The 2nd post of the day

Geese and Goslings

Shades of Christmas Dinner?

Maybe not,

It may be cool and wet,

but surely that's ridiculous.

Bookshops

For the last two days I have been catching up on writing a sort of personal travelogue about a short trip to Brittany. On a chilly day in June when a walk by the sea didn't appeal we took a drive to Bécherel which proved to be a book lovers town, along the lines of Hay-on-Wye, but on a smaller scale. The ancient little town, which has a population of just 528 according to the Michelin Guide, is perched on top of a hill, which allows views as far as Dinan, Dol and Combourg. It owes its existence to the Chateau Caradeuc which is the former home of a famous Attorney General, Louis-René, Marquess of Caradeuc de la Chalotais, who lived in the 18th C.

The few cobbled and winding little streets boast mainly bookshops. We are keen readers and book collectors and coming upon this little gem of a town was a great pleasure.

La Vache Qui Lit

Neiges D'Antan

I thought it might be fun to share the names of just two of the shops with you.

The Scraper's Diary, Monday, March 17th 1947

Yesterday we went in the truck to Iserlohn for a day off. A practically undamaged town, but quite uninteresting. On entering these places now, I behave almost like a soldier, and head straight for the Naafi, or the Y.M.C.A.

Having got lost on the road, we got back at 12.20 am, - two hours for what, on the right road, is only 30 km.

Everyone is very short of cigarettes, as our ration hasn't been issued this week, and we've disposed of our stocks.

o-o-o-o-o

"I wish I 'adn't come, straight I do", says Ginger in his best stage-comedian manner. "I could be all snug in bed, instead of getting bumped around on the wrong road. I'm bloody jarred off, straight I am".

"Like a flippin Sunday School outing, ain't it", says Stan. " 'ave you brought the sandwiches, Teacher?"

"Now don't worry me, dear", says Ginger, "just sit still like a good girl, and we'll be at Sarfend before you know what's up".

"Better than the old picnic party", I say, "with Dad and Ma and all the kids all dolled up for the day".

"And all the kids holding their spades and buckets" says Stan, "and getting covered with sand on the way back".

"Cor yes", says Ginger, "And old Grandma. She's been looking forward to the trip for weeks, and then gets a splitting headache, and only comes so as not to spoil it for the rest of 'em, and only makes it worse".

"And then they get on the tram", I say, " And Ma remembers she's left the gas on".

"And Dad's left the tickets behind", says Ginger. "Funny how these families always take a packet of sandwiches to eat in the old train, even if they're only in it for ten flippin' minutes".

"Then they get in the train", says Stan, "and Dad sits up straight and looks round at his flock, and gets out his old pipe and the newspaper and starts readin', and sits all anyhow till the Missus kicks him, and he sits up all straight again".

"I took the Missus to Brighton once", says Ginger, "and we got into the train coming back and saw a family party get into the train opposite, in the last carriage. You know, Dad sits there all proud and counts the kids and Ma says 'ave you got everything, dear?' and he says 'Yes', and looks all proud and all the kids are laughing away, and then the train goes out and leaves their carriage behind and he looks out of the window and says 'Strewth, the bloody train's gone', and all the kids get cryin' and the Missus starts naggin' and Dad loses his temper, and they march off, and Ma says 'It's ruined my day, I wish I'd never come" and he kicks the boy to stop him hollerin'. We nearly killed ourselves laughing".

"And they always have packets of winkles", I say, "or shrimps and chuck the shells all over the place".

"And the old business man in the carriage", says Stan, " right in the corner, all dolled up and one of the kids sits next to him and he pats him and says "Hullo, sonny, go away, you sticky little thing".

"Something always goes wrong", says Ginger, "and Ma gets naggin' and wishes she hadn't come and they leave something in the train. Laugh? I kill myself every time".

"This is Iserlohn", says someone.

"It's not, ye know"

"It is, ye know"

"It's not, ye know"

"It is, ye know"

Ginger sighs. "I wish I 'adn't come", he says, "Straight, I do. I'm bloody jarred off. Roll on, roll bloody on".

o-o-o-o-o

I am again forced, in the queue before the Y.M.C.A. shop, to realize just how much bartering means to the average soldier.

