Turnchapel

The water taxi to Mountbatten. We're in choppy water, but sit out nevertheless on the exposed part of the deck. – 'Poseidon must be angry', says W. Homerically. W.'s learning Greek again. Is it the fifth time he's begun? the sixth? It's the aorist that defeats him, he notes. Every time.

It's choppy! – 'We should libate the sea', says W. Then he asks me if I know why the sea is salty. It's because the mountains are salty and the sea is full of broken up mountains, he says.

The round, stubby tower at Mountbatten Point. W. seemed rueful when we were here last year, reading the plaque then as he does this time. Why was he so unhappy? He must have been hungry, W. says. Hunger makes him very depressed. First his nose aches, then his teeth ache, then a great wave of depression breaks …

W. cherishes my special love for the town of Turnchapel, near Mountbatten. I become gentler when I'm there, he notes, kinder. He likes my tender side. In another life, I could have lived here, imagine … We muse wistfully on what I might have been like. – 'A better person', W. thinks, 'taller, with some nobility of character'.