The other day rom said "you can still like someone even if you know they don't like you"

And I think he is right. There is this monster book of Kingsley Amis's letters that I read a while ago. It has bits in that you read and go, oh great, this is going to make me laugh on and off for the rest of my life. Lots of it is very mean on a sort of personal level as well as just a this is no way to see the world level, but it's very very very easy to get really into that as well.

While I was reading it I kept remembering that even though I so desperately wanted him to be
a) still alive
b) my best pal
it was important to keep in mind that he would HATE me. He would dismiss me as a drip and a nerd and a Fucking Woman. But still I don't care. I love him and I wish he would have loved me.

Here is him writing to his real best pal, talking about his father in law:
An old man i hate has come to stay with us for a few, but not nearly few enough, days...Alas, there he was at the train station, his resentful ape's face peering about all round me without seeing me, finally moving off to the right and out of my view. had he fallen down a grating? No, he'd just slipped away to the left, after his feint to the right, so as to take me in the rear. Squirting me with talk, he followed me home. Whenever his face was turned away from mine, i screwed my own into a dazzle pattern of hatred and fury...i shall swing for the old cockchafer unless i put him in a book, recognisably, so that he will feel hurt and bewildered at being so hated.

and here he is talking about his brother in law:


"When we arrived back here, my sister-in-law's husband announced that he and his wife were going to Paris for a week instead of the four days agreed upon. When they had gone, after telling us that they had broken our iron, we looked round the house and found that they had broken the wringer, drunk the rum i asked them not to drink, and left several week-old dirty saucepans in the sink. But old Rodge gave us a gas poke for Christmas and paid the electricity bill, so that's all right you see NO it isnt THEYVE PUT IT RIGHT you see NO they havent WE CAN CALL IT SQUARE you see NO thats just how we shall be unable to call it."

the whole book is like that.