"What've they got, soap? that's worth ten", meaning cigarettes. or -

"Pity the coffee's finished, that's worth forty" -

Still, why should I worry? I who think of coach trips in terms of solo schools?

o-o-o-o-o

I picked up part of some deceased creature's jaw-bone from a pile of rubble this afternoon.

Sets you thinking, you know.

So what?

Sunday Quotation

P.G.Wodehouse

The Adventures of Sally

Chumps always make the best husbands.

When you marry, Sally, grab a chump.

Tap his forehead first, and if it rings solid, don't hesitate.

All the unhappy marriages come from the husbands having brains.

What good are brains to a man?

They only unsettle him.

Happiness

The English poet, Robert Graves, was born on 24th July 1895. On 24th July 1916, on his 21st birthday, he read his obituary in The Times, having supposedly been killed in action.

Nevertheless, he survived the war and went on to write his famous memoir Good-bye To All That, as well as historical novels, scholarly works and many fine poetry collections. Robert Graves died on 7th December 1985.

The poem I have chosen is amongst his happiest, in fact, he wrote of it in a letter, dated 2nd May 1963:

"As a matter of record, I have never been so happy in my life as now: all the unhappiness of three years has peeled away. I wrote a poem two days ago, beginning, 'Not to sleep all the night gone, for pure joy....' which is one of the few poems of utter happiness ever written....this is mine and may it excuse all the dark ones."

Not To Sleep

Not to sleep all the night long, for pure joy,

Counting no sheep and careless of chimes

Welcoming the dawn confabulation

of birds, her children, who discuss idly

Fanciful details of the promised coming -

Will she be wearing red, or russet, or blue,

Or pure white? - whatever she wears, glorious:

Not to sleep all the night long, for pure joy,

This is given to few, but at last to me,

So that when I laugh and stretch and leap from the bed

I shall glide downstairs, my feet brushing the carpet

In courtesy to civilized progression,

Though, did I wish, I could soar through the open window

And perch on a branch above, acceptable ally

Of the birds still alert, grumbling gently together.

Into the Void

Emptiness

photo Stanislas Toma, Prague 1982

I had a friend.

My friend's body is still here, but Joan is no longer with us. Alzheimer's disease took her away from me.

Years ago Joan's once brilliant brain began to shut down, gradually losing the ability to perform the most basic tasks; she gradually forgot the names of her friends, gradually she stopped to recognize us.

The BBC had a small news item yesterday, towards the end of the news, about a group of scientists calling for a three-fold increase in funding into research into dementia in the UK, urging the government to end years of underfunding for research into the debilitating disease.

Anyone can develop dementia.

Seven hundred thousand people in the UK now live with dementia, and the figure is going up fast. It is estimated that the cost of treating and caring for people with dementia is £17bn a

year - more than the cost of heart disease, stroke and cancer combined.

When we first moved here Joan was the first person to take me under her wing. I was taking a bag of household rubbish to the bin at the end of the drive, by the road, and this bright little lady, with a collie on a lead in tow, came towards me, waving her walking stick at me and hailing me. As we stood chatting, she pointed her stick at the sky above us; she had noticed a buzzard circling and so started this townie's introduction into the wonders of life in the countryside.

Joan and I became friends.

Her illness manifested itself in small ways at first, hardly noticeable. She forgot things, words mostly; but we all do that as we get older. It's what we call "having a senior moment". Only Joan's senior moments became more and more frequent until there was no question that she was suffering from the onset of dementia.

Joan loved music. She still came to visit me occasionally and, on one occasion, before she had fully succumbed to the disease, when she still had a lucid moment or two, we decided to listen to Schubert's two cello Quintett Opus 163, a sublime piece of music. We sat side by side on the sofa, both silent, both listening intently. During the Adagio I happened to look across at her, wanting to share the moment, and saw that tears were running down her cheeks, unchecked.

On impulse, I took her hand in mine; she turned to me; the pain and despair in her eyes were so great that I too felt the tears starting up; the moment was almost unbearably poignant. This was the last time our spirits connected.

I learned today that Joan has now "forgotten" how to walk, her doctor's words. not mine.

The void has truly claimed her.

Walkies !

