Such sad but not unexpected news

Peedeel has been in self-quarantine since last Monday. He is poorly but recovering. And he is happy that while most people bulk purchased toilet rolls, he bulk purchased brandy!

Sadly the girls, both totally symptomless, have had to self-isolate also. We are here together but apart, and so alone – I am, it seems, the poisoned apple in paradise.

Cheers for now, boys & girls

The Stripper’s Manual

(all words from a B & Q leaflet on paint stripping)

keep cool
don’t work in hot weather
as layers need to be removed
it needs skill so don’t do it
out of doors when windy
remove all charred spots
and flammable items
set fire to birds’ nests
keep water buckets handy
just in case
and wear gloves
it’s smelly
moist
and sticky

Kriss Nichol

Two from dear Brendan (perhaps a day late?)

I’m a drinker with writing problems.

Brendan Behan
Interviews and Recollections

saw a sign that said ‘Drink Canada Dry’. So I did.

Brendan Behan
The Quare Fellow

scíth a ligean

swim in the sky

Oh, God, I know no joy as great as a moment of rushing into a new love, no ecstasy like that of a new love. I swim in the sky; I float; my body is full of flowers, flowers with fingers giving me acute, acute caresses, sparks, jewels, quivers of joy, dizziness, such dizziness. Music inside of one, drunkenness. Only closing the eyes and remembering, and the hunger, the hunger for more, more, the great hunger, the voracious hunger, and thirst.

Anaïs Nin
The Diary Of Anais Nin (30 May 1934)

in a suddenly cavernous space

There’s power in the touch of another person’s hand. We acknowledge it in little ways, all the time. There’s a reason human beings shake hands, hold hands, slap hands, bump hands. It comes from our very earliest memories, when we all come into the world blinded by light and colour, deafened by riotous sound, flailing in a suddenly cavernous space without any way of orienting ourselves, shuddering with cold, emptied with hunger, and justifiably frightened and confused. And what changes that first horror, that original state of terror? The touch of another person’s hands. Hands that wrap us in warmth, that hold us close. Hands that guide us to shelter, to comfort, to food. Hands that hold and touch and reassure us…

Jim Butcher
Skin Game

sorting science fiction and speculative fiction from literary fiction

Literary fiction is a shelving category. The taxonomical insistence on sorting science fiction and speculative fiction from literary is something that drives me crazy. We talk about crossover fiction and things that strad­dle these two worlds. Of course, what there actually is, is a gradient. There’s never a clear division between those things. In Gnomon, there’s an interesting conversation to be had. On the one hand, it’s the most nakedly science fictional book I’ve done. We have a futuristic society, albeit one that’s close to where we are. I even gave a date, close to the middle of this century, or maybe mid-end. Then obviously there’s at least one character who’s directly science fictional, coming from the far future and traveling in time. On the other hand, when I started writing the book, I was inventing technology for surveillance, and by the time it came out, almost all of that technology was real.

Nick Harkaway
A Little Bit Quantum

(Nick Harkaway is the pseudonym of Nicholas Cornwell, son of David Cornwall whose pen name is, of course, John le Carré)