From my Substack diary of Wednesday, 17th. June 2026

After 11 full days at home I think it is time to meet up with a few folks in the pub and, since I will be in town I shall also purchase a few niceties from the market greengrocer. Hopefully there will be some of the good bread left. I like the malted grain but if they have a farmhouse crusty white I think I’ll go for that – it will be good with what is left of the Curworthy Haytor and my more usual Cornish Cove vintage cheddar. Which reminds me, I’m out of chutney so will have to remember to get some.

I must get on with writing, but not today. Today I am having a day off. I am halfway through a lengthy piece on my period of homelessness in London in the 1970’s. The memories recorded in my diary are almost distressing, although in a strange way they are also tinged with hope. They almost feel as if these are the experiences of someone I once knew rather than me. I am attempting to untangle what I wrote and felt then from what I know and feel now. Today I know that I came through it, but at the time I did not know when the horror was going to end, and I want to keep that tension intact when I finally come to upload it to my Substack page.

The story I am writing, about a consignment of whisky that goes missing during a storm in 1918 and which mysteriously turns up at a London auction house in the present day, has been on the back burner for far too long. Two men and their lorry with its valuable cargo take shelter in a cave when a rockfall seals them in. The men and the whisky are never seen again and attempts to rescue them quickly fizzle out, but the legend of the whisky, said to be the best ever from that particular distillery in Loch Lomond, lives on in stories far and wide, becoming increasingly fanciful over time. Sadly, The Dalrymple Hoard may never be finished, but I remain hopeful that, perhaps with a change of home and removal of distractions, I might get back to it. Eleven days at home followed by a trip to the pub would seem a reasonable strategy for completing the story, provided I can resist distractions – and that is always the difficult bit.