Walkies, WALKIES! Benno!

shall we risk a quick one? It doesn't look like the rain is going to hold off for long, so get out the voluminous, cover-all, family raincoat with the huge hood which hangs well into the forehead, slip into wellies, grab the walking stick and camera, and off we go.

To start with, let's climb up on to the castle to survey the clouds from up there;

Not good, not good at all.

The Bowling Green looks inviting from up here,

but no one seems to fancy a game today.

No children in the playground either.

That's sad.

A quick visit to John and Helen Osborne in the Churchyard.

I wonder, does John "Look Back In Anger"?

If there is no bar in dramatists' heaven, he probably does.

Unbelievable, now that I'm on the way back the sun's come out.

You can tell how much rain there's been by the colour of the river.

It's full of good, Welsh soil from the hills.

Sunday Quotation

Dahlia The Bishop of Llandaff

.......the Dahlia's first duty in life is to flaunt and to swagger and to carry

gorgeous blooms well above its leaves, and on no account to hang its head.

Gertrude Jekyll, 1899

Summer 1945 - Food and the Lack of it

It is over a month ago since I last posted on Reminiscences. Those days have been history now for so long, and lack of food, for me, today, is an unimaginable concept. Summoning up that world requires a deliberate effort of will; how much of it is memory and how much family lore, I couldn't say.

The situation in '45 was still bearable. In the lower Rhine area the war ended in March and in spite of huge obstacles farmers were able to till the land, to sow and plant, to tend the remaining cattle. By late summer the hedgerows were full of free food, there were berries and tree fruit to pick and the harvest in the fields was looking good.

Shortages were not as acute then as they were to become later, in the winter of 1946/1947. Refugees from the East were still just trickling in, the exodus was only just beginning. The villagers stormed the Wehrmacht food depots and helped themselves until the Americans impounded the stores, declaring them "war booty". They had, however, already begun to secure the supply of flour to bakers and bread was available. The supply of grain from the East, Germany's "Granary" had dried up completely, the East was now in Russian hands.

By August, the harvest was in full swing, turnips, potatoes, cereals and cabbage being the main crops of the area. Every able-bodied male was commandeered to help; there were hardly any tractors or other field machinery, the lack of fuel saw to that. Old men who knew how to handle tools like sickles were standing in the fields, mowing the corn.

Those who had no direct access to crops other than through the meagre supplies available on ration cards were dependent on the fields being freed for gleaning after the harvest proper.

The villagers knew which field would be harvested on a particular day. Adults and children turned up long before the last horse-drawn cart had left, lined up along the field edge, awaiting the signal to start, which was usually just a wave of the arm as the farmer and his helpers followed the carts off the field at the other end.

My parents lined up with the rest of the villagers, with me beside them. In retrospect, I feel that I enjoyed these "outings", particularly in the potato fields. The days were hot, the atmosphere was not exactly jolly but calm and friendly; everyone was in the same boat, intent on gathering as many stray potatoes as they could find. You stayed in your row, hoed and grubbed in the freshly turned soil and dragged a basket or potato sack behind you. As with stealing coal later on in the winter, the rule was that you did not help yourself to another person's loot.

On rare occasions only half the potato field had been harvested before the farmer gave the signal freeing the cleared half for gleaning. I was very small, to keep me safe and keep an eye on me while slowly traversing the field on their knees, my parents had me crawling between them and the edge of the field which was to be harvested the next day, a field still full of large, healthy potato plants, some of them taller than me. In my eagerness to help, my little hands strayed more than once into the lush growth next to me, coming up with clumps of potatoes.

"Look", I shouted, "I have found plenty here". "Come away from there"; my father was angry with me and I didn't understand why, after all, we were there to gather potatoes and I had just found a large supply of them.

It had happened before, somebody getting too close to a row of plants had been barred from gleaning. Father did not want this to happen to us. Farmers were very suspicious, they gave nothing away unless you had goods in exchange for food.

It was much harder to collect grain. The stubble was sharp and painful and you could easily tear and scratch your knees until they bled. Being very small, I managed to stay in the gap between two rows, but even then I often cried out when a vicious stalk dug into my leg. I can see puddles of grain lying between the rows of stubble even now, neat little heaps, or sometimes little streams of grain, ready to be scooped up with bare hands.

