Seven hours in front of the computer, typing like a fiend on the first real day of winter, leaves me with a strange sense of elation- although, like Frankenstein, I have no idea what I have created and am far too pleased with myself to take a critical look. It has taken me six weeks to get this far with my bastard of an honours paper. SIX WEEKS!!!!!!!! Nevertheless I am feeling cheerful and as if I've reached a turning point in this horrible year. I have even answered the phone a couple of times this week, and read Bernard Schlink's The Reader again, scanned and briefly wept over before falling into a corpse-like sleep that lasted 11 hours. Currently revelling in a long-suspended feeling that everything is going to be alright- thank you and goodnight.

The things which make me feel better in these difficult days are many and varied. Here are some of them, in no particular order.

hearing that other people are miserable
baths
red wine
a good sleep
coffee
cirrus clouds
the smell of the mangroves in Tarban Creek
the prospect of terminal illness which will make it unneccessary to finish my studies
good movies (especially involving terminal illness and other people's misery)

The things which make me feel worse are no less numerous.

stories of other people's success
coffee
the thought of terminal illness etc.
the blue computer screen which appears periodically saying 'physical dump of memory completed': after this cyber bowel movement, being forced to turn off the computer and start all over again.

It has recently occurred to me to resort to a paper diary for certain internal investigations, and I'm learning something about my own distinction between the public and private and what it means for this blog. The marital universe in all its shifting complexity is not, unfortunately for voyeurs among you, a subject for these pages unless it is sunny and free of blemishes. I wonder how many romantic alliances collapse under the weight of these privacy laws, or- alternatively- under a sense of betrayal generated by public airing of dirty laundry?

An autumn revelation- going outside on Sunday morning ( a few hours off from my torture), down a deciduous avenue of falling leaves on my bicycle with my love at my side (or behind me, or- more likely- in front. He doesn't like to be beaten). We go for breakfast in a cafe near the park- it is early, and only a few dog walkers and cyclists are there, swilling coffee in the expectant air. We eat, gossip. Marcin reads the paper and I read a draft of an essay I've been writing- the sky is deep blue and I suddenly like what I've written.

Outside, sitting tigetherat a table on the footpath, there is a middle-aged man and an old one. It is the old one that interests me. From where I sit, I can see his tan plastic hearing aid and liver-spotted hands. He has a pair of glasses with an extra set of black tinted frames clipped onto them, and he washes down a rainbow of pills with his orange juice. And I (with my juices still flowing, much good though it does me) I'm suddenly envious of him as I am, these days, of everyone who seems able to receive simple pleasures- he has gone past the tyrannies of youth- vanity, competition, the urge to achieve something out of the ordinary. He is free to reflect and to take full advantage of mornings like these under the plane trees , to fossick in the compost of his past for old joys, old conquests (I like the decomposition metaphor). Nobody expects much of him, except that he take his pills and not repeat himself too often. I begin to look forward to my retirement.

The news that my friend Freyja has written six chapters of the great Australian novel has galvanised me into blogging again- along with the urge to preserve for posterity the pain I'm going through with this goddamned motherfucking honours business. The last six weeks have been spent suffering and making regular excursions across the borders into utter derangement- some days I can feel my mind beating around in my head like a moth stuck in a lampshade, and think that I know what it means to crack up. I didn't know (oh limited imagination!) that it was possible to feel like this over intellectual endeavours as well as emotional ones- that said, it could lead to a divorce and then I'll have both. So, in order of magnitude, since last I wrote the world has inflicted the following trials on me.

1. Crisis of confidence of unheard of proportions
2. Computer misbehaviour
3. a mysterious pain in my left breast (today fondled by an ageing mincy doctor who may well never have touched one of these objects by choice)

In return I have had one compensatory vision. Two days ago, the library was evacuated by a (false ) fire alarm. There were sirens and shouts, the firemen came, they left. The library staff were allowed back inside. One librarian (the hairy one with a bald patch which is overcompensated by the tufts of hair sprouting from every orifice further south) stood in front of the library, arms askew, holding back the tide of nerds poised to overwhelm him and roll in a wave back to their computers. One boy (an Asian with a wispy moustache) can wait no longer.... he breaks loose from the crowd and bolts for the library door........ despite his youth and desperation he is intercepted by the hairy librarian, who turns him away. Without losing any speed he turns around and runs off in the other direction.

I still haven't stopped laughing.