Headache, began yesterday. The camel's backbreaking straw was probably a Dutch cigar that Godebski gave me. I nearly cured the headache twice today and then brought it on again by working. The trouble is that if I stop work every time I have a headache I won't get much done. My inclination when suffering is to turn inwards, allow myself to be entirely self-absorbed, and to become uncommunicative, or sometimes surly. I know that the best thing is just to get on with things, but easier said than done. My wife copes brilliantly with headaches which she gets infrequently but which last for three days - she seems able just to ignore them.
Godebski's for tea yesterday.
I finished "Ann Veronica" yesterday. Wells sent me a copy with the inscription "The Young Mistresses' Tale, to Arnold B. with love from his nephew H.G." The last 30 pages are the best. But still, a minor work. Seems to me much too short; incidents not described in sufficient detail. But then again I have been accused of too much attention to detail. Mere writing impudently careless of dissonant effects, and full of extreme colloquialisms. Of course it occurs to me that my appreciation of the book may have been affected by my headache. Critics ought to take this into account and declare at the start of each review what the state of their health was when they were reading!I finished a letter to a cousin of mine who lives on the Isle of Man today. She is a native of the "ancient borough" but has lived on Man for a long time and I asked her if she felt herself to be a manxwoman. I suspect not. You probably have to be born there to be Manx. When people ask me where I am from I say "the Potteries, but I don't live there at the moment". There is a sort of implication in the statement that I would live there if I could, and one day might. In fact I have no intention of doing so. I may well leave here one day, but I won't be going back to the Potteries.
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