I’ve been told that going on about Thames Water is boring and I agree but what can I do – the other day I got up and opened the curtain and look:

There they are again, making yet more improvements, always striving to do better. And yesterday, just at the end of the road, at the notorious fault line where Manor Road meets the High Street:

They still believe that I’m patient! But not another word.

I chopped up some carrots in the kitchen, turned away to do something else for a minute and when I came back:

Where did that come from? It’s called a green cellar slug and the carrots were in the cellar but how come I didn’t see it when I chopped the up. They also like pet food apparently, are often found in compost heaps – handy because I then put it in the compost bucket – and don’t eat living plants. So that’s all right.

• november 23 already. whenever I’m running out of statins I know that 8 weeks have passed. 8 weeks! and I’m still alive. but for how much longer. and what have I done with those weeks, except grow shorter of breath? I was listening to that melvin bragg programme in the kitchen. I don’t know why, unless it’s just that I enjoy being annoyed. Katherine of Navarre. from Cognac originally, Navarre by marriage. poet, politician, sister, conservative catholic evangelical at the time of Luther’s revolutionary challenge t the authority of the church. anyone of the three panellists could have given an interesting lecture on the subject. it’s what they’re good at. but no. they have to be asked a question each in turn by melvyn or melvin who sounds as if he’s barely managed to wake up, who mutters, who picks on them one by one like a grumpy old school teacher. Tell us something about…. and why did the King of France…. what were the tensions that developed between Katherine and her brother? And when the programme had an anniversary recently (it’s been going on and on and on for years) the BBC advertised it frequently, shamelessly, as if venting their frustration at not being able to irradiate all their programmes with advertising. They got Michael Morpurgo to do a shameless puff. He praised Melvin’s vast learning, spoke about how stimulating the debates and arguments between the panellists were, when there is always cosy consensus. Maybe one day Lord Bragg will do the origins of the State of Israel, with panellists from Israel and Palestine, and their twin diasporas. We surely know that the programme is researched and conducted, the panellists recruited and coordinated and Melvin coached and prompted by anonymous professionals. we’ve become more and more interested in the fil crews for nature programmes, they have their own interesting the-making-of add-ons, their fame supplements David Attenborough’s, but the minions of In Our Own Time are hidden servants. I did learn that when she was a girl Q. Elizabeth the first translated a book of poems by Katherine of Navarre and gave it to her father for christmas, she also translated from Italian, French and Latin. Not bad for an english monarch.

The other day I was decluttering. it’s not going well. it’s like the war on motorists. This house bears the weight of possessions like a pavement squatted by 4 by 4’s and amazon vans. But I took from the mantelpiece over the stove a piece of bark from a black pine near the tree line in the Taygetos mountains in the Peleponnese.

Just before the forest gives out on the highest mountain which, like a thousand other hills and mountains in Greece, is called Profitis Ilias, named after the prophet Elijah or Ilias in greek who of course was lifted up to heaven in a sweet chariot from the top of a mountain, although some say the name is a reference to the sun and derive Ilias from Ilios, the greek word for sun familiar to us in various flowers like helianthus, helenium, heliotrope and helichrysum, up there at the edge of the forest some remarkable ancient pines grow; they are hundreds of years old and have somehow survived many fires. And I have a piece of cherry also from the cluttered mantelpiece, neatly split, with lovely chestnut coloured shiny brown bark though not as shiny as it used to be which has a pattern of short rough horizontal ridges across it as do many trees in the prunus family.

These ridges are called lenticels which contain spores through which gases are exchanged, carbon dioxide goes in and oxygen comes out. I nearly wrote ‘apparently’ as the first word of that sentence but I’ve decided to own what I know, even if I have just looked it up on wikipedia. Well, I had known, I did know but I needed reminding. And a piece of walnut from a branch which I cut in about 2008 from a self seeded tree at St John’s which was growing with great vigour – still is – and was beginning to spread out over the new dry garden. Sawing through this branch revealed a beautiful dark heart, a deep, warm brown, while the sap wood, the outer circle, is very pale. These qualities help to make it prized for furniture making.

