A time of disgrace, lived without guilt

It must be a day without guilt because a lot of the things I shall be

doing I do anyway, but I do them guiltily. For example, if I have

something to write, I will frequently get up and start re-sorting my

books into some sort of order. From the top of the house to the bottom.

Thereby preventing myself from writing.

I'm a terrible tidier, something I frequently use as an excuse for not

working. I would like to be able to tidy to my heart's content without a

shade of guilt. Drawers and books and letters and correspondence,

everything. For most people I imagine that sort of thing would be a

nightmare. For me it would be a great pleasure.

Even when I go into somebody else's house and there is a desk all

covered with rubbish, I have to fight to stop myself squaring everything

up. I have several untidy friends who frequently ask me round and leave

me alone in a room. It's a sort of madness and I know the psychiatrists

have a name for it.

I do a lot of fishing and I love trains. So on another eighth day I

would love to catch a train to somewhere in Hampshire, be met by a

cheerful gentleman, wearing the right sort of clothes. Not too

intellectual, please. I don't want to discuss existentialism or

anything. He would drive me to a fishing hut on the banks of one of the

great chalk streams. It would be an ideal day. Not too bright, plenty of

cloud about, but warm. It would be May, but not May at the height of the

May fly season, because then it's really too easy. And I would like to

fish all day and not be too successful. But successful enough. If one's

too successful one becomes sated. There has to be a certain amount of

frustration in looking for brown trout. Using the lightest tackle and

the smallest dry fly.

Then I would have the drinking day. In my youth I was a considerable

drinker. Now, because of age -- touching on 67 -- and because also with

having so much work to do, that has changed. I was fairly idle as a

young man. It seems that everything's happened in reverse. I now control

my drinking. I'm drunk perhaps once a year. High quite a bit. So I would

like to do a bit of real youthful drinking. The sort of thing when you

get up in the morning and say: Good, I'm going to get very drunk. And,

of course, I would like a condition to be that there would be no

hangover. I'd start as soon as they opened at 11 o'clock and I wouldn't

finish until I fell into bed in the small hours. I think it would be gin

and tonic in the morning. Wine at lunch with a brandy afterwards. I've

always eaten when drinking. More gin and tonic in the early evening and

then solid whisky into the small hours, preferably JB or the Famous

Grouse. And I would like all the moments of invention and funniness that

go with heavy drinking, the sort of flow of humour and madness, but none

of the repetitiveness. Nothing maudlin, cheerful to the end. And

furthermore, some sort of guarantee I wouldn't disgrace myself by peeing

on the floor. That's one of the things that pulled my drinking up.

One more eighth day I would cherish: With a great deal of money to

spend I would set off in the morning after a bath, run by my valet, to

the west end of London where I would saunter and purchase objects beyond

my means. I would have two pairs of shoes hand-made at Lobbs. I would

order several hand-made shirts from Turnbull and Asser. Very expensive.

And I would go for a fitting of a suit in Savile Row, say Hunt's. Choose

a couple of ties in the Burlington Arcade. I'd like to lunch in a

leisurely way on oysters washed down with Grouse, probably at a

restaurant called Wilton's. And I would like to buy a nice drawing.

Nothing very expensive -- #20,000, say. I do love expensive objects.

I would really indulge myself as if I was an Edwardian gentleman. And,

of course, I would go to Hardy's, the most celebrated fishing shop in

the world. Fritter away a few hundred there. I would then go back to my

wonderful apartment in, say, Belgravia, having spent enough to keep the

average family in some comfort for a couple of years. And that would be

my disgraceful day.