The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched uplands; even this may be the eventful year, which will drown out all our muskrats.

Just occasionally, in my mind, a year gets a name tag attached to it. The first time this happened was 1984, the year when I realised that I had to start to explore the gay side of my nature. Borrowing the title of a film that came out a couple of years earlier, I decided that 1984 was going to be The Year Of Living Dangerously. Not that I did anything exactly dangerous. But I started occasionally going to gay pubs and clubs, and buying gay magazines and books. And although I was well into my 40s, I felt as nervous as a teenager at first. After a while, I knew that I had to take things a bit further than that, and before 1984 was even through, I had decided that 1985 was going to be The Eventful Year, taking the title from the above quote from Thoreau's Walden. As it turned out, 1985 was not particularly eventful -- nothing much started to happen until 1986. But that's another story.

After that, I ran out of titles for years, until some time during the past year I came across a weird poem called Gorgon, or the wonderfull yeare by Gabriel Harvey, an obscure Elizabethan poet. For Harvey, the wonderful year was 1593 (don't ask me why: the poem is so obscure and weird that it's really not worth reading), but it began to occur to me that for me 1998 has been The Wonderful Year. For a start, it is the year when both my kids seem to have found what they want to do with their lives -- Steve as an olive farmer and Liz as an osteopath. Then, it has been a good year for travel, with interesting trips to Russia, France, Denmark, Germany and Spain (but I'm very glad not to be going to Moscow again this January; that trip has been postponed to June, which should be less dismal there). It has been a good year at work too: I am no longer Head of Department, which has meant that I am freed from a lot of administration and stress. But the thing that has made 1998 really special has been the online friendships that I have made through discovering journals on the internet and then through starting one of my own. For the first time, I have a network of friends that I can be openly gay with, even if it's only online.

I hope that 1999 will turn out to be another wonderful year, for me and for you.

*****

Our New Year celebrations were quiet, like our Christmas. We invited Judith, Lorraine and David round for dinner and stayed up to toast the last year of the millennium. They all stayed the night because they were in no condition to drive home. They were all supposed to leave early this morning, because they had to go home to feed their cats. But Lorraine was feeling severely hung over, thereby ruining her reputation as a hard drinker. So David went home on his own, Lorraine stayed in bed for the morning and I drove her home when she finally felt ready to face the world.

Sunday 3 January 1999

Yesterday evening, for the last event of the holiday season before I go back to work tomorrow, we took Francesca, and her daughter and niece, to see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor^® Dreamcoat, which is playing at the Grand Theatre as part of a UK tour. The girls enjoyed it, but frankly it was a mediocre performance, and I spent most of the time reminiscing about some of the memories that this musical has for me. The last time we saw it was when we took our own kids to see it when they were small, and Jason Donovan was in the title role. He was excellent as Joseph, and so were the rest of the cast then, much better than last night's lot.

The other association that Joseph has for me is a strange one, namely my father's death. Dad died suddenly and completely unexpectedly in 1987. He collapsed while out walking with some friends and died almost instantly. His death came as a shock to everyone, particularly to my mother, after 53 years of marriage. But she reacted very stoically, and I never once saw her cry. In some ways, she acted as though he had not left her but was still there in spirit. She used to talk to him, right up to the time of her own death, and to her he was still present with her. The words that she wrote on his funeral wreath were from one of the songs in Joseph: "There's one more angel in heaven, there's one more star in the sky." Some of the relatives disapproved of this. They thought the words were inappropriate and flippant. But I think Mum knew just what she was doing. She wanted to downplay the significance of death and to treat it as something not to be intimidated by. She had a strong religious faith, and she believed that she would be joining Dad in heaven before long, when she died. I would like to believe that they are together again now. I no longer have any religious beliefs myself, but I know that Mum and Dad are together in spirit in some sense. May they both rest in peace.

