"You may think the Grand Tour is about politics, and culture and art---and you would be quite right. But it is also about gambling, drinking and sex. Particularly sex"

"You may think the Grand Tour is about politics, and culture, and art---and you would be quite right. But it is also about gambling, drinking, and sex. Particularly sex. Young grand tourists came across it everywhere, lively, in prostitutes, and given some sort of authority by the works of art at which they looked." That is exactly the effect of Makart's Summerhouse in Berlin, or his Four Senses in Vienna, or of the Wiertz Museum and the Delvauxs and the Last Temptation of St Antony and the Tresors de Satan in Brussels. It gives 'authority' to my search for sexual pleasure at night. 

"Unlike Rome, Naples was ruled by a royal court. And where there was a king there too was opera. In innumerable letters, journals, and diaries, opera is mentoned far more often and far more specifically than art or architecture. It was, apart from sex, their most fervent passion. They adored it. Some rode halfway across the country to hear a soprano of new reputation. And in Naples opera was said to be the glory of the country. Young grand tourists fell in love with these people...with their voices rather than their bodies." How else to describe my repeated visits to Berlin, for Die Ferne Klang, Salome, La Traviata? For one night only to see Elena Prokina? Maria Grazia Schiavo 

"To Vesuvius the grand tourists were drawn like bees to honey." 

"When they went back to England, they knew how to gamble, they knew how to drink, they knew how to fuck." 

I gamble with my life. Every time you go out at night looking for someone, you are gambling. Like on a roulette wheel, you put your money down on a number black or red, & spin the wheel. Most times you will lose, but once in a while you will win, and the win makes all the losses worthwhile. All the innumerable small losses are more than made up for by the occasional spectacular win, and that is what you keep doing it for. It is to be learned--this cleaving and this burning, but only by the one who spends out himself again. Oh 

I so much want to resume my Grand Tour: to go back to Brussels now, for the Radisson SAS, for La Monnaie, for the Empire and the Gare du Nord. I so much want to go back to Berlin for the Berlin Plaza, for the Staatsoper, for the Oscar Wilde, for Ciro, Mon Cheri, Golden Gate & Monte Carlo. I so much want to go back to Vienna for the Dorint, the Belvedere, the KHM, the Butterfly House, and the Gurtel. And the videokabins! The videokabins are the glory of Europe. 

THE ONLY WAY I CAN GO TO EUROPE AGAIN IS IF I HAVE GOT PLENTY OF MONEY IN MY WOOLWICH ACCOUNT. ONLY BY NOT GOING TO THE FLYING SCOTSMAN WILL MY BUILDING SOCIETY ACCOUNT START TO RECOVER TO GIVE ME SOME SPENDING MONEY. 

Why do I wake up at 2AM feeling so unhappy? (16th August 2006)

Why do I wake up at 2AM feeling so unhappy? I feel like I want to cry. I had such an unhappy dream. I was trapped on a long distance train going across Europe and I knew no longer wanted to be on it, but I was trapped. I had no choice. In reflection in the window I saw an old man with black holes where eyes should be. It is almost a premonition of myself in 20 or 30 years time. I felt like I was trapped on this train, and trapped in this travelling, without aim and without enjoyment. Maybe it is just the after effects of the drink. Drink causes depression and low moods. Such a reversal of how I felt on the train home last night. Instead of having my epiphany in the Calcutta, I had it on the train home. As the train neared home in the darkness from station to station closer to ——, I imagined I was on my train in Europe, getting nearer and nearer to pulling in at my final destination of Munich, or Vienna, or Berlin, and I felt again that intense excitement of about to arrive. How exciting it is to arrive at a place by train, not by plane. It made me really want to be on that train to Munich, or Vienna, or Berlin. The great thing about arriving by train is I know my hotel is right next to the station in Munich, and in Vienna, and very close even in Berlin, and in Brussels. To arrive in Munich at night is so exciting, when everywhere is so dark, and all lit up, and the night is about to begin. Very soon I can be heading over the road to Atlantic City and the night can really begin. Now, however, this morning I feel like I do not want to travel to those places and do those tawdry things again. I am sick of those places, and throwing all my money away. As always in the mornings I am most conservative and frightened, and at night I am most wild and hedonistic. 

Who would I want to be with now? No one. I am happy to be in bed alone. And yet I am very lonely. I feel cosmically alone.  Again in the Calcutta–Monkeys From the Ritz to the Rubble on the jukebox– there was a sexy little brown bob thing sitting opposite me as I sat in the box seat, black top, black miniskirt, showing a lot of thigh. It was sexually exciting. I only had two. It is never the same when I have got my bag with me and I am travelling home. I am sure I will stay longer Friday. How lovely to go to Brussels for four days and just do NOTHING. I like to go to places where I can do nothing. Just sit in the Pullman getting drunk while watching the girls pass. Just sit up on O’Neill's balcony watching the girls pass. Just sit in the window of Cafe Belge watching the girls pass. Maybe the Radisson SAS, too. It is true, this money I am saving I must use it to pay off the £6,000 debt because in October the Virgin interest is going to cripple me. And yet, I read of university students leaving with £12,000 debts and I think mine is not so bad, when  I have got a secure (?) job I really like. 


Yesterday I was thinking I want to go to Europe and just go really mad and really for one week just not care about the bills, just fuck everyone—fuck Evalina, fuck Maya, fuck Erika, fuck Olga & Alla. Have the wildest time of my life and then spend the rest of the year paying for it, but what wild erotic memories. Or go to Vienna and fuck Maria, fuck Angelique, fuck Irina double. Go completely wild, that is what holidays are for. I CANNOT go again feeling depressed and miserable and controlling myself. It is not worth going to brothels controlling yourself! And for me Vienna, Berlin, Munich, Brussels, Frankfurt are just vast brothels and nothing else. For me holidays are for dirty sex and nothing else, I just dress it up with art and opera. My holidays are Rabelaisian, Chaucerian treks and pilgrimages. I feel almost medieval, especially if I go by train. Pulling into these great cathedrals that are the railway stations. I don’t know what to do. I change my mind from minute to minute again. I think of course I will not go at the end of October. That will slip by like May did. Now I must think about January for La Traviata and Carmina Burana if at all. Of course October is too soon. Oh to be arriving in Berlin by train, or Munich by train, or Vienna by train, at night.