Reading report; dreaming report

I await my $0.64 copy of The Sorrow of Belgium. I bought it online from Better World Books. It has passed from BWB’s warehouse in Mishawaka (5–6 mi from my house) to Cincinnati, OH, to Allen Park, MI – near to Detroit. Now I’m hoping it’ll come back west.

It’s dumb for stuff to be shipped so circuitously. Would the Pony Express have taken this route? I doubt it.

Meantime, I’m making good progress reading these books:

Inner Workings by J.M. Coetzee;
The Witches by Roald Dahl;
Doctor No by Ian Fleming.

Later this month, Karin & I’ll go on a long car-ride to a place called Brown City Camp. I don’t like to listen to audiobooks, but Karin does. I’ll compromise. The key is to pick out something funny and gruesome: for instance, a book written by Roald Dahl and narrated by Stephen Fry, or by Hugh Laurie, or by some other British comic person. (Maybe also some nice sermons.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I dreamed last night that I wasn’t very fat any more – but also not very limber; and that I was trying to play soccer on a tiny field with two dozen other people, and that the passing lanes were all blocked off; and that the overaggressive coach (or whoever he was) was telling me to “jab the foot in” more, and I was like, It isn’t necessary, Sir: on this congested field I can simply hold the ball carrier off; he will lose his control of the ball. And I dreamed that I scored my only goal by climbing up a chain-linked fence and waiting for the ball to come up to me and then tapping it in from above the other players; but everyone wanted to disallow that goal.

I dream a lot of dreams like this one.

Zaza

In their quarterfinal, Müller, Özil, and Schweinsteiger erred their penalty kicks. Luckily for them, Simone Zaza’s miss counted for three, it was so terrible.

Zaza without music;

Zaza with music;

Zaza with horsey music.

At least he’s contrite. Brave Zaza, I understand your pain, and I wish you future success.

Other Italians erred. The Germans, KO’ing them, advanced to play against the French, who defeated the Icelanders. Here are the Icelanders back at home, doing their rigid cheer (which I like to think of as their “Ent” cheer).

On a lark I’ve begun to write a story called “The Nephew of Poirot.” It’s set during the present day, i.e. during these Euros. It tells of a collaboration between the Englishman Henry Hastings (the grandson of Captain Arthur) and the nephew of Hercule, the Belgian Claude-Luc Poirot. They must come to terms with Brexit, with their countries’ respective footballing crises, and with the past. Following a tip from Coetzee, I am going to have to do some research into Hugo Claus, the author of The Sorrow of Belgium. Dame Agatha, like Chesterton primarily a commentator on the soul, had absolutely nothing to say about Hercule’s homeland – which was all to the good; but nowadays a responsible writer can’t ignore fiction’s geopolitics.