I usually wake at around 3am, a couple of days after the vernal equinox. I spend around an hour studying the inside of my eyelids and pondering the main issue of the day; just how fascist is Substack now anyway?
After settling on the opinion that Substack, at this point, is probably about as fascist adjacent as any similar platform, I go back to sleep for a bit.
I rise at 9am and bring my wife tea and toast. We enjoy our breakfast in bed, chatting about the film we both enjoyed on TV last night (Almodovar’s Pain & Glory) and I idly doomscroll, as she checks in with her phone’s zombie-survival game. I wonder whether a spoof take on a ‘My Saturday’ column is a suitable way to reignite The Hypolloi newsletter. Is it too far out from the Gregg Wallace thing to be relevant? Gifted with a properly functioning sense of perspective, my wife has no idea which Gregg Wallace thing I am talking about. I decide that I will go out and consult a local spirit entity or two. I get dressed.
At 10am, I check in with my two children, playing on the Nintendo Switch in the front room, then head outside. It is too early in the day to disturb Mother Erith, the most powerful nature deity of the borough. She would be busy doing her rounds in the ancient woodland of Frank’s Park at this time, and you really have to catch her in the right mood, lest suffer her wrath. By strange coincidence, as I step out of the front door, I am startled by the presence of one of Mother Erith’s minions, the Saturday Satyr. What could this colourful entity be doing, mooching around our cul-de-sac? I wish the Satyr a good morning, but he pretends that he has not seen me, despite being ten feet away on an otherwise empty street. I head off towards the river. The Satyr pretends not to follow me.
The sun is bright and the air is sharp. Seagulls circle and squark as I arrive at the pier. Measuring 360 metres in length, Erith Pier is the longest in London (Although I have noticed, recently, that Uber Boat’s new Royal Wharf Pier, in Newham, has started to claim that it is now the longest pier in London. But as there does not seem to be any official length recorded anywhere; I will just assume that they are lying until they prove otherwise. I might trust them more if their Thames Clipper service picked up in Erith. Just saying.)
The river is quiet. There are a few anglers dotted along the pier. I stroll along the concrete promenade, glancing over my shoulder at the Saturday Satyr, several metres away, still trailing me. At the end of the pier, I peer over the edge, into the murk of the Thames. Sometimes Deep Ones can be seen here, hunting eels. Occasionally they will impart their wisdom. None are present this morning, the brightness of the sun was most likely keeping them to the lower depths of the river.
At 11am I stop for a cup of tea in Morrisons and read a chapter of my book, The Patient Assassin by Anita Anand. It is an historical account of Udham Singh’s killing of Sir Michael O’Dwyer, in retribution for the Amritsar Massacre of 1919. I am about halfway through and it is as much a riveting a thriller as it is an indictment of British Raj. Recommended.
Around midday, I leave the supermarket and head towards the woods. The Saturday Satyr is loitering in the car park as I pass through and continues to tail me at a distance all the way to Frank’s Park.
The trees are alive with a pandemonium of chittering parakeets, flashing neon green amongst the ancient, curling, oak branches. There are dog-walkers, joggers, vaping teenages, but no sign of the goddess. The Saturday Satyr leans against a fallen tree trunk, hands in pockets. I approach him and ask if he knows where Mother Erith might be. He pulls out his phone, swipes the screen a few times, then shrugs. Dashing my hopes of any shamanic commune - and realising that I appeared to be forging ahead with the dubious newsletter format anyway, without any devine input - I give up and head home.
My wife has made stottie pizzas when I get back. The whole family eats lunch at the table and laughs about things that you have to have been there to understand or appreciate.
At 2pm I write three hundred odd words of my long-gestating Faction Paradox book, Rose-Coloured Crosshairs. Leo, the family cat, joins me, sits on my laptop’s keyboard, bites me, then leaves.
At 3pm I wash the pots and clean the kitchen, whilst listening to the Whatculture Wrestling Podcast review of AEW Dynamite - Big Business, and concur with my parasocial ‘friends’ opinions on the excellent show.
At 4pm I lie down on the red sofa in the dining room and read issue two of The Forever People (the analysis of which can be found in an upcoming instalment of Born On The Fourth World) and a recent issue of Disco Pogo magazine, with Grace Jones on the cover, and a big retrospective of her work inside. Then, I nap.
In my dreams, I am visited by a cthonic spirit, in the form of a cloud of glass butterflies. The spirit asks how the newsletter is going. I say that I was reasonably happy with it. The spirit wonders if I had any regrets about choosing the ‘My Saturday’ format. I said that I did, but that I had gone too far with it to back out now. The spirit was not so sure and suggested that when I woke up, it would probably be best to wind the thing up ASAP.
I woke up to find that I needed to get the dinner on. We were having chicken lengths, waffle chips, a lovely crunchy salad and coleslaw. The evening was enjoyed with the family watching quality Saturday night plebdazzle on the TV, with a bottle of wine or two.
In bed, just after midnight, I kiss my wife good night, then close my eyes and try to imagine as many upsetting things as possible, before I eventually fall asleep.