Tuesday 5 January 1999

This is not public knowledge yet, and I really ought to keep quiet about it for a while. After all these years in the closet, I've had plenty of experience of keeping things to myself, and I usually have no difficulty at all in keeping secrets when necessary. But on this occasion I can't resist the urge to talk about it.

A few minutes after I got home from work yesterday the phone rang. I always ignore it because the calls are inevitably for Mary. But she was in the kitchen getting dinner ready, so I answered it, and it was Steve calling from Spain. I could tell at once from the excited way he said Hallo that he had good news. He then said, "Are you sitting down, because if not I think you should." By then I had guessed what his news was. Sure enough, he was phoning to tell us that Jo is expecting a baby in the summer. We are to be grandparents for the first time. *G*

By the time I had congratulated him and asked how Jo was (she's fine), Mary had overheard enough to know what was going on. She came running in from the kitchen and grabbed the phone from my hand. Almost the first thing she said to Steve was, "When your low-key father sounds faintly pleased about something, you can tell that he is really delighted." And it's true that I am feeling very chuffed about the whole thing. Of course, it's early days yet. The baby is not due until August, and Jo's family has a history of complicated pregnancies. So it's much too soon to start celebrating, and she may yet lose the baby. But I am definitely looking forward to being a grandfather.

It comes as a surprise to me that I should feel pleased about this. Until now, I have always thought that it would be nice to have grandchildren one of these days when I am older, but not yet, thank you. I don't feel old enough to be ready for that role. In fact, mentally I have not even reached the age of 30, and I don't suppose I ever will. Mary doesn't strike me as the grandmotherly type either, she doesn't act her age any more than I do. But she is as excited about the prospect of having a grandchild as I am.

Okay, I'll try not to go on too much about this subject, I know how tiresome it can be when people gush on endlessly about additions to their family. I have to add one further thing, though, to put the matter in perspective. Why, if I am so excited about this news, didn't I post an update yesterday evening as soon as I heard the news? Um, well, the answer is that I went to the computer to start drafting this entry, but then I thought that I would spend a few minutes seeing whether I could get any further with Riven (the computer game I got for Christmas). I made good progress on this game for a while, but then I was more or less stuck for a couple of days. Then yesterday evening I discovered how to get through to the next level of the game, and before I knew it the whole evening had vanished. So the question has to be asked: What is more important to me, becoming a grandfather or playing a pointless computer game? I think I'll pass on that one.

*****

This journal doesn't often pay attention to what is going on in the wider world, but yesterday something happened that is too important for me to ignore. No, I'm not still talking about the grandchild, I'm referring to the birth of the new european currency. Yesterday was euro day, when eleven of the countries of the European Union took the decisive step towards merging their currencies into a single unit. Politically, this must be a huge step towards the formation of a United States of Europe. Economically, the euro may soon start to rival the dollar as the world's leading currency. As usual, Britain is left on the sidelines, undecided whether to join the new monetary union or to try to struggle on independently. Personally, I think our government is crazy even to think of staying out of euroland. The longer we delay joining it, the further Britain will fall behind the rest of Europe.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I'll cut this entry short. I have something more urgent that I want to get on with. *Mouse pointer hovers over Riven icon*

Sunday 10 January 1999

When first my way to fair I took
  Few pence in purse had I,
And long I used to stand and look
  At things I could not buy.

Now times are altered: if I care
  To buy a thing, I can;
The pence are here and here's the fair,
  But where's the lost young man?

A E Housman, Last Poems, XXXV

It would take a brave man to intervene in the brawl argument discussion currently taking place between Mr Free Enterprise Desi and Rotti the Red on the topic of whether a conservative economy is better than a social democracy. I don't want to side with either of them, but perhaps I can come in from a different perspective.

