Adding Joan Ddion to my notebook

It’s a source of great amusement to my drinking companions that, when I arrive in the pub, I go through a ritual of placing on the table, next to my pint, my tobacco tin, my tobacco pouch and my lighter, a pen and a notebook.

For a while some were a little self-conscious when I would suddenly pick up my pen and scribble something, thinking that they were due to be lampooned in this blog for some remark carelessly made. More likely that my mind is rudely elsewhere.

Looking back over the last few days’ notes, I see I have a list of potential winners for The BBC Sports Personality of the Year in December. Good odds should be available, which is why I do not plan to reveal my thoughts more fully. What happened to my vow about premium bonds?

Update: I knew it would happen. I'm too late now

I have a reminder to lend someone my video of Dr Strangelove and check what ‘emo’ music is. There are attempts at solving anagrams from The Times crossword, and words like ‘tenace’ which seem to be the correct solution, but which need to be confirmed. Tenace, by the way, is a kind of card game, I find.

There are opening lines for poems that will probably never be written, such as

‘An empty glass is like a sleeping woman/ Satisfied but empty, smeared, still warm/ and tingling from my thirsty lips’ . . . .I know, don’t say it!

There are observations on people, like the young girl listening while the man with her talks and talks. She is continuously twitching her left foot. Is she nervous? Bored? Is she wondering how to get rid of him? An older couple are sitting in silence. She is drinking coffee; he is nursing half a pint. He is surrounded by shopping bags.

I agree with Joan Didion, who writes in her article ‘On Keeping a Notebook’ that such observations are more about me than those I am observing. I didn’t like the look of that talkative young man and I felt sorry for that shopping-bag bearing old man.

And I’ve made a note of an anecdote Didion tells in her article ‘On Morality’. A boy tells a rabbi, ‘I don’t believe in God.’ To which the rabbi replies, ‘Do you think God cares?’ And I’ve added another piece of Jewish religious wisdom I recall from elsewhere, which sums up the Book of Job.

Job: ‘Why me, Lord?’

The Lord: ‘Why not?’

Joan Didion is a recent discovery, for which I have to thank a friend who loaned me her Slouching Towards Bethlehem. I like her style, conversational, personal, intelligent and self-aware. The way blogs should be.