Del: (Or Ms Rain or Dela, or Lluvypie, or whatever. I haven't yet found a diminutive that feels right for you. What should I go with? Can you think of one that you like?)
I think The Coming Plague mentioned one scientist whose courage failed him on the hunt for Ebola/Marburg and he got off the plane before it even left the States.
Ah yes, that would be me. I remember flying home to London during the height of the SARS scare in Toronto, and the woman next to me sneezed and coughed the entire time. It took all of my self control not to shriek "Get off this plane you disease riddled old hag! A curse on you and your festering pestilential germs!". I didn't. I was very nice, and offered her kleenex. But I wanted to smother her with my mini pillow. I would make a terrible epidemiologist.
Well, when you move to London, you know where my house is. Cross the Abbey road crosswalk so you're facing the studio, and turn left. Keep walking for about thirty seconds, and you'll be there. Number 24. Watch out for the cat, she bites.
Oh, you're so right about the casting of Smilla's Sense of Snow. Gabriel Byrne, Jim Broadbent, Julia Ormond, and wasn't Tom Wilkinson in it too? Shame it wasn't all it could be.
I forgot to write before about how much I loved Robin Lane Fox's book on Alexander. It makes me laugh because every weekend in the Financial Times in the U.K., he has a column on.......gardening. It's so great. This erudite, tweed-wearing old fellow happily nattering on about aphids and bindweed, and debating the merits of
Rosa Rugosa and
Rosa Rugosa Alba. Long live the English eccentric.
Henrypie:Speaking of London,
I was in London for an academic year, experiencing depression. The second apartment I lived in -- after I moved from a nicer one to save money -- was truly squalid: no heat; little furniture; fleas; a human poo right in front of the door downstairs one day. But only just that once. And of course I'm not sure it was a human poo. But I'm kinda sure.
Oh yay. Depression in London. Been there, done that. No fecal matter on my doorstep, though. That really takes the biscuit. Nice that you had a
slight margin of doubt about its provenance, anyway. What part of London were you based in? Where I grew up in St. John's Wood, there was a red-faced old codger across the street who used to get out his chalk and circle any doggie turdlets that were left abandoned on the pavement. Boy, he would just get hopping mad. Hey, they weren't
my turdlets. Sidewalk sausages are a strong argument for cats, I feel.
That's not a bad collection of books to be holed up with, though. Speaking of Smiley, have you ever read her
All True Travels and Adventures of Lydie Newton? I took the year off from school in 2003 to teach English in Honduras, and it was the only goddamn book in Tegucigalpa that I could find that wasn't in Spanish. Well, there was that and Tom Clancy's
Clear and Present Danger, and I'm not too proud to admit that I devoured that, too. But the Smiley's a goodie. I wept. Oh, how I wept. Generally, books don't make me cry, but I
howled over Lydie Newton.
I've never read any Updike. Philistine, aren't I? Should I start with
In The Beauty of the Lilies?