Though my innate contrariness rebels against creeping literalism, it would be perverse not to mention the six-day war in which Putin’s army has already sustained greater human losses, 6727 dead and wounded as of this writing, than in either of the two Chechen wars or after a decade of fighting in Syria. I can, however, lessen the injury to my authorial ego by at least beginning from afar.
As the gentle reader has surely noted, in my sketches of the last few weeks I sought to uncover some unacknowledged – I could even say hushed up – producers of dopamine and all the other happy hormones in the brain of modern man.
The evident pleasure taken by a habitual liar in the climactic moment of prevarication can be likened to that of a rogue builder – in London he would be Irish, although Albanians, I gather, are edging out the Irish nowadays – at the final hammer stroke when he hangs your bathroom cabinet upside down.
In England a Member of Parliament otherwise not known for his folly told a newspaper some days ago that the expected Russian invasion of Ukraine would almost certainly result in a dramatic increase in the price of biscuits, which is what the British call cookies.
I hadn’t planned on pursuing this line of argument in the present series of posts, I really hadn’t. I thought it far too obvious a direction….
With apologies to George Orwell, whose memoir my title evokes, in this post I propose to begin uncovering some hidden strings of human character which, not to put too fine a point on it, make the music of happiness
Kazakhstan! Kazakhstan! It’s even funnier in Italian: Kazakistan, with more k’s than you see in a lifetime round these parts, all the more absurd because in Russian kazaki is “Cossacks,” a Christian people settled along the Dnieper and the Don….
I often play on a chess site, against opponents from all over the world known only by their monikers, particularly when I have some time on my hands that is freer than my free time. Admittedly this last, as the gentle reader is likely right to surmise, is very nearly always.
Some months back a wise friend of mine observed that the frequency with which I sound off on Russia – notwithstanding that I am tied to this troublesome part of the world by “propinquity and property of blood” – is likely to fatigue the gentle reader.
My firstborn Nikolai is in Palermo this week to meet his new brother and, perspicaciously, has brought with him a liter of excellent French brandy to mark the occasion. “Your Christmas pudding, Father,” he said, handing over the ornate gold-topped bottle.
