All set

Dear Diary,

With mounting legal pressure to seize all my worldly goods I perhaps did something a little unwise this morning. The nice lady whom answered the phone, a humble civil servant, well spoken, polite, had to endure me very calmly and collected saying, "I am afraid I cannot meet the demands made of me as I live on less than the dole even though I work, so in response to your letter over my dead body!" This will undoubtedly make matters worse and perhaps even hasten the process of "the siege of Orchard Avenue". I spent this morning cutting all my oil paintings out of the frames, collecting all my late bronze age flints and cut gemstones, in preparation for departure: homeless in England if I have a favourable result on my A397 examination, and straight to the Continent if I fail. I will have to leave my books with my sister (the last time I left all my books with my mother and step father: they sold them all) in the hope that they are not coined into gold. I am most anxious about the Liddell and Scott, also the Lewis and Short, as they are not available to buy on the web, and are far too heavy to carry.

I look forward to smashing up the piano and guitars, and I will only be taking Saint Lillian (a grands' worth of Spanish classical guitar), Arion (ten grands' worth of 19th century ornamental parlour classical guitar), Dirty Gurty (a Japanese 1960s bottleneck acoustic) and Sweaty Betty my banjuitar. I might have to leave Betty at my sisters because it is mainly made of metal and is just for show really, it doesn't play well. I might even do the same with Dirty Gurty, simply because if I stuck the tailpiece on Arion, it would mean that I just have to carry the one little half-sized travelling guitar and a light classical, not a very heavy bottleneck guitar. In any case, the paintings, gems and artefacts are coming with me, wherever I go. I am not about to let the State get their grubby mitts on that little lot, not when I have sweated worked and carried them across mountains, through swamps, icy rivers, being shot at, through hedges, thorns, barbed wire fences, wildness filled with wild rams, bulls, you name it. They will have to pry them from my cold dead fingers before I let go of that little lot. I just don't care any more.