Category: Literature

Antarctic Storm

Patrick O’Brian wrote sustained passages conveying the tedium of life at sea, naval engagements and storms. Here HMS Surprise encounters a storm in the Antarctic Ocean.

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Pickers

I wrote about The Picnic Papers almost four years ago. Confined to barracks I remember wistfully childhood picnics.

Steel’s List

I parted with my 1960 edition of Crockford’s Clerical Directory but found it a good home in Wales. I judged, probably incorrectly, that it was surplus to requirements in my burgeoning shelves of reference books.

Coronavirus Chronicle II

Sunday 29th March, 2020 Woke up unusually late, 7.30, feeling rather seedy. A surfeit of The King’s Ginger more likely than coronavirus. Unlike me, my iPad remembered the UK had changed to British Summer Time.

Who’s Who

Oh the shame of it. It turns out I have been self-isolating for years, living in social Siberia if you will. Anyone of any consequence has caught the virus but it hasn’t sneaked into No 56 yet. The Prince of Wales has had a royal flush.

I Don’t Believe It!

That’s Victor Meldrew’s catchphrase in One Foot in the Grave; a sitcom broadcast on the BBC in the last decade of the 20th century – those halcyon days. Well, I don’t believe it; I don’t believe I’ve never written about Rafael Sabatini.

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A Limpid Dreary Day

This morning I went to the Polish Café by the tube station to buy lunch. It is only doing take-away sales. The corner shop was busy but had run out of eggs. A long queue outside the butcher. A sign on the chemist’s door: “no Ibuprofen, thermometers or hand gel”. Oddbins also have a sign:… Continue reading A Limpid Dreary Day

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Country Life

Plenty of time to catch up on reading. I have just given up on Aldous Huxley’s first novel, Crome Yellow, published in 1921. It seems very dated. I am going to play for safety and re-read Jill the Reckless next – written by PG Wodehouse and also published in 1921.

Welcome to Dystopia

Walking this evening in sunshine in Margravine Cemetery; the grass mown for the first time this year, trees in bud and spring flowers in bloom. The lark, no doubt, on the wing and the snail on the thorn; though it seems a bally silly place for a snail to pick.