The Eleven O’Clock v Dublin 1798 Saturday 21st June, 2025

Each day for the remainder of June, I’ll post The Eleven O’Clock and aim to answer the following three questions in short sentences and/or very short paragraphs.

1. Where am I?
2. What am I doing?
3. What am I thinking about and feeling?

Of course, I would welcome any comments, humorous, poignant, serious, or otherwise.

1. On the landing, at my desk, windows open

2. Apart from typing this, I’m eating two pieces of toast – jam and marmalade, downed with a cuppa Tetley

3. I’m thinking about writing. To do that, I have to do some time-traveling, back to Dublin in 1798 in the smouldering pre-uprising heat of the Irish rebellion. And within that context, to move person A and person B around. Writing, I have found, is more like watching a film unfold in real time than planning too far ahead. By the end of today, or maybe early next week, I may have discovered how the novel ends, but for NOW, by now I mean the Tuesday after Easter 1798, person A has to brew some coffee on a riverbank and greet his work colleagues as if nothing is out of place. It’s all smoke and mirrors. Beyond Dublin, there are other thoughts, some continuous, but all are relegated to wherever the back of one’s mind lurks.

By the end of today, or maybe early next week, I may have discovered how the novel ends

Feelings? Not entirely settled. If the writing goes well, I will be absorbed in that other world with its feelings, its hopes, dreams, horrors, fears and so on. Until then, the things that may retreat to the back of my mind are not there yet. Mild anxiety in various forms over organising a social event next Saturday. Also a surprising burst of Strava joy that informed me that I had run far faster than I had thought earlier this morning to avoid the heat later in the day.