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how to tell real rage from rage’s impersonation. Real tears from the am-dram equivalent.
    By the time we celebrated our tenth anniversary we barely fought at all. And I have to say I rather missed it. I missed caring that much, either way.
    Speaking of Richard Burton, they had some idiot on the radio the other day being supremely dismissive about him. I can’t remember who he was. Some thrusting young critic, I imagine. But it rather struck me how it’s apparently quite acceptable these days to be perfectly pissy about Burton’s films and performances, which rather depressed me. I mean, did you have to be around at the time to appreciate the man’s talent? If you watch those films now, out of context, are they completely meaningless?
    There’s no doubting that when you see a film with Burton in it you know pretty much what you’re going to get. But that’s why people bought their tickets. He had that ticking internal mechanism which meant you couldn’t take your eyes off him. James Mason was the same. You never hear people singing the praises of himeither these days. And it makes me feel dreadfully old to be sticking up for actors who, not that long ago, were generally considered to be gods.
    I have a cassette of Burton reading Under Milk Wood at home somewhere. I should’ve brought it with me. I never was that big a fan of Thomas’s poetry – all that maudlin, sub-Yeatsian babble rather gets on my nerves. But I do like some of his prose. And Under Milk Wood definitely works, in its own weird way. Thomas and Caitlin were another pair of proper scrappers. I once read someone’s account of visiting them out in the sticks. And how at dinner, after a couple of drinks, Thomas started picking on Caitlin, and she started having a go back, until finally the two of them dragged each other off to the kitchen and proceeded to knock seven bells out of one another. Caitlin finally emerged, triumphant, and limped back over to the table, pinning her hair in place, and said to their guest, ‘Well, thanks very much for coming to the aid of a lady.’ A minute or two later Thomas reappears, with a split lip and a black eye, and carries on where he’d left off. No doubt telling everyone what a genius he was.

Today, it seems, is laundry day
    T oday, it seems, is laundry day. The resident washing machine is practically Edwardian and whilst I’ve put most of my clothes through it, I don’t feel it’s to be trusted with one or two items. So I’ve been doing a little washing by hand.
    There’s an extendable wire rack in the bathroom which pulls out from the wall. But the moment I touched it the bloody thing flung itself off into the bath. I carefully replaced it, but it’s clearly incapable of bearing the weight of a single sock. It was an hour later before it occurred to me that every visitor to this place has probably had exactly the same experience, but no one has had the balls to point it out to the agents for fear of losing their deposit.
    I’m half inclined to take it out the back and set fire to it. The little bugger has left me with a blood blister right under my thumbnail, where it nipped me. And all the clothes are strewn over the backs of chairs and radiators. I feel like I’m a character in some kitchen-sink drama. I should be wearing a headscarf and moaning, in a Northern accent, about my having a bun in the oven and him blowing all the housekeeping on beer.
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    The other thrilling new development is that I’ve become a newspaper-buyer. I forgot to pick one up the day beforeyesterday and it meant I had to sit in the pub and read a book, rather than do my precious crossword, which irritated me no end. At home we’ve always had them delivered and to be honest I’ve just never quite got round to cancelling them.
    One of the articles I read today concerned some report into rocketing dentists’ charges. And how, as a consequence, more people are simply not bothering to go at all. It failed to mention how a fair