I take back my fandom. 📚

I quit reading A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor, round about page 100. At first, I thought “Perhaps I’ll set it aside and come back another time.” But the more I think about it, the more I doubt it.

At one point, in the most memorable line of those hundred pages, Fermor describes an uppity German house this way: “Except for the panorama of the lights of Stuttgart through the plate glass, the house was hideous – prosperous, brand new, shiny, and dispiriting.”

Mutatis ditto mutandis for Fermor’s use of words to build this literary construction.

Years ago, a British friend (think sheep farmer British, not Londoner British), upon hearing that I had fairly recently discovered a love of reading, insisted I simply had to read Laurie Lee As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning. I don’t think I ever had the heart to tell my friend how unfinishable I found Lee. My memory of that book is over a decade old, but I’m certain it had at least a loveliness to it that I do not see in Fermor. I think I expected in Fermor something at least reminiscent of Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon but found something closer to, and much less lovable than, Lee.

But that’s the funny thing. Neither Jan Morris, who introduced the book, nor Fermor in his own introduction, make any mention of Lee or West. Morris even goes so far as to describe Fermor’s book as unprecedented. (“He has no rivals, and so stands beyond envy.”) I was happily willing to overlook that baffling fact (along with Fermor’s praise for Alan Watts, which raised an early red flag), but not no mo’.

I accept that I might be wrong or just weird. Sincerest apologies to those lovely people who recommended it, but I am so excited to be reading something else tomorrow.

Presented without comment:

You mean why are there utensils in the book drawer?

Jack-dog has had a longstanding, cartoonish obsession with cats. We once sat outdoors at a winery in Jacksonville, OR where a cat slept on the steps and, for the better part of two hours, Jack did not blink. The cat rested; Jack stared with unwavering attention.

Well, he finally got his wish. But it was not Jack who started the confrontation yesterday. Charlie did. Honestly, I have never seen a cat go this far out of its way to more intently start a fight. This scene could actually serve as a wildly accurate reenactment.

(He’s fine. And so is Charlie, who rethought his decision after a ten-second ass kicking. Never underestimate Jack’s deeply mutt-ingrained survival instincts — and canine jujutsu.)

Ordinary unplanned utterances • “What is that? Is that a booger on your face? Come here. Give me that. Is that your booger or your brother’s booger?”

(We’ll never know.)

January ‘26 • When was the last time you smelled — you just had to smell, couldn’t resist smelling — some morning sunshine on a wall?

Kitchen Chalk Talk • Fuller context here, plus a poem to the same effect.