Three eggs.
The cock pigeon, which at first was rather sorry for himself, no doubt owning to having been confined in a cage & having had his wings bound, is better & trying to fly a little. The female at first courting him, walking around him & bowing.
Another dead donkey, with two dogs tearing its entrails out. The third I have seen. They never seem to bury them when they die.
The pepper trees, whose peppercorns were ripening about September, have now got a fresh crop on them. The nasturtiums which were nipped by the frost are mostly dead. Ditto the vegetable marrows & the foliage of the brinjals is all withered off.
Clear & fine, not particularly cold, nice sun & no wind.
E. saw four more storks.
The oranges etc., & even apparently the lemon blossom, not in the least damaged by the frost.
Orwell Diaries 1938-1942 
Happy New Year!
God Bless You and Yours
I wonder if George and Elaine and/or friends stayed up to welcome the new year in.
It’s pretty gory about the dead donkeys. If you really want to drive yourself batty, imagine who the final owner of the latest dead donkey was–and what happened to him–and where he’s buried–and where his descendents are.
My theory now that we are moving into a new year (1939 – what a year!!) – is that the diary reflects Eric, it is a private thing.
The published writings of course reflect George (thus the descriptive writing in ‘Marrakech’ about the flies and the funeral – slightly embellished to enhance reality or better illustrate the point).
This diary doen’t need to embellish as it is a private record.
Now, the interesting thing for me is this – when war looms and catastorphe stares the world in the face, how does the private world of Eric reflect it? Is it simply ‘2 eggs’ style, or does the scale of news warrant different treatment – leading to a diary more like George would write?
Three eggs and peppers;
Entrails foreshadow the year:
The blossom prevails
Part 1.2 is the first time in Coming Up for Air that the words “war” and “Hitler” are used.
~~~~~
As for the savaged monkeys littering the Road to Marrakesh, I want to know who the “they” are who have apparently shirked their moral obligation by not burying their discarded monkeys.
How common was it to see someone chunking a dead monkey? From a passing camel, for example. Or from an upstairs window?
As the [presumably] deceased monkey arcs through the air, does a cloud of flies pursue it?
:shock:
Brinjal–I didn’t know this one. The OED has a special entry for it:
The Anglo-Indian name of the fruit of the Egg-plant (Solanum Melongena).
[Few names even of plants exemplify so fully the changes to which a foreign and unintelligible word is liable under the influence of popular etymology and form-association. Cognate with the Sp. alberengena is the Fr. aubergine, dial. albergine, albergaine, albergame, also without the al-, belingèle, and, with m for b, merangène, melongène, botanical Lat. melong{emac}na, It. melanzana, mela insana (= mad apple). All these go back to the Arabic b{amac}{edh}inj{amac}n, and ultimately to Skr. v{amac}tin-g{amac}na, whence also Hindust{amac}ni baingan, began. The Malay berinjal{amac}, prob. from Pg., illustrates the Anglo-Indian form (see Devic, and Yule). In the West Indies brinjalle has been further corrupted to brown-jolly. The Sanskrit name is said to mean ‘the class (that removes) the wind-disorder (windy humour)’, a meaning supposed to connect it with v{amac}rtt{amac}ku, another name of the same plant, which is said to have a m{amac}ruta-n{amac}{sacu}in or ‘wind-removing’ effect. (J. T. Platts.)]
A nice gift. The presence of Eileen, at least. With a short sentence.
Her gaze skyward, following the flight of great birds who fled the european
winter cold.
Monkeys, or donkeys? GO/EB hasn’t mentioned m-monkeys, only d-donkeys. Is it possible there was a typo somewhere along the way that transmogrified a perissodactylid into a primate?
monkey…donkey…Small typo..? hangover/overfertile brain ?
Transmogrified?? I hope that never happens to me
also noted “chunking a dead monkey” ??????? as in chucking?
Can someone tell me (a luddite) HOW you get those smiley faces on your entries..this stikes me as the ultimate stealth weapon
OK, I don’t really know what transmogrified means, but as I don’t have a copy of Coming Up For Air I’m wondering: does it really say monkey in the text? If so, since Morocco seems to be too far north for native monkeys, could an editor have made the change from donkey at some point? And if that’s true, how cool is it that it took GO’s diary (and the Marrakesh essay) to show us this?
to get a :-) type a colon hyphen close-parenthesis (: – ) ) with no spaces.
Hmmm. Ignore the () around the : – )
How do you make a smiley with little blushing cheeks? There’s nothing in Coming Up For Air about donkeys or monkeys. How did this monkey thing get started?
Meanwhile, check this out, for more about chunking and monkeys! However, I think JL3 is from part of the US where “to chunk” is not an inappropriate usage, so I mean offense.
Whoops, not that, this: link.
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/chuck.html
Holy cow, I’d better shut up before it’s too late and I make a fool of myself. No, wait: it is too late.
I meant “JL3 is from a part of the US where “to chunk” is part of the dialect, so I mean NO offense.” Sheesh!
I’m putting myself on a posting hiatus.
On a lighter note:
:lol:
Click HERE for Luddite-proof info regarding WordPress Smilies.
~~~~~~ :shock:
On my home planet “chunk” is the act of disposing of trash/garbage with just enough panache—bordering on a slam-dunk, but not quite—to cause a reverberating Chunk Sound. Although I am no fan of his, I believe David Letterman chunks things from rooftops.
Just read for the first time Down and Out in Paris and London, and the essay about his boarding school as a boy. Now I realize why he might be preoccupied with food. “Please, sir, may I have some more?” might be a fitting motto for his relationship to food.
In Down and Out, it becomes clear where/how he might have picked up TB, and his lungs were bad even as a boy in school, where he was picked on for “wheezing” so much.
Then there’s those fags…
George~~
By the way, there’s about a billion varieties of “stork,” can’t you be more specific? How about some drawings?
Welcome to 1939!