Diary, Thursday 26^th September, 1996: Visited a friend yesterday. Stayed with him for a couple of hours, talking into the night. He drank Vodka. Lots of it. It is a metaphysical depression: at the vulgarity, the ugliness and coarseness of things, at the pointlessness of sticking one’s finger in a dyke to stop the water. We laughed. He was dressed only in a towel. His ageing pulpy body crushed by his depression. Sitting on a black leather coach in a room with pink walls. I went to the toilet. The toilet is lime green set against pink tiles. It is not his house.