A dish of clams at the restaurant called Brawn in London where we meet for a family lunch. The restaurant, on the corner of a street in Bethnal Green is full of sunlight. We drink Sauvignon de Touraine.A neighbour rather apologetically offers me a book in a blue cardboard box. It is a gift from shop in the town of whom he is a customer. "It's of no use to me," he says. It is bound in leather and has a tongue which feeds in to a loop to close it. The leaves are gilt edged. Is it a diary? Or a bible? It is just a book with plain leaves, no lines, no squares, just blank pages. I gladly accept. I find it hard to resist such things. Blank pages call out for words to make them happy.
The holly trees round here are laden with berries. Such displays ares supposed to promise a cold winter. But perhaps they just mean that it is a good year for holly, as one might say in June, it's a good year for roses.
4 comments:
I can see that's one way of looking at an empty exercise-book. But there's another involving une vierge and violation. Or perhaps it's just me. I dislike being the first to open a box of crackers, to break into a new bar of chocolate, etc, etc. But not with bottles of wine.
Those clams look amazing.
I too find beautiful stationery hard to resist - but I never seem to have words worthy of more than a scrap of paper.
Winston Churchill, when he first took up landscape painting as a hobby, describes his reluctance once his palette was prepared, oil and turpentine ready, brushes fanned out, to spoil the lovely expanse of the canvas on the easel before him.
The clams look like the little palourdes from the bay of Mt St Michel, I went looking for them yesterday but didn't find any, and the bigger 'praires' are just a bit too chewy really. Bought brown shrimps and a crab claw instead! A light filled room and seafood and crisp white wine on a winter's day sound as close to heaven as one might get...
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