This is the only piece I’ve kept from that branch, most of it’s burnt, one or two pieces given away, and I had assumed that I would be able to get more when I started gardening again at St John’s in 2017 but although I have since then twice pruned the tree, and some of the branches I’d removed were thicker and more mature than that first branch, none of them have even a trace of brown inside, they are all very pale, but it can’t all be sap wood, can it? and I had set my heart on getting together a nice little collection of fancy pieces, to keep with my Too Good To Burn firewood logs and maybe sell to people who might like to have pieces of wood with decorative, sculptural qualities to sit as trophies beside their almost virginal wood stoves, or even get some that bowls could have been turned from. But now the branches that I would like to take out, in order to raise the canopy of the tree and let more light in underneath, are thicker and higher and grow beyond my reach, beyond my safe height on a ladder, and my fitness. I grow older, they grow stronger. We don’t get any walnuts, the squirrels take them, eat some lose some bury some, and they germinate so that we have weed walnuts all over the garden, which quickly put down a strong, deep taproot. And the fourth piece of wood on the mantelpiece, cloaked in dust, is yew, from the Irish yew which grew here in our garden for 27 years I think. I was given it by a customer when it was about 18inches high. Irish yew is the one with the upright branches, over the years they become wider than they are tall as branches divide into more and more uprights; they’re most commonly seen in churchyards. At first mine was a slender short thing, but of course it slowly grew taller and wider, beginning to develop that stately structure which you see in ancient trees, with a whole throng of leading shoots forming, someone said, a flame like effect, but then of course it started to outgrow the garden, just as it was coming into its own, and growing more beautiful – or, its dominance spoilt its beauty, as well as depriving neighbouring plants of air and water, and although I tried for a few years quietly trimming bits off the sides to contain it I could see that this was futile. I kept some long beautiful pieces to use as props in the garden: after the bark drops off the wood revealed is the colour of pale sand and smooth. And some smaller lengths to use as pea sticks. After seven years outside they are still strong and fresh, no sign of decay. The piece of possible firewood which stood on the mantelpiece has more than twenty rings, is less than a foot long with one set of rings at one end and, because it was cut at the place of division, three at the other with scars between the sets of rings which seem to record the complex process by which one becomes three.

But no one ever came into the living room, that I can remember, and said, that’s an interesting piece of pinus nigra bark! or, look at the rings on that section of yew, so many packed so close together, so clear and delicate! Tell me the story! They see clutter and confusion, though cosiness also. But the thought of just burning them…. so then I thought I would photograph them before burning them, digitalised clutter is no clutter at all. And then I thought that I would picture them at their best, cleaned, sanded, smooth – so I was sanding them in the kitchen while listening to melvyn, although I often lost the 16^th century if I sanded more firmly and the rasping sound killed the radio. Then the new modern women’s hour came on and they were interviewing the actor who became the first female doctor who. She had that noisy professional confidence and sense of self importance and clarity of diction which shone out above sanding, unlike melvyn who sounded like fine sandpaper himself, and her sentences had proper structure and fluency because they were so well practised and nothing she was asked presented any sort of intellectual challenge and she couldn’t forget or stumble over her brilliant career. It’s not as if she was being asked about the causes of the first world war or the nature of anti-semitism. This morning I remembered Emma saying when she was little that she was a quarter russian, a quarter polish, and half american. How odd, because none of that was true. When Emma was a little girl many radical jews made little of their jewish identity or heritage – or they were only just begining to. A jew from russia or poland could be described as russian or polish; and it wasn’t poland anyway, it was the ancient province of Galicia, not the much better known one in north west Spain, but the godforsaken corner of south eastern europe fought over like a bone by russia, ukraine, poland, by austria hungary, tsarist russia, the ussr, nazi germany, by fascists and communists, and the only thing most of them could agree on was that they didn’t like the jews. And as for america, if you’ve lived all your life in britain, and all you know of the states is macdonalds and disney that doesn’t make you anymore american than billions of other people all around the world who are lovin’ it, even if your grandparents are living in Dallas, even if you watch Dallas on the telly. Of course the academics on the Lord Bragg show also knew their stuff, and were pretty good at speaking in sentences, but it wasn’t all about them, it wasn’t at all about them, and their performance didn’t seem to attract attention to themselves. If they’d argued, if it had got more personal, more spirited, the sentences might have suffered, it might have grown more lively. Yew is a very hard wood and the sanding wasn’t going well, it had been roughly cut with a bowsaw and the saw marks would have taken a long time to disappear. Decluttering takes as long as cluttering, if you make the mistake of being thoughtful about it, and now that I’ve sanded and photographed them,the thought of burning them is even more painful, I’ve grown more attached to them, to the phographs as well as the real things. Daniel the builder turned up. He’s a carpenter. I said, do you know what this is? He said its a tree. Yes, it’s from a tree but what sort of tree. He didn’t know. He hadn’t heard of yew. The old confusion. He thought I’d said you. Obviously it’s not you. So I showed him some pictures of yew trees on my phone . One was a thousand years old. Old yews, like homo sapiens ourselves, now go back further and further than we used to think. Like the earth itself. Everything is now thought to be older than earlier estimations. Yews get older all the time. I have some stones in the garden which are nearly two billion years old, from the oldest rocks in the country, Lewisian gneiss. How can I throw them away! Emma rang up. apparently the steroids I’m taking for five days because of the effect my current chest infection is having on my copd – a shocking sudden new shortness of breath which made me feel years older overnight and overturned the way I saw my future, all those things which are a part of me which suddenly I wouldn’t be able to do – those pills should be taken all at once in the morning. So then having taken four of the eight, 2 by 2, and the last two just before she phoned, I took the other four. Honestly, it’s a new drug, this steroid business. Never been on them before. I’m still coughing and quite wheezy, though not as bad, but suddenly I had lots of energy, though it’s beginning to run out now and I must take the dog out before it gets dark . it’s quite dark already.

So I walked the dog up to the station – she pulled to get to Queenie’s house and was disappointed that we didn’t go in; they say you can’t be good friends with your children but it works for dogs – to get some copies of the Metro because it burns well. It’s difficult to light the stove with either the london review of books or private eye but the metro and the standard readily combust. each time I pass the hoarding at the end of the road I feel a surge of anger. this might be the worst macdonald’s ad ever. and in the name of christmas.

