February 14

Anarchy is in the air - it's a time of divorces and flux, and it's reflected in the demolition process going on at the university where they are knocking down the building beside the library. Behind a high wire fence they are slowly reducing it to a pile of rubble and it's a peculiarly satisfying sight: the smashed windows, the twisted wire supports protruding from the concrete, the sudden visibility of previously hidden rooms as they are torn in half and reveal that inside, there is nothing interesting at all. The same impulse that leads me to secretly hope to see a terrible car accident is the impulse that makes watching this destruction such a pleasure: it demonstrates what everybody knows, that nothing is stable, that everything will fall apart when the right amount of pressure is applied in the right place.

These maudlin thoughts provoked partly by Katherine and Tawfik's separation, which is unfolding as we speak in surreal technicolour. He went to Egypt to photograph an archaeological dig, fell in love with a sexy young headbanger and came back listening to Iron Maiden and requesting a separation. My powers of imagination are so exercised by this unlikely scenario that I am even dreaming about it and trying to make sense of it in my sleep. My first thought is that he has gone completely mad but Katherine tells me that 'that's what she thought at first, but that's what people always tell themselves when they're being dumped.' She is vocal and articulate about the process- the pity succeeded by rage with a constant drumming of pain in the background. Destruction is not only a source of secret fascination, it' s also unbelievably easy: it's possible to ruin something that's been years in the making in a matter of minutes.How depressing it is and how paranoid it can make one.

On another, not entirely unrelated topic , yesterday I made my first ever visit to a psychiatrist. I had to meet my mad phone-friend's doctor before meeting her, so at 12:30 I rolled sweatily up to the door of a discreet house in Paddington which had the blinds drawn and only a tiny Please Enter sign to indicate that it was anything other than an ordinary residence in a fashionable part of town. Inside the decor was relentlessly beige, the trashy magazines (Vogue and Cosmopolitan, not New Weekly- there is both money and taste here) lined up with military precision on a spotless glass tabletop, the light moderated by pale, neutral blinds, soothing music and a smiling, unintimidating receptionist hunkered down behind a high desk. Obviously the designers didn't realise that a lack of any discord is just as likely to cause an outbreak of madness as a hot pink couch and a Black Sabbath soundtrack.

Dr. Both himself was smooth and pleasant in the same uncompromising way - polished shoes, a balding head shaved to minimise the obviousness of his hair loss, neat ironed trousers. He sat in one wide beige chair and crossed his legs in an accomodating (as opposed to defensive) manner : I sat in another one opposite him and mirrored his pose. An easy conversation followed with exactly the right amount of eye contact, guided precisely by the doctor who gave me (in an unemotional but caring fashion) a rundown of Julie's illness. Diagnosed with chronic schizophrenia 20 years ago, she has never worked due to her condition and currently lives at home with her parents as she has for most of her life. She struggles with finding ways to occupy her time and has only recently ( within the last couple of years) found a medication which controls her symptoms (voices). She has made a couple of unsuccessful suicide attempts and frequently suffers from anxiety in new situations.

This, then, constituted the only discordancy: this recount of what has basically been an unhappy life circumscribed by recurrent madness, uttered in this reasonable tone by a pleasant- faced young man in his beige office.