Northern Ireland) were 'personable'. Ros was something of a sucker for quasi-'spiritual' groups such as the Theosophists.]

Thursday January 27th

Painted 'Two Poems' on driftwood chair seat. [One of the few paintings I ever sold - in 2016 to [email protected]]

Sunday January 30th

M & G bearing gifts as usual (including delicious Brown Betty). Jim in evening..

Monday January 31st

Jim had never had soft boiled eggs before!
Letter from Jim & Diane Gracey ('The Blackstaff Press') accepting 'A Book of Translations' for publication. Hurrah! Weather very stormy.

Sunday February 6th

Jim & Diane Gracey 5.20 pm. Discussed 'A Book of Translations' etc
Dinner of mussel soup; leek/egg/cheese pie leeks in red wine;
leeks with olives & tomatoes (all on bread cold); apple tart. Muscadet & 'Toros'.
A most excellent evening. Jim came 7.20 pm & enjoyed himself too.

Tuesday February 8th

Alan in the evening-with Hirondelle wine. [Alan Crozier, insurance salesman, who came occasionally for the usual mechanical sexual relief. Jim met him after I had dumped him, and they would live together over 25 years, when Jim died of motor neurone disease.]

Monday February 14th

Paddy for half an hour at 6 pm.
Jonathan for 2 hours at 8.30.

Tuesday February 15th

Alan in evening - depressed.

Saturday February 19th

John Moulden 12.50 pm [Schoolfellow and later folk-musicologist who introduced me to early jazz, early blues (Ma Rainey etc.) and 'the folk scene' in 1960s Belfast. My only friend to turn Christian, but like all my friends except poet Tom Matthews, married.]

Dinner of cockle soup (me) Leek & potato soup (John); ribs with leeks in wine;
baked apple, John left 9.20 pm.

Tuesday February 22nd

To Belfast on 8.30 am bus.
With Mattie & Jim to Daisy Hill Nursery (via Dromore Mound), Ballymacdermot court-tomb, Kilnasaggart cross-pillar, & on to the Tandragee
Figure etc in Armagh Cathedral. [This was early in what would be an all-Ireland gazetteering of prehistoric stone monuments over 15 or more years, culminating in my on-line field-guide on www.irishmegaliths.org.uk. The Blackstaff Press would publish an early version, badly-produced, with few and poor photos and half the index missing - in compensation for which they a little later published my handsome, but slight first collection of poetry, 'Cinema of the Blind', favourably reviewed by Francis Stuart!]

Thursday February 24th

Planted Leyland Cypress at the electricity pole;
got Fascicularia etc. from abandoned Mount Stewart swimming pool.

Friday February 25th

To Ulster Museum to photograph Ballintaggart court-tomb from café window. Back home on 18.15 bus

Friday March 3rd

Paddy's Birthday.
Lift to Newtownards yet again from Marjorie McAuley [antiques-dealer]. Planted several shrubs at Catholic church in pouring rain. Completely soaked. Bus to Belfast. Miserable by the time I reached Clonlee Drive. Thence into Belfast centre and on to Jim's (wife not at home) to see self on UTV programme ('Spectrum') Thence at 11 pm by taxi with Jim to Kilnatierney!

Wednesday March 8th

Supplementary Benefits (dole) slug came to ask if I had earned any money from the TV programme! (answer: no)
Jonathan in evening, with a bottle of wine, & a Choisya ternata

Thursday March 9th

Jim 8.25 a.m. Planted Choisya at wall in corner. [Where it grew very well.]
With Jim to Belfast; late lunch with Jonathan and Jim at Mooney's pub in Arthur Square. To Brian & Lorna's - a pleasant evening in aspirational suburbia.
Hitch-hiked to Clonlee Drive (Brian's car out of order).

Friday March 10th

To N'ards and Kilnatierney, laden somewhat with goodies.
Tom on 4.20 bus. Tea of Mattie's fresh scones. Dinner of ribs & leeks baked in wine.
Jim at 8.40.

