March 7
What one person calls charming, another finds tiresome. Snow in the morning delights me; someone else sees only the cold, arduous journey. The world wears the colour of the mood of whoever happens to be looking at it.
The Pillow Book (freely rendered)
Two Ripe Cheeses
What one person calls charming, another finds tiresome. Snow in the morning delights me; someone else sees only the cold, arduous journey. The world wears the colour of the mood of whoever happens to be looking at it.
Jerome's narrator was to take two ripe cheeses from Liverpool to London for a friend. He put them in the luggage rack. Seven people were sitting in the compartment.
One found the air stuffy. He left. The next found it oppressive. He left too. The last fellow passenger grumbled about the fuss people made over a trifle. At Crewe he got out for a drink and did not come back. At the stations that followed, travellers hurried towards the empty compartment. They opened the door, sniffed and vanished.
The friend's wife wanted to be rid of the cheeses as well. The narrator assured her he liked the smell. He couldn't take them in himself, though: his landlady.
The wife moved into a hotel with the children. Only the charwoman stayed in the house. What smell were they talking about? She went up close and sniffed. A little like melon, she thought.
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