The Sophist: in which I receive some very strange news indeed

My kid went to a sleepover on Saturday night. We were both excited about it. Her, to get to know a group of girls better before they leave primary school forever. To go nuts on one of their birthdays, worship some false gods, howl at the moon. Then to retreat back to being her bookish self the next day, wondering what all that was about. The joining of the group, the hazing rites. 

Me, to have a Saturday night by myself, being at the age where I want to leave groups and indulge in some of that me time that they talk about in lifestyle supplements. I’m sure it used to be known as loneliness or masturbation, but me time certainly has its appeal, especially as there are not many people who can drag out a table for one in a Franco Manca for as long as I can. And not even by masturbating, 

No need, now that phones contain the internet in its entirety, and now that the internet is regularly updated by a formless sequence of people adding more things to it for me to read and be annoyed by. The hours are long, the pay is in endorphins and RSI and sinking feelings. But I didn’t choose the scroll life: the scroll life chose me. 

So I wandered along our local roads to Camden, which, if you haven’t ever been, is a place with all the allure of a back alleyway that’s been stretched out to fill a whole postcode. People in Camden look like they’ve been through a war. The war is called alcohol. A truce has yet to be called. I recently tried to persuade my daughter that we should move to a small town in Devon and live a different life. “I prefer Camden,” she replied, “the drunks are better.” 

I walked down the Kentish Town Road, where the traffic is always jammed, construction is always underway, and sweet young things vomit from the pub doorway on a Saturday night. Pollution filled the air with an exotic sense of promise. It felt like something was coming. Something is always coming in London, but sometimes it’s E coli. 

And so I sat alone in my chosen chain restaurant, where the service was satisfyingly  awful, and I looked at my phone for at least 97% of the time, and I read about Martin Amis dying and felt a great wave of sadness and surprising amounts of gratitude for it all, suddenly. For being a writer, for these other writers having made it all so big and bold and important. I read about his publisher, Jonathan Cape, who is my publisher too, and it was like I woke up from a long dream and suddenly understood what you could do, what he had done. Shit. 

And then I got this text from the kids at the sleepover saying that my child had died at the sleepover.