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Spring and all that...
Tuesday, 27 September 2005 09:47 am"In the spring a livelier iris gleams upon the burnished dove... Right-o! then. Bring me my whangee, my yellowest spats and the old green Homburg. I'm going into the park to do pastoral dances".
Or, if Bertie Wooster is a little too opaque for your tastes (what's a whangee, anyway?*), try Dorothy Parker for the converse: "Summer makes me drowsy, Autumn makes me sing, Winter's pretty lousy, but I hate Spring ... Every year, back comes spring, with nasty little birds yapping their fool heads off and the ground all mucked up with arbutus."
Actually, I quite like Spring, yapping birdies and all. Cape Town is green and leafy, and strange quail-like birds (or possibly frogs) are burbling their heads off on the mountain. Even better, today it's doing a classically Capetonian spirited imitation of winter. There's a wintry bite in the air, and it rained all night, and today is all damp and full of random rainbows, and my garden is happy and smelling glorious (buddleya and Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow), and all the grotty pollen that has made me sneeze explosively at 10-second intervals for the last 5 days, unless drugged to the nines, has been laid, like an unquiet nasal ghost. I have almost caught up on sleep from the weekend. Life, if not precisely good owing to randomised academic angst and the fact that I still ache all over from the weekend, is at least looking up.
Also, I found a new author. This month's Fantasy & Science Fiction has a perfectly gorgeous piece of surreality by Kelly Link, who is off-the-wall brilliant. "Magic for Beginners" is about a TV program called "The Library" in which a bunch of kids (the main character has the most randomly eccentric family life I have ever seen in a literary forum, Addams Family included) are addicted to a random and inexplicable TV program called "The Library", which is about a self-contained library universe in which fantasical, inexplicable, amazing things happen. I even put off watching the next Lexx movie last night in order to curl up on the sofa and giggle continuously over Kelly Link. Will achieve her latest collection pronto.
* I lurve Google, that word has bugged me since I first read PG Wodehouse. A whangee is a bamboo walking stick, presumably suitable for swishing.
Or, if Bertie Wooster is a little too opaque for your tastes (what's a whangee, anyway?*), try Dorothy Parker for the converse: "Summer makes me drowsy, Autumn makes me sing, Winter's pretty lousy, but I hate Spring ... Every year, back comes spring, with nasty little birds yapping their fool heads off and the ground all mucked up with arbutus."
Actually, I quite like Spring, yapping birdies and all. Cape Town is green and leafy, and strange quail-like birds (or possibly frogs) are burbling their heads off on the mountain. Even better, today it's doing a classically Capetonian spirited imitation of winter. There's a wintry bite in the air, and it rained all night, and today is all damp and full of random rainbows, and my garden is happy and smelling glorious (buddleya and Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow), and all the grotty pollen that has made me sneeze explosively at 10-second intervals for the last 5 days, unless drugged to the nines, has been laid, like an unquiet nasal ghost. I have almost caught up on sleep from the weekend. Life, if not precisely good owing to randomised academic angst and the fact that I still ache all over from the weekend, is at least looking up.
Also, I found a new author. This month's Fantasy & Science Fiction has a perfectly gorgeous piece of surreality by Kelly Link, who is off-the-wall brilliant. "Magic for Beginners" is about a TV program called "The Library" in which a bunch of kids (the main character has the most randomly eccentric family life I have ever seen in a literary forum, Addams Family included) are addicted to a random and inexplicable TV program called "The Library", which is about a self-contained library universe in which fantasical, inexplicable, amazing things happen. I even put off watching the next Lexx movie last night in order to curl up on the sofa and giggle continuously over Kelly Link. Will achieve her latest collection pronto.
* I lurve Google, that word has bugged me since I first read PG Wodehouse. A whangee is a bamboo walking stick, presumably suitable for swishing.
