Well, the game was a washout last night, but fortunately it's been rescheduled as part of a doubleheader tonight. So we'll enjoy a long baseball evening, and then at 4 a.m. tomorrow I'll haul the Boy off to the bus station so he can embark on his Canadian idyll. Until then, the doll-house will continue to be strewn with grotty tarps, sleeping bags, dry bags, duffle bags, rope, tumpline, wool socks, headlamps . . . you have the idea. A Boy needs a lot of mangy supplies in order to spend six weeks in the river wilderness.

I've started reading Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies and thus far am pleased with it. I'd been avoiding her Tudor novels, mostly because I love Ford Madox Ford's The Fifth Queen so much and I didn't want to get myself involved in anyone else's Henry VIII fiction. But I like the way she's made Cromwell a sympathetic character, whereas Ford portrayed him as a monster. And her prose details are beautiful and evocative. In a way, her style reminds me of some of Jonathan Swift's poems. Swift, to my mind, had a matchless eye for street details, and Mantel can also conjure up place with great deftness and clarity.

A Description of the Morning

            Jonathan Swift

Now hardly here and there an hackney-coach,

Appearing, showed the ruddy morn’s approach.

Now Betty from her master’s bed had flown,

And softly stole to discompose her own.

The slipshod prentice from his master’s door

Had pared the dirt, and sprinkled round the floor.

Now Moll had whirled her mop with dextrous airs,

Prepared to scrub the entry and the stairs.

The youth with broomy stumps began to trace

The kennel-edge, where wheels had worn the place.

The small-coal man was heard with cadence deep,

Till drowned in shriller notes of chimney-sweep,

Duns at his lordship’s gate began to meet,

And Brickdust Moll had screamed through half the street.

The turnkey now his flock returning sees,

Duly let out a-nights to steal for fees;

The watchful bailiffs take their silent stands;

And schoolboys lag with satchels in their hands.