Another Brief Note From the Editor

Hello.

"Davy" - the author of this diary - is now sleeping in his chair, right over there. Just something I slipped into his tea. I've taken this opportunity to grab his laptop (by that I mean computer) and tell you some facts.

We had been spending this lovely Autumn evening in front of his fireplace, transcribing and translating his diaries. I do this as a favor. And perhaps I am a bit voyeuristic.

But it has been truly maddening. Microscript, idiosyncratic, and written in boustrophedon style. Do you know what that means? It means each line left to right and then right to left. Backwards.

Now here are the facts. I am of a certain station, one perhaps "Davy" cannot comprehend. I have status. I have privileges and obligations. I still have 400 hours of court-ordered community service picking up trash on that damn road.

So, as we sat there, "Davy" with Galehaut in hand and that incessant shit-eating grin that nostalgia brings, I lunged. I grabbed his precious Galehaut and held it over the fire.

"I am not for free!", I screamed. "My time! This insane text! You will find a way to repay!"

I'm not ashamed. I am beyond shame. I threatened to burn his entire past unless...

And now there will be ads. Oh yes. I will "monetize" this blog. I need my share. He cares little for the material world, but I do. And I am crucial to this journey.

So. You will soon see a "Pay-Pal" link. Ads - we will have no control over their content. Apparently the algorithms scan the text and try to match up something appropriate. Perhaps "1 Weird Trick For Lumbago" (Oh! Lumbago. How I love that word, it sounds like a secret ingredient for the perfect pesto. Add oregano, rosemary and lumbago).

More likely, as we get further into his diary, you will see the strangest juxtapositions of ads. Prophylactics here, bibles and lexicons there. I care not.

So. Back to his tale. Much has already been written.

The Editor.

Note From The Editor

Hello.

I am helping "Davy" transcribe his diaries for this tale. He has provided me with a long glossary and a Greek dictionary. I am "The Editor". I have been given access to this blog and will from time to time comment on his posts.

We have received some complaints that his style is "enigmatic". That he is "guilty of the twin sins of omission and elision." Thank you for your comments.

Please be patient. All will be revealed. These diaries, especially that goddamn "Galehaut", are incredibly cryptic. We will translate and paint the picture soon.

In the meantime, I suggest you read this "blog" with some equipment:

- A Bible.
- A copy of the "Decameron" by Boccaccio.
- A copy of "The Divine Comedy" by Dante.
- A dictionary.
- Pepys would help. He was also an abnormal diarist.
- "Repetition" by Soren Kierkegaard. There will be much "ressentiment". Look both quoted words up.
- Internet access, of course.
- Perhaps a good stiff drink. Things will not get pretty.

Thank you. The Editor.

Ah yes. And soon that story of how he arrived. And why he needed, immediately, to depart from another in Waterloo Station.

  "Be inconstant, nonsensical; do one thing one day and another the next, but without passion, in an utterly careless way that does not, however, degenerate into inattention, because, on the contrary, the external attentiveness must be just as great as ever but altered to a formal function lacking all inwardness."

My Room

Right. That above is actually a good likeness.

Up the stairs. Then my room. I would change and then Angelika would clean my new suit.

Across from my chamber lived another gardener. We will call him "Gaz".

Gaz was a trainspotter. No, not the kind in that horrid film (I think they were referring to heroin tracks, not the railroad). Instead, he was a young man who would spend his free days at the local train-station. Binoculars in hand and a notebook, he would record every train he saw. He had memorized schedules - this habit was actually quite handy for everyone in the Convent.

"Gaz, when is the next one to Flexmore-End?"

"12:43"

"Bristol?"

"7:18"

Always right. He had a massive toy train layout in his room that he would play with. Sometimes, I would walk past his door and I would hear "Choo-Choo," and then agonizingly later in broad Yorkshire, "Choo". More about him later, since he would become a champion for me, of sorts.

