I have a stinker of a cold. A real “Judge” cold, as me mammy would say, so-called because it’s typical of my mother’s side of the family, with explosive sneezes that come in uncontrollable loud bursts. My body knows something noxious has to be expelled but is going for a cluster-bomb policy of dynamiting everything, so my aching eyeballs and my tired guts and my whining sinuses and my popping ears have to be covered to prevent the sneezes from blowing them right away. But I don’t have enough hands and I don’t get enough notice. Each one leaves me reeling, and, like earthquakes, the aftershocks can be just as intense.

It’s war, I tell you, war. So far, hasn’t turned nasty. I figure it’s been at least nine months since I was ill, in any way, shape or form, and that’s a good run. I first remarked on it in September, when I met someone recovering from cancer, whose plea was “value when you’re healthy” and so I have. It helps my mood now because I can be livid at life’s unfairness sometimes when I’m ill, a real tantrumming boy. And I’m very fit with all the bicycling and eating fresh food and salads and virgin oil every day, which must count for something.

But nothing can prevent the common cold and, fingers crossed, it won’t turn into a chest or sinus infection, as they have done so often in the past with me.

It’s cold out. Very. A freezing fog is gliding over my house from the valley below as I write, leaving white dust wherever it touches. It’s been snowing for the past couple of days, prettily, but not settling everywhere, as if a giant white spray-painter has been hovering over a hill there, a slope here, a tree there. My fire has been on the go for 3 days now, non-stop, each morning first thing I do is go over and breathe life into the embers for another day. Because it’s the only heat I have, and I spend a lot of time sitting stationary in front of this machine, I’m going through a lot of wood, and need to order some more. But the house is mercifully free of draughts or damp and keeping busy by tending to the fire is good for me.

Strangely enough, I’ve begun writing again, properly. When my body is aching and nothing seems to alleviate it, and the prospect of awful Italian TV ensures that the TV remains at the bottom of the cupboard, I find myself with a mind that’s relatively functioning. So I’m sitting down and hacking away at the novel. I’ve decided to call it a story, to myself, which helps quieten my inner critic. “Just tell the story, Dermod” I keep on saying to myself. Nothing will happen unless I put the hours in.

I finished Edmund White‘s My Lives and was both depressed and encouraged by it. Depressed because, for all his struggles, he has had a lover for most of his life, for at least five years at a time. However his own insecurities and passivity and self-loathing have manifested, they haven’t resulted in a life alone, and I’ve been alone for too many years now. A sense of isolation, though, is palpable in his writing, the same as it is for any honest, introspective man/artist with a mother/lover to contend with. But I was encouraged because it is a very satisfying autobiography – I have a sense of the man, his weaknesses, his passions, his strengths and cravings, in a way that feels complete. I don’t feel manipulated or seduced or appalled, I just see him, warts and all. Ecce homo. The virtue of a good biography is that it gives one a sense of what is possible, and what can be achieved, by one person. He and I are very different, but have a lot of things in common. One of them is interesting: he doesn’t believe in evil, or at least, “when forced to stare it in the eye” he attributes it to ignorance. He attributes that to his Christian Science upbringing. I like him a lot for holding on to it, though.