Party Time

It's my niece's 18th birthday. She's already had a party for her friends and today she's having one for the family. Ailz's parents will be there (groan, grit teeth) and some uncles probably. I'm making my speciality rice salad to take along.

J is a cool kid. Rebellious, intelligent. Go, J, go!

The Price of Empire

Watching Tim Henman at Wimbledon- and studying his parents sitting in their box- his dad like Rameses II with a little more flesh on the bones- and I realize why I dislike the guy so much: he represents that snooty, repressed, public school stiff-upper-lippedness that I had to struggle so hard against in myself. He's what I was- an emotional retard, a child of empire.

So watch out, you Americans. This is what running an empire does to you. It drains out the vital juices. It makes you as brittle and ghostly as rice paper. It turns you into Celia fucking Johnson.