A Rare Find.

I don’t want to talk about today’s Ashbourne visit. Too wet, too many delays and mishaps. Miserable – apart from one thing:

I found a book in a charity shop called The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. I opened it at random and read one passage, just to see whether I approved of the style (since the style is as important to me as the content.) I bought it because I was hooked by this joke:

There were three men on a train crossing the border into Scotland. One was an economist, one a logician, and one a mathematician. They saw a brown cow in a field, standing parallel with the train. ‘Ah,’ said the economist, ‘the cows in Scotland are brown.’ ‘No,’ said the logician, ‘there are cows in Scotland, at least one of which is brown.’ ‘Actually,’ said the mathematician, ‘there is at least one cow in Scotland, and it appears to be brown.’

I only mention it because it struck me that the kind of person who could write such a joke might well be a rare example of my kind of person. I think I’m maybe not quite right.

I read about a quarter of it tonight, sitting by the fire and trying to ignore the barbaric storm-force wind that’s been vandalising the garden furniture and wheelie bins, and removing yet another pane of glass from the greenhouse. The book is holding my interest well. Its protagonist is an autistic 15-year-old boy, who you just have to love for his innocence, high intelligence and oddball ways. I’m hoping he’s going to teach me about one more thread in the tapestry we call life.

That’s enough for today. Today I worked out why winter is such a problem to me, and a windy winter especially so. Such revelations can be quite tiring.