Rotti started it by commenting how strange he finds it that many poor people in the US vote for  parties that favour the rich. In saying this, he took a swipe at Desi, who responded with a tirade in defence of The American Way. I couldn't resist pointing out to Rotti that he was the one who had chosen to come and live in the Land Of The Free. His reply (I'm paraphrasing this -- it was on ICQ and I don't have a record of the conversation) was that although he now has to struggle to find the air fare to New York, he is confident that the US will give him the opportunity to succeed and that in a few years' time he will be doing better there than he could in Germany. This, of course, is pretty much exactly the same as Desi's attitude to his current poverty. Perhaps these two have more in common than either of them would want to admit.

I am sure that their optimism is justified, and that in years to come they will be able to look back on their youthful poverty, as I can, and smile about it. Not that I was ever seriously poor, not to the extent of going hungry or anything. But I do remember having to save up to buy a toothbrush. Now times are altered. I'm certainly not rich, and never will be. But I am comfortably off, and have to pay 40% income tax. Do I grumble about that? Would I prefer to live in a country which let me keep more of my hard-earned income? Absolutely not. I believe that those whom life has treated kindly have a duty to help out those who have been less fortunate. That sounds like old-fashioned noblesse oblige. But the difference is that I believe this redistribution of wealth should be done by government, not by private charity. Nobody wants to feel that they are being supported by charity. That is humiliating and degrading, as Tommy pointed out in an illuminating entry a few weeks ago, where he pondered how to give a penniless woman a dollar without demeaning her.

So I am glad that I live in a country where my taxes go towards social security for those who are handicapped, sick or otherwise unable to provide for themselves, towards a National Health service which ensures that nobody has to go without medical care because they can't afford health insurance, and towards a free education system which provides a (moderately) decent schooling for even the most disadvantaged kids. Of course, my taxes are also used for other purposes that I might not feel so proud of, but then nothing's perfect.

But wait a bit, things are more complicated than that. Desi is absolutely right to point out that if people get something for nothing, they often don't value it. And if they can live comfortably off the state, they don't have the incentive to work hard to improve themselves. I'm very happy to pay taxes to support those who can't support themselves, but I don't see why I should support those who are just too lazy to work. In Britain in the 1970s it was certainly the case that many people found it more comfortable to live on unemployment benefit than to look for work. And as much as I detest the woman, I have to admit that Margaret Thatcher's government had the courage to tackle this problem and take away the props that too many people were leaning on. This did a lot of good to the country. But the benefits came at a terrible price. In the 1980s we began to see homeless young people begging on city streets, and mentally ill people turned out of hospitals to fend for themselves under a programme cynically entitled "care in the community". And of course you see the same in the US. If you go to homes in the ghettos of North Philadelphia, or the rural valleys of West Virginia, you will find people who stand no chance of escaping from grinding poverty however hard they work. In a humane and civilised country, there just has to be some safety net to help those who can't help themselves.

Social inequalities are going to get much worse as we head into the Information Age. There is going to be a much wider gap between those who have, or can learn, the skills that are needed in an advanced society, and those who don't. I don't have any problem with a society where the top people earn huge incomes. The fact is, their skills are worth that much. Look at Apple Computers, which practically collapsed when Steve Jobs left, and then bounced back when he returned. People like that are worth tens of millions to their companies, and I think they deserve to be paid that much. But if someone is earning tens of millions, I don't think it is going to hurt them if the government top-slices a few millions from their salary to provide some kind of a life for the sick and disadvantaged.

So there's a real problem. How can you differentiate between those who really need help and those who are just idle? How do you find a compromise between a ruthless free enterprise system and an over-indulgent social democracy? When governments start to distinguish between the "deserving" and the "undeserving" poor, they find themselves in a minefield, forced to make moral judgments that governments have no business making. There are no easy answers to this. If there were, they would have been found long ago. But that is no reason to stop looking for answers, and that is possibly beginning to happen in some western european countries. In Britain, the Labour government calls it "the third way", and the new social democratic government in Germany is aiming for "die neue Mitte". Slogans alone won't get us anywhere, but maybe at last we're beginning to head in the right direction.

