I have given up trying to write this. I was doing a “We are born on the cusp of time” thing for Press Daddy – you know: that any given person that has ever lived, has been in their present at the very point at which the earth was at its oldest. Funny thought that isn’t it? Anyway, I was trying to conflate it all with the idea that today is the tomorrow that I so feared yesterday and all that – to prize out, I suppose, an explanation for the idea that the certainty of yesterday has gone for ever, and all it’s done by way of preparing us for the future, is to have taught us that we are incapable of making the simplest choices to make our futures better.
And from there, it’d have been but a small leap to assert that’s why we’re so easily beguiled by those who promise us a revealed wisdom: Christians; sales assistants; cult leaders, Elon Musk, Catherine the Great, Rylan; making the point that it’s not so much the imparting of what’s to come, but the confidence with which the message is imparted, that draws us to these people; comparing that, with the way the rest of us use the confidence we’ve gained about what has gone, to torture ourselves about what is to come.
I couldn’t get it right, as you can see, so, I gave up, not least because all of that was but a preamble to that which we planned to announce shortly after publication: that me, and Friend John have decided to kill ourselves – I thought you’d be pleased. Yes, the irresistible conclusion of our cusp of time piece being that our paralysis had reached another level – that in which we accept we are now condemned to do nothing other than repeat the errors of our pasts, for as long as we both shall live. The only variable under our control being the time left in which we must endure it.
There was a delay to the project because one of us persuaded the other, that we should first ask permission of our mothers before we did anything. We to’d and fro’d a bit on this idea for a while, then dropped it on the basis that they’d probably say, no, without thinking properly about the benefits. But then came the matter of the err, execution of the self-execution. I’ve talked here before about our lack of courage when it came to the deed. And that has been our greatest stumbling block. Well, the day came, a few days ago, when we had gone past the moment when we ought to have acted. So, we struck a compromise. We bought an inflatable dinghy each, tied them loosely together, with about twenty-five yards of rope, then put ourselves to sea, to allow nature to decide our fate for us.
Friend John had some residual matters of faith to grapple with; me, I just channelled Cesar Soubeyran – you know, that bit where he realised that he’d made a right mess of everything, and wrote a letter to his granddaughter to tell her that she was his granddaughter, and signed it off by saying, I will not wake up tomorrow, because I have no wish to continue living. That’s a hard trick to pull off, but I gave it a go, and as soon as we were afloat, did my best to drop off to sleep, so that when the moment came, I’d already be at least half way there. Well, experience should have taught us that nothing is as you plan it. Once you get out into the shipping lanes, it becomes less about a slow drift into oblivion, and more about pure, undiluted terror, full of regret for the idiotic project on which you’ve embarked (ВТШ, why do ships beep to make you get out of the way?) It pains me to say this, but it makes a case for regulated suicide – you know, you may only do it by jumping off a high building, and only then if you wear a parachute, having first filled in a risk assessment, so that you can change your mind on the way down, and have some support staff waiting for you at the bottom to counsel you through a recovery.
The skipper of the fishing boat that picked us up was at first not at all pleased by our stunt, but I think that’s because he thought we were economic migrants (one of the worst things you can be, it seems) as soon as he knew that I was a returning refugee to my own country with designs on radicalising the political centre ground, he warmed to us slightly, though I think that had more to do with us identifying with a cause that has no allies, and only enemies. I don’t know why these thoughts of a future in politics re-emerged just then, but they were what I heard tumbling from my mouth, so I just tried to make my face fit with them.
When we were dropped at Lowestoft, and had waded from the shallows to bypass customs, Friend and I organised a post-project appraisal meeting. He averred to the notion that providence had, through its good offices, once again provided the solution. ‘We must embrace all of that about which we despair,’ he said. That neither of us has ever drawn a salary in our lives is not something that we should look upon as a matter of shame, but rather, an attribute we should present to the world as a virtue. We must take this story of what other people call failure out to public.
I’m still not so sure. Look at my face.
Come on, he says, ‘We have been given a second chance. We are charmed. Recognise that at least, and make it work for us.’ There’s something about this do or die attitude that I like – look at him, he may be an unwelcome invader, with no prospects, but he’s a natural politician. I, on the other hand, occupy an entirely different position, I am an illegal immigrant in my own country, and it was bad enough when I was a real person. I’ve never been able to convince anybody of anything in my life. Perhaps, he’d make a better job of being, Richard Delaheade White, and my fate is to be homeless, stateless, John from somewhere near the Ukraine-Russian border?
I must admit, I am beginning to feel the call of the sea again, already.
Dickie White's Diary 