I saw this plaque today and, as usual, realised how much I don’t I know. The picture isn’t mine: it’s on the Ranger’s house but he was at home and I didn’t like to intrude.
The very name, Trieste, is redolent of sadness: I’m thinking of Françoise Sagan’s novel. I went for a Ryanair weekend in 2008 and, to avoid repetition, you can read about it in a post misleadingly titled Tahiti .
James Agate tells the story of a generous but punctilious host, one of whose guests arrived thirty minutes late for a luncheon party. Full of contrition she (of course) explained that she had stopped to buy a chandelier.
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?
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.