'You see,' he went on, in case we had missed the point, 'you see, I am not a fearful man.'" Impeccable comic timing. I can sail the boat magnificently in the typhoon without fear.' He sipped his tea delicately, regarding our awestruck faces with approval. When I ride the horse, I have no fear, for I ride superbly. 'I am a superb swimmer, so I have no fear.
"'I have no fear,' said the Turk modestly. Here's just a taster, from one of Margo's beaus (not too spotty to have beaus, then, huh, little brother?). Now, it's the human portraits which I adore – the wonderful Spiro, "a short, barrel-bodied individual, with ham-like hands and a great, leathery, scowling face surmounted by a jauntily-tilted peaked cap", the magical Rose-Beetle man, the myriad bonkers bit-players. When I was young, I loved My Family and Other Animals for its minutely detailed descriptions of animals and insects. I survived, though, and at home again in England, I was (briefly) inspired to become a collector, like Gerry and Theodore, although my bits of broken bird egg and stag beetles were, in retrospect, rather pathetic when compared to their trapdoor spiders, pet owls and pigeons. Yani the shepherd's tale of a man stung in the ear by a tiny scorpion, whose head "had swollen up as though his brains were pregnant" before he died in terrible pain, also put the fear of god into me when it came to scorpions – I can remember sleeping curled into a ball in my bed, terrified that one might scuttle by and be tempted to bite any limb protruding over the mattress.
0 kommentar(er)
