You may have noticed that there has been no mention of riparian walks up to Richmond recently. The towpath is narrow but walkers are good at stepping into the bushes to pass safely.
Yesterday’s post was fiction. Today’s sounds like fiction but is true. It starts in Pondolàndia – where? Is that what pretentious people call Poundland?
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.
It seems to me it’s unusual to have a surname that is a vegetable or herb. The Broccoli dynasty of Bond fame, of course, and the fictional Parsnip created by Evelyn Waugh to mock WH Auden in Put Out More Flags. So I’m pleased to add Parsley to my trug.
Looking at the coronavirus statistics around the world is a daily addiction. Like most addictions, unhealthy and pointless – I expect I will get spots or worse. This Eastertide I want to look at the Easter Rising in Dublin 104 years ago. First the stats.
I hoped to wake up in Skopje this morning; in the Balkans following in the footsteps of Saki who was there before the First World War as foreign corespondent for The Morning Post; a warm, sunny Easter weekend ahead.
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.
I sent an e mail on the Sabbath; I cast my bread upon the waters. The quote continues “for you will find it after many days”. This makes no investment sense. Chucking a perfectly good crust away and getting a soggy, mouldy, inedible mess back is akin to investing with Neil Woodford. But I digress.