Virtually nothing to report. I don’t think I’ve done any knitting since I was here last. Certainly no photography. C. came and got me around the garden. It was another rather nice day, for December.

 

Comments: Chloe and Jean, my memory of the polio vaccine (not to be relied upon) is that it started out as a drop of something on a lump of sugar. That would have been in New Jersey, perhaps just after the war.

 

It is interesting that people down south have appointments for their covid vaccinations already. I’m more than happy to wait, but there’s always a nagging anxiety connected with having heard nothing. Do they know that I’m 87? And here all alone?

 

Degrees of separation

 

I have been floundering around the last couple of days, wondering what to read next. Another Pym, perhaps? A degree of toughness, but low on violence, is what’s wanted. God has answered the question, rather sharply, and I am now well embarked on The Honourable Schoolboy. I’ve read most of Le Carre, but that one not in the last two years (I’ve kept lists) and not on the Kindle (Amazon would remind me) – so possibly not at all.

 

One of David Cornwell’s sons is a mosaicist. He has written an article for the journal Andamento (what does that mean?) which Helen edits. She has been corresponding with him about the biographical paragraph which will accompany the article, and had this email from him yesterday:

 

Helen

Not an excuse to use often - he wouldn't have let it interrupt him - but my father passed away last night and things a bit crazy at the minute, 

Tim

 

I told her to write back and say, He was a great man. But she knows Tim only as a mosaicist and thinks it would be embarrassing to reveal that she knows who his father is. I think he wouldn’t notice in the general fuss,  but she’s the Englishwoman, I’m just an American. I mean to print it out, anyway, and insert in a copy of something. I’m not sure we have anything on paper here. “The Little Drummer Girl” (my fave) and perhaps “The Constant Gardener” are available in Kirkmichael, though.

 

However, it certainly means that I’m only three degrees away from John Le Carre. The same degree from Evelyn Waugh, also due to Helen who knew his son Auberon and also a granddaughter, ??Daisy. And I’m only two from Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, through my own efforts. (See this blog for January, 2018.) That’s pretty well late-20^th-century literature covered.

 

The first two news bulletins I heard last night, didn’t even mention his real name. Perhaps there was a late-night editor on duty who didn’t know that he wasn’t named John le Carre.