Saturday March 11th

SHEP DIED
Jim left on 2.05 bus. Diane & Jim Gracey at 7.30 pm. Excellent celeriac & potato soup. Rather good vegetable curry: turnip, red cabbage, tomatoes, peppers, apples, onion & lots of spices & vinegar -served with fried mangoes, fried bananas, pineapple chunks & pickles.
Baked egg custard flavoured with coffee and orange. Discussed 'Tide and Undertow' at length and inconclusively. Bed 2 am.

Tuesday March 14th

Made a selection of poems to send to Séamus Heaney for his anthology (simultaneous with 'Tide and Undertow') via Jim & Diane Gracey.
[None of my poems was included.] £10 cheque from UTV.
Warm, sunny day. Tulips, tomasinianus & ordinary crocus in bloom.

Thursday March 16th

Letter from 'Honest Ulsterman' asking for a short autobiography for a feature in the next issue including my translations of 'Nun of Beane',
Rimbaud, etc.

To Belfast hitch-hiking & by bus. With Jim and Mattie [in her sturdy Renault-4] to Legananny Tripod Dolmen, Goward Portal Grave, Kilbroney Churchyard, Kilfeaghan Dolmen, Donaghmore Cross; Daisyhill Nurseries (bought Gaultherias), Clontygora Court grave (most impressive), Clonlum Cairn & mutilated portal-grave, & Annaghmare court grave. Picnic at Clontygora.

Saturday March 18th

Jim left on 8.20 bus.
Composed curious autobiographical note - 'From slime through slime' & sent it, with lino-cuts, autobiographical & humourous poems plus 'Nun of Beare' & 'The Sea in Swell' translations to Frank Ormsby c/o Honest Ulsterman.

Friday March 24th

No money from Supplementary Benefit this week because of £10 from UTV.
Another fine day. Jim at 20.45 - dinner of celery soup; Hamburg Parsley & red cabbage cooked with apple and onions, oranges and sour cream; coffee & orange custard.
An evening of Schubert piano sonatas

Monday March 27th

Electricity cut off because of 'Ulster Vanguard' [extreme right-wing, anti-Catholic, anti-Republican, racist 'Loyalist'] protest strike at suspension of Stormont non-parliament. But buses to Portaferry still running - so Jim got a bus into Belfast at least.

Monday April 3rd

Completed 'Gallows Song' one of my best yet poems [binned].
A yellowhammer tapped at the window pane today. Father Murphy in afternoon. Gave me £13 for gardening services rendered to the Church grounds!!! Wrote short story 'Thule, the period of Cosmography'.[later binned]

Friday April 7th

to N'ards & Belfast- had to take bus to Ards! [almost always hitch-hiked]
Planted yet more bulbs at Clonlee & a climbing Hydrangea in back yard.
Into town - bought 'Barber of Seville' which turned out to be unplayable!!!
Jim 8.50 pm: Made a good approximation to Danish Øllebrød with brown bread and Guinness; asparagus baked eggs; baked apple and cream. Muscadet.

Sunday April 9th

M & G in morning. Walk in Mt.Stewart. Mattie's clutch cable broke. Telephoned AA from [neighbouring - 900 metres] Finlay's on Mid-Island.
AA man came at 4.32 to tow car away to N'ards; he gave them a lift home. Jim 7.15.

Monday April 10

Breakfast on back steps. Alan in evening - with wine. Gave me free Fire/Theft cover for Home and Contents for a year even though I never lock my door! Not that anyone will come and steal anything.

Wednesday April 12th

Yellowhammer tapped on windowpane again today. Otherwise a day of gloom and depression. Revised Grethe Risberg-Thomsen translations.

Thursday April 13th

Up to Belfast - to Clonlee Drive [hitch-hiking as usual]. Salady lunch with Riquewihr.
Bus into town; stole 144 sheets Carbon paper! met Jonathan in pub) & to Brian and Lorna's - a nice civilised bits-and-pieces meal with beer.
A liberating walk with Lorna while Brian washed up. O how I lack a woman for company! Overnight in Belfast.

Friday April 14th

Mattie left 6.30 am for London & Iran.
Bus to N'ards & hitch-hiked on home to K. Jim did not turn up - but Alan did, later, with beer.
Translated poems by Lars Huldén.