Gleaning was backbreaking work for the adults, for whom it would have been a matter of survival. The gravity of the situation went straight over the head of a child; for me it would have been a game, a game of hunting for food, being in a competition to see who could gather the most.

Transitoriness

The short but spectacular life of a

Delphinium

not quite fully grown,

once the flowers are fully out the spikes will measure 1m

the full glory of the individual blossom

this morning,

on its way to the compost heap.

Wind and rain have done their careless best to destroy my beautiful

delphinium.

Slug Fest

Slugs are most gardeners worst nightmare, in one night they can demolish a whole row of your choicest hostas or your crispiest lettuce. Britain has 23 species of slug and the great black slug is one of the largest. In spite of their name they can be black, brown, brick-red, orange and grey.

Having no shell, slugs need a means of keeping their soft bodies from drying out. This is provided by a layer of sticky mucus over their body, giving slugs their characteristic sliminess. Slugs are rarely seen during the day, they need the cool of the night to come out and play.

And this is the playground they leave behind in the morning:

But there is another side to slugs.

Watch and be amazed! This is a breathtaking spectacle of leopard slugs mating in the most sinuous and beautiful display. Music, Dancing and Sex, all that's missing is Poetry, but poets just simply won't touch slugs!

Sunday Quotation

Robert Frost

from

A Star in a Stone-Boat

Never tell me that not one star of all

That slip from heaven at night and softly fall

Has been picked up with stones to build a wall.

Photo Jeremy White

The Otter

The Otter

When you plunged

The light of Tuscany wavered

And swung through the pool

From top to bottom.

I loved your wet head and smashing crawl,

Your fine swimmer's back and shoulders

surfacing and surfacing again

This year and every year since.

I sat dry-throated on the warm stones.

You were beyond me.

The mellowed clarities, the grape-deep air

Thinned and disappointed.

Thank God for the slow loadening,

When I hold you now

We are close and deep

As the atmosphere on water.

My two hands are plumbed water.

You are my palpable, lithe

Otter of memory

In the pool of the moment,

Turning to swim on your back,

Each silent, thigh-shaking kick

Re-tilting the light,

Heaving the cool at your neck.

And suddenly you're out,

Back again, intent as ever,

Heavy and frisky in your freshened pelt,

Printing the stones.

Seamus Heaney

Photo: The Otter Trust.

These otters were the first to be bred in captivity in Britain and were born at the Norfolk Wildlife Park, Great Witchingham, 14 miles N.W. of Norwich. Young otters are released into the wild on a regular basis to help save the otter from extinction in Britain. The Park is open to the public.

The Party Season

Twice a year, in summer and winter, for about six weeks each time, people in the valley in and around our little town feel the party spirit come upon them. Well, the summer party season is well and truly with us and invitations are coming in thick and fast.

Not all of them are big dos, there are drinks parties, tea parties, select little dinner parties for four, six or eight (rarely more, because nobody nowadays has a dining table, much less a dining room, big enough to seat ten or more), huge outdoor barbecues, where you had better bring a coat against the evening chill and a cushion to sit on - as chairs and benches have been waiting outside all day, they have probably been rained on.

Barbecue fare is best sampled on a full stomach - always eat something at home first!

Chargrilled food can play havoc with your digestion. In order not to look a spoilsport you can always fill your plate with plain boiled rice salad, green lettuce and white bread rolls; both have invariably been available at any barbecue I have ever attended. The other possibility is that your host has forgotten to light the coals in good time - this often happens at barbecues in aid of something or other, where several men are in charge of joint proceedings - which means that you get no food for hours or that your sausages are raw inside.

Drinks parties are slightly more civilized, your considerate hosts have provided room inside, where the guests can take shelter from sudden downpours. This is England, after all, there is usually a shower at least once a day. Drinks parties are noisy affairs, they usually happen before dinner, between six and eight in the evening, unless they are at that ungodly time of Sunday morning, before lunch. There's not much point in finding a seat, everyone is standing around and talking busily; if you are sitting down all that talk happens above your head and you are left out.

Come to think of it, maybe that is not such a bad choice after all. If you choose a nice, comfy seat anywhere near the "nibbles" table you could nick all the juiciest olives and unbroken cheese straws. And have a nap. Drinking before lunch or dinner can be quite hazardous.

