My solution has been to scroll through my life, my thoughts, my fantasies, my memories, mis-memories, and the like until I have chanced upon events, people, or narratives that I can employ to divert my mind from the body in which it is encased. These mental exercises have to be interesting enough to hold my attention and see me through an intolerable itch in my inner ear or lower back; but they also have to be boring and predictable enough to serve as a reliable prelude and encouragement to sleep. It took me some time to identify this process as a workable alternative to insomnia and physical discomfort and it is by no means infallible. But I am occasionally astonished, when I reflect upon the matter, at how readily I seem to get through, night after night, week after week, month after month, what was once an almost insufferable nocturnal ordeal. I wake up in exactly the position, frame of mind, and state of suspended despair with which I went to bed—which in the circumstances might be thought a considerable achievement.

The fact that there are not enough hours in the day and I’ve taken on too much.

That to-do list I am supposed to get through but can’t summon the energy for in these weird, distracted times.

Worry about work: it’s a precarious business being an actor.

Not being active in my own desires.

When I was a child, it was a bus driver or engine driver; then, when I was a teenager, I went to the theatre and wanted to be an actor.

Just remembered, really.

I was very proud of doing Falstaff, because it seemed to go well.

Reading aloud the last two pages of a book about Montaigne by Sarah Bakewell. It was about his relationship with his cat, and a letter to a friend whose dog had died. It’s about letting the unexpected happen to you, and how that can really be what life is about.

Picking tiny bits of glass out of long grass for Haringey council, 45 years ago.