My room. I opened the door. Nothing like the Oriel Chamber in the Manor. No. This was a closet - a very tiny room. Instead of stained glass, I had a narrow arrow slit that barely held back the rain. Sometimes I was dripped on, despite the fact that thing (the leaded glass) was wedged behind three feet of stone. No light at all. The one saving grace was a fireplace (no central heating there, reader). I also had a desk and an armoire.

The bed. Mattress concave and uncomfortable (perhaps from many previous poundings, I supposed). A crucifix with a bleeding Jesus stamped firmly above.

Sometimes that crucifix needed to be covered with a towel. When I did this, I was always reminded of my grandmother. She turned around that portrait of the Kaiser in her kitchen during the entirety of the Great War. There are just some things you don't want the Guy to see, and sometimes you don't want to see the Guy.

So I changed. I would bathe. My clothes would soon be clean.

S.D.G.

Priest's Cottage Part 2 of 2

Right.

My room in the Priest's Cottage. I needed clean (I hate that - why are the definite articles so often dropped, as in "He's in hospital," or "I'm going up to University"). And I needed changed.

Not really a "cottage" - at least what I would imagine. It was actually part of an ancient defensive outer-work for the Manor: a gothic fortress. It remained, I suppose, after the dark days, because it was handy for housing servants. Now it housed priests and gardeners.

Right in front were what once were the stables. Now, it housed my tractor and a priest's silver lake-blue Bentley. Yes, a Bentley. Have you ever sat in one, reader? I have. It's true. That thing represented the sum total of all the money I would ever make in a lifetime. Every piece hand-made, glorious to ride. Especially that time when I was allowed to - oh, more about that later.

Right. I opened the door and headed to the 2nd floor to my room. Below me lived John, the priest and owner of the Bentley. John - not the real name, reader. Middle-aged. Handsome, very troubled, and from an extremely wealthy family (they owned half of Scotland once, it was whispered). He had, I suspected, a very rakish past. The 70s, London, clubs, too much money, perhaps a bit of the white stuff. Something happened (more on that later) and he abandoned his fortune and his family and entered the priesthood. He left it all behind. Except for that Bentley.

Occasionally, there would be people from his past who would visit the Cottage. These visits would invariably end with a scream from John like, "You traitor!". Door slamming. Yes, I could hear it.

I could also hear something else.

You see, John subscribed to that medieval Catholic tradition of Flagellation. Look it up, it's true. He whipped himself to atone for his sins. Mortification of the Flesh.

It was awful - and very awkward when I had a guest. This self-abuse would usually start during the Shipping Forecast, on BBC, just after midnight. So, "Sailing By" would begin, and then shortly:

"Humber. Southeast. Variable at 5 or 6."

Loud slap. "Uhh!"

"German Bight. Northwest. Backing southeast later. 5 or 6."

Crack. "Ohh!"

"Dogger. Gale warning. 7 or 8. East."

The worst was always Trafalgar. Loud smack and whimper. Something must have happened there once.

It was if John was sailing himself - as if he was trying to find forgiveness for all the sins he committed by circumnavigating the entire isle of his past. Perfidious Albion. Perfidious Patmos.


http://www.victorianlondon.org/publications2/gaslight-15.htm


I simply turned up the volume. And so, that is how my evenings often ended.

Next, a bit about my room there on the second floor. And, oh, that Bentley (S1 Continental):

And this is an example of the entire broadcast. It would put me asleep every night for 2 years. Hypnotizing.

(Ed. that sentence needs fixed).

The Priest's Cottage 1 of 2

Right.

So Angelika would clean my clothes. We had a deal.

She stood up, and walked away, saying nothing more, crunching on the lawn of the West Garden, and back to the Manor in the distant mist.

Well then. I stood up and clapped, wrung my hands a bit,  put on the wellies. I needed to go back to my room and get changed.

My room. Ah. The first few days at the Convent I was allowed to stay in the majestic "Oriel Chamber". Look up there, reader. It was just above the main gate. The other image below is a map of the Manor, and no, you are not "here", but I was "there". Not a good map I admit, but the best I could find. Ha! "Car park"? That was the tennis court, where I had matched another once - so fateful -  on the court. Now, now it is a "car park".

