On Bank Holidays I forget it is
Bank Holiday, and go and sit on draughty platforms for hours,
waiting for trains that do not run on Bank Holidays.
To add to my misfortunes, I am the miserable possessor of a demon
time-table that I cannot get rid of, a Bradshaw for August, 1887.
Regularly, on the first of each month, I buy and bring home with me
a new Bradshaw and a new A.B.C. What becomes of them after the
second of the month, I do not know. After the second of the month,
I never see either of them again. What their fate is, I can only
guess. In their place is left, to mislead me, this wretched old
1887 corpse.
For three years I have been trying to escape from it, but it will
not leave me.
I have thrown it out of the window, and it has fallen on people's
heads, and those people have picked it up and smoothed it out, and
brought it back to the house, and members of my family - "friends"
they call themselves - people of my own flesh and blood - have thanked
them and taken it in again!
I have kicked it into a dozen pieces, and kicked the pieces all the
way downstairs and out into the garden, and persons - persons, mind
you, who will not sew a button on the back of my shirt to save me
from madness - have collected the pieces and stitched them carefully
together, and made the book look as good as new, and put it back in
my study!
