October 30, 20–

The night was tense and squalid. Though wild gales savaged our building, inside, with the windows closed and no power for a fan, the air stifled us, as still and humid as a Yorkshire pudding, and the only way to catch a breeze was to fall down.

Morning revealed that the elderly neighbor’s elderly birch tree had fallen squarely into the backyard, crushing

 fence and hedge alike. when our landlady, a nervous and fastidious widow, finds out, she will have sixteen heart attacks, and what then shall we do with her body, except to use it as an offering to placate the cannibal gangs soon to roam Northern Boulevard? Already I have heard wild shrieks and gibbering from inside the shell of the old Scobee Diner. how soon before they emerge to demand tribute?In the parlor, Adam plays endless tuneless choruses of “Hot Cross Buns” on that instrument of torture he calls a recorder. I would snap it in two, but I must conserve my strength for future hardships.