Helen Garner - Yellow Notebook: Diaries Volume I 1978–1987

Maybe itd be a good idea to start another diary, just to cream it off. I bought this yellow book today.

Man in the metro, a 1950s relic but real, not an affectationuntidy, perfectly period clotheslumber jacket, tight trousers, big, worn, nondescript shoes. He was playing an exquisite basic rock-and-roll guitar and singing Corinna through a little amp that looked like a white Daisy Duck radio.

Monkey Grip appears to have won the National Book Council Award. Letter from T in Melbourne: Sometimes I fall into the trap of thinking that jobs and money and grants are luck instead of recognition for talent and hard work. Do you feel that still?

I know what the matter is. I havent got any women friends here. I miss, I miss. I feel crazy and weepy.

F says hes not really French: that he comes from the south, that its different there. He says if you dont turn a mattress it starts to smell bad. He sings to himself as he works. If he looks over my shoulder at this Ill start screaming.

Actually, I dont care if he reads this. Im protected by the fog of incomprehension thats always between us unless we work singlemindedly at direct contact.

M and I work to wall off a sleeping space for her at one end of the living room. We stretch a length of unbleached calico tightly over the back of the high, open shelf we bought at Habitat, stand it at right angles to the wall, then lie side by side on her little bed and gaze at the tent-like structure. A bottle of Scotch on the living-room side picks up the light and shines a brown glow through the fabric. When we do a task together she turns me into a better mother. Shes a witty person, companionable and kind. Got any idea how to draw a hamster?

Rilke wrote that when people know your name they scatter your forces. He suggests changing your name as soon as they get hold of it.

I must disabuse myself of the illusion that I once sat down and wrote a novel. I am not good at constructing major pieces of work. I have a short concentration span. I can work only in small, intense bursts. I dont seem to work consciously. I write to unburden myself, to amuse myself, to arrange in order the things that bulge in my head, to make myself notice things.

Jerzy Kosinskis absolutely unemotional style. As clear as crystal, as objects arranged in a line. Whenever the lost child in The Painted Bird approaches a farm to ask for work or for shelter, the peasants consult their neighbours.

At Cap Frhel F tried to stop me from tackling the cliff. Dont climb! he cried, white-faced, seizing my ankle. So as not to watch me, he went to prise mussels off the rocks with his knife. I climbed. His fear had infected me. The void sucked at my back.

I have a lot of trouble with self-disgust. It disgusts me that I repeat things in this book that I have already written in letters. It disgusts me that I am so lazy.

A critic in Melbourne writes that some people consider Monkey Grips subject matter distasteful. Someone else said I was a traitor to my class. I now grasp the meaning of the term provincial.

Cure for homesickness and ennui: walk. I must have walked ten kilometres yesterday. Bought two jumpers and a pair of red shoes, which are perfect.

I went to shake hands with Solange. She laughed and went Oh! as if to say Come off it! and kissed my cheeks instead.

M didnt understand the information the teacher gave about the weeks holiday for Toussaint: she thought it was a school camp, and tried to ask if she was supposed to bring her sleeping bag and something to eat. The teacher had no idea what she was talking about. M gave up and came home bewildered. She cried when she tried to explain to me what had happened.

Drank some kir and this and that. In Charlie Hebdo I read: BOUM! = NO FUTURE x 7. I laughed and laughed. I dont even know why its funny. If I lived alone with my leedle cassette player and idiosyncratic assortment of tapes, Id probably drink myself stupid.

F took an old wooden-handled hammer out of his briefcase this morning and laid it on my desk. Its still there.

How he pronounces VAPORUB.

We went walking in the cold, up to Place Clichy and rue Joseph de Maistre etc. He put his hand through my arm and I was happy.

The visitor on his way to LondonIts my spiritual home!spoke about his poems as being ahead of their time. In ten years people will see what I was trying to do. I doubt this. Also, he was too cheap to pay fifty centimes to use the toilet at Parc Monceau.

I wish I lived peacefully somewhere. I wish I had a shit job involving physical exertion.

In Toulouse our hostess made a dormitory of her bedroom and she, M and I slept comfortably in a row. All the sheets and towels, from her trousseau sixteen years ago, are embroidered with her initials. At about 4 pm I remembered that it was my birthday. She took us out of the city to stay with some friends in a village. On the drive she told us that the husband had had an affair. The wife had fought it, or sat it out. He had returned to her. So, she said with a satisfaction that did not quite convince me, she won. The air in the house was thick. The husband and wife did not look at each other. In the afternoon we walked halfway up a small mountain. An easy track. Chestnuts still bright with yellow leaves. At night the darkness and silence around the house frightened me.

A drunk black man in a cobbled street yelled at us that we were de la pourriture.

Tweezers. Wool. Needles. Pencil sharpener.

A certain graciousness of manner; a deep courtesy.

Ill be the toughest kid in the whereabouts, says M.

The fact that the glass is raised to the lips without being smashed into the face is a tribute to the subtle weighing abilities of the outstretched limb. And the fact that the glass remains at the mouth while losing weight as it is emptied shows how punctually the news is updated: without this information the glass would levitate as it was drained. Jonathan Miller

Some teargas got in my eyes at the demo. It was my first dose, unbelievably confusing and painful. I was surprised at how philosophical people were about it. They covered their noses and mouths. Aii! said Fs friend. It hurts your eyes! Well, thats what its for, I suppose. Everyone around him laughed.

Despair and sadness and fear are easier to write about than hope, happiness, confidence.

Middlemarch. A substance smooth of surface but containing firm lumps of foreign matter.

The famous publisher and his translator took me to lunch at Brasserie Lipp. I am sure they will not want my book. They addressed me in perfect English. They were unbearably chic. When I offered my hand to the translator, all she gave me was her little finger. My cheeks were red with awkwardness. She worked hard, I suppose: See the man with the moustache? Thats Romain Gary.

He looks sad, I said.

Hes been looking like that ever since Jean Seberg left him.

F is sick. Im looking after him. He hates to be dpendant, but he appears to have abandoned attempts to fight it and is sitting up in my bed reading Playboy France.

M cries because I get eight letters and she gets only a postcard. She refuses to speak to me, then bursts into tears, casts herself on to my lap, and sobs: I had a sudden feeling of meanness. In the afternoon we sit together knitting. She is so thrilled about her new cherry-red knee-high boots that she can hardly sleep. Soon after midnight I wake to find her standing beside my bed, fully dressed for school: I thought it was morning!

I quarrelled with F because I wouldnt show him a fan letter I was writing to Woody Allen. He says that he and his former girlfriend used to show each other everything. He says Im secretive. Its strange to realise that I am a very different person from the one I thought I was.