Yes. My first room. The Oriel Chamber. Resplendent stained-glass windows (which are still a subject of scholarship to some) that would wake me in the morning with a splash of prismatic colors (more on that glass later, since it told a story of poor Lady Gage and her three dead lovers - she evidently, it is written, witnessed their successive suicides from that same window). Wood-paneled walls, and a leather-padded door. A portrait of Charles II embedded, staring at me. It was next to the "Queen Elizabeth Chamber" - so called because she was rumored to have visited the Manor once. It was not a nice visit. Her strategy was to bankrupt Catholic land-owners with the cost of her huge retinue. It's true.

Even though I was a gardener, I was allowed at first to stay there. I was a Yank, after all, and from an unusual and interesting religious persuasion the nuns were ignorant of (take that Swedenborgians and you Quakers). I felt privileged.

Unfortunately, there was soon an abnormal "incident" involving myself and Angelika during a Catholic foot-washing ceremony (John 13:14-17). Not my fault, mind you, reader. Those long legs stretched, a deep sigh, and those toenails before me and above the basin were painted bright red and I...oh, nevermind. I had a wash-cloth. The ceremonial cleaning was supposed to take a minute. We took at least 30. In the Chapel. Impatient nuns observing. What did I know? Gimme a break. I was a Protestant.

After that, I was politely informed by the nuns that I would from now on be staying at the Priest's Cottage.

Next, a description of the Priest's Cottage. And then the laundry chamber in the main Manor.

Payment in Kind Part 2 of 2

Right. My first falsehood. Those roses above are not the actual roses at the Convent. Those were long since removed after an unfortunate "incident". More about that later.

So.

Angelika would clean my suit? Never possible, and I would not be able to repay her. I was broke and I knew the nuns wouldn't approve of it, not those sort of personal transactions between the "Help".

"Angelika. Thank you, but I can't really give you anything in return."

She looked around, past the Yew, past me, and gazed at the garden.

"I want flowers. Every day for my room, for a...a fortnight, I think is said."

I looked around and saw the beautiful beds I tended. The very reason my back aches in middle-age today. Brilliant! Thousands of roses, flowers of all kind  everywhere.

As a bankrupt gardener it was now my only resource. It was perfect payment in kind.

"Shit sure! No problemo!"

She tilted her head as if in utter incomprehension. So many misfires of my English that day.

"I mean yes. We can do that. But your room, I can't really go..."

"Yes. I speak to Sister Aquinas. We have an understanding. Men are not normally allowed to visit those quarters for..."

"But I'm not very normal! Common, I suppose, but not very normal."

"Good. Yes. I know that. I work something out now. Get changed. Clean. Meet me in the laundry chamber."

Next, a description of my "chamber". Getting changed, and the trip to the laundry-room.

Payment in Kind Part 1 of 2

Right.

So there I sat head in hands on the mossy stone (just up there on the right), the massive Yew aft and the Hungarian laundry-maid fore.

She was wearing an odd gingham skirt. Red and white checkered, like it had been torn from a picnic table. A fuzzy wool sweater of Prussian blue. Long black locks on both sides of her face, and an immaculate white apron that obscured                 .

I was filthy. My cheek was burning. I just discovered a quickly swelling bump on my head.

She sat down beside me on the stone, her hair spilled down and and then was swept up from the wind. She spoke in that wonderful husky low tone Central European women have which originates from the diaphragm:

"What has happened?"

I really didn't want to talk about it. I figured her English wasn't so good anyway, and at the time I knew nothing of her native tongue.

"Well there was this thing at this place and then another thing over there, my bike, oh I don't know."

"You need to be clean."

"Well, I'm a gardener. I can be dirty sometimes."

"Your clothes are dirty." (She pronounced "clothes" with two syllables - "clothes-ez")

"I fell into a ditch."

"Your clothes needs to be clean. We clean them."



More on this later. The linen room, the laundry chamber, and the environs of the Manor.