Now let's move from the political to the individual level. Both Desi and Rotti have raised the topic of parents supporting their children. Here, as a parent, I see things completely from the other side of the fence. Life is bloody hard for young people these days. They need a lot of money to set themselves up in life, and they usually can't earn enough to do so. Should parents come to the rescue? Well no, not necessarily, because parents face the same dilemma as governments. If you support your kids too generously, they will not have the incentive to work for themselves, but if you are too mean they may never be able to afford to get anywhere.

But parents have the big advantage that they know their kids much better than governments know their citizens, and they can judge when their children really need help and when they don't. Mary and I have been both mean and generous at different times. When Steve was going through his "difficult" phase, he was living with a girl who took the attitude that middle class parents were there to be screwed for every penny they had. After a while, we got sick of this and dug our heels in: No more money for Steve and Colette, no matter how hard up they are. When we had a burglary, I even kept the insurance money for Steve's television, as a way of recouping some money that I had lent him. Eventually he got the message that he had to go out and work. A couple of days before his first pay check was due, we phoned him and found out that they were up to their overdraft limits, had spent all their cash, and the only food they had was a quarter of a pound of mushrooms to last them the weekend. Too bad. They had to go hungry. But now, things are very different, and Steve and Jo know that we will be happy to give them however many thousand pounds it takes to buy the piece of land next to their farm, that they have their eye on.

Same with Liz. At one time, she was completely irresponsible with money. It got to the stage where I wrote to her bank manager saying that I was no longer prepared to act as guarantor for her overdraft. But now, she knows what she wants to do with her life, and she is working flat out to achieve it. Even so, she can't afford the fees for her course or the rent for her flat. So I am very happy to pay these for her. Now she is starting to make plans to visit Steve and Jo in September, to see the new baby. I don't see how she can possibly afford to go, and I suspect that she will need our help. Will I end up paying Auntie Liz's air fare to Málaga? Watch this space.

Am I manipulating and controlling, deciding when to subsidise my kids and when not to? I don't think so, I think it is part of one's parental duty to train up children in the way they should go.

Sunday 17 January 1999, my birthday

Opera North's winter season is under way. On Thursday we went to see their new production of Carmen. This has had some unenthusiastic reviews in the national press, and we were apprehensive that it would be one of their "modern" productions, with jarringly anachronistic props and costumes. In fact, the staging was excellent. Some of the details of the story had been updated, for instance in the smuggling scene the contraband was cocaine. But theatrically it was the best production of this opera that I have seen, with an atmosphere full of menace and incipient violence, breaking out in a really vicious knife fight between Escamillo and Don José. The producer had deliberately chosen young attractive singers for the principal parts. Escamillo the matador looked particularly sexy in the café scene, with tight black leather trousers and a scarred bare chest. But the trouble with opera is that the best actors are not always the best singers, and it has to be admitted that some of the singing was not up to Opera North's usual high standard. The part of Don José in particular needed someone with a bigger and better voice. The best singers were the female roles of Micaela and Carmen herself, who had a provocative sensuality that almost made one see why some men fancy women.

Friday, I had a meeting in London. I was looking forward to a relaxing couple of hours afterwards at Chariots, but unfortunately the meeting went on longer than usual and there wasn't time for that. So I took an early train back to Leeds and walked up from the station to the university, where I had left the car. It's only about 15 minutes' walk, but halfway there it started to pour with rain. I was wearing my hooded Gore-Tex^® jacket, so I stayed completely dry above the waist. Below that, I was soon soaked to the skin. For some people that can be a real turn on, but not for me, I was just wet and uncomfortable. I went to my office to take a quick look at the day's e-mail before squelching back to the car to drive home for a hot shower. While I was in the office I saw that Corey was online. He and Scott had arrived in Phoenix a few hours earlier after driving down from the Edge of Nowhere. Scott had crashed out exhausted, but Corey was too hyped up to sleep after the journey so we chatted for a bit, with me feeling wetter and colder all the time.

