Things bubble up and stick in my head sometimes. I don't know if it is meaningful in any way. But I keep seeing myself as a small child in the country, all unknowing, being driven off to church on a Sunday morning along dusty roads. It was largely wasted on me though I think the message 'you are your brother's keeper' got stuck in there, more or less permanently. I also keep remembering being at King's Cross, in the early hours of the morning, in the company of friends and strangers. There was no message there, the whole thing was totally devoid of content. I wasn't in the least bit comfortable with it.

Sir,
A little light may be shed, with advantage, upon the high-handed methods of the Passports Department at the Foreign Office. On the form provided for the purpose I described my face as 'intelligent'. Instead of finding this characterization entered, I have received a passport on which some official utterly unknown to me, has taken it upon himself to call my face 'oval'.

Yours very truly,
Bassett Digby

February 17th, 1915.

From The First Cuckoo: Letters to The Times since 1900 (1976)

'Rameau was personally known to all the great literary men of the age, Voltaire, Rousseau, and many others whose writings still endure, but though many mention him, his art, his musical reforms, his influence upon French music, there is not one who says a good word of Rameau the man. The kindest of them say nothing. The others, such as Piron, Diderot and Grimm, have bequeathed this unprepossessing picture. The best that can be said is that at a time when principles tended to be lax, he was scrupulously honest, as particular in meeting his own obligations as he expected others to be in meeting theirs, a good and respectable citizen, a wise, if strict father, and a man whose repute could not be impaired even by his enemies. In short, a dour but just man, scarcely fitted to be the hero of a romance, but probably a very good husband, except for that rather repellent trait, his inordinate love of money.'

By Edwin Evans in Music of All Nations, Vol. 5, ed. Sir Henry J. Wood (date unknown).

That's the sort of thing I don't like to say. (And yes, there should be a circumflex in there. I don't know how to do that on here).

I mentioned new babies yesterday. Today, because of a little coincidence with a name I remembered something. After my third child was born (not much fun because the anaesthetists were on strike) my obstetrician kissed me with quite astonishing fervour. I was quite startled even though I was still under the influence of some powerful narcotic. Funnily enough I really wasn't in the mood for that sort of thing.

Everybody needs a(n) URL, so I'm told. This feels a bit like getting used to a new baby without having episiotomy stitches and hot engorged breasts.
(Some times I talk like that).