Tuesday, 18 April 2023
I bought a big four-in-one book of the four memoirs that I read back in 2011. Faerie found it a bit heavy to share a lap with.
I cannot explain any better why I love these diaries so much that I want to reread them as this, from the introduction:
So, just a few of my favorite bits, of which there are so many. He began the first diary upon turning 68…just my age.
One of the things I love about him is that he doesn’t drive, nor do I, and like him, I felt I was doing a favour to the world to not drive because I was sure I would have hurt someone or myself if I had. I sort of learned how but was terrible at it. And now, because of vertigo, it would not be possible anyway.
Not being able to drive away did keep me in a bad relationship for longer than it would have otherwise. (I had to literally walk away, which would have been easier had we still lived in a city.)
Skooter slept nearby.
I deeply wanted to finish the first book but our neighbour’s indoor cat, Coco, went missing, wearing a little sweater, and we spent four hours participating in the search. She was retrieved!
While searching for Coco, Allan photographed some tulips and an unfurling sword fern across the street at the J Crew Cottage.
Thursday, 20 April 2023
I returning to The Smoking Diaries after work, wishing it were winter time so I could read the whole 824 pages in three uninterrupted days. On memoir writing:
Later: “I will never rewrite again, any part of this, on I go and on–feckless, thoughtless, cruel and stupid, it doesn’t matter, because in this case, you are only what you write, never what you rewrite.”
Do I agree with and find agreeable everything he writes? No, not any more so than with Derek Tangye or Christopher Isherwood or Patricia Highsmith, but its the self-deprecating honesty that I appreciate.
I think by now I was into the second book, The Year of the Jouncer.
Cats and dogs figure large in the Grey household.
After years of fame and success, he had hit a bad patch due to a bad investment. I was amused by his ways of being frugal…
…and was intrigued when he promised to tell the reader how he managed to continue to enjoy vacations in Greece and restaurant meals…but he never did tell. I imagine the success of these memoirs helped after this first one was published.
21-22 April 2023
I was blessed with cold and rainy reading weather for several days. I did not want to but had to start Friday by transplanting tomato starts from six packs into larger pots.
Then I could read.
In The Year of the Jouncer, Simon wrote eloquently about his friendship with Alan Bates, who starred in many of his plays and in the film of his play, Butley. I was especially interested, having just watched the television series Oliver’s Travels (you can find it on YouTube).
In The Last Cigarette, he writes about loss, when friends are gone.
…………………………….
On the last trip to a favourite place:
On the 22nd I took a short break from reading to salvage a Zepherine Drouhin rose from the Jay Crew Cottage where it is no longer wanted. It came home to my garden. Allan dig the final digging out, I did the replanting.
23 April, 2023
I now had this far to go.
Something was going on in our town which made me sad about the destruction of an old building at the port, which had housed Tide Wind Charters and then OleBob’s Seafood Market and Restaurant and had been built to give the feeling, from the apartment on the second floor, of being in a wheelhouse.
I used to think how great it would be to live up there and have a wind-tolerant roof garden. The building had been empty for a couple of years and would have taken some restoration. It will be replaced with this:
Simon Gray spoke to me of how I felt about that.
I had now reached the last book, Coda, in which Simon was diagnosed with lung cancer (after fifty years of smoking 60 cigarettes a day and attempts to quit) and given just a couple of years to live. I did not want to lose his voice. But at the end, I had to…but not quite yet. He had written four earlier memoirs, of which I have acquired two and will get the others. There is even one I didn’t read last time (somehow didn’t know about it).
I wonder what he would have thought of modern social media. He died in 2008.
Maddeningly, he did not get all of the time promised him in the prognosis, as an aneurysm got him about six months early. I wish he had gotten every possible moment.
Calling the excerpts I shared here my favourite bits of the book is not even really true. Most of it is a great big favourite because I love the way it’s written. I am grateful that the cold weather held on long enough for me to finish it without having to go back to work first. Now, please, some more reading weather so that I can enjoy the earlier diaries when they arrive.
Oh it’s wonderful to find an author you just want to keep reading!
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I like the idea of the rooftop garden. A pity that it was not to be.
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