Ben McIntyre: The Spy And The Traitor

The Soviet sniffer dog had almost certainly never smelt anything like cheese and onion crisps before.  She offered a crisp to one of the dogs, which wolfed it down before being led away by the unsmiling handler. The other dog, however, was now sniffing at the boot of the Sierra.  Gordievsky could hear muffled Russian voices overhead.

As the dog circled the boot, Caroline Ascot reached for a weapon that had  never been deployed before in the Cold War or any other. She placed Florence on the car boot directly over the hidden spy and began changing her nappy – which the baby, with immaculate timing, had just filled. She then dropped the soiled and smelly diaper next to the inquisitive Alsatian. The dog duly slunk off, offended. Olfactory diversion had never been part of the plan . The nappy ruse had been completely spontaneous and highly effective.

Starlight Serenade

 

 

One morning recently I was drifting awake to the sound of my radio and I heard a rich tenor voice singing these words

You came when the stars were gleaming

You came after all my dreaming

That night when they played the Starlight Serenade

For you, with the stars above you….

Gert is addicted to…

What better use could you have for your shut-at-home hours than this excellent and addictive hobby?

Hillbilly Elegy- J.D.Vance

 

J D Vance dedicates his memoir thus, For Mamaw and Papaw, my very own hillbilly terminators. He was only thirty-one when his memoir was published in 2016, but he had come a long way from Jackson, Kentucky, the place he thought of as home. Here is his description,

Jackson is a small town of about six thousand in the heart of southeastern Kentucky’s coal country….Most of the people live in the mountains surrounding Kentucky Highway 15, in trailer parks, in government-subsidized housing, in small farmhouses, and in mountain homesteads like the one that served as the backdrop for the fondest memories of my childhood.

Cathleen Schine: The Grammarians

Feelin’ Good

Birds flyin’ high, you know how I feel

Sun in the sky, you know how I feel

Breeze driftin’ on by, you know how I feel

Lemonade out of lemons: the new you

So you can’t go to the hairdresser.  Why not take the chance to create an entirely new you? Here are some ideas you can try at home:

Station Eleven- Emily St John Mandel

Emily St John Mandel wrote Station Eleven in 2014, eleven years post SARS, but well before our present pandemic. I read it a few weeks ago and hesitated to publish my comments, as it concerns a pandemic which has wiped out 99% of the population of the world. It is our current situation greatly multiplied, but still her key hopeful ideas remain true. That the arts and music keep society alive, as does remembering or somehow piecing together our history.  But above all it is the cooperation of the tribe that makes life start again and where meaning is generated.

Happiness

If, like Gert, you’ve been out of your usual whirl of cocktail parties, media appearances and clamourings for your advice on all sorts of subjects, you may appreciate this poem Happiness, which popped into our mailbox courtesy of the Paris Review’s Daily Poem service: