Donald

This is Donald. Donald is the boat’s mascot. Barbara, my therapist, gave him to me a long time ago. I’ve brought him outside to have his picture taken. He usually sits on his own corner- shelf at the front of the boat.

Oh, I've just remembered: I asked Anastasia to bring a few things for me but the lesbian has chucked all my stuff out – or she says she has.

It’s lovely sitting here alone on the boat. The weather is much cooler and a strong breeze is causing ‘Oscar’ to rock gently. There is rain in the air, but that’s okay – I like the canals in the rain.
Don’t you find that there are some moments that you wish would last forever? That you could ‘freeze-frame’ like on a video recorder?
What moments would YOU choose?

3 hours and a Mercedes later:

Anna has turned up trumps. She persuaded Jake to loan me two of his shirts and a pair of trousers. Also, included in the bin-bag were a couple of pairs of underpants and some socks.
Unfortunately, Jake is built like a barrel: what he lacks in height he more than makes up for in width. The trousers are ‘half-mast’ but there is a pouch in front that I could put a baby kangaroo in. Still ‘vagrants can’t be choosers’ to paraphrase Anna’s Swedish joke! The shirts aren’t too bad – I like them loose-fitting. The socks are fine.

When my beloved introduced us, I offered my hand. Jake took it in his fist – the size of a York Ham – and gave it back to me, crushed. He assumed I was on the run from the law – which in a sense I am. I tried to explain but he didn’t want to know. Laying a forefinger against the size of his nose, he growled ‘The less I know, the better.' I felt like some big time criminal – but I shut up.
The next thing, he delves into his coat pockets and produces two pork pies, a packet of crisps and a gherkin (this last item being wrapped in tinfoil). He thrusts them at me without saying a word. In an instant I change from ‘big time criminal’ to ‘vagrant’.

I had this very strange feeling. I don’t know what it was. Maybe I was touched by his kindness. Maybe it was self-pity. But I felt tears come. I blinked them away before anyone noticed.

Anna was unusually shy. Instead of wrapping her arms around me and sticking her tongue down my throat – her usual greeting - she just gave me a quick peck on the cheek, and stepped back quickly. I thought it might have been due to the odour of liquid fertilizer, but I had had a good shower in the toilet block?

Later, when they had gone, I began to speculate upon the nature of their relationship.
Paranoia? Maybe. But I did not like the way Jake placed a beefy paw on my finance’s bottom as he steered her to the car. Still, she did give me a quick wink when he was getting into the driver’s seat. I think things are going to be all right. Aren't they?

Tonight though, I have to confess that I am feeling a bit down. Sometimes I think I have made a mess of everything. What have I got to show for my X years on this planet? I am thinking of what Tony Hancock said in one of his sketches: “What happened to you? What went wrong? What happened to those dreams? … No plaque for you in Westminster Abbey. The best you can hope for … is a few daffodils in a jam jar. A rough-hewn stone bearing the legend: he came… and he went. And in between, nothing.”

He once told his scriptwriters, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, “If you get to the stage where you get fed up with it all, then turn it in mate.”
Hancock ‘turned it in’ in a hotel bedroom in Sydney, on June 25th 1968.

I am beginning to understand how you felt, mate.