“Plagiarize; let no one else’s work evade your eyes.’ Who remembers the wicked wit of Tom Lehrer ? He puts it harshly, but the fact is that all writers feed on what others have written.
I frequently scroll through my memories of Shakespeare. Othello crops up often. “If it were now to die, ‘twere now to be most happy’ clicks in at moments of intense pleasure. Even just on smelling a rose. The sense of smell momentarily takes over from all other sensations, and even thoughts. If the olfactory nerve is closest to the memory (as I’ve been told) perhaps that includes a cut-off switch for the rest of the brain.
The rose we call ‘Mad Alf’ has scrambled twelve feet up the sycamore at the end of this garden. One hopes that Madame Alfred was as fragrant as the marvellous rose that has made her (or her name) immortal.
I still had my nose buried in her bosom at nine last night. There was complete stillness, even here, in the heart of London, but for the faint trickling of water into the little fish tank. Alas, for the moment, no fish. The heron from, presumably, Kensington Gardens, stole our little Cae and Gwian (named after our. wood in Wales). How he spotted them is a mystery. Their tank is half-buried in viburnum and ivy; its water surface only four feet by one and a half. I’m off to find their replacements; perhaps ones in camouflage colours.
