A well-known strip club in the Florida Keys has gone out of business. A friend posted a picture on social media of the sign out in front, which says: “Sorry, we’re clothed.”
On our way back from IKEA last week we stopped at Foodtown, where we strolled the plaza – which now has a Korean doughnut shop, and soon will have a restaurant named Serious Dumplings – and then went into the supermarket. The smell was not as bad as it sometimes is. By the fish department we heard a strange noise and, looking into a covered tub, found it full of live toads. We strolled the aisles, picking up a few items (though no toads), and then took our basket to the cashier.
At home that evening we were all set to dive under our new duvet when the air-conditioner shut down. We turned on the fan and remade the bed with only a sheet. Walking to my bathroom, I noticed a cockroach in the corridor. It was large and lying on its back. I approached it with my raised sandal; the only movement it made was a last-gasp wiggling of its legs. I went and got the dustpan, swept it in, and then took it to the toilet where I flushed it down.
It was the first cockroach we had seen in 30 years. We live on the third floor, and even though Hania refuses to let the exterminator in, for health reasons, we don’t get cockroaches. One of my concerns about moving to Florida was the idea of flying cockroaches, but we never see the kind that run. At first I thought: That honeymoon is over. Then I remembered our afternoon shopping trip. I supposed a roach had been, or climbed, in our basket, and latched onto one of our boxes before snuggling nicely in our bag, which, after emptying at home, I threw on the floor of the corridor. Now I’m hoping for another good roachless run.
In the current Spectator, Martin Vander Weyer relays the public speaking advice given by Philip Mountbatten before he became Duke of Edinburgh. It was a simple alphabetical formula: ABC-XYZ, which stood for: Always be cheerful – examine your zip.
Tuesday Hania and drove out to IKEA to get a duvet for our bed. I had been a strict sheet-and-quilt man for most of my life, despite four years spent in Europe, but a recent stay in a New York apartment, owned by a Polish woman, convinced me of the superiority of the duvet. There is no sheet to get tangled, no bother with layers, just one light but insulating cover. It makes getting in and out of bed, which I do with more frequency as I get older, infinitely easier.
Not surprisingly, there was a large selection of duvets, each with a painted thermometer on the plastic packaging to show its degree of warmth. We got the second warmest. Then we chose a cover: white with a series of black geometrical designs.
It was only when we got home, and put the duvet in the cover, and then on the bed, that I noticed that the black lines, overlapping and repeated, were of the Dala horse, the most famous piece of Swedish folk art. (It is to Sweden what the Barcelos rooster is to Portugal.) I recognized it because we had one in our house when I was growing up – brought by a Swede on a Rotary Club exchange – and years later, I spent Midsummer in Dalarna, the central region of Sweden from which the horse comes (like much of the country’s folk art). The design made the duvet even more welcome.
I'm on deadline this month; blog posts will resume in July. Thanks for reading.
I went to All Saints Sunday for Pentecost and was greeted warmly at the door. Leaving, I was also approached and thanked for coming. ‘They’re looking for younger parishioners,’ I thought to myself. Then I remembered my age.