Saturday commute xcii: following the ground

Our meadow grasses licked our boots with frost, the seething soil rose earthy to our nostrils, a slant-ing light reflected from the silver as it melted.

Fiano gave way to Barolo.

I'm fine with the font

  

    not so sure

    about the

    punctuation

    

 I doubt if it ends. A blog
 posting sometimes prefig-
 ures, sometimes recalls an
 experience extruded by met-
 aphor. This morning Thorny,
 my English Cocker, exuber-
 ant to be feeling swell af-
 ter a long run in a frosty
 meadow, careened into my
 desk and demolished a clas-
 sic lamp from Artemide, one
 of two from the year of its
 release. A predecessor of
 his, Robbie, munched a first
 edition of Alexander Pope.

 Pillage doesn't have a la-
 tent punctuation, but among
 the options, the full stop
 is the last one imaginable.

 Still, the picture makes a
 point. It can be amusing.

        From the basement there emanated a great brou. Ha ha.
        'They're all there. Down below. Hear them romping a-
        round? They're prehistoric. Because, as I told you,
        to me, billiards ..'




















Raymond Queneau
Zazie dans le métro
Barbara Wright, translation
Penguin, 1960©

Same-old, same-old Curzon Street

  Violating my holiday from

  care, Heywood Hill wrote

  in to announce their new

  website, and I summarily

  offer the penalty of hot

  publicity in the same me-

  dium. We've visited them

  before from this address,

  but this time I leave it

  all up to John le Carré,

  in a well-recollected in-

  stance of intrusion upon

  a fellow's private time.

.. he solemnly set off for

Heywood Hill's bookshop in

Curzon Street, where he oc-

casionally contracted friend-

ly bargains with the prop-

rietor. On the way he became

even more irritable, and from

a call-box sought an appoint-

ment with his solicitor for

that afternoon.

"George, how can you be so vulgar?

Nobody divorces Ann. Send her flow-

ers and come to lunch."

This advice bucked him up and he

approached Heywood Hill with a mer-

ry heart only to walk slap into the

arms of Roddy Martindale emerging

from Trumper's after his weekly

haircut.

Martindale had no valid claim on

Smiley either professionally or

socially. He worked on the fleshy

side of the Foreign Office and his

job consisted of lunching visiting

dignitaries whom no one else would

have entertained in his woodshed ..

He affected buttonholes and pale

suits, and pretended on the flim-

siest grounds to an intimate famil-

iarity with the large back rooms 

of Whitehall.

With due regard for my shameless

fondness for Trumper's Portugal -

a happy evocation of another Age

in California - I credit the nov-

elist for a withering appreciation

of that very same fateful juxtapo-

sition we've all experienced, of

the sublime bookstore and the tem-

ple of vanity. Here was Tillman

Place, there Tiffany; here was

Scott Martin, opposite Wilkes.

This lent many a fanciful jaunt

the flatulence and bad company of

a supererogatory lunch, and not

a reader has lacked for Smiley's

regret of Martindale.

Hurrah for HH, as ever.

John le Carré

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Penguin Books, 1974©

Christie quits, desiring higher status

The office of the Governor

of New Jersey announced to-

day his retreat from thrust-

ing a celebration of bigotry

before voters in the Garden

State, and abandoning his

appeal to the State's high-

est court, to extend the

exile of same-sex couples 

to second-class status of 

citizenship. For this, he

expects forgetfulness, and

and he'll probably get it,

from himself.

Garden State Equality v. Dow