Thursday 22 July

The summer hourglass is running out rapidly & rather sandily. Many nights I wake in a shudder thinking 
of some atrocity of mine. I bring home minute pinpricks which magnify in the middle of the night into gaping 
wounds. However, I drive my pen through de Quincey of a morning, having put The Lighthouse aside till 
Rodmell. There all virtue, all good, is in retreat. Here nothing but odds & ends—going to the dentist, buying 
combs; having Maynard & Bob to tea, & then Ralph & Frances to dinner, followed by Eddie & Kitchen [C. 
H. B. Kitchin]. But we are both jaded, & get no clear impression any more from the human face—must dine 
with Osbert Sitwell tonight though, & go to Hardy tomorrow. This is human life: this is the infinitely precious
stuff issued in a narrow roll to us now, & then withdrawn for ever; & we spend it thus. Days without definite
sensation are the worst of all. Days when one compells oneself to undergo this or that for some reason—but what
reason?

There is nothing important at the moment to record: or if so, & one's state of mind is overwhelmingly 
important, I leave that, too for Rodmell. There I shall come to grips with the last part of that python, my book; it 
is a tug & a struggle, & I wonder now & then, why I let myself in for it. Rose Macaulay said "What else would 
one do with one's thoughts?" I have not seen her again nor Gwen, nor written to Violet [Dickinson]; nor learnt 
French, nor finished Clarissa.

Desmond came in; talked about Shakespeare. Now to settle my mind to Suspiria.