what goes around comes around

Last summer I saw a woman knocked off her bike by somebody opening a car door. She was bleeding and shaken: I walked her over to her GP on Newmarket Road.

She's just dropped off a box of chocolates for me and a nice thank-you note, having seen me in town the other day ...

poking around Deptford 1623

Am dead impressed by the British Library's London in Maps downloads: old maps as layers in Google Earth, so I can superimpose John Evelyn's map of Deptford Strand on present-day Deptford, locate 'historic' pubs and fried-food outlets, and make much more sense of changed street-names and Mr Evelyn's orientation. All without leaving my bed.

2010/21: Galveston -- Paul Quarrington

Galveston -- Paul Quarrington

Maywell's concept of the globe was based in large part on his reading, and rereading, of William Dampier's A New Voyage Round the World. So in Maywell's mind there was the Atlantick Sea, and Dampier Cay was in the Caribee. He thought of the largest island to the southwest as Hispaniola, although he was grudgingly aware that it had at some time been divided into Haiti and the Dominican Republic. [He] knew his unique reference points made him an object of curiosity. Fishing clients often grilled him about the immediate geography: Maywell might refer to New Andalusia, which would earn him a look of confusion, then as much laughter as the clients thought they could get away with. (p.132)

( non-spoilery review )

2010/22: Dreamers of the Day -- Mary Doria Russell

Dreamers of the Day -- Mary Doria Russell

If we are timid or rebellious or both, then travel -- by itself and by ourselves -- forces us to leave our old lives behind. Travel can overcome habitual resistance and set the soul in motion along magnetic lines of attraction. On foreign soil, desires -- denied, policed, constrained at home -- can be unbound. What lies beneath the skin-thin surface of the domesticated self is sensual, sexual, adult. (p. 138)

( slightly spoilery review )