Saturday April 15th

Letter from Jim to say he had to work last night. [He posted it in the main sorting-office in Tomb Street, Belfast, so it was delivered within 12 hours.] Father Murphy 5 pm - wanted me to put in an Escallonia hedge - £35 worth. Did so in less than two hours. Tired.
Some plants left over due to my poor spacing!

Sunday April 16th

Characteristically, Paddy did not arrive as arranged. Radu Lupu played Schubert Bb sonata on Radio 3 - exquisitely desolating,
Completed new story: Sonata for Meat Machine. Very depressed.

Jim arrived 7.15. My 'depression' deepened. To bed early.
Soon quit double bed for my own...

Monday April 17th

Depression. Mattie-ish taciturnity continued towards Jim (Whose relation to me is not unlike that of Girlie to Mattie).
With him to Belfast, Planted Hemerocallis & daffodils. Jonathan called.

Tuesday April 18th

to Doctor for charms and cures against my 6 month (or more) bladder infection (NSU ?) & my smegma. He is very business-like.
To N'ards by bus with Escallonias for Judy McClelland [whose possibly-aspergerish son had persuaded her to join the Divine Life mini-cult, presided over by a very fat and very over-indulged child, probably manipulated by his grasping mother].

Thursday April 20th

Dug garden & prepared raised beds with Jim. Ros McAlpine in the afternoon.

Friday April 21st

RENT DUE
Letter from Mattie in Isfahan.
Met Jim at Clonlee Drive. Made nice meal of Smørrebrød on pumpernickel, preceded by celery soup and foillowed by rhubarb crumble.
Girlie enjoyed it - of course.

Monday April 24th

To doctor again for more effective cure for bladder trouble. [This continued, off and on, for years, and has not worsened, despite over 40 years of wear. In fact sometimes now I can go a whole night without pissing more than once, other nights 4 times.]
Letter from Colin Turnbull, impatient with my silly [pedantic] questions [about whereabouts of "Binga pygmies"].
Ordered £23 worth of wine (£8 worth for Mattie) from IECWS. [Wine Society whose wines have always been carriage-free to Northern Ireland.]

Tuesday April 25th

Letter from embassy of Central African Republic in Paris. Binga much more accessible than I thought. Is this A Good Thing or not ?
Letter from Grethe Risberg Thompson [Danish poet]. Transplanted strawberries. Hottest day so far this year.

Wednesday April 26th

Letters from Mattie (in Shiraz) and from Birthe Arnbak [Danish poet].
Went to Belfast - Dept. of Anthropology at Queen's University. John Blacking very friendly and encouraging.

Friday April 28th

Man from Guinness arrived with 2 dozen Guinness in response to my complaint, plus dozen horrible 'Harp'; nearly £5 worth!
Will use Harp for cooking. Jim at 9.25 pm- by taxi.

Saturday April 29th

Letters from Paddy, Diane Gracey, and Mattie in Tehran; Guldendal offering negotiation on translation rights of Tove Ditlevsen's poems! With Jim to Belfast by bus. Train to Dundalk - to Paddy's. Empty. Hung around a bit, then climbed through the kitchen window shortly before Paddy came home! With him to Clontygora court cairn & Clonlum portal grave and Annaghmare en route to Nuremore Hotel, Carrickmacross. Unexceptional meal of smoked salmon, chateaubriand with tasteless veg & a sad Charlotte Russe. Coffee Excellent. Beer OK.
Bed 2 a.m. (overnight chez Paddy)

Sunday April 30th

Made Beltane porridge, bacon, sausage & egg for P's breakfast (! !!) and& washed several days' dishes. With Paddy to Kilnatierney
via Ballymacdermot court-tomb, Derrymore House, Goward Dolmen, and Ballynoe Stone Circle bearing rhubarb & five tomato plants. Jim already at K - swam! Into Mount Stewart. Dinner of celery soup, onion/egg bake & rhubarb crumble with ---- Cave Bel Air- wine very like
my own damson wine. P & J left at 9 pm.

Monday May 1st

Mattie (returned from Iran with gifts of modern minatures on bone, & a ceramic bottle) & Girlie around 3.30pm. To Mount Stewart.Light tea here - boiled eggs, wheaten bread, rhubarb crumble.

