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Post by sparacus on Jan 5, 2020 16:37:18 GMT -5
Sunday 5th January
Woke up late this morning (not is the politically correct sense of the word 'woke') due to a lovely bottle of 1988 vintage Cabernet Sauvignon consumed with Julian last night while watching 'The Magic Flute' on BBC4. Thankfully I've taken until January 15th off as there is nothing more horrible and common than rushing back too early after Christmas. I have to begrudgingly admit to missing Katie and will give some thought how to bring her back onto the team. Had a letter from father who is back living with that ghastly French woman; I'm dumbfounded and baffled by this development. Binned the letter. Will now be expected to visit mother and listen to her side of this frightful mess. After coffee and croissants I drove into town to shop for wine and books. Some frightful doll on a bike nearly knocked me over outside Trinity College and she didn't even stop. Obese and wearing leopard skin leggings; not the sort of cyclist I expect to see in Cambridge. Purchased a first edition of 'The Charioteer' by Mary Renault and very pleased with it. I'll save it for Julian's birthday. Stopped off for light lunch at the Mermaid Wine Bar with Kyle and Corinne to discuss how we divide up the work given Katie and Adam's absence. Later took Julian to the Blue Angel Jazz Café for absinthe and music. Life is good.
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Post by sparacus on Jan 12, 2020 13:07:52 GMT -5
Monday 6 January
I think I've got an awful cold coming on, this really is too much. It must be from those awful people coughing and sneezing in the shops yesterday. Probably the kids. Why do they insist on inflicting their awful children on other shoppers? Screaming, running around, sneezing and shouting, they should keep the things at home. My head feels woozy and I've got a temperature. Julian is looking after me and I've instructed Kyle and Luigi to get a list of provisions in. I'm consoling myself by listening to 'Blackstar' and reading the excellent new study of the archaeology of the Orkneys by Sir Michael Ensor. There is no way I'm dealing with any Operation Delta emails today as I have to look after my state of mind. Others can do it as their stress level doesn't count. Had a handwritten letter from mother asking me to pay her a new year visit so at least this awful illness gets me out of that one. Pity me.
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Post by sparacus on Jan 12, 2020 13:08:48 GMT -5
Sunday 12th January
The worst is over and thankfully I am recovering. I have been too ill to write in this diary, thanks to other people spreading their germs around Cambridge. Julian has been a dream, bringing me cups of tea, orange juice, caviar and grapes. I've not had a drink for days so am looking forward to venturing out to the Mermaid Wine Bar later for brandy and bagels. I cannot think about work at the moment and as far as I know Paul and Corinne are coping. I've been watching Visconti and Pasolini DVDs; I do love the Italian cinema and I think another holiday to Italy is called for this summer. If nothing else its nice to feast one's eyes on Italians on the beach. I'm hearing that the Doctor and her latest companions have just dealt with an unusual case involving spies being bumped off. I'm not warming to the Doctor's latest incarnation, she has stopped replying to my texts. The tenth Doctor was always very quick. I am now going to have a relaxing few hours listening to music. Its good to be recovering
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Post by sparacus on Feb 8, 2020 8:43:38 GMT -5
Wednesday 15th January
Back at work after my illness. Thankfully I've got Chiara Smith keeping me fueled with cups of coffee and we've ordered in some nice food as one is always advised to feed a cold and starve a fever. Corinne and Paul are working on a case involving a man who has been supposedly killing people with psychic thought attacks. It all seems rather far fetched. Apparently he belongs to some kind of far-right group so this could be a case of his political opponents letting their imaginations run wild. I have several books on archeology to catch up on and thankfully my office has a couch. I'll be pleased when this awful rainy, windy weather is over. Cambridge in spring can be wonderful, but would be better without the overcrowding. Dark skies make me feel so depressed and lethargic. But I'm struggling through.
