Saturday.

And here we are at the end of the week at the end of the month again. How time gallops. I refuse to quote the one about 'When I was a child time crawled...) too depressing in the actuality.

My two hours off were spent with the retired Minister and his wife who were shop-sitting for H. Jim officiated at the wedding of Chloe and Geordie so was naturally disappointed to hear what had come of that union, however he is a man of the world as well as of the cloth so nothing really shocks or phases him as far as I can tell. They brought me up-to-date with the unrepentant progress of Mr Toad, sordid in its predictability. One of his trawl nets is always out in the bipolar chat rooms and he has landed a woman there who has a husband - but will that be protection enough? There is a trip planned to Bulgaria to 'help' set up an internet business selling English books. I remember a woman he met a few years back through the same channels. Her equilibrium was precarious, made more so by a new baby and other young children (there is a husband.) He drove down to 'help.' The form the 'help' took was spending the night with her. She was hospitalised the next day. When he told me the (slightly edited) version he hadn't even the grace to look ashamed. Jim joined the dots on that one.

Two or three Christmases ago I read David Botting's biography of Gavin Maxwell who was also bipolar but not diagnosed. It touched me at the time because I was still seeing Mr T as ill and therefore needy of understanding and forgiveness. As the years have passed and the drama has played out this view has been modified. Maxwell didn't hurt people. He may have had many schemes that didn't succeed and he may have shot off in all directions whilst carried inappropriately by enthusiasms, but he persisted in holding Camusfearna together, in valuing his friendships and treating people decently. The only woman who was hurt by him was Kathleen Raine who was in love with him and frustrated that he couldn't return that love. But he was privately homosexual, a fact she must have become aware of as he did admit it to friends.

The Maxwell story is hypnotic to me. Whilst my flesh shrinks at the discomfort of the living conditions and the huge physical challenges of the life he chose, his closeness to the otters and to the landscape has something metaphysical about it. His writing is so very personal that it is easy to feel I know the man as well as if I had met him. He disliked writing but often wrote like a poet and could move a sentence from the mundane to the extraordinary with a word.