sheldrake

Hello. I did hope to bring you another update on the Christmas cactus, which is now looking most impressive, but it always seems to be obscured by drying dishes whenever I think to take its picture... and by the time I've dried them and put them away, it's dark or I've forgotten.

My moods have been a bit odd lately - yesterday was a washout, but I've got a fair bit done today and enjoyed myself. Plus, new Doctor Who in an hour! Hooray!

I've been meaning to link to this for ages. Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story. I love her writing and this is a really great talk, full of wisdom about the stories we tell ourselves about our world. Give it a watch/listen -- it's worth it.

I'm currently rereading Derek Jarman's Modern Nature -- one of my favourite books, and one I can read over and over (it's also full of underlining from when I used it for my dissertation back in college). I love it because it's so calm, full of meditations on gardens (it is in part a chronicle of the garden Jarman created in Dungeness) and history and memories, and yet there is anger and sadness there too. It's wildly romantic, and unapologetically subversive. The journal begins in January 1989 -- 20 years ago. Time flies...

I wanted to share this entry, because it made me smile.

Sunday 11 June 1989

A letter from the Folkestone Herald alerted me: the Sun wanted to buy their photos of me. Meanwhile the lawyers' letters to the People and the Mirror have produced an apology and a correct reporting of my HIV status under the headline: 'Del's Not Dying'.

A motorbike draws up and a hapless reporter from the Sun clambers off. This is his third trip down here from London.

'Do you mind if I photo you?'

'Yes, but since one way or another you're going to, we might as well do a good job of it. Not in front of the house, on the beach.'

We trek off across the shingle. I sense he wants to get this assignment over with as quickly as possible. I offer to carry his camera bag with a malicious smile. When we set up at the water's edge he says, 'I'm only a snapper.'

'Well,' I say, 'this is your chance to take a decent photo.' I fix him with a basilisk stare as he clicks away.

'You look uncomfortable,' he remarks.

'Not as much as you should.'

'Oh?'

'I'm writing a diary, which I'm publishing. You're today's entry. When all is said and done what I choose to write will, I expect, be the only trace of your life. Your memory is in my hands.'

Long silence.

'The Sun's not kept by the British Museum, the paper destroys itself it's so acid. When you get back tell your editor to read the retraction in the People. Because next time I'm going for a million unless it's right. Mr Maxwell, the retired captain of the AIDS Foundation, has seen better to print an apology.'

I kept him snapping for as long as I could. I hope he remembers the session.