Now that felt good. Cleaning my kitchen, washing crockery, bleaching surfaces, getting the vacuum behind the fridge for once. I had to do this; there's a lot at stake. I've begun to feel cowed by the stuff that has to be done - the walls are grubby, the bathroom suite's a shocker, the kitchen filthy, my living room overflowing with books, papers, clothes. In the right hands, the right writer's hands that is then this tiny flat could be as epic as Quentin Crisp's legendary New York apartment. My hands are n't those and I don't want that.

It's the last thing; no, what I want is somewhere clean, quiet, pleasant, that I can gladly invite people to see, drop-in if they do wish. I don't want to have the cortisol jolt of wondering was that mice scampering along the roof space, or the indignity of having to bear someone else stamping across their floor (my ceiling) in the wee small hours.

Tonight I think I've stopped myself going into a state of near domestic suspended animation where nothing would have happened. All sounds quite melodramatic, does n't it, but understand this: I've turned something like a corner here. I've taken a stand against that other me - the idle, the worrier, the sometimes despondent, the procrastinator, the talker but not the doer.

The other me, incidentally, is a reflection of only an aspect of my personality, not the fullness of me; after all we are complex, often contradictory beasts, perplexing to our own self as well as others, resilient, introverted and extroverted according to circumstance, active and passive.