Yesterday we gave a little dinner party for my Italian research assistant and her husband. She is leaving in a couple of weeks when the research grant expires, to go back to Italy. We also invited a new, German, research assistant who will be in our department for the next three years. She came with her husband and small baby. The husband is on study leave from his company in Germany (except that he continues to do some work for them part-time over the internet), and is spending the time as a house-husband and baby minder. He is a good looking young guy, and looks very cute playing with the baby and settling it down to sleep.

I always get up at least a couple of hours before Mary, and by the time she came downstairs this morning I had long since finished breakfast and was reading the Sunday papers. She always teases me by pretending to forget my birthday, so I wasn't surprised that she did not mention it. But after a while I got tired of playing along with this and said "Okay, where's all the presents then?" She was mortified. For once, she really had forgotten. She had to run upstairs and dig out the cards and presents that she had hidden away. Not that I was in the least upset -- I don't like to make a big thing about birthdays, and the only thing I care about at all on my birthday is that the kids should get in touch with me, which they usually do. In fact, Liz phoned earlier this evening, and this morning I had an internet greeting from "Steve, Jo and the Blob". The day was spent just like any other Sunday, reading the papers and grocery shopping in the morning, swimming at Kirkstall sports centre in the afternoon and listening to Radio 3 in the evening (Messiaen's Turangalila symphony) while I update this journal. What better way could there be to pass a day (apart from the grocery shopping)? We didn't even have a special birthday dinner, because we were finishing the leftovers from last night's dinner party. But I'm not complaining about that, because my baked salmon was delicious, though I say so myself, and so was Mary's strawberry pavlova, as always.

I have noticed that several online journallers have reported severe angst on turning 30. I don't remember being at all worried at reaching 30, probably because life was eventful and exciting for me then. We had one small child and another on the way, my research was going well and there was a sabbatical year in Philadelphia coming up. I was much more concerned about reaching 40, because that is an age at which you can no longer pretend to yourself that you are young. But by then I had developed a strategy for dealing with birthdays. When I reached 38 I started telling myself that I was "fortyish". So by the time my 40th birthday came along, I had already had two years to get used to the idea and felt comfortable about it. The same strategy worked for the 50th birthday too. It's essentially the same technique that you use to overcome jet lag: you set your watch to the new time zone long before the flight even takes off, and by the time you get there, you have already adjusted to it.

So since today is my 58th birthday, ... *GULP* No, I'm not going to follow my own advice. I really am not prepared to start thinking of myself as "sixtyish" yet. I think I'll defer that for another year or two, or maybe ten. Sixty is OLD, dammit.

Friday 22 January 1999

Today is the anniversary of Mary's illness. For the past eleven years she has suffered from the condition known in Britain as M.E. (myalgic encephalomyelitis), and in the US as Cfids (chronic fatigue/immune dysfunction syndrome). It started very suddenly on 22 January 1988 with a virus infection which knocked her out completely. Instead of recovering, she was left with a severe continual headache which even the strongest analgesics weren't able to shift, and disabling muscle pains whenever she tried to do anything at all. For several months she was virtually bedridden. At the time when the illness struck, she had three part time jobs. One of these was as a lecturer at the local polytechnic (as it was then called: now, it's a university). She had to give this job up, as she was no longer able to stand in front of a class. The other two jobs were editorial, publishing learned journals. She was able to continue with these while the contracts lasted, but after a couple of years she gave them up and since then she has not had any paid work.

Not knowing what the illness was (we had never heard of M.E. then, and nor had most doctors), she tried to struggle on and do as much as she could, and it was only gradually that she learned that this made the symptoms much worse and that she needed to ration her energy carefully. Then she read a newspaper article about M.E. and realised that this was what she was suffering from. She joined the local M.E. support group, and she found a sympathetic consultant, who was able to advise her how to manage the illness. There is no known treatment for M.E. other than careful management of energy and various dietary supplements. We spend a fortune on things like evening primrose oil and melatonin.

