jump me at the bike shed. In jungle alert primal mode I turn to the flash of green and violet on the lawn, but the brown Mallard is prowling on the roof behind me, Ghost and the Darkness style. It bats my helmet with a wing and joins its mate. Foiled by a duck. Why a duck right now, crashing my morning fumblings? Viaduct for deep water. Vy not a chicken? How will they get over the Victorian walls? It’s OK, they’re building a tunnel in the morning. Groucho is fresh on my mind, clear as the first time I saw the grainy black and whites, lost afternoons when the Yorkshire rain was too thick to get out in. Groucho in the crowded ship’s cabin, two perfect minutes pushing the impossible situation ever further…”Did you want a manicure?” “No, come on in.” And you see it in writers, the masters pushing the sense and power of a sentence, building to a great line and then adding even more. Melville’s lashed sea’s landlessness. All in a day’s work.
