Activity

British Airways messed up our flight to Madrid and our English friends had to go on ahead without us. V handled the desk staff so brilliantly, never losing his cool, that he got us a refund for the whole trip, including the hotel, and we even still went, at BA’s expense, though not arriving till di…

G writes. He has been present at the birth of the baby, a girl with ‘long, splayed fingers: I think she could manage a tenth already, on a proportionately reduced piano. I’m dizzy with exhilaration and lack of sleep—exalted, absurdly happy. Is there a plan, Helen, or is it just women carrying on wi…

Janet Malcolm’s big New Yorker essay on the biographers of Sylvia Plath: boom! She shows me that the things I’m too timid to write can be written—that I should trust the stuff that my inner censor has been telling me to scrap. Meanwhile, in the New York Times someone reviews a book: ‘a model polemi…

The imagery V uses in ordinary speech, loaded with reluctance. ‘I’ll dump you off at work.’ ‘I said I’d cart her round the bookshops.’ ‘We’d better get rid of’ (i.e. eat) ‘those potatoes.’ ‘I suppose I’ll drag m’self into town.’ As if the ideal were stasis.

We walked along the creek this morning. Wind very sweet and balmy, a drying wind. High, creamy clouds, burst through by sheets of sparkling sun. The first spring-like morning. The green shoots clearer on every tree, and everything seems in motion, standing up to the wind in good humour.