I almost certainly won’t manage. Experience has taught me that. And yet I find myself hoping things will be different this time, because the grant is involved. I’ve already been sent the first half of the money, which will be enough to keep me until the end of the year in a reasonable life of leisure. As soon as I knew for certain I was getting the grant this year, I began more or less clearing my schedule, getting rid of some things altogether and spacing others out, so as to leave very few days each month when I have any commitments at all. You see, a life of leisure takes time to arrange. It doesn’t come about just like that, from one moment to the next, simply because you have nothing to do. At the moment my instinct is to fill every gap, devoting all my free time to stupid, pointless activities, because, almost without realising it, I have become like those people I always look down on: intensely afraid of my own selfhood, of being alone with nothing to do, of the ghosts in the basement pushing at the trapdoor, eager to poke their heads out and give me a fright.