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Post by sparacus on Feb 8, 2020 8:44:22 GMT -5
Monday 20th January
Had a rather humdrum day today. Chaira was wittering on about wanting a more active role in the team as opposed to being mainly office-based and I informed her to just do her job. I wasn’t in the mood for that kind of discussion. Father is back from France and giving mother a hard time asking for her ‘understanding’ that he needs breaks from their marriage. I had to listen to her on the phone for nearly an hour this morning. I needed a Fox’s Glacier Mint to get through listening to it all. Also father wants me to let my dreary half-brother join Operation Delta as he’s ‘drifting’ apparently. He can drift over the edge of a cliff for all I care. I feel low, stressed and harassed by them all. There is a new case involving a weird boy called Nate who apparently has the power to implant his thoughts into the minds of others and has been using this to get them to kill themselves. We have him in the Lab and Jake is conducting tests. I feel bored with my life today. I have Julian but every day is just dull routine when I’m at work. I feel I’m wasting my young life away and may wake up one day and find myself old. Time for a drink I feel.
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Post by sparacus on Feb 8, 2020 8:45:16 GMT -5
Sunday 26th January
I’ve had a bad day today and I just want to drown my sorrows and drift into a sea of dreams. Sleep can be a great refuge. My awful half-brother James Bartlett is joining the team, or rather my father has foisted him onto me. He never even wanted anything to do with him at one point but Madame Camboux got under his skin again. They’ll be falling out again next week. He’s temporarily staying in my flat which is a constant worry as he’ll have his eye on Julian, I just know it. I don’t need this stress right now. I inadvertently upset Julian today in the Mermaid. I got talking to Kyle and Corinne about travelling with the Doctor and that horrible martinet Martha Jones and before that Rose Tyler, who threw herself at me back then. Julian doesn’t like me talking about past relationships with women, not that I’d call that a relationship. I just know that James will be in there exploiting any minor tension in our relationship. The sooner he’s out of the apartment the better.
The weird boy Nate used his psychic power on Jake who took a massive overdose of LSD. Fortunately Jake has done so much acid that a massive overdose to anyone else is a small speck to him and he’s ok. We’ve locked the kid in a padded cell with 10ft thick lead walls. Jake thinks he’s an evolutionary leap in our evolution, a ‘homo-superior’ or tomorrow person. However I can’t concentrate on work matters like this at the moment , I’m just too stressed.
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Post by sparacus on Feb 8, 2020 8:45:57 GMT -5
Saturday 8th February
I've been far too busy to write in this diary. However I simply must record an incident that happened this morning. I had a nice exclusive Columbian Blue Ridge coffee in the Mermaid (they stock it just for me) before going to peruse the second hand bookshops and to buy a new sports jacket for Julian. As I was passing the Blue Angel Jazz Café, who should I see passing on the other side of the street but Martha Jones. I could have fainted. Unfortunately she saw me and came striding over the road. She hasn't changed, same old humourless face and depressing voice. It seems that she is also involved in alien investigations and is in Cambridge to investigate a Physics professor at the university. She wouldn't go into details, typical of her. I was pleased to get away from the awful girl. I had an expensive gin in the Blue Angel to calm my nerves; they had an excellent three piece ensemble playing soft jazz and there were a few uni lecturers in there but otherwise it was nice and quiet. I'm going to phone Paul and Corinne to warn them not to discuss our cases should Martha try contacting our organisation formally; not until she accepts the primacy of Operation Delta in these matters.
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Post by sparacus on Feb 22, 2020 13:57:13 GMT -5
Friday 14th February
It’s Valentines Day! I am so lucky and so loved. Julian gave me a delightful card and an expensive watch this morning. The card featured a picture of us punting down the Cam, taken last August . Cambridge is so beautiful in Summer. I have given Julian a set of Christopher Isherwood first editions and a large and extremely expensive bunch of red roses. He was delighted. We had a wonderful morning laughing our way round the bars of this exquisite town, making wicked fun of all the boring humdrum people we could find and basking in the joy of togetherness. I feel that my life is on a high for once, we’ll deserved given all of the pain I’ve been through and the knives that have been stabbed in my back. Yet I have a strange fear that something bad could still happen and the black dog that has long haunted me could bite again.
I saw that awful Martha again yesterday; she was trying to mine me for information about the university and it’s staff. She somehow knows about the boy Nate and his special powers. Naturally I told her nothing of value and will instruct my team to investigate her and how she has acquired information on an Operation Delta case. Her breath smelt even worse than usual.