Gradually and erratically the symptoms abated a bit. After about three years the debilitating headaches became less frequent. She would have partial remissions from time to time, and be able to go shopping (though she still finds clothes shopping too tiring usually, and has to buy most of her clothes by mail order). By 1992 she felt robust enough to be able to face going to Philadelphia for a year when the opportunity for a sabbatical there came my way. In fact, we had a great year in Philly, as on all the previous occasions. One of the things we did while there was to go to an international Cfids conference in Albany, NY. It was interesting for me to see how different medical research is from mathematics. Several of the speakers at the conference gave lectures to the effect that they had spent a year investigating whether something-or-other might be implicated in causing Cfids, but the results had been negative. I wish I could get paid to go to a meeting and report that I had spent a year trying to prove a theorem but there was a gap in the proof and the result might not be true after all. But then medical research affects people's lives far more directly than mathematics. If someone does discover a cause and a treatment for M.E. it will be worth all the unsuccessful efforts that have gone into it so far.

For several months in 1997 Mary had an almost complete remission, and began to think that she might have recovered completely. Then, as so often before, she had a relapse. Now, I think she realises that this is something she will have to live with for the rest of her life. She has learned to live within the limitations that the illness imposes on her, and she has found a new vocation helping other people with M.E. She trained as a counsellor, and she runs a telephone advice line for M.E. sufferers.

Of course, her illness has changed my life as well as hers. In the early days I had to spend quite a bit of time nursing her. The loss of her income means that we have to subsist on my meagre salary. Not only that, but we have to pay for a gardener and a cleaner to do the work around the house and garden that I don't have the time or inclination for and Mary doesn't have the strength for. The pace of our lives has slowed and we go out much less than we used to. But the effects have not been all bad. The fact that Mary needs to spend a lot of time resting has given me opportunities to go off and do my own thing from time to time. That sounds horribly selfish. I suppose it is. But I have to admit that I am grateful for it. For example, it was only Mary's lack of energy that kept her resting in the hotel room in the afternoons and gave me the opportunity to explore the gay saunas of Berlin when we were there last August.

Some people recover completely from M.E.  Young people in particular can in some cases be back to normal after a year or two. At the other extreme, there are people who never seem to get better at all. It looks more and more as though Mary comes into the category of those who make a partial recovery but will never shake it off completely. She has good days and bad days, and longer cycles of remissions and relapses. It has been part of her life for long enough now that she has learned to live with it, and so have I.

Sunday 24 January 1999

Tesco have an excellent value home delivery service. For a mere £5 surcharge, you phone in your grocery order, they pick up the items, bag them and deliver them to your door. You can send in the order over the internet if you prefer. But it's slow and laborious to navigate through the virtual aisles on their site and click on the goods that you want, so it seems easier to use the telephone. We do that whenever we're too busy to go shopping at the weekend or when Mary is having a bad M.E. day. (By the way, I was wrong to say in my last entry that 22 January is her M.E. anniversary, she says it was 28 January. I know that doesn't make the slightest difference to you, but I do like to be 100% accurate always.)

We phoned in the grocery order this weekend (and they delivered it exactly when they said they would, 10.30 this morning) because we were busy with our annual marmalade weekend. I am a creature of habit, and I always like to have toast and marmalade for breakfast. But you can't buy good marmalade in the shops, so we make our own. You have to use Seville oranges, which seem to have a very short season. There was a time not so very long ago when most fresh fruit and veg was seasonal. Now, you can get most things all year round, but not Seville oranges. They are only available for a week or two in the middle of January, and that is when we make our supply of marmalade for the year. After thirty years' experience, we make the best marmalade you ever tasted, and this year's batch is the best yet, with a sharp citrus flavour and exactly the right consistency, DElicious. Next time you're in this area you'll have to come round for breakfast, and you'll see what I mean.

