Cavafy

Cavafy lived for poetry but never published a single line. It wasn't that he tried and failed (like Dickinson or Hopkins) but that he chose not to. I guess he was simply too fastidious for the literary life.

On his 70th birthday he took a piece of paper and drew a full stop with a circle round it. Within twelve hours he was dead and buried.

I like his style.

Cool It, Britannia

I haven't been following the Olympics. I don't see why I should take an interest once every four years in sporting events that otherwise interest me not a jot.

Today Britain won a gold in some sort of bicycling dash. Great, fine, let the good times roll.

And the nationalism gets under my skin. Maybe I'm becoming a bore on this subject, but I've always been hostile to those whom Kipling (of all people) called "jelly-bellied flag-flappers". And "God Save the Queen" is such a bloody awful song.

I want us to calm down. I want us to forget the tunes of glory-or at least relegate them to the past- and relax into being a cool, unimportant, unaggressive European nation like Holland. OK, once upon a time we ruled the waves, but that's all over now. If we must brag of national achievement lets brag about the things that endure- like Shakespeare and Stilton cheese.