October Normally, when the day begins, I wake up feeling ambitious. Not hugely ambitious, not filled with a towering ambition of world-historical proportion, but sufficiently ambitious to accomplish some small feat, begin a project perhaps. Lying in bed, feeling ambitious, I fully expect that the sensation will pass, but until it does I am prepared to enjoy it. I need this little illusion. Without it there would be no compelling reason not to return to bed after getting up to pee. Over the course of the morning, my ambition bleeds away. After a slow breakfast with Annette, nursing our coffee, I will stare out the window for a while, across the rooftops of our very tidy Berlin neighbourhood, listening to the faintly ridiculous BBC on the radio, or when that grows too tiresome, German news, weather and traffic on an endless ten-minute loop - comprehension through repetition. By the time I've cleared the dishes away and tidied the kitchen, my ambition is beginning to look very anemic. Before picking up whichever borrowed novel I happen to be reading, I turn on the computer and check for e-mail. I am invariably disappointed. My friends across the Atlantic have jobs, responsibilities, busy lives. They don't have time to write long messages for no other purpose than to entertain me. Particularly when I gloat about all the time I have to be entertained. The morning passes. I interrupt Annette, absorbed in her work; I interrupt the cat, absorbed in her sleep. Sunshine helps to preserve my ambition a little, but even on the best days it has usually bled itself dry by mid-afternoon. At this point, we generally go out for coffee. I dress carefully, knowing that this will be the day's one proper excursion. I feel a little silly, picking the cat hairs of my black pants and choosing a jacket while discussing the range of café options, but this small event provides a great deal of structure and meaning to my life at present. (By extension, would my existence would be unstructured and meaningless without it?) Walking one afternoon, Annette looked at me and said, "You're in a bit of a do-nothing phase right now, aren't you?" "Yes," I replied. "The trick is to be in a happy do-nothing mood, not an unhappy do-nothing mood." "That's fine. But you know where this generally leads." Evenings are a little better. There is dinner, after which I read, and if I find the inspiration, write a little. The time passes. It's going to be long, long retirement.