Howard Jacobson's Blog, page 18

I have very little of Mr Blake's company, the wife of the poet William Blake is reputed to have told visitors.

I have very little of Mr Blake's company, the wife of the poet William Blake is reputed to have told visitors.

Reader, I'm in love. Smitten. Usual signs – cold sweats, inexplicable exhilaration, inability to sleep. It's art I'm talking about. Art smote me.

Say "Cheese".

Just back from the Mantova Literary Festival," I wrote in this column three years ago, "in love, as you'd expect, with all things Italian." And here I am, just back for the second time, and every bit as smitten as I was in 2008. Italians aren't much smitten with themselves at the moment, citing the humiliation of having a womanising clown for a prime minister as the main reason. But I'm not sure that we should see any damning reflection of ourselves in our political leaders. It's said that we get the politicians we deserve, but use every man after his desert, as Hamlet remarks, and who should escape whipping?

The black dog of depression has been busy around me these past 10 days or so, I'd like to say sinking his teeth into my life force, but it's been more a matter of humping my leg and snuffling my groin.

I grow old, I grow old...I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. And my trousers are not the half of it.

I grow old, I grow old...I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. And my trousers are not the half of it.

Friendly banking

In an essay in praise of idleness, that cadaverous philosopher Bertrand Russell argued "that a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work".