The Pendulum's Arthritis
Diarium Absurdi – Entry 1
Our insistence on experiencing time as a continuous whole is anthropocentric. There is growing evidence that block-time is sliceable, and, under the right metabolic conditions, digestible. –Professor Calderón Finch
I don’t pretend to understand much of what I’ve read in The Journal of Speculative Chronophysics. But it does help me to get to sleep. I’ve tried counting sheep, playing mental scrabble and knitting, but nothing gets me to sleep better than a bit of theory. The quote above is particularly interesting. What would happen to time if it was digested? It would be fascinating to find out.
The Diary
I’m sleeping badly at the moment. I dreamt I was trying to pull someone out of a deep, muddy hole. I’ve always scribbled in notebooks but I’ve never kept a diary. I’m going to change that. Why? I feel I live increasingly on the surface of things – I barely touch reality. I’m far too immersed in the human narrative, which is becoming increasingly materialistic. I’m now committed to re-engaging with my imagination and to embracing the natural as I used to. The power of words is that they can show us the way back. A diary is a path back into ourselves. Something is moving in that deep, muddy hole, and I think it belongs to me. This diary will be my way of pulling it out.
4th February 2026
My third wife got me the curtains that hang in my bedroom. They were in the loft for years and would have stayed there. But the day before yesterday, when I went round to clean the gold-fish pond, my only post-divorce responsibility, she told me that she’d never stopped loving me. We divorced after I painted the front door pink. “Do you remember our cheese-on-toast soirées?” she said as I was leaving.
It’s 8:30am.
There’s mist on the hills. The clock’s tick tends to be more clunky when it’s damp outside. It’s tock seems unaffected. It’s a very old timepiece and has arthritis in its hands. It’s pendulum has problems too. It has to have three drops of steroids administered to its swinging mechanism every month. I hide the steroids in WD-40 so the clock’s none the wiser.
February isn’t my favourite month.
Yesterday I went to the dentist. He was taller than I expected. He had an Irish accent and was playing Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony on an old record-player as he scraped bits of calcified plaque from between my teeth. He drew blood. I could taste it. I could hear trains rumbling over the viaduct that passes just above the dentist’s extensive premises.
There’s a new Tesco hypermarket opposite with a carpark, carwash and a collection of recycling bins. It’s quite a busy corner of Durham. Nowadays, I only ever go to Durham for the dentist. I used to visit the city to walk along the river and eat carrot cake in the coffee shop on Elvet Bridge.
“I’m Seánóg,” the dentist said, just moments before he invited me to sit in his leather lounger and began tutting at my teeth. “Your teeth are older than you, by about ten years,” he said. He looked up at his assistant. A woman with naturally grey hair and a slightly crooked nose. “We’ll need to keep a close eye on his premolars.”
The woman wrote something down on a scrap of paper. “The computer’s still not working,” she moaned. She placed a piece of pink gum in her mouth and then smiled at me. It was a nice smile. Her teeth looked quite young. “It’s alright,” she said, winking at me. “I never forget anything. I’ve got an elephant’s brain. Isn’t that right Dr Delaney.”
Dr Delaney rolled his eyes. “Your skull’s not big enough for an elephant’s brain. The pachyderms’ encephalon is three to six times larger than a human’s and a lot heavier.”
I was unable to comment as three of the dentist’s fingers and some sort of implement, were in my mouth. I was beginning to salivate and began to worry about drowning. Can you drown on your own saliva? I didn’t want to swallow for fear of biting one of Dr Delaney’s fingers off.
The oral ordeal ended at about the same time the record-player finished playing the last movement of Beethoven’s symphony. I’ve always loved Beethoven. I love classical music. I was pleased to get Dr Delaney’s fingers out of my mouth.
At one point I remember asking what had happened to my usual dentist, Mrs Ditheridge. “She has eleven whippets,” Dr Delaney replied. I’m not sure how that answered my question but the dentist said nothing more on the matter and the assistant just shook her head and mumbled something like, “I can only afford three.”
On the way home I stopped on Waldridge Fell and watched several grouse roaming amongst the heather as if they were looking for something. I kept the car’s engine running. A passing hiker stared at me angrily and then tripped on a stick. This startled the grouse making them fly away in three different directions. The hiker began swearing at the stick. He picked it up and threw it. Due to its curved shape, it returned to him like a boomerang and hit him on the head. I wasn’t really paying attention to the hiker’s misadventure as I was busy trying to remember cheese-on-toast soirées with Harriet, my third wife.
I had pizza and chips for tea. With some marrowfat peas.
I struggled to sleep. I dreamt the dentist was a famous pianist. He was performing at the London Palladium in front of the King and an audience of attractive women of varying ages. A grouse suddenly appeared out of the piano and woke me up. Harriet’s curtains have always been able to induce dreams. Once I dreamt they were magic carpets. They flew myself and Harriet to Sinbad’s cave. The tea he served was disappointing. I remember that.