The Lost Diaries. Craig Brown

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СКАЧАТЬ of an upturn come the autumn?’ But before the Chancellor had a chance to reply, the incoming governor of the Bank of England had barged into the studio, wearing nothing but a posing pouch. If this is how the Sixties begin, how on earth will they end?

      

       JOAN BAKEWELL

       January 2nd

      Today I cook pasta. Pasta plain. But good. For those who come after, these directions I leave:

      

       PASTA PLAIN – BUT GOOD

      Ingredients: Pasta. And Salt. And Water. And Fire.

       Directions:

      Place the pasta in the water and the salt in the water and the water in the pot and the pot on the fire.

      In the pot? The fire in the pot?

      No. The water in the pot. The pot on the fire.

      The pasta in the water?

      Yes in the water.

      And the salt in the fire?

      No. The salt in the water.

      And the water on the fire?

      No. The water in the pot and the pot on the fire. Not the water on the fire. For then the fire will die and dying be dead. Nor will the water boil and the pasta will drain dry and not cooked and hard to the teeth.

      The salt falls nor does it cease to fall.

      The water boils. So be it.

      Cease from placing your hand in the boiling water. Place your hand in the boiling water and it will cause you pain.

      Much pain?

      Very much pain.

      In the pot the bubbles bubble up and bubble some more. The bubbles are bubbly. Never more bubbly bubbles bubbling bubbliest. And having bubbled the bubbles still bubbly.

      Or bubblier?

      Or bubblier.

      Across the kitchen a board intended for chopping. Here. Take it. Chop.

      What will I chop? There are no ingredients to chop.

      Just chop. Don’t cease from chopping. To chop is to become a man.

      After ten minutes. The pasta stiff and dry and upright no more. The pasta lank and wet and soft. In the eternal damp of water.

      Pour water free like some ancient anointing. The pasta left alone in the pot. Alone and naked.

      The salt. Where’s the salt?

      The salt is gone. Lost to the water and gone forever.

      I grieve for the salt.

      It is the salt for which I grieve.

      Tip the pasta out.

      The pasta?

      Yes. Tip it out. Onto.

      A plate?

      Yes. And stop.

      Finishing your sentences?

      Yes.

      Why?

      Because it is so.

      Irritating?

       CORMAC McCARTHY

      Darling Debo,

      Could you bear to cast your bejewell’d eye o’er this weary traveller’s joyous twitterings?

      Day 1. Yanina, 8 March. We arrive in Prevaza from Yanina with Konitsa and Kalpaki before venturing forth to Kalpaki with Prevaza and Yanina. Umbrous olives procrastinate pleadingly over the weary waters in the priest’s leafy garden overlooking a forested valley along which a repining river flows flowingly. O’erhead flies a squawking convoy of stuffed courgettes, flapping fearlessly towards a destination undefined. Ah, the joy of skipping on the petulant pine-needles and the verdant grass underfoot! Gentians cluster in every fissure, and clusters fissure in every gentian. Blow the wind southerly, southerly, southerly! One nearly swoons away with the magic of the language as a sunbaked Sarakatsan muleteer, Christos Karvounis, cackles cautiously, recalling rough-hewn rambles with…<twenty pages cut for reasons of space>

      …and when we wake up – joy upon joys! – we fulsomely find we have another thirty-nine delightful days to gorgeously go.

      Bundles of love,

      Paddy

       PATRICK LEIGH-FERMOR, FROM A LETTER TO DEBORAH, DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE

       January 3rd

      Nothing in your memory anywhere of anything so good. Now the pasta is eaten. Disappeared. The pasta disappeared as everything disappears. As the comma disappears and the semi-colon disappears and the inverted comma disappears and the apostrophe disappears and the adjectives and the pronouns all disappear.

      Leaving just full stops and And.

      And And?

      And And.

      And And.

       CORMAC MCCARTHY

      Darling Twat,

      Can’t wait to read your last scrumptious screed, possibly first thing next year, or, failing that, the year after, leisure permitting.

      Greece – it was Greece, wasn’t it? – sounds desperately Greek, which is just as it should be. One would hate to hear that it had turned all French.

      P.S. Why does everyone insist on being so beastly about poor Dr Crippen? He may have been a mite offhand with his wife, but, my word, he was an excellent doctor with a perfectly lovely smile, a dear old friend of Mecca.^*

      In tearing haste,

      Debo

       DEBORAH, DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE, LETTER TO PATRICK LEIGH-FERMOR

       January 4th

      People have been kind enough to call me sharp. To be blunt, I am sharp. It was probably Rilke who first taught me that if ever a man is to be sharp, he needs СКАЧАТЬ