nightwork
It is a favourite notion of romantic young men that misery can be forgotten in work. If the work can be done late at night, all the better. And if the combination of misery and work can be brought together in an attic a very high degree of melancholy self-satisfaction may be achieved, for in spite of the supposed anti-romantic bias of our age the traditionof work, love, attics, drink and darkness is still powerful. The only real difficulty lies in balancing the level of the work against the level of the misery; at any moment the misery is likely to slop over into the work, and drown it.