London, How Could One Ever Be Tired

The Middle Years, Caught Between Children And Parents, Free Of Neither: The Past Stretches Back Too Densely, It Is Too Thickly Populated, The Future Has Not Yet Thinned Out.

What Foolsmiddle-classgirls Are To Expect Other People To Respect The Same Gods As Themselves And E M Forster.

Auntie Phyl's Last Months In The Care Home Were Extra Pieces. Age Is Unnecessary. Some Of Us, Like My Mother, Are Fortunate Enough To Die Swiftly And Suddenly, In Full Possession Of Our Faculties And Our Fate, But More And More Of Us Will Be Condemned To Linger, At The Mercy Of Anxious Or Indifferent Relatives, Careless Strangers, Unwanted Medical Interventions, Increasing Debility, Incontinence, Memory Loss. We Live Too Long, But, Like The Sibyl Hanging In Her Basket In The Cave At Cumae, We Find It Hard To Die.

There Would Be More Genuine Rejoicing At The Discovery Of A Complete New Novel By Jane Austen Than Any Other Literary Discovery, Short Of A New Major Play By Shakespeare.

Men And Women Can Never Be Close. They Can Hardly Speak To One Another In The Same Language. But Are Compelled, Forever, To Try, And Therefore Even In Defeat There Is No Peace.