Cosiest of all are the tea parties, they are usually held inside; bees and wasps and other insects all love the smell and taste of strawberry cream teas and cakes and scones as much as some humans do and are therefore best excluded.

Tea parties are the preferred option for the older generation; they like to get back to their comfortable sitting rooms in good time for the evening news and maybe a favourite soap opera. Besides, all that starch does make one feel rather drowsy.

This leaves the dinner party, which can last for many hours, until late into the night, if you are lucky or maybe unlucky, depending on how much you are enjoying the occasion. At one recent such party I came home with face cramp from many hours of determined smiling. The hosts themselves are excellent people, who provide delicious food and dispense drink with a liberal hand. The problem was that one of the guests felt obliged to entertain the party, ably encouraged by his wife. All I remember now is a joke the man told:

A barber complained that making a living from cutting hair in these days of the credit crunch

was getting ever more difficult. He was therefore contemplating going into the hedge trimming business as a sideline.

The man swore blind it's a true story. Yes, well.

At another recent dinner party the host read his own poetry and the hostess played Mozart on the piano, followed by Irving Berlin songs which were sung by a lady guest. Actually, you may not believe this, but I really enjoyed that party.

It is rather bad form to accept hospitality and not return it. My turn next.

photo Huub Koch

Beweging 1984

And Again : The Scraper's Diary, Sunday Morning

Well, I did it, I got drunk.

But whenever I achieve a sudden ambition like that, I wish afterwards that I had not.

Perhaps that should be a lesson to me.

I'm sober again now, but last night - phew!

Mike and I went into the beer bar at 8.15; the party was not there, but a friendly bombardier invited us to help him drink some of the dozen or so glasses that were on the table. He had already emptied twenty. We accepted.

Here let me say that German glasses hold more than a half pint, and that the beer, which is chemical beer, is not so innocuous as it looks and tastes.

After four glasses, I lost count, and began to feel a little merry. My eyes needed reminding to focus on anyone, when I walked out, my legs needed coercing to obey me.

The waitress came up. I gave her a shilling and she brought back six more glasses, and then they stopped serving.

We drank on. I emptied about thirteen glasses, Mike about eight. By this time I was thoroughly, uproariously drunk. I could not stand straight. Every time I put my foot down the floor jumped up to meet it. Mike was unsteady on his pins too, and as he grew drunker, so an episode in the Y.M.C.A. grew funnier to him (the microphone fell off the stage), and he kept remembering it, and going into fits of laughter.

The place was nearly empty, and the attendants were urging us to leave; we emptied the last glasses, and I suddenly realized that I was going to be sick, so I lurched outside and vomited copiously. I felt much better then, and managed to walk back to the billet.

Soon after I reentered our room, I realized that I wanted to be sick again, so I opened the window and leaned out. I spewed the rest of the beer, and kept on retching long after my stomach was empty. Mike decided, ridiculously, to go for a walk, so he went. Fifteen minutes later, when he staggered back, I was still leaning out of the window, but in the meantime I had collapsed dizzily onto a bed and then gone to the window again.

With Mike's aid I staggered, almost unconscious, to the lavatory, where I stayed for fifteen minutes and emptied my stomach again and again. Then Mike helped me back again.

Don't imagine that he was sober, he was wimbling all over the place, but was in a better state than me.

Between us, we got me to bed, and I immediately fell sound asleep. My last words (so they say)

were "Never again".

When I was woken, after over eight hours deep slumber, I felt perfectly normal, with no hangover.

I have a dim recollection of reassuring Mike that a cigarette he put down was really going round and round, and also of the feeling that nothing was worth while. I wanted to die, my stomach and head were performing the most complicated rhumba, and my eyes seemed to be rolling in a complete circle.

Never again, Never, never again.

The Scraper's Diary, Saturday March 15th, 1947, Dortmund,

Morning.

Having gone to bed at eleven last night, I was awakened by Bunty, the Q, (Quartermaster Sergeant) at 8.55 this morning, to be told that pay parade was at nine o'clock.

I made it.

Strange, but today Spring has arrived. It is still very cold, but the sun is shining gaily and the forbidding wrecks of this sad town assume a triviality and a witness of Nature's essential change.

