Re: The Name of My Blog



A friend dropped off a book a while back when I first set out on my forced gig as a couch potato. Notes From a Small Island was written 10 years ago but it's still good. At first humorist Bill Bryson put me off, he kept referencing England in the 1970s and he dropped enough Anglophile quips to drown Garrison Keillor in wittisms, but he grew on me.

Here's some of his universally cute lines:

The hilly landscape was gorgeous and extravagantly green. You could be excused for thinking that the principal industry of Britain is the manufacture of chlorophyll.

And when observing the Scourge of the Universe, air rats:

They really are the most amazingly panicky and dopey creatures. Here are instructions for being a pigeon: 1) Walk around aimlessly for a while, pecking at cigarette butts and other inappropriate items. 2) Take fright at someone walking along the platform and fly off to a girder. 3) Have a shit. 4) Repeat.

Better yet, I just discovered Bryson also wrote In a Sunburnt Country -- the one book I could NOT find anywhere in Australia while I was there. Dymock's was always sold out. Now I have to buy it ...

-- Mz M.