Whoops! End of chapter two and yet another face is aflame with excitement. These guys need to be careful. One of them could expire from instantaneous combustion. The other problem with this book, as it is sometimes with plays, is that in order to keep us informed, in this instance about history, religion, archaeology etc., characters keep telling each other things they already know and they know that they know so it just doesn’t sound natural. Okay so the facts might be very interesting but surely there is a better way of putting them? Isn’t there?
The gales of Crete have blown a thousand dead bougainvillea flowers into the lobby (slight exaggeration) and the garden rubbish should be dry enough now to start burning again. The cotton sheets are off the bed and the flannel ones take their place together with a blanket for the first time, the nights are definitely getting cooler.
Songololo (Zulu, I think though most probably misspelt), sarandapotharoosa (Greek), millipede (English), what strange little creatures they are, trolling along, their little lergs going twenty to the dozen. I know nothing about them except that the pets all stray clear. Cats usually investigate anything that moves but they studiously ignore them. What do millipedes eat? How long do they live? What brings them into the house? Is it a sense of exploration? Last night I discovered, not for the first time, one in my bathroom. Now my bathroom from a door through which the creature must have entered the house is about a mile or more in millipede distance, there are a number of stairs to climb to reach it and there’s no way out but back, but there he was, wandering around the floor of the shower. I should have thrown him back into the garden but left him there and went to bed and this morning he was curled up against the wall, stone cold dead in the market, or in the shower anyway so I flushed him down the loo instead. Maybe I’ll look up Google and find out more about them. If I were a Buddhist I would be thoroughly ashamed of myself.
Watched part of a film called “Orlando”, written and directed by one Sally Potter and with Quentin Crisp as Elizabeth the first. Beautifully costumed, beautifully photographed but eventually rather boring, an art house picture for those who like that sort of thing. Orlando played by a beautiful woman. Surely Miss Potter and her casting director could have found a beautiful boy? These days of course they would. And who is Miss Potter that she could raise the finance for a film for a minority audience? I certainly cannot see Ford Mondeo man forking out his cash at the box office. Maybe I’ll look up Miss Potter on Google as well.