14January1995

London: 14 January 1995
My dear folks,

I've a yen to be with you this evening, in spirit at least. I have the weekend off after working six of the past seven nights. And it's so nice. Like the glorious feeling when a headache or toothache goes away - a great sense of release. Just to be and not to be under pressure is wonderful, especially with a 12-year old whisky for support. I'm a bit floaty. My clock is still 12 hours behind real time. I woke at 0400 and lay listening to the World Service until 0600 when I came downstairs, made tea for Jones (who fell asleep again before she drank it) and did some serious computer reading until 0800 when I took up coffee instead.

After lunch, I suddenly felt a great need to sleep. It's as though I'm injected with a drug. My brain bubbles, my ears tingle, my scalp gets goose-pimples and I have to lie down immediately or risk falling fast asleep on my feet. I barely made it to the couch where I went out like a light. I woke myself briefly with a snore, to hear Jones telling Chris that I often crashed like this but that she lacked the gift. And then it was lights out once more.

Chris is going back to Cape Town for a fortnight before be begins a contract in Guyana. We ran him out to the airport when I awoke. He'd found the planes to RSA heavily booked and gritted his teeth at the price he had been forced to pay for a ticket. We told him it was well worth it and that (assuming he could afford it) he should go for it. He did. But he's a man who likes value for money and was frustrated that he couldn't get a better deal. He's a treat to watch in a shop. Never mind the clearly-marked price tag on the item he wants, he enquires politely but firmly how much the merchant would really accept, and then, with a winning smile, what extra discount is available for cash, and so on. And he gets away with it in the most unlikely of places. Thrift would appear to run deep in the Jones blood.

We have minor problems in the house. The girl who rents the flat below ours took on a real s--t as a flatmate. He hasn't paid her his share of the rent and has caused her some serious grief. I arrived back from work at dawn on Wed. to find a brick heaved through a glass pane in the front door of the house, & the door itself bashed. Moments later, the said s..t rang my buzzer and demanded admission him to the house. It appeared he'd lost his keys. I had absolutely no interest in his plight and told him he could stay out as far as I was concerned.

It emerged from a bleary-eyed Jones that he had been stranded outside for hours and ringing all the flat buzzers and thumping the door madly in a bid to gain entry. She had declined. Other house occupants had either been away or equally uninterested in his fate. He had clearly done the damage. I called the police. He'd vanished by the time they came and took sundry notes. The girl tenant had tried to throw him out earlier, piling his goods in the passage and changing the locks but he called the police who warned her that it was illegal to lock him out regardless of whether he had paid his rent. Funny old world!

The lottery is being drawn as I write. A £19,000,000 jackpot for the person who has guessed all six numbers correctly. And what do you know. I had the first two right - and then one more. I win £10. It won't take me far. But it's just about the first time I can remember winning anything and it's quite nice. Jones beckons me to supper. I had meant to talk about all kinds of other things. But this is how the letter went. Thank you for all your own letters and faxes. They are more special than you know.