The Doctor is still not answering my texts.
We are going out soon to the most expensive restaurant in Cambridge, the Cafe Le Rivieux. The French do know their cuisine.
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Post by sparacus on Feb 22, 2020 13:58:32 GMT -5
Monday 17th February
I’m feeling really tired today. Had a great weekend with Julian but I am now back at work. Corinne is still refusing to compromise on the Katie issue which is beyond annoying and Katie herself seems to be trying to form her own separate organisation with Adam Wooten. I am very disappointed and hurt by Adam’s actions as I thought he was loyal to me however yet again a knife plunged into my back. I should not be surprised.
We have taken over managing the old Torchwood facility used to home victims of the rift, which is where we are holding the boy with the special powers, Nate. If he is, as Jake suspects, a ‘tomorrow person’ then he may be a usable addition to the team; Jake is testing him with various mind-expanding drugs. We have managed to throw Martha Jones off the scent I think. I’m still not sure who exactly she is working for and I suspect that the government may be setting up some rival organisation to us run on the cheap so that they can cut our core funding.
I’ve managed to take an extended lunch and am sat in the Mermaid Wine Bar enjoying a crisp Mediterranean salad.
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Post by sparacus on Feb 22, 2020 14:13:18 GMT -5
Saturday 22nd February
I feel strangely down today. I cannot really explain it other than Julian being away on some university literature conference and general pressure of work. Its also cold and grey. On days like this I sit and think of things that might have been, going over lost opportunities. I should write poetry, given my natural sensitivity. Father is back at home causing difficulties and I have a real fear that mother may turn up here at my doorstep expecting to stay with me for a while. The very definition of stifling. Cambridge is changing fast and not for the better. The town was packed today and not with students and traditional residents but with awful people from newer developments, loud, crude, slovenly women and bovine, humourless men. I mean what kind of woman goes around with tattoos all up her legs and you can just imagine what kind of males they have in tow.
We have let the boy Nate out of confinement on the understanding that he works for us. His parents are in agreement as they couldn't handle him at home. First sign of trouble and he's back inside. I can't be doing with children so I've designated Chiara Smith to mother him.
Katie has gone quiet and isn't answering my texts as she should. I'm concerned about her plans. No more news on the Martha front so perhaps she's gone from Cambridge. I'm now going to relax and listen to some Mahler. I'm melancholy.
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Post by sparacus on Mar 26, 2020 13:59:05 GMT -5
Wednesday 18th March
I’m self-isolating. I do not wish to catch other people’s germs and I do not miss Cambridge town centre. It has gone terribly downhill over the last five years or so and is no longer a place for the discerning. Thankfully the colleges are still wonderful buildings which provide some sense of the past and of our town’s rich heritage. Julian is self-isolating with me and I am sending out Luigi and Kyle to purchase essential items. Luigi was desperate to return to Italy but fortunately he was unable to go before the lockdown. At times like this I realise how fortunate I am to have staff.
It has been a very stressful and hectic few weeks and I need a break. I’m starved of mirth and have felt at times so on edge that I could disappear into the abyss. Mother came to stay and forced her presence into my life here. I had to listen to her problems with father and she started trying to rearrange my life. She hates Julian. He was so upset by her manner towards him. Eventually I had to persuade her that she’d be safer from the virus is she went back to the countryside.
We are having lunch delivered from the Mermaid Wine bar. Unfortunately they keep sending Barry Tuck to deliver as they’re short staffed and he has caused me embarrassment by making a very lewd remark to the girl in the downstairs apartment. Her father is a diplomat! I do miss evenings at the Blue Angel Jazz cafe but sadly I am confined. I fear I may wilt.
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Post by sparacus on Mar 26, 2020 14:00:23 GMT -5
Sunday 22nd March
This self-isolation has lost its charm and I fear it is starting to grate with me. Julian was irritable all day today, most unlike him. It just isn’t normal for the poor boy to be cooped up like this I suppose, although it is with me so it could be worse for him.
