No.117, Monday, 6th. April 2026

I was feeling low yesterday and I hope that today I will be better. It no longer comes as a surprise to me that the smallest things can get you down, but the real intuition comes from the realisation that when things go wrong and you feel miserable as a result, it is the overpowering sense of helplessness that can lead to despair. Yesterday it was something as apparently silly and seemingly inconsequential as curtains and a curtain pole crashing to the ground, and it marked the end of a process that I hoped would improve my life ever so slightly. I went from being pleased with myself to tearful in seconds. The underlying cause of some of the misery I feel from time to time is simple: I am a private tenant and inherently feel insecure.

I love films and I am lucky to have a collection of discs and a good cinema system paid for before I retired. My dual-aspect living room – let’s call it a cinema room – has windows of unusual size. I have nets up at the windows on both walls, but no curtains. Consequently, all I can see on the TV screen, whether it is on or off, is a crystal clear reflection of my garden through French windows. The obvious answer would be to hang good quality daylight-blocking curtains, but because I am a tenant the cost is prohibitive: if the rent goes up and I have to move at short notice, what are the chances of them fitting in my next home?

Last week I decided to wash the nets, one set at a time. Yesterday I washed the second pair. By way of an experiment I thought I would see if the sitting room curtains would fit over the windows facing the screen in the cinema room. They were not ideal but adequate; the experiment was a success and showed me that I could enjoy watching films during the hours of daylight!

The nets did not take long to dry and by mid-afternoon yesterday were returned to their normal place in the cinema room. During this process I learned that the curtain poles and wall fixings provided by the landlord were not only poor quality – I already knew that – but were actually broken. My next job was to return the curtains to the pole in the sitting room – and the whole lot came crashing down.

If this was my home I would simply buy new fittings, re-drill the walls and get everything just-so. But it isn’t – and that is where the helplessness comes in. Fear of a rent increase prevents me troubling the landlord. When I feel up to it I shall fix everything myself.

This story may seem trivial, and in many ways it is. But the real story is the helplessness I felt – and feel. Thankfully, this morning I am over it – until the next time.