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A manuscript by the music critic John Clare is studded with moments of electrifying power and beauty: Sydney’s ‘brassy, maritime light’; ‘a ferry walked on tiny spines of light’; two drunks wrestle in the Cross, and one stretches the other’s ‘cardigan a yard at least’; a man frenziedly about to fuc…

Since I got back from Melbourne I’ve had to stay in bed with a horrible cold, coughing up brownish-yellow stuff. V’s gone to the gallery with X the painter. He mentioned with elaborate casualness that they’d had ‘a few coffees’ together while I was away. I realise that by getting sick I’m encroachi…

V has been stewing over a remark the minister made at Robert Haupt’s funeral: ‘We should be glad that his tribulations are over.’ V said it was a ludicrous misrepresentation of Haupt’s whole approach to life. I agreed that it was a misrepresentation, but suggested it was an attitude integral to a C…

A woman with a racked, pointed little face tells me that her husband has fallen in love with one of his students and ‘it’s been hell all year’. They’re talking about selling their house, trying not to wreck things for the kids. Apparently he doesn’t want to leave, though: ‘He says he’s stopped seei…

I took Mum and Dad a copy of True Stories. ‘Errr,’ they said, looking at it with peculiar gingerly expressions. Dad said that the cover photo made me look old, and ‘didn’t do much’ for me at all. Then, while explaining to me how to sharpen a knife against a stone, he demonstrated with his blade acr…