I share his frustration at the curtailing of my freedom. I’ve grown tired of television, the preserve of ambition and folly in pursuit of illusion, or should I say delusion? And that is just the good stuff, most of what is on there in the daytime is pleb fodder. I listened to Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem this afternoon and am now looking out of the window at the indigo sky, a bright yellow half moon set amongst the stars over the shimmering lights of Cambridge.
The girl in the downstairs apartment has made a formal complaint to the Mermaid Wine Bar about Barry Tuck. Martin, the owner, is most upset and I had to calm him down on the phone. Corinne has organised a Skype meeting for the OD team tomorrow morning which I’m dreading. At least I’ve got out of having to visit mother today.
When this is over I want to visit Sissinghurst Gardens with Julian. Sadly that elegant sodom in the garden of England is now ‘heritized’ or should I say ‘chavised’ in the institutional hands of the National Trust. However the shades of the Sackville-Wests pursuing naked guardsmen through the herbaceous borders do return after the last horrendous coachload has departed.
The Doctor hasn’t lifted a finger to help with this crisis, despite my texts. Since she became a woman this is what we get. I miss the man she once was.
Oh well life goes on.
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Post by sparacus on Mar 26, 2020 15:08:18 GMT -5
Thursday 26th March
I've had an awful day. I can hardly write about it. I took the fateful decision to go into town this morning rather than let Luigi do the shopping as I felt that I needed the exercise. It was bright and sunny and like Icarus I was enchanted by the light and flew too close. Cambridge was strange, virtually empty and almost sinister. The occasional masked figure walked past, ghost-like and suspicious. At the bank I was forced to wait in a queue as they were only letting one customer in at a time. No regard was given to who I was. Behind me was an obese woman with glasses who kept coughing and spluttering. A horrible-looking beer-bellied man was standing by a taxi staring at me as if I was a mass murderer and then to top it all none of the cash machines were working. Today has reminded me just how coarse and unpleasant much of humanity is. At least I didn't encounter that awful Martha.
Then when I returned to the apartment I found Julian coughing and running a temperature. Its just awful. Several calls to BUPA later and we are both drained. He is gazing at me now like an injured dappled deer. I feel so down.
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Post by sparacus on Apr 15, 2020 12:39:20 GMT -5
Saturday 11th April
Spending the whole of Easter in my apartment is tiresome and I'm suffering from a deficit of springtime optimism. Thankfully Julian has hay fever rather than anything more serious and the scare is over, however for a time I was seriously concerned. I was looking forward to a break away from Cambridge but there's no chance of that now. Its thumbs down to Ben so far from lady luck. I think its time the authorities realised that the lockdown should be applied to those most likely to have the illness at the lower end of the social milieu, and not to myself. However perhaps I am writing foolhardily as ultimately I do not want to catch other people's germs. I seem to be in two minds which must me a sign of my sophistication. The Mermaid delivered a simply delicious smoked salmon platter this evening with white wine. Unfortunately Tuck had another run in with the girl in the downstairs apartment; I didn't hear the details just a great deal of shouting on her part.
I have been relieving the monotony by listening to a Bowie album per day in chronological order. I finished with 'Blackstar' this morning.
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Post by sparacus on Apr 15, 2020 12:40:05 GMT -5
Wednesday 15th April
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day... I feel maudlin today. Julian is in a strange mood, I think he's tired of being confined in the apartment day after day, week after week. He's like a hyacinth enclosed in a box but at least I see him. There are work problems. Corinne seems to have time on her hands and is using it to find fault with the way I run things. I had an email from her this morning questioning the ethics of me paying for holidays out of Operation Delta funds. She never used to be like this but lately she's become obsessed with a faux 'doing it by the book' sense of rigour. Obviously the mental well being of the person at the top of an organisation is an important thing to maintain and therefore my holidays are an Operation Delta matter. I dread to think what she'll say if she finds out about the donation to the Conservative Party; frankly I'm very annoyed with her. She used to be such a vigorous person.
It's been a warm, overcast day. However the clouds have gone and tonight the sun hangs huge and scarlet, a perfect circle before disappearing. I may try writing some poetry; a poet digs in another time, without past or future, beginning or end.
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