A limerick for today

I logged on to Facebook this morning
To make a quick check on a posting.
I've sat and I've scrolled
For three hours, all told,
When I could have been limerick writing.

Marcel Marceau, miming artist

Source: Chariserin-Flickr
Creative Commons

French mime artist Marcel Marceau was born today.
Here are a few lines about him.

Marcel Marceau, miming artist,
Stripy shirt and whitened face.
He, the art of silence practised;
Pulled on inconspicuous ropes,
Leant on walls that went unnoticed,
Took large bites from fruit unseen,
Struggled in the face of tempests.
Famously, in Mel Brooks' Silent
Movie (nineteen-seventy-six)
Marceau speaks. He says quite clearly,
"Non!"

More stuff

First day of spring

Here's a little verse to celebrate the first day of spring.

A blustery breeze and bright sun in the sky.
Thus far escaped Covid. So why? Tell me, why
On this first day of spring, when buds start to unfold
Must I sniffle and snuffle and suffer a cold?

This was not the face in the doorway

Nadifa Mohamed's The Fortune Men was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and praised as an excellent example of historical fiction that explores present day issues, in this case, racism and injustice. But it's more than fiction. The characters are real people whose voices have never been heard, and the story is taken from a real life incident that happened 70 years ago.

A teenage boy with raging hormones

Charles Highway is a "chinless elitist and bratty whey-faced lordling". He's the protagonist of Martin Amis's The Rachel Papers. His saving grace is that he's young, nineteen going on twenty, and if you can remember how awful you were at his age, you'll be able to laugh at the "devious, calculating, self-obsessed" little twit.

Antigone, Iphis, Electra and more

It was eighteen months after reading a review of Antigone Rising before I bought it. I'd forgotten what had drawn my attention to the book and assumed it was just a general interest in the Greek myths or perhaps a recent book club choice, Home Fire, Kamila Shamsie's modern retelling of Antigone. So it was something of a surprise, a pleasant one, to find it was actually about how those myths are being appropriated by feminists and non-binary people in the 21st century.

Living through a period when politicians don’t merely lie

When Boris Yeltsin became President of the new Russia, I was working for a bunch of London-based management consultants who were looking for opportunities to provide advice to the new Russian entrepreneurs. Our strategy was to employ two young Russians. The man introduced himself. He took my hand, bowed slightly, and I swear I heard his heels click. As for the young woman, she was terrified of flying, something of a disadvantage for a jet-setting consultant. Throughout a flight she would grip the arm rests but as soon as the Captain announced our descent she reluctantly let go and fished in her handbag for lipstick and mirror. No matter how terrible the situation, she told me, no Russian woman would ever allow herself to be seen without make up.

Other than a handful of students, that's been the limit of my personal knowledge of Russians.