wall laughing last

Peels and cracks and strata revealed.

So impressed am I with Victor Hugo's compelling novel, The Laughing Man, that I have ordered a copy in English, to give to the next deserving person I encounter. I am only half way though the French original L'Homme qui Rit and find it difficult to put down. It is the first Hugo novel that I have read. The better know Notre Dame and Les Miserables have not appealed perhaps because of their fame as films and musicals. The pocket sized classic English edition of L'Homme... arrives to day.  When at school we learnt and recited VH's lament for the Battle of Waterloo which begins " Waterloo, Waterloo, morne plaine!...and produced mixed feeling of triumph, guilt for being on the winning side, and laughter because Waterloo station, just round the corner, badly fitted the melancholic alexandrine  music of the words.

Today the last of this summer's extraordinary crop of courgettes are to be grated, fried seasoned with a little feta cheese added to some beaten eggs,  and turned into a fritata, an Italian omelet of which we have  become very fond.