The way the world used to be - by Alexander McCall SmithPublished: 30/11/2011
Missing a train? said a middle-aged woman. “Let me tell you this. I come from …”
I come from Adelaide, which, as I’m sure you know, in South Australia. Or maybe you don’t. Australia’s so big that I find people abroad have only a vague notion where the cities are. It’s as if the cities somehow get lost in all that emptiness.
And that emptiness has to be crossed if you want to get from one place to another. If you live in Melbourne and you want to go to Perth, you have to cross a continent. And even within one of the states, the distances are vast. Adelaide is a long way from William Creek or Coober Pedy. They’re in the same state, but a long way away.
More details... Classical Landscape with train - By Alexander McCall SmithPublished: 19/11/2011
Six, said a young, rather ascetic-looking man. “A sitar has six playable strings. It has lots of others, of course.” He paused before going on, “But what interests me about your story is the element of chance. How many of the major things that happen to us in our lives – and I mean the really major ones – are the result of chance, pure chance? If you hadn’t got off at the wrong station, for instance, you wouldn’t have met her and you wouldn’t be going to Paris and… well, it was all a matter of complete chance.”
More details... Brief Encounter - By Alexander McCall SmithPublished: 12/11/2011
In Boccaccio’s Decameron, ten young people, decamping to the hills outside Florence, entertain one another with diverting stories. We have five people here – rather than ten – and there is no country villa, just a train snaking through the early morning, across the rich farmland of East Lothian. Shooting through small stations, this train is not one to linger: Longniddry is a blur, as is Dunbar; North Berwick a flash of buildings, houses still sleepy, and then off to the east, the sea, a broad field of blue on which the sun paints dancing flashes of silver.
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