Tonight I think I shall get drunk. I've been invited to a farewell party by a bloke who is demobbed on Monday and I think I'll go and get drunk. Beer (weak) is 3d a pint.

I feel like getting drunk.

It snowed last night.

Evening.

This afternoon Mike, Len and I walked round Dortmund. I found a philatelic shop and bought two hundred marks worth of stamps for fifty cigarettes.

We went into a German Kaffeehaus and ordered coffee. I forced myself to drink mine, to keep up appearances, - for the Germans were watching us, - but I was spitting for an hour afterwards, and even now, after ten, I can still taste it, - there was certainly no coffee in it. It was a dark green-brown fluid with specks of some black stuff in the bottom of the cup. No milk, no sugar, it was probably ground acorns, and the taste bore no relation to anything I have ever drunk. If that is what the Germans drink, I pity them. Mike and Len left theirs after one sip.

We walked through some deserted side streets on our way back, all around us piles of brick lay tragically, the view was limited all round by occasional broken walls that either tapered to a precarious chimney, or bore great cracks with sublime indifference. Rubble and cement covered the roads in uneven piles to a depth of up to three feet, and obviously no effort had been made to clear them away or to demolish any of the tottering, dangerous wrecks that were once proud homes or great stores. No one seems to worry, an air of lethargy is everywhere.

Somehow, though in the middle of life, and an interesting adventure (for a sentimentalist can make Romance of nearly anything) I long to be in England and to see Spring coming down English valleys and English lanes.

I feel that I suddenly understand the row of dots in the travel books: "England......."

Sunday Quotation (4)

Leisure

William Henry Davies

What is this life, if full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this, if full of care,

We have not time to stand and stare.

Sure, it's not what I would call poetry, verse at best, but it's the sentiment that counts, right?

Go on, let's all follow this advice today, for a little while.

Elderflower Wine

The Scraper has been picking elderflowers.

It is a very laborious and labour intensive process

to pick the tiny flowerlets off the stalks

and collect them in a delicate heap.

Any "winemakers" among you will

know about the long process to turn this heap of blossom into wine.

I have no idea about the alchemical wizardry involved,

all I know is that at first there will be an intense scent of fruitiness

pervading the scullery.

A week later large glass bottle shapes will appear,

(which the scraper assures me are called demi-johns)

which hubble and bubble away gently,

every so often emitting a gentile burp,

which actually sounds quite friendly and homely.

In our house, this fermenting process lasts for about a month.

Eventually, the fermented liquid clears and the burping, which has

become part of family life, much like the dog snoring,

stops

and the liquid is strained into bottles.

The bottles are stored away and for twelve months at least,

we have no idea what the "wine" tastes like.

There are, of course,

bottles of homemade wine already and always available.

I will be generous, and say, that they come in very handy for making gravy.

Sei Shonagon, the first blogger?

Was the Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon one of the first blogs ever?

Sei Shonagon was a lady-in-waiting at the court of the emperor of Japan at the end of the tenth century. One day the empress showed her a bundle of notebooks, asking her what could be done with them.

"Let me make them into a pillow", Sei Shonagon replied.

In her own words:

"I now had a vast quantity of paper at my disposal, and I set about filling the notebooks with odd facts, stories from the past, and all sorts of other things, often including the most trivial material. On the whole I concentrated on things and people that I found charming and splendid; my notes are also full of poems and observations on trees and plants, birds and insects. I was sure, that when people saw my book they would say, "It's even worse than I expected. Now one can really tell what she is like." After all, it is written entirely for my own amusement and I put things down exactly as they came to me. How could my casual jottings possibly bear comparison with the many impressive books that exist in our time?

Any of that ring a bell?

Sei Shonagon's Jottings will appear in these pages from time to time; for now, here is a taster:

Hateful Things

A man who has nothing in particular to recommend him discusses

all sorts of subjects at random

as though he knew everything.

To envy others and to complain about one's own lot;

to speak badly about people;

to be inquisitive about the most trivial matters and to resent and abuse people for not telling one, or, if one does manage to worm out some facts, to inform everyone in the most detailed fashion as if one had known all from the beginning - oh how hateful!

An admirer has come on a clandestine visit, but a dog catches sight of him and starts barking.

One feels like killing the beast.

Picture Wikipedia

Text in Italics The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon