Erupted in polite conversation
hello,
September. The best month.
I think, thanks to kind advice from Kim, that I’ve fixed the dark-mode formatting thing. It’s to do with stuff I’ve copied and pasted. I now have to go through a third space on the way, a cleansing copy/paste balm in Simplenote.
AND, for those that care, my blog is dead, long live my blog.
5 things:
This is a magnificent bit of writing. Jack Draper, tennis, Britishness.
“A Wimbledon crowd is almost always engaged in a performance of middle-class English civility. Its default expression is modest applause. This might be for anything. It also quite likes shushing. (When the umpire reminds people to turn off their cellphones, there is an opportunity to combine the two.) A Wimbledon crowd also roars and shrieks with abandon, as and when the occasion requires. But its favorite mood, by far, is one of mild titillation, which arises whenever something slightly out of the ordinary occurs—a ball flies into the crowd, a baffled bird pecks at the service line, a champagne cork enters the field of play—and a burr of chatter rips round the court. Draper, up 30–love against Báez, sent a forehand into the corner that was so neat in its curve, so complete in its unanswerableness, that the crowd was very briefly silenced altogether. When Draper closed the game out with an ace, Court 1 frankly erupted in polite conversation.”
It’s from the New Yorker. I think it’s open to all, but just in case.
Succumb to the crumb, you cowards
3. My favourite September fact
4. More from Donald Hall and Essay’s After Eighty
“Essays, like poems and stories and novels, marry heaven and hell. Contradiction is the cellular structure of life. Sometimes north dominates, sometimes south—but if the essay doesn’t include contraries, however small they be, the essay fails.”
5. An excellent interview with Katherine Rundell
“You are going to have to allow yourself to write badly, or your ideas will die with you.”
SELF-PROMOTIONAL CONTENT
I’ve got a new stupid idea. Please join us.
I’ll give you back your day
Russell
(There are 1006 of you. The Emeco 1006 ‘Navy chair’ is a great chair. There’s no need for any more chairs.)