Blah-Feme and I have decided to eat offal every night for two weeks, but it’s hard to find. Rumours of heart sold in Morrisons. Another night, we find cheap liver at Somerfield. But it’s brain, above all, that we’re looking for. Sliced brain, fried. ‘No one eats brain’, says the butcher.
W. phones to find out how it’s going on. ‘How’s offal fortnight?’ – ‘We had midnight haggis the other night. Then midnight kidneys. Then midnight liver. But we can’t get any brain.’ – ‘My God, how can you eat at midnight?’ – ‘That’s when we get in.’ W.’s horrified. ‘And how’s your stomach?’ – ‘Bad, it’s always bad.’ – ‘My God, how fat are you now?’
W. is writing an introductory book, despite the fact that he dislikes introductory books, and has written an essay on disliking introductory books. ‘It’s so bad, it makes me laugh.’ W. is rising very early and opening the book on which he’s writing. ‘I’m ruining it, it’s amazing, really funny.’
W. has been mentioned at an international conference as one of the few people in the world who understand the significance of X. for Y. ‘How does it feel?’ – ‘It’s hilarious.’
‘You really inspired me the other night’, says W., ‘oh nothing to do with your thought.’ – ‘What, then?’ – ‘I bought a bottle of wine and went home and drank it all. That’s how you live, isn’t it?’
I’ve sent W. something I’ve written. ‘It fills me with shame,’ I tell him. ‘Shame will survive you, like a dog’, says W., ‘that’s Kafka, isn’t it?’
W. has decided he’s got a higher IQ than me. A few points higher, he says, that makes all the difference. He can be witty, W. points out, but I can’t be witty. You’re just filthy, he says.
W.’s your Jewish mother, says Blah Feme. I tell W. ‘You bring it out in me’, he says.
‘How’s your flat then?’, asks W. There was no electricity for days, I tell him. There was nothing to do at night but sleep. And now the drains are blocked. And the new shower doesn’t work. And they delivered a dishwasher instead of an oven. ‘But is it still damp?’ The plaster’s soaked through, I tell him. I had to sleep with the door open to let it dry. But it’s not going to dry. ‘Why not?’ – ‘It’s the timbers, they’re completely rotten.’ – ‘My God.’ The ceiling caved in, I told him. It was entirely unexpected. So I had to get a new ceiling. – ‘My God.’
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