Macdonald’s seem to have rented that space for ever, it’s one loathsome hamburger after another. and NowTV have the one next to it, all guns and botox and moody murderous dynasties. I pointed out a lurid hamburger with orange cheese like daggers or the teeth on a halloween pumpkin to little Martha, I said what do you think of that, she said, lovely! that made me a bit depressed, how could she be hooked on that shit. and then the way pious crusaders urge us to listen to the children! we must help them to save the world, or if we’re incapable of doing that, at least not stand in the way of the children’s crusade. On the way back from the station I tied the dog up outside the grill on the hill and went in to get some of their falafel. It’s a jewish place, all those little businesses at the decayed end of the road leading up to the space where the last one started to topple down onto the railway embankment and was demolished, just before the huge rusty hoarding with its violent hamburgers, all those businesses are jewish, new neon now disguising, specially after dark, the rotten structures they embellish which surely one day soon will be swept away and replaced by some kind of wedge shaped tower block – it’s an awkward site. I saw a man surveying last year, squinting into his – is it a theodolite – and he told me so. but the guy behind the counter at the grill on the hill – it’s not on a hill, but the area is called stamford hill, there’s a slight upward slope as you go north, saving us from the floods – he was a young black guy with quite long untamed hair which almost hid a kippah, he was chatty, told me the place had been open for eight years, he’d worked there for one year, I said that long? before I’d hardly noticed it, it seemed different now, brighter, yes, he said, it had had a facelift, and become more kind of diverse, all sorts of people come in now which is nice. he liked working there. who owns it? – he pointed to a car parked outside – he’s sitting in that car! a good boss, doesn’t interfere, lets him get on with it. expensive falafel though. crisp and crunchy but very little flavour. so not half as good as the falafels at Baba’s Nan in Blackstock road, a local legend. On my way out I saw the amiable boss sitting in his BMW eating something. Now I hear that James Cleverly said something rude about someone or was it somewhere but we don’t know what he said because it was too rude for the radio. And we don’t even know if he said it. He says he didn’t, but some people heard it. (I heard the voice on the underground say: Mind The Cat! – it’s the consonants that go first.) So we don’t know if he should resign, because apparently that’s what you have to do if you’re caught lying in Parliament, although we know that they lie all the time! It’s ok to tell us about children being beheaded and the inhabitants of whole apartment blocks blown to bits but no rude words please. Last week on woman’s hour there was a free frank chat about swearing – it’s ok! social science has proved its value! – but they kept on referring to the f word and the c word, all except for one woman who told us abut her two year old who, in a cafe, asked to get down from her high chair and was told to finish eating first. a few minutes later she calmly said, mummy, will you get me out of this fucking high chair! and her mother said this was so much better than the fit of hysterical screaming she would probably have had a few months earlier; although of course it was very embarrassing. Yes, thank god for steroids. They say they make you fat, but I’ve got some way to go before that could become a problem and anyway I’ve only got three and a half days supply left. But my feeling more energetic might also be from relief at learning that I’m not going to die soon. After a short but intense episode of coughing and sneezing and spitting and my eyes streaming I found I was getting out of breath just walking along on the flat. On my way back from a day in Ely on monday I had to change trains in Cambridge, tried to make it up over the bridge from platform 8 to platform 1 but just missed the connection, then waited for the train which was to leave from platform 5 I think but that was held up by a signalling problem, you could see it stuck right there in the middle of the station, then I tried to go back to platform 1 for a train to Liverpool Street but I was so slow, wheezing and gasping while young people swept past me, I missed that one, back over the bridge to wait for another train but then a announcement to say that that train was going to leave from platform 7, very soon, I just made that one, coming in at the back of the crowd like those who limp in last in the marathon. The train seemed to match my disability, stopping at every station. And I woke in the night hearing a strange noise. It was my lungs or my airways whistling and wheezing. And I thought of all those old men you see, not so many any more, so many of the old hard cases have gone, spitting big grey lumps of gristly snot on the pavement, and their faces grey, straining with each noisy breath, always alone, walking slowly by with their eyes down. I told Daniel the builder about my chest infection, reminded him I had COPD, he said oh yeah, my dad died of that. He couldn’t even put his shoes on without getting out of breath. I said, thanks Daniel, yes, I know what you’re talking about. And the other day my sister had an operation for lung cancer, a small tumour, they caught it very early thanks to a routine checkup, a scan, in France, and the operation went well. Oh well, we’ll see, both of us.

The next day – today – the steroids, which I took all in one in the morning, as advised, just made me feel like a zombie, albeit a breathing zombie.

‘today’ is now two days ago.

back to the end of the road, just to finish:

No idea why FREE PINK has appeared on the fence that hides the demolished building at the end of the terrace just above the railway embankment. The sycamores should not be despised. The space with sky to the right indicates where the railway line runs in a cutting and preserves a view to the north west. Since railway cuttings are rarely built over this remains a precious function of theirs. The sky here is remarkably pure. Round the corner on the main road one of those digital advertising displays flashes a a little portfolio of posters at you as you wait to cross the A10:

And on the other side of the road, next to the new Thames Water works is this:

Modern warfare: play has no limits. That’s a plain message. oh and look, a bird.

See also rust, weeds, water for more on Macdonalds, Thames Water and the end of the road.