The life of a bohemian dog redux

Someone very near and dear to me adds his interpretation to this photo.

Good Short Fiction: Great Aunt Allie's Flypapers (P.D. James)

Title: Great Aunt Allie's Flypapers
Author: P.D. James (Phyllis Dorothy James)
Where I read it: The Oxford Book of English Detective Stories (edited by Patricia Craig)

Synopsis
Canon Hubert Boxdale has inherited a large sum of money from his step-grandmother, Allegra (known to the family as "Great Aunt Allie"). He's reluctant to accept the money, because he was never sure about Allie's innocence in regards to the death of his grandfather; though she wasn't convicted in court, people always suspected that she had murdered her husband to obtain his fortune. Hubert asks his godson, Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh, to reopen the decades-old murder case and see if he can settle the question of Allie's innocence with certainty.

Some reasons to read it

• The characterization of Hubert, who is a good unselfish man. Thinking him naive, people often take advantage of him, but he knows what they're up to even as he keeps trying to help them. A key insight is that "his goodness had in some sense protected him." Dalgliesh will have to protect Hubert too, but not necessarily from finding out anything painful about Allie, who may very well have been innocent. Dalgliesh has great respect for his godfather, and wonders sometimes how a man like that can live "in a carnivorous world in which gentleness, humility, and unworldliness are hardly conducive to survival let alone success."
  

  Dalgliesh told himself that he should have remembered what, as a small boy, he had discovered about Uncle Hubert's conscience; that it operated as a warning bell and that, unlike most people, he never pretended that it hadn't sounded or that he hadn't heard it or that, having heard it, something must be wrong with the mechanism.

  
  
• Another person Dalgliesh comes to like during the course of the investigation is Allie herself. I won't reveal much more about her. In the timeframe of the story she has passed away, and never appears outside of other people's recollections and records, but her presence lingers throughout. The question of her innocence is answered conclusively by the end; and at the end, after we find out exactly what happened to Hubert's grandfather, we're left to reflect on the nature of innocence.
  
  
• James is an engaging story-teller. Her characterizations are sharp, her writing skillful and precise; the story is rich with wry humor and keen observations of human nature. All throughout there are questions - if it wasn't Allie, then who was it? Dalgliesh tracks down witnesses and other potential suspects who are still alive; he pores over trial records. There's always the danger that the truth will be lost to time; or it might be a painful truth that's best left only partially revealed.
  

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Other recommended tales from The Oxford Book of English Detective Stories are Death on the Air (by Ngaio Marsh) and these stories here.

Week in Seven Words #75

ataraxy
We find a rose garden and a magnolia garden facing each other across a quiet street. Both are past their season. Both are mostly empty. A breeze shimmers through them.

coda
Fireworks rumbling at the day's end.

disclosure
I share as much of the truth as I can bring myself to without distressing them unduly.

loll
It's a happy lazy day, when the sun pounds through my head; I play Scrabble, fight off sleepiness, and read out loud from a chapter book about a pig in search of hot buttered toast.

municipal
They take me on a tour through their slowly growing Lego town. In the pizza parlor a Lego lady is firing up some pies.

sheen
Chocolates wrapped in slick foil of different colors: orange, ocean blue, silver, gold, and fir green.

trammeled
We glimpse The Thinker through a sprawl of planks and chain-link fencing. He's hemmed in.

Happy Fourth!

Doorways in Elfreth's Alley, Philadelphia

Week in Seven Words #74

cartographical
To solve the game I sketch out maps on lined paper with squiggly tunnels and shaky rooms, roads that leap too far right or left. I love it when I haven't yet explored everything, and there are blank spaces, terra incognita.

changeable
For the exact same task, twenty minutes isn't nearly enough time on one day but a decent amount of time on another.

inflation
The quality of a mediocre film improves when you watch it in good company.

interplanetary
When talking to different friends it can feel as if I'm bouncing around from one planet to another - some are brilliant and turbulent, others are spare and rocky, a few aren't planets at all but friendly moons with valleys, caves, and silver mountains. But they're all inviting, one way or another.

meandering
I like his free associative style of speaking. He says what comes to mind, but it's never anything malicious - at worst it's irrelevant, but mostly in an amusing way.

puffy
Pizza dough slowly swelling in a bowl.

terpsichorean
At half past midnight, while walking past the brightly lit windows of a bank, I see a janitor inside mopping the floor. Several feet away his young daughter twirls around with a broom.

Good Short Fiction: Death on the Air (Ngaio Marsh)

Title: Death on the Air
Author: Ngaio Marsh (Edith Ngaio Marsh)
Where I read it: The Oxford Book of English Detective Stories (edited by Patricia Craig)

Synopsis

On the 25th of December at 7:30 a.m. Mr. Septimus Tonks was found dead beside his wireless set.

Chief Detective-Inspector Roderick Alleyn investigates the death of a man who was apparently electrocuted by his own radio. As it becomes clear that this wasn't an accident, Alleyn needs to sort through a houseful of suspects including the wife and children, servants and employees, and friends of the family. Septimus Tonks was a cruel tyrannical man with no shortage of people who feared and despised him. Alleyn's investigation uncovers secret relationships, dysfunctions, and the wreckage of an unhappy home.

Some reasons to read it

• Marsh attends to the technical details of the crime and to the delicate dance of timing and opportunity that makes it so difficult to pinpoint the murderer. What's most compelling about her story though are the characters and the household dynamics.
  
  
• The precision of the crime contrasts with the messiness of the people. Marsh reveals to us these wounded people, and the man who liked to grind them under his thumb. Sometimes the story only suggests things that are all the more disturbing for not being entirely exposed. You wouldn't find this family sitting around the tree opening presents together.
  

  The radio hummed, gathered volume, and found itself.
  'No-oel, No-o-el,' it roared.

  
  At the same time, they can be decent to each other in small subdued ways, Mr. Tonks excluded. Unhappy or damaged as they are, the different family members and employees understand each other. Love can grow in unforgiving soil, like a weed that's difficult to uproot.
  
  
• The story is absorbing, both for the mystery and for the character portraits. I wonder at what stage Alleyn solved the crime and knew who did it; he's a man who seems to keep his cards close to his chest. Certain conversations gain significance at the end, after everything is revealed.
  

  "I'm the least suspicious man alive. I'm merely being tidy."

  
  

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Other recommended tales from The Oxford Book of English Detective Stories are Great Aunt Allie's Flypapers (by P.D. James) and these stories here.

L'equip petit

A documentary about little kids on an underdog soccer team (what would be a little league team here in the U.S.). They haven't scored a goal yet. They speak with seriousness and passion about the game; failure isn't fazing them. They're also having fun, as are the people who coach them.

l'equip petit from el cangrejo on Vimeo.