I wonder how many people are able to match my experience – though I think that their drugs may be more recreational than the anti-flu jab that I had!
Once again the health service in this part of the world lived up to its promise: I had an appointment for 4.15 pm and I was seen just before 4.15 and left within a couple of minutes of being seen after my injection had been administered.
My egress from the place of learning on Friday was swift, so swift indeed that I was able to sit down and read a few more pages of “Earthly Powers” by Burgess on my Kindle.
This interminable, verbose, self indulgent and prolix jeu d’esprit of a writer’s life cobbling together fictionalized portraits of real people and events to create a rambling, well travelled screed in which scandalous, thinly veiled portraits of the good and the great were illustrated in self congratulatory prose left me, ultimately, cold.
In the hands of Nabokov this would have been a quarter of the length and more intellectually satisfying – perhaps pandering to the readers intelligence rather than Burgess’s parading of his own!
It will not stop me reading more of his work; perhaps the long overdue reading of The Malayan Trilogy is called for. I will certainly be tempted if I can find it free as an electronic book.
At the moment my “library” in my Kindle is full of classic, impressive tomes which I am sure that I will not be tempted to read, but are too good not to add when they cost nothing. Perhaps I should set myself a target of at least one World Classic a term.
At the moment the Kindle Store is particularly insistent about Trollope and Sophocles being a major part of my immediate reading. Dream on!
Tomorrow, Toni’s illness permitting, The Family will descend with chestnuts (roasted) and small pine covered pastries for whatever fiesta such things are supposed to celebrate. I am all for these festivities because we have an extra day for the weekend - and four day weeks have a nicer sound to them than the full whack.
I have yet to see a single penny resulting from my last birthday, though I am working on it.
En passant, why does an electronic transfer of funds from one of the richest banks in Britain take four working days to get to a rich bank in Spain? How do the bloodsucking, shameless, crisis-inducing bastards get away with it? As these evil manipulators of other people’s money must deal in millions of pounds every day, they must make substantial amounts of money from a three day delay. God damn them all to hell!
When the money finally gets to me I fear that my resistance to the blandishments of the iPhone will be paper thin: indeed as thin as the notes that will buy one for me!
I consider that I have held out against buying an iPad with a fortitude which does credit to my name – admittedly with printed sheets entitled “12 Reasons I Will Not Buy an iPad” tucked inside my mark book to bolster my strength in time of temptation.
Today I bought the Spanish version of “Stuff” the gadget magazine and that still rates the iPhone 4 top of the available smartphones. It is only a matter of time!
Meanwhile I am preparing to enjoy Sunday – which is a sure sign that Monday is a holiday!
All I ask is a little sun.
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