The Qrious Q belongs in a zoo, next to the Long-Tailed Lemur.

  

 

It’s an upstart! That’s what it is. It’s just an “O” with a tail, yet it’s oh so high-faluting. Just because it’s a letter and a homonym.

Now you and I know that a homonym isn’t a creature in some fantasy by J Swift. And so does a common-or-garden Q. Would a Q queue? Not likely. The long-tailed O is too fecking arty-farty for that. Try to imagine it: a queue of Qs waiting for the 732 to Woking-on-Rhyme. 

Nah.

Yet it’s today’s letter, so I’ll treat it with a little respect.

Without the Q we wouldn’t have the fine word Question. Or we'd have to spell it Kwestion, which is out of the question. 

And without question we wouldn’t be able to tell our neighbours, our children, our grandchildren, and sweet old Mr Murphy down the road who mows everyone’s berm to QUESTION everything. Especially everything that’s on the internet.

It’s a great shame, but the internet – which started out as something so promising – has been broken so soon.

We all thought – no, we didn’t. We foolish optimists thought that the internet would allow us to share facts, to share wisdom, to give humanity a great hand up to becoming a sharing and caring group of naked apes.

Well, mostly naked. My bloody nose and ears are growing hair at a rate that hasn’t been equalled sine Esau saw a see-saw, and Samson strained to regain his strength.

So we must question, question, and question again. Not cynically: there may be nuggets of truth in amongst the dross. But question with genuine, open, curiosity. To dig out the truth. The facts.

 

I want to see a liquor store with the name “Red, White, and Brew”. 

Just because. But that’s beside the point.

 

Actually, today the letter Q is also almost beside the point, because what I really wanted to do was mention a couple of books I have had the excellent fortune to read over the past couple of weeks. 

It’s only once in an occasionality that a book comes into your life to deal you a great smackeroo-blurdy around the left ear-‘ole. It’s rare to fine one a year. To find two in two weeks is astonishing.

 

The first one, “Becoming Duchess Goldblatt” is a book I would never have looked at twice. Or once, to be honest.

What made me grab it from the Library’s non-fiction shelves beats me. I dunno. It’s a physically slight book, perhaps the size of a paperback, but slimmer. It has a picture of some old Dutch dauber’s idea of what a Kindly Old Woman should look like. And it’s a memoir, that most blighted of literary endeavours… and written by that great revealer of crackpot mishmush, Anonymous.

I read it in one sitting.

It is a phenomenon. Each of its 221 pages contains more wisdom that you’d find in the Rubaiyat. It’s a heart-breaking tale, filled with joy and more laughter than a year could decently contain. 

It’s about a woman whose difficult life has been transformed by her invention of Duchess Goldblatt, and who subsequently tweeted Mme. Goldblatts aphorisms. All glorious, all short, all packed with deep humility, astonishing arrogance, and profound human-ness. And all look-at-able on Twitter.

Find it, and read it.

 

The second book is one that’s been lurking in our bookshelves since June 2015. Jenny bought it, and has since been read by practically everyone we know. I finally managed to get my hands on the slippery little bugger twenty minutes after basking in Duchess Goldblatt’s after-glow.

 The Little Paris Bookshop, by Nina George.

Oh, my goodness. Reader, I wanted to marry it.

Sorry, Jane.

The Little Paris Bookshop is the finest piece of truth in fiction that I have read since, since, since… I dunno.

What a tale of love, of sensuality, of healing books (yes. Books that heal.), of hearts broken and mended, of phoenix-like rebirths, of food, of sunshine and storm, of city and country, of places magic and mundane.

And every person, every character, is written with a deep affection for people.

Read it.

I’m about to read a shooty book, one with guns and car chases, just to get my blood pressure down.

 

Q Poets!

NIZAR QIBBANI

Light is more important than the lantern,

The poem more important than the notebook,
And the kiss more important than the lips.
My letters to you
Are greater and more important than both of us.
The are the only documents
Where people will discover
Your beauty
And my madness.

 

Every time I kiss you
After a long separation
I feel
I am putting a hurried love letter
In a red mailbox.

 

SALVATORE QUASIMODO

 There is still the wind that I remember

firing the manes of horses, racing,
slanting, across the plains,
the wind that stains and scours the sandstone,

and the heart of gloomy columns, telamons,
overthrown in the grass. Spirit of the ancients, grey

with rancour, return on the wind,
breathe in that feather-light moss
that covers those giants, hurled down by heaven.
How alone in the space that’s still yours!
And greater, your pain, if you hear, once more,
the sound that moves, far off, towards the sea,
where Hesperus streaks the sky with morning:
the jew’s-harp vibrates
in the waggoner’s mouth
as he climbs the hill of moonlight, slow,
in the murmur of Saracen olive trees.