August 2013
Crambe repetita (30)
2 August 2013, around 5.19.
A chimney at the end of our house was the only one smoking and there was a great fire in the kitchen. Perhaps the servants were roasting an ox. Mr Sindbad couldn’t sleep and was resting his head on the dulcimer, and his strange friend, Joco – we only knew his first name – kept singing one song over and over again in that harsh wine-stained voice of his, like thin ice cracking round a well one winter’s day when there’s roast pig on the spit and you’re chewing a crisp bit of cabbage between your teeth. Like sour wine trickling down an old man’s throat, that’s what Joco’s singing was like, and he had been singing ever since dinner.