… i am on the last number of pages… DJ’s health is deteriorating…

… he is starting to cancel work… a short film with Annie Lenox… his physical condition getting in the way of concentration… i find myself wishing i had successful creative friends of the Lenox caliber…

Beth Chatto comes to see DJ’s garden… she’s a celebrity i never heard of… looked her up on Wikipedia… well known plantswoman, garden designer, author… Christopher Lloyd is with BC, is it that Christopher Lloyd?… he makes more of a deal about Beth Chatto…

… migraines and blindness… back to the hospital… Berlioz’s death march from Symphony Fantastique starts playing in my head… he’s frustrated, but not that sad…

Full dusty orange moon glimmers over the sea, climbs over the house.

A midnight hedgehog rustles through the flower bed. I switch the light on in the kitchen and the spiders scatter. Over beyond the Long Pits bush fires flare. A house burns down in Lydd.1

… the book finishes with one entry in September of 1990… i find his Wikipedia entry which tells me he died 19 February 1994… three more years of the descent… i hope he was able to be happy some of the time… i hope he was able to enjoy his garden…


  1. Jarman, Derek, Modern Nature, p 310 ↩︎