A 1 lb jar of marmalade lasts us a bit less than two weeks, so we need about 30 lbs for the year. Last year, we made 32 lbs, and we were away for the whole of August, so we still have 5 lbs left. After a year, it has dried out a bit and lost some of its flavour, but it still tastes a whole lot better than the shop bought stuff. The two batches we made this weekend produced 12 lbs and 14 lbs, so we are left with a little problem. Do we finish off last year's batch before starting this year's, or do we throw it out and start on the delicious new stuff straight away, and then have to start buying commercial marmalade by December? I think we'll probably compromise - persevere with the old stuff for another couple of weeks, then throw out the rest of it and start on the new consignment. Life is full of these hard choices: instant gratification versus delayed satisfaction.

Apart from slicing orange peel, I have been busy marking exams this weekend. We have our first semester exams at the start of the second term. It's a good way to keep the students stressed out and working hard through the Christmas break. But it means that I have to mark the exams at the same time as I am preparing for the two new courses that I am teaching in the second semester, which begins tomorrow. On top of that, there was an Opera North Gala Concert yesterday evening, and a memorial service this afternoon for a colleague's wife who died in November. So there has been no time to relax all weekend, and no time to think of a journal entry except on this mundane domestic topic.

Wednesday 27 January 1999

The film Shakespeare In Love has been getting a lot of publicity, with three Golden Globe awards and the prospect of Oscar nominations in March. It is based on the idea that Shakespeare's own love life was his inspiration for the story of Romeo and Juliet. I haven't seen the film, and I don't know that I want to. I'm sure it's a very well made film, but it is totally fictional and you should not think that it has the slightest basis in historical fact. If you want to know about the real love life of the author of Romeo and Juliet, the only available source is the poetry that he wrote. He kept the 16th century equivalent of an online journal, in the form of the 154 sonnets that were eventually published towards the end of his life. Of these poems, 126 were addressed to a young man (or men, there may have been more than one of them), and the other 28 to his mistress. This seems to suggest that the boyfriend played a bigger part in his affections than the mistress.

He describes the boyfriend as his "comfort" and the mistress as his "despair", and when he suspected that the mistress was having an affair with the boyfriend he wrote a bitter sonnet in which he fretted that she would infect him with the clap ("fire him out"), as she had already infected the poet. I don't think you'll find any of this in the film.

Two loves I have, of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still;
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill.
To win me soon to hell, my female evil
Tempteth my better angel from my side,
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,
Wooing his purity with her foul pride.
And whether that my angel be turn'd fiend
Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;
But being both from me, both to each friend,
I guess one angel in another's hell.
     Yet this shall I ne'er know, but live in doubt,
     Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

Shakespeare, Sonnet 144

*****

Funniest journal entry of the month: Josh's item on 23 January, where he describes his plan to freeze his overdraft (literally) by embedding his credit cards in an ice cube. Mind you, in the 110° temperatures where he lives, it's not going to take him long to thaw them out whenever he's tempted to go on a spending spree. I'd be a lot more impressed if he lived in Alaska.

Sunday 31 January 1999

People have been asking me how I'm getting on with Riven. I hadn't realised what a popular game it is. Everyone seems to know about it.

The short answer is: I finished it. I worked through the whole thing, and also checked out one or two of the alternative endings. That is the truth, and it is nothing but the truth. But it isn't the whole truth, so I should add one further piece of information: I cheated. Well, perhaps cheating is too harsh a description. Let's just say that I needed a couple of hints at crucial points of the game. If I felt like it, I could blame Corey for tempting me to cut corners. It was while we were chatting about Riven one morning that he said something which made me realise that I was probably not going to have the patience or perseverance to solve one of the harder puzzles (the stone circle puzzle, for aficionados). So I did a quick net search, and came across an excellent site, riven.supernews.com, which is cunningly designed to feed you with hints where you need them, without giving away anything that you would prefer to discover for yourself, and without taking away too much of the sense of achievement that comes from working things out for yourself.

Verdict: Riven is a very good game, well up to the standard of Myst. I hope they bring out another sequel in this series one of these days. But not too soon -- I wouldn't want to get too addicted to these games.