A collection of pieces by AB, which I must have taken me over a year to get through, because I was dipping into it every so often. The writing was very good. Some bits I highlighted

• Of his mother, who had been hospitalised for severe depression and was medicated: "Are you my taxi?" she would say to anyone who came near, though this persistent expectation of departure did not necessarily mean she was dissatisfied with her circumstanes, and there are after all worse ways to live than in a constant readiness to depart. The irony was that it would only be when she stopped thinking that she was on the point of departing that she would be pronounced cured and allowed to do so.
• this reminded me of David Nobbs: Typical was the wedding photograph of Uncle George and Aunty Flo, taken around 1925. Uncle George is in a suit, wing collar and spats, Aunty Flo in a white wedding dress and veil, the folds of her dress carefully arramged to cascade down the sooty steps of St Mary of Bethany, Tong Road, where Uncle George sings in the choir, and watched off-camera by their respective families, the Rostrons and the Bennetts, and also by anybody who happens to be waiting this Saturday morning.
• On another occasion when they had actually been asked out to drinks and gone in great trepidation Mam rang up in some excitement. "Your Dad and me have found an alcoholic drink that we really like. It's called bitter lemon"
• When he talks about looking at paintings in art galleries: Having struck it lucky once with Jesus, it's understandable that Mary Magdalene should thereafter never go anywhere without her pot of ointment, so when she's reading, in the painting by Roger van der Weyden, she has the pot ready just in case there are more unexpected feet to annoint. And approaching the sepulchre in Savvoldo's painting, once again she's taking no hanges, and the pot doesn't jar because it's generally quite discreet.
• The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought unique and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours - yes!
• he says the Queen is an "Indian Giver" which was an expression I'd never heard before - means someone who gives a present but later wants it back.
• When he's in a private hospital for chemotherapy, complaining about he food: The nurses assured me that their food was even worse, but he irony of crusading for better conditions for some of the richest patients in the world was not lost on me, and eventually I took to having most of my food brought in, a practice I'd thought confined to the inmates of Turkish prisons.
• But there's no doubt that knowing that one day (provided there is a one day) you may write about what is happening to you (or just write it down) is a solace not on offer to patients unblessed by a similar instinct. For a writer, nothing is ever quite as bad as it is for other people because, however dreadful, it may be of use. (there was a similar feeling expressed in Unexpected Lessons in Love)

Completed : 06-Jun-2018