Just time for another update from the Barney Rubble suite here at Blogstead Espagna. Life slips into an easy stone age rhythm – Betty and Bamm Bamm had a run in the shops this morning and we tested out the coffee in the square. Otherwise it is a snooze by the pool and the books. Maybe some rock music in the background ..
I’ve been reading Alistair Cooke’s book on his travels through America just as it entered WW2. I had never thought about the parallel between the shock of the destruction of the fleet at Pearl Harbour in 1941 and that of 9/11. Same feelings of innocence lost and invincibility punctured. But there was one crucial difference. Cooke describes the frail and crippled figure of Roosevelt being helped into the House of Representatives as ‘the unexpected and dramatic revelation … of what a man can suffer and what he can grow to by reason of it.’ Compare that to the sight of President Bush walking from his shoulders – strutting weakness posing as strength – and faith somehow caught up in it and debased by it. I feel the shame of it.
I forgot about that. Just like home really – touch of ‘stroke city’. And, of course, I was being a bit non-specific about the location of this particular idyll!
For the sake of good relations with the neighbours, you had better make it Blogstead Catalunya.