A Bad Day at School

School has started. We have within walking distance of our flat two primary schools and an after-school play area. (This last is why the ice-cream truck comes by every day at 5 or so, even in the winter when it is dark and raining. I guess if British ice-cream trucks only circulated when it was nice out, they’d go out of business.) The children are of various sizes and wear brightly colored uniform sweaters.

When I walked past this morning at recess-time, one small boy was lying face-down on the asphalt with his face buried in his arms - the immediately recognizable pose of someone having a Very Bad Day. The other children pretty much ignored him until three little girls descended, patting him with apparent intention to comfort and then trying to roll him over by main force. This never helps.

It Does Not Smell

I have become saddened by the lack of some pithy, meaningful quote in the signature of my emails. Since most of my correspondence has to do with music, I went to Bartleby.com and did a search for "music." So far the resultant haul has been less than inspiring. Some of the better ones:

Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread
-Conrad Aiken

[Music] can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell.
-W. H. Auden

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.
-Frank Zappa (1940–1993)