"what makes the british holiday maker happier than anything [...] is stepping from his aeroplane (which left london in fine sleet) into a blaze of sunshine that hits him like a hot shovel and melts the buttons all down the front of his cardigan. however often this happens he never really believes it's going to. that's why he's wearing a cardigan and gets to the arrival lounge cranking his wife's bag of woolies and general thermalwear with the sweat of his brow running into his socks.

"this didn't actually happen to the gerald c. potters for two reasons. first, it had happened so often before that even we were on to it and travel only with one layer of everything [...] and owing to a slight outbreak of unrest in spanish control towers our plane bounced onto alien tarmac at three in the morning. this had also happened before. but there is a certain powerful magic about print, as who should know better but a pair of literary persons, and when timetables list the touchdown as 1633 hours, just in time to catch the ferry to an unspoilt island, you somehow still think they mean it. no, the only snag this time was standing around the airport in the freezing sub-tropical night with no clothes on to speak of, knowing that we were catching pneumonia, and a good chance for a fortnight's hospitalisation with doctors who didn't know the english for "lung"."

this is as far as i'd transcribed (and even so, only selectively of course) of last week's "the intricate life of gerald c. potter" which i'm always telling people is whimsical and gentle and darling, but am, as usual, ignored by all.

more to come, when i get to transcribing from the rest of my collection.