Home life
Pigging it
Alice Thomas Ellis
My ingrained pessimism causes me to mistrust the post. It is only recently that I have realised that those envelopes with win- dows in them sometimes contain cheques rather than threats, bills, or final demands.
Lester's in it now.' There is a certain sort of handwriting which signifies its possessor to be raving mad. I've got quite a lot of letters from mad people, some abusive but mostly just barmy. I was once dismissive about the masons and their passion for secrecy, and I got a very nasty letter from a mason who said they weren't secretive at all and then didn't sign his name. Today, however, I got a nice anonymous letter from a kind person who liked my novels. Perversely, since I usually don't answer letters, I am frustrated by not being able to respond appreciatively to this inconnue.
On the other hand I don't think I can write anything today on account of the hangover I instituted yesterday. While Nadia was directing her little film about home life she made me pretend to write while darling Remi crouched with his camera trained on me. It is difficult pre- tending to write — more difficult than writing — so I am proud of what I achieved. It is rather beautiful and so I give you the benefit of it:
`Once upon a time there lived a pig in a forest. His name was Fred. Everything that hasn't got a name — a book in progress, an unborn child — is born as Fred. Now I come to think about it, I'm not even sure he was a pig — all I know is his name was Fred.
'Or maybe it was a she. Now I incline to the supposition that it was not a pig but a hyena — and its name was Freda. I don't know much about pigs but I know less about hyenas (how do you spell them in the plural?). I don't think they live in forests anyway. I think they live . . . where the hell do they live? Not tundra, not desert (desert?), not in fields or meadows.
'The bloody things live where lions live because they eat all the bits of dead things (pigs?) that lions leave. Why do lions leave bits? You'd think they'd eat it all up or give the left-overs to their babies. Perhaps they eat pigs and they don't like them much.
`This brings me back to the point and at this point my pen is running out of ink. Damn silly, goddam. How is this pen? This pen is much thicker and darker. I wonder if the hyena would mind changing to a thicker, darker pen? I wonder if my poor little pig would mind? If he's been eaten by the lions I don't suppose it would matter to him one way or another.
'I am getting a bit sick of this pig. I think I'll let the lions have him. And the hyena. I think I'll let the lion eat everything in sight. I think I'll let him eat Nadia too. Or is that too unkind? Shall I make him confine himself to pig?'
Next week when I've recovered from the hangover I will try and return to writing sense. And I will attempt to describe the events which caused it.
Apologies to Alitalia, who were wrongly referred to as 'Air Italia' in last week's review by Alistair Hicks of the Alitalia Perkins Collection at Assisi.
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