I’ve been to London. To visit the Queen!
Well, not really. I couldn’t as yet afford it.
I’ve had, however, very good interactions with her subjects. Well, mostly they were one-sided.
In January, I read three books from two British authors, Tom Sharpe and Doris Lessing. Tom Sharpe’s book, Grantchester Grind was funny. Doris Lessing’s “The grass is singing” and “The cleft” were both disturbing; a woman’s grinding poverty and hopelessness in the first book and cruelty in the second.
During the Sinulog weekend, I met two Brits, Anne and John. They came here to learn diving. Anne has already left middle of February while John will leave end of this month. When we met, I kept quiet the whole evening. I always keep quiet when I met new people. Sometimes I hate my reticence.
On the same month, from Jessica Zafra’s blog, I read a poem from another Brit, Philip Larkin who incidentally happened to be a librarian.
January was a very productive month. And somehow the interactions with Her Majesty's subjects were a change from the usual American literature I seemed to be always reading and American accent I always hear, maybe because the latter is more accessible than the former.
And last night, for the first time, out of sheer boredom (not that I had nothing better to do, but sometimes the brain simply refuses to work at top notch), I visited audible.com. What did I listen to? Love stories. Samples of them anyway, and I found out, I preferred listening to the British narrators. I don’t know why, but there is just something elegant about their accents.
