poliphilo

It seems there's an agreement between the Met Offices in Britain and Ireland to share out the naming of storms- with the consequence that half of those that come barreling through have Irish names. The one that's out there now, driving the rain and pushing the trees about, is called Darragh. I need to feed the birds but I can see that Darragh is going to give me a hard time if I step outside so I'm prevaricating.

The phone just rattled to say it had a message for me. OK, what to you have to say? Something about Colin Firth having some new movie out and I should watch it? No, thanks. Colin Firth is the British Tom Hanks; he seems to be in everything and I can't see why. Decent actors both of them, but neither of them gives me that buzz I get from watching your actual bona fide stars.

I watched a really terrible antique TV play the other day for the sole and simple reason that Patrick Troughton was in it. Troughton was only ever a small-screen star, but he gives me the buzz I don't get from the likes of Hanks and Firth.

I read most of Conrad back in the day without him ever becoming one of my favourite authors. That is changing. I loved my re-read of Heart of Darkness, I loved Lord Jim and now I'm loving Victory. The critics call him an Impressionist but he's not, he's an Expressionist. His plots are extravagant, his landscapes and seascapes hyper-real and symbolical, his characters monstrous- sometimes in a good way, more often not. Interesting fact: Victory was Joan Didion's favourite novel and every time she was going to write one herself she re-read Victory to see how it's done. Conrad is both the last of the great 19th century novelists and the first of the Modernists....

"Deny", "Defend" and "Depose": the three words incised on the bullet casings left behind by the guy who shot the Healthcare CEO. They are suggestive rather than clear- as if written in some private language- but they've got us talking, which must be what the shooter intended. How long before they start appearing on T shirts?