I read that Scotland lost in the rugby; on the upside they won 6-0 in a
Euro qualifier. That’s soccer. I think it only fair to mention that their
opponents were mighty San Marino, a country that most of us have to look up on
a map and which, when you type the name into a search engine produces the
question, “Why is San Marino a country?” You don’t get that question about,
say, France. The capital, also called San Marino, sits on the slopes of Monte
Titano, which is a fun thing to say when you’ve had a glass of wine. Try it.
This being peak season for squirrel activity, Hamish has been hard at
work keeping us safe. One of the unfortunate side effects of his vigorous
charging around the garden has been a separation from all forms of identity.
This is not a psychic ailment; he lost all his tags.
As any emergency doctor will explain, injuries can happen in the
strangest ways. My lip is currently recovering from attack by breakfast
baguette. Somehow while reading the morning paper and sipping coffee, I lifted
a cheese and bacon sarnie up, and cut my lip. If blood did not pour or spurt
out in the manner that Sam Peckinpah made famous, we can at least say that
there was a smear on the napkin and that said smear returned the following
morning when I tried the trick again. I think I shall have to tell people at
work that I got botox, or was triumphant in a fight.
“So, Mimo, typhoon in Japan, gas leak in Wirksworth, what do you think of our
prospects, survival-wise?”
“Japan has come to my ears, but what is this working with worth?”
“It’s a place.”
“Really?”
“Where my brother lives. There’s gas escaping, a rupture of some sort.”
That perked her up, “The rapture? We have views on that.”
“I’m not surprised. Are they share-able?”
“As in, may I eat your food?”
“I didn’t have that kind of sharing in mind. I’m sure you didn’t hear about
menus that feature, ‘my girlfriend doesn’t want to eat,’ portions. Eminently
sensible idea: if you order these meals the waiter brings portions the size you
want plus extra servings for those who imagine they absorb fewer calories when
the food start out on your plate.”
“No idea what you’re on about. Is there any more of that quinoa medley? We’re
fond of that. Also the tiny bits of cow.”
L. is out of town so dinner earlier in the week with E. and J.,--lovely
salmon and chanterelles. Chanterelles are having something of a bumper
year—down to ten dollars a pound at the market today. Dinner twice on my own,
with movies. Wonderful food, if I say so myself, and a French Western, “The
Sisters Brothers.” Avoid that/
It’s been a week of, “I didn’t know that” about him or her. I watched
Bohemian Rhapsody and wondered why I knew so little about Freddy Mercury. I
think it was because I was in graduate school when Queen were hitting their
peak. I knew the name from Britain in the seventies, but in the eighties I was
working and trying to keep up with professors who wanted you to read all of
George Rudé’s output—more than a dozen books— in a week. I remember
subscribing to the Guardian weekly and reading some football scores and
laughing when someone showed me a cartoon of plaques in the White House,
“Ronald Reagan slept here,” “Ronald Reagan slept here,” but I pretty much
missed who Freddy Mercury was. On the day that she died I bought a copy of
Cokie Roberts, We Are Our Mothers’ Daughters. I remember her from the radio. I
grew up listening to the radio, or wireless as we sometimes still called it;
drama, music, comedy, it all came on the wireless. We had a television, so I
did watch the early episodes of Doctor Who and Monty Python, but radio and my
78 record player shaped me more. People say, “But you must have been listening
to…” Well yes, but not in the way that people who owned an up-to-date record
player did. Me? Records you’ve never heard of.
The thing about radio is you don’t know what people look like, so when
I looked at the book, which has an image of Cokie Roberts of the cover, I
thought two things, “She’s got awfully good teeth for a radio person,” and,
“She doesn’t look old enough to be dead.”
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