Tuesday May 2nd

Letter from Tom
Visitation from two somewhat stupid & overweening detectives from Newtownards
accusing me of cashing a blank cheque signed by Philip (son of Dorothy) Kerr for £80
on the 7th of February. Took me to Greyabbey Police Station to take samples of my writing which has a semblance to that on the cheque. To Dorothy Kerr in the afternoon to inform her of the visitation-she was somewhat surprised. The writing on the cheque is very like hers; & moreover Philip Kerr looks somewhat like me; although nearly all his Northern Bank transactions are made by his mother. The police made comments about my "affluent home" & so on. A most unprepossessing and unpleasant pair -who of course equated "good taste" with affluence.!

Thursday May 4th

Letter from Mikael & Siv [in Helsinki. I had met Mikael some years earlier in Stockholm when I attended the award ceremony for the Nobel Prize for Literature - as a representative of Queen's University - because no-one else would volunteer for lovely Stockholm in December. M and S later came to stay.]
Breakfast to Schubert's eviscerating C Major quintet. Made some lino-prints for Paddy.

Friday May 5th

Tom on 3.30 bus. Jim at 8.50 - & Brian Acheson, unexpectedly. Alan at 10.15 pm.
Showed Ancient Monument slides. Bed 2 am.

Saturday May 6th

Reduced (and improved) 'Quatrains' to 100 with Tom's help.

Sunday May 7th

Jim on 10 a.m. bus. Thrilled to bits to be licked by 3 calves & a cow after a little (motionless) patience.
Francis H. in evening. Played Pelmanism!

Tuesday May 16th

To doctors 10.50 a.m. to get charms and cures against smegma - and now piles !!
To N'ards with prescription & to Ros McAlpine's. Ros absent, but husband friendly. Made his lunch for him & had some of it.
Met Ross and friend Dorothy Kelly while hitch hiking back to K. where they had been waiting for me ! With them to Dorothy's
nurseries near Comber. A pleasant afternoon looking at, watering & selling plants, as well as talking and looking at Dorothy's drawings.
Hitched from Comber to N'Ards in an Alfa Romeo ! Then to K. with Marjorie McAuley.

Wednesday May 17th

Worked on translations of Viggo Stuckenberg's anti-fairy tales, wrote introduction, and sent them to Penguin.

Friday May 19th

Mattie collected me in evening to to organ recital at Ballywalter Parish church. Excellent concert; reception afterwards.
Coffee at Kilnatierney - where Jim was swimming. Mattie left 11.30. Bed about 2 am.
(Handel organ concerti; Bach chorales; Two Noels for Organ by Balbastre
(very witty) & Bach Brandenberg 5.

Monday May 22nd

to Dublin with Mattie & Jim. Called in at Paddy's en route. Photographed prehistoric stones in National Museum, where people were very helpful (Dr Raftery). To National Gallery (briefly) and North again to Newgrange where we were treated to a tour by Professor O'Kelly. To Paddy's again & back in Belfast at 10 pm.


Tuesday May 23rd

Lift from Mattie to N'ards. Hitch-hiked thence to K.
To doctor: no treatment known for smegma [except dastardly circumcision!].
Ros & Dorothy at 11.30. Lunch of Piperade & my own wine - excellent. The three of us merry. Took 2 Rhododendrons and 2 Azaleas from K.
to Fr Murphy's & planted them in church grounds. Rest of afternoon at Ros'. Very wet and stormy. Hitched back to K - and got a lift right down the lane to front door!
Maps (large scale)of Central African Republic & Congo People's Republic. arrived

Monday May 29th

Nice letter & book of poems from Grethe Risbjerg-Thomsen. Sent her a copy of my 100 quatrains. [Poor woman!]
Radu Lupu recording of Schubert Bb Sonata disappointing - unlike his broadcast which was superb.

Wednesday May 31st

A week of strong winds.
Ros & Dorothy at 11.15 am. with climbing Hydrangeas & Pyracantha (the latter for Fr Murphy).
Cleaned house with vacuum cleaner. [Borrowed. The house had running cold water and electricity, but I had no gadgets apart from electric blanket and sound reproduction equipment including Wharfedale loudspeakers. No fridge. I would never have a washing-machine.]

