PIP, PIP HOORAY

The blog apologises for the dearth of posts recently, having been walking round Toulouse and discovering the wonderful Japanese garden and vast Catholic cemetery while on holiday in that city.

Strange are the paths that lead us to books. My Sony e-reader arrived with 100 free classics, and I am finally and happily plugging many embarrassing holes in my literary bucket, because - like mountains - the books are there, albeit virtually. Our older readers may have grasped the allusion to an ancient, repetitive, popular ditty involving holes, buckets and other items. They don't write them like that any more.

At the moment, I'm digitally processing Great Expectations, and, as ever with reading Dickens after a long absence, I'm enthralled by the sheer brilliance of his prose, which is often used to such wonderful comic effect. For example:

My sister, Mrs. Joe, throwing the door wide open, and finding an obstruction behind it, immediately divined the cause.....She concluded by throwing me - I often served as a connubial missile - at Joe, who, glad to get hold of me on any terms, passed me into the chimney and quietly fenced me up there with his great leg.

The humour is of course counterpointed with scenes of the grotesque, the squalid, and the emotional or sentimental, all stamped with the same wit and eloquence.

I may even finally get round to watching the film.

David