Thursday 24 January

Coffee with Daisy at the House of Angles, just days before her departure to the Argentine. I sometimes wonder if I concoct myself a particular blend of hangover in order to avoid the temptation of inappropriate drinks to come. Today is one of those special occasions in which the booze is best avoided (but how does one celebrate this without a drink?) While Daisy is excited, self-deprecating (‘I’ll probably be back in a month’), expansive (especially her hair) and all the other things that make her so unfeasibly charming, I am still vulnerable to going overboard whenever she’s near (as well you bloody know) and today it seems obvious that gin would have made me a weeping harpy, whiskey a randy rogue, Guinness an unwelcome and rambling poet with no blarney stone ring to lend credibility to his words. Instead we talk as the friends we are, not the lovers we might have been. Daisy gets déjà vu seeing the same man walk past twice outside, undertaking the exact same action (eating a rat on a stick). I check my pocket watch and tell her, sadly, that time has not been reversed, nor even frozen, and we must part in moments. This makes her smile (the comment, not the parting) but I am too inept to capture it on the pictorial recording device she has left in my safe keeping, and must rely on memory alone. Still, that smile has survived so many drinks now and will survive many more I’m sure. However, a decision must be taken to move our Daisy to the temperance house of my heart and mind, sheltered from, and sheltering me from the giddying effects of love and liquor.