Soon no-one will march there at all
2002-12-08 || 12:49 p.m.

It looks like it may be a day of entries.

I don't know where to start. It all sounds so stupid.

Yesterday me and Bex went to see Bright Eyes at ULU. Its down a street off of a street off of Tottenham Court Road. Its funny in London because once you stray from the main, well-known streets into the back streets everything becomes really nondescript and there are roads and roads of the same Victorian/Edwardian style houses and pubs on corners, tall Georgian, flat buildings and you could be anywhere. Everything looks the same. It was freezing cold. There was a light drizzle, the kind that you feel doesn't quite justify an umbrella but yet soaks you through. We had a spare ticket because Eleanor decided to go and see the Murder Dolls at The Forum instead. I sold the ticket to an American girl who was well pleased. I only wanted what I paid for it. Whilst she was finding her money a tout came up to me and said 'I'll give you �30 for it'. I'm not interested in things like that, it's one reason why I will always be broke. But I'm glad i will always be broke. I never want money to mean more than people.

Anyway, it was freezing cold and there was a Waterstones bookshop right opposite. I said to Rebecca that I was going into the bookshop for five minutes to put my jumper on and warm up. We wandered about in the bookshop and I saw a table with piles of children's books on. There was a big pile of copies of 'Charlotte Sometimes' with a beautiful pink and gold cover. I picked one up, just to hold it; there's nothing so nice as the feel of a new, unopened book. I stroked the cover and it felt so shiny and perfect. Rebecca took the book from me and said she was going to buy it for me.

I don't have 'Charlotte Sometimes' anymore because I gave it away but that's another story. So I was well pleased and followed her to the counter.

Talk about go off at a tangent, i really did not need to go into so much detail in order to say what I want to say now.

I read half the book on the train on the way home. I got up late this morning and, after writing my first entry, I thought I would read the second half. I just got to the part where Bunty's father is killed in France and I started to cry. There's some bits in some books that always make me cry no matter how many times I have read them: Bunty's father dying, Judy dying in 'Seven Little Australians', Matthew dying in 'Anne of Green Gables' - these always make me cry. I think actually that Matthew dying was the first time I ever cried at a death in a book. Before that I remember crying at the 'Dog who went to sea' in the Bimbo annual but mainly that was because he was a dog and because he ran away and I always wanted to run away and be alone but again, that's another story.

Anyway, I read on and I just got to the part where they were summoned into the school hall to be told of the armistice. Emily and Charlotte have nowhere to go, so they wander the streets, they see the celebrations all around them and I just feel so, so sad.

I can't believe I can cry at something that happened almost 90 years ago. All those men. Things changed forever. Into my head came the lines 'all changed, changed utterly, a terrible beauty is born' which I think may be a Yeats poem but I don't think its about WW1, i can't remember. Yes, I just looked it up on Google. It is Yeats, 'Easter 1916'. The other thing, I think it is safe to say, I'm pretty much obsessed with. It's just the thought of all those men, in those old film reels, all looking the same with their hats on - hats, no-one wears hats anymore - moustaches, not smiling, they all look the same but of course they are all totally individual and I just can't bear to think of what I know was to come but they didn't know. And then time seems so strange because its like both happening and already happened and somewhere they are dying still.

And that's what makes me cry.

And I like 'Charlotte Sometimes' because Charlotte does not only 'become' Clare, at one point she almost becomes Miss Agnes too and its hard to tell where one person ends and another begins. And then I wonder, and I really CANNOT work this out, whether I think about time and WW1 because of this book or whether I liked this book because I think about time and WW1.

I don't think I'll ever know the answer to that question because I can never begin to untangle the way I feel about things and I don't suppose it matters anyway because one day I'll be dead and no-one will know I thought these things and they will care even less.