Friday June 2nd

Tom on 16.20 bus [for a week].
Jim at 20.40.

Monday June 5th

Jim 8.30 am. Tom went to the execrable Northern Ireland BBC to discuss programme 'The Northern Drift'.
Jim left 2 pm. Printed linocuts.

Thursday June 8th

Tom helped to edit short stories, now re-arranged & retitled 'Thule, the period of Cosmography'
Makes an excellent book - quite an original work [quickly junked].

Wednesday June 14th

Hot sunny day - Jim burned!
Made jackal-skin tabard (with tail).

Saturday June 17th

Painted 'Still-life with books & a paint tube' - my last painting. [Absolutely not!]
Windy, wet, cold day.
Large-scale maps of border area of CAR & CPR arrived. Mostly green (forest) with blue filaments of streams, plus Lobaye river flowing into the Oubangui/Ubangi

Friday June 23rd

ELEKTRA died (1965). [My first dog - wonderfully intelligent and beautiful.]
To Ros' via Jim and Diane Gracey; & from Ros' (with her husband) to a party.
Like all parties - totally superficial and pretty boring, though I met girl called Marge apparently interested in Pygmies - who lives at the end of Clonlee Drive !

Saturday June 24th

With M & G to Craigs court cairn - met nice dog called Nellie - & to Ahoghill to see Terence O'Neill's garden! very nice indeed, though somewhat on the Neat National Trust side.
Left Girlie off at Aldergrove for her holiday to Norway.
Back to Belfast & thence to Castle Ward to a Chopin recital by Peter Katin - quite good but not electrifying. [In 1980 I would move to within two miles of Castle Ward, a property whose grounds were largely trashed by the nefarious National Trust. My wonderful professor of Philosophy lived there until he was exalted to the truly venerable post of Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge. He left hundreds of empty wine-bottles behind.]

Sunday June 25th

Jim in morning, exhausted. He spent all day yesterday walking through the town - has decided to leave his wife "for good". Fed him and put him to bed.

Tuesday June 27th

Letter from Tom, enclosing review of 'The Hunting Peoples' by John Hillaby.
Jim later in morning. He has agreed tp stay with his wife until September when the son does his eleven-plus exam. Then they will sell the house and separate.
Maps of border area of CAR and CPR arrived - with mission-stations marked!

Wednesday June 28th

To Belfast early, then with Jim & Mattie to South Derry & North Tyrone:
Knockneill court grave; (failed to find Kilhoyle wedge grave - and got a puncture); Boviel & Loughash wedge graves. Clady Halliday court grave & Ballyrenan 'Cloghogle' chambered graves.
Back to Belfast, very tired, at 10.30 pm

Friday June 30th

GIRLIE'S BIRTHDAY
Jim in morning: has agreed to stay with his wife until September, when his son goes through his 11+ exam. Then they will sell the house & separate. [She, whom I met only once and had absolutely no wish to separate from Jim, quite appropriately took the proceeds to buy a smaller home. Jim decided to move in with me, and I (who have always found it immensely difficult to say No! when I can't simply walk away or disappear) acquiesced. He was, after all, very good and enthusiastic company on outings. Mattie was not happy about it, but kept her feelings pretty well to herself for seven years.]

Thursday July 27th

Hot weather continues. Started reading Laxness' World Light. Michael and Peter Pritchard in afternoon. [Michael was my only real schoolfriend for the final 4 years.]
Alan Crozier in evening - wine, cherries, sodomy. Don't care at all for the latter. Das Lied von der Erde on radio, a talk on Savonarola, etc.

Wednesday September 20th

To Ards Hospital at 9 am for vasectomy operation. 'Came round' 11.45. Ros arrived at 2 to take me home. Discharged at 3.15 with sore balls and still-bleeding scrotum. Feeling a bit groggy. Had a wank (to get rid of residual live sperm!) and went to bed. Lovely letters from Mikael and Siv in Helsinki, and Madge Herron [whose letters were much better than her poems, and whom I never actually met].