After a month of susceptibility to every winter germ on the market, the colour has gone out of the world somewhat. I have finally succumbed, admitted that my immune system is unequal to the task of eight hour work days, and made the decision to abandon fiscal caution and spend three days at home. The most beautiful part of these days is the morning sleep. Alone in the bed (a blissful condition), I wallow in the morning sun that pours in through the blinds. I wake and read for a while, drink some tea, sleep again. This sleep is populated with swooping circular dreams which inevitably include the plot device of at least one bicycle theft. It seems that this event has replaced the exam nightmares and concentration camp dreams of my early twenties; as if, entering on the decade of greatest solidity, the most fearful prospect is the loss of material possessions.

On this subject: facing unemployment (or underemployment) and the prospect of another six months in the country, I'm forced to meditate on a recent penchant for buying clothes and hoarding money, activities which give me a disproportionate satisfaction. I consume therefore I am. A growing wardrobe renders me a person of consequence.

I suspect it all means that regardless of my blessings I feel fundamentally unsafe, and wonder if love and luck carry their own dark burden of fear which cancels out the joy. Ahh, the manic-depressive counterpoint of my third decade- a steady drumbeat of prospective loss shadowing the high hopeful strains of possession.