Wilfred Thesiger
Homosexual?! Never! ;o)

Being a writer...
...is just the way some people are made, says AL Kennedy.

I preferred stories to healthful and nourishing exercise outdoors, I made things up as often as possible, collected words like amphibian and carried them around with me like pets. I liked to examine reality, in order to think things different, to make them what they were not. Language, I met as if I were returning to a friend, to a part of myself - it seemed to be a place where I could be.

Damn right, missus.

I am dying, Egypt, dying...
"Precious, precious, precious! My Precious! O my Precious!" -- Gollum

"Tell Inspector Patterson that the papers which he needs to convict the gang are in pigeonhole M., done up in a blue envelope and inscribed "Moriarty." I made every disposition of my property before leaving England and handed it to my brother Mycroft. Pray give my greetings to Mrs. Watson, and believe me to be, my dear fellow
Very sincerely yours,
SHERLOCK HOLMES." -- Sherlock Holmes

"Ah! I have kissed your mouth, Iokanaan, I have kissed your mouth. Your lips had a bitter taste. Was it the taste of blood? . . . Perhaps it was the taste of love. They say that love has a bitter taste. . . . But what does it matter? What does it matter? I have kissed your mouth." -- Salome

All the above, and more, in Last Words of fictional characters. Really diverting.

Bye bye, Bayyybee....
...time to hit the road to dreamland... *big grin* This is all about the news that Tony Blair's Director of Communications and Strategy, Alastair Campbell, has announced his resignation. Damn right. It makes today feel very much more like Friday than it really is, actually... :o)

So he's always been Governor of California.
And we've never known. Tsk. I call it a deception. A slip of the tongue by a news source gives away the secret. But then, that's no surprise - after all, it's American poltiics. Or just politics. :o)

Crash, boom, kerrrr---ack
I love thunderstorms. But we never ever get proper loud crashes and ground heaves and lightning - until tonight that is, when I even thought about turning my computer off. There was a big hit about a quarter of a mile away I'd guess - can't see where it went but I can hear fire sirens all over the city, now that the booming has calmed a little. And it's all thanks to this little critter here, right above Northern Ireland.

Anyone who doesn't know where Northern Ireland is on that satellite pic - please leave a comment. I'd like to mock you. ;o)

New purchases
Yesterday, I went into Waterstone's and had a look at their "3 for 2" shelves and tables. Bought The Necropolis Railway by Andrew Martin, which seems to be a very atmospheric thriller, Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self, which is a superb biography of the London diarist; and The Eagle's Shadow by Mark Hertsgaard, which promises to be an interesting critique of monolithic 21st-century America.

Ahhh. Now all I need is a big chair and a couple of cushions, and a ready supply of gin.

No planes, some trains, no automobiles, and a few ships
I'm not a transport nut, but with Ghost Ship now released on Region 2 DVD, it send my mind whirling back to the wonderful site about sunken ocean liners. And that sent my mind whirling back to site after site about other ghostly old transport stuff: a gargantuan old railway station in London, and the quirks and oddities of the same city's mouldering abandoned underground stations.