weaponry also noted

"You're early enough for eggs and bacon if you need a start." Eddie added, his invitation tossed kindly into the morning air, his smile a match for morning sun, a man of welcomes. "We have hot cakes, kulbassa, home fries, if you want." We have the food of kings if you really want to know. There were nights we sat at his kitchen table at 101 Main Street, Saugus, Massachusetts planning the trip, planning each meal, planning the campsite. Some menus were founded on a case of beer, a late night, a curse or two on the ride to work when day started.

"Been there a'ready," the other man said, his weaponry also noted by us, a little more orderly in its presentation, including an old Boy Scout sash across his chest, the galaxy of flies in supreme positioning. They were old Yankees, in the face and frame the pair of them undoubtedly brothers, staunch, written into early routines, probably had been up at three o'clock to get here at this hour. They were taller than we were, no fat on their frames, wide-shouldered, big-handed, barely coming out of their reserve, but fishermen. That fact alone would win any of us over. Obviously, they'd been around, a heft of time already accrued.

The tables were all

"You left it in the lift," he said. "May I sit down?"
His voice was soft. Cultivated. What could I say? The tables were all pretty full so I nodded. He said bon app閠it and began to eat. I'd always thought he picked at his food. But as I watched, I noticed that he selected small pieces, speared them and moved them carefully to his mouth.
"Have you been there?"
"Been where?" I was totally dazed. From dropping my book and banging my head and everything.
"Australia, New Zealand."
I stared at him and thought again of what Mark had said about me reminding him of someone. An Australian? Maybe an ex-girlfriend or wife?
"Not such a strange question," he said. "You're old enough to have travelled there. And Katherine Mansfield, Janet Frame, are most likely in the book."
His smile crinkled up his eyes.
"No, I haven't and yes, they are," I said.
That's how it started. He asked me a question, nodded when I spoke and then asked another. I was off, talking about reading, books and all that stuff I love.
Days later Malcolm passed our table with his tray and spontaneously I said a seat was free. Mark stared at me and I felt a rush of heat to my cheeks.
After that, Malcolm often sat with us and he and I discussed a lot of things. We spoke a little about ourselves too. I told him how Mom had brought me up on her own at the start of the Hippie Era. He said he had married during that time but divorced a few
years later. Mark asked me how come Malcolm and I always had so much to talk about.
"He's easy to talk to. And he reads a lot."
"You two got so much to say, I don't get a chance to open my mouth all lunch-time."
"You do. You shove food in."
One lunchtime Malcom asked me if I'd like to go to a reading with him.
"Um. Don't know."
"Amelia Turner. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize last year."
I wanted very much to go. But although I no longer thought Malcolm quite so weird, I wasn't sure if I wanted to go out in his company.
"Afterwards, I'll cook us curry. Do you like it? "

back to my table

The tray didn't just hit the floor. It crashed and smashed his lunch to pieces. Serves you damn well right, I thought. You were staring again.
He stood stock-still and looked down at the food. Suddenly I got up and moved towards him. I hadn't intended to, hadn't wanted to help him. I called to the woman behind the counter. She closed her mouth and brought a cloth to clean up the mess. I picked up crockery, put it on the tray. There was a soppy stain on his trousers and through it you could see just how bony his knees were. Like the rest of him. All bones, dangling jacket and hanging trousers. Stooped shoulders and mile-long arms. Then he smiled at me. A wonderful smile that creased up his worn face and totally surprised me.
"Thank you."
I shoved the tray at him and went back to my table.
I worked at a large publishing company and ate lunch in the canteen. I had noticed him because he stared at me. He was weird-looking. His hair was badly cut and his clothes were ancient and dull; too-short corduroys, baggy at the knees and colour-less sweaters, dotted with fluff. Often he sat alone and just picked at his food. Or he read and jotted things down.

belief that a fun-filled

The way people cling to the belief that a fun-filled, pain-free life equates happiness actually diminishes their chances of ever attaining real happiness. If fun and pleasure are equated with happiness, then pain must be equated with unhappiness. But, in fact, the opposite is true: More times than not, things that lead to happiness involve some pain.

As a result, many people avoid the very endeavors that are the source of true happiness. They fear the pain inevitably brought by such things as marriage, raising children, professional achievement, religious commitment, civic or charitable work, and self-improvement.

still at memory

Brother was still at memory, we could tell. Silence we thought was heavy about us, but there was so much going on. A bird talked to us from a high limb. A fox called to her young. We were on the Pine River once again, nearly a hundred miles from home, in Paradise.

"Name's Roger Treadwell. Boys are Nathan and Truett." The introductions had been accounted for.

Old Venerable Roger Treadwell, carpenter, fly fisherman, rocker, leaned forward and said, "You boys wouldn't have a couple spare beers, would ya?"

Now that's the way to start the day on the Pine River.

doors of the van

Then the pounding came, from inside the truck, as if a tire iron was beating at the sides of the vehicle. It was not a timid banging, not a minor signal. Bang! Bang! it came, and Bang! again. And the voice of authority from some place in space, some regal spot in the universe. "I'm not sitting here the livelong day whilst you boys gab away." A toothless meshing came in his words, like Walter Brennan at work in the jail in Rio Bravo or some such movie.

"Comin', pa," one of them said, the most orderly one, the one with the old scout sash riding him like a bandoleer.

They pulled open the back doors of the van, swung them wide, to show His Venerable Self, ageless, white-bearded, felt hat too loaded with an arsenal of flies, sitting on a white wicker rocker with a rope holding him to a piece of vertical angle iron, the crude kind that could have been on early subways or trolley cars. Across his lap he held three delicate fly rods, old as him, thin, bamboo in color, probably too slight for a lake's three-pounder. But on the Pine River, upstream or downstream, under alders choking some parts of the river's flow, at a significant pool where side streams merge and phantom trout hang out their eternal promise, most elegant, fingertip elegant.

be your father

"Someone he knew?"
"Yeah. Could be strategy. Maybe he fancies you."
"Fancies me? But he's old."
"Only old enough to be your father."
I grabbed my tray and left the table.
I didn't do much work that afternoon. I kept wishing Mark hadn't said what he had said. Old enough to be your father.
The following week I took along a book to read during lunchtime. When I got into the lift on my floor, he was already inside. He greeted me so I had to reply but I didn't smile. We were alone and that worried me. I wondered whether I should get out at the next floor and walk up the stairs to the canteen. Don't panic, I thought. Just because he's stared at you for ages doesn't mean he's going to do anything.
" Well, I suppose one of us should press the button or we'll be here all day, won't we?"
I'd been so busy wondering what he was going to do and expecting him to do something, that I'd completely forgotten to do anything myself. I felt like an idiot and this made me smile and I hadn't wanted to. He smiled back, his blue eyes crinkling right up to the grey hair at his ears and making him look ... nice. Then there was a slap. My book hit the floor. I bent down and so did he, and we bashed heads. At that moment, the lift shuddered to a stop and the doors seemed to fling themselves wide open. I was so embarrassed, I marched out of the lift, straight towards the queue at the counter. I ordered without looking at the menu and took my tray to a table where there was only one empty seat. I breathed a sigh of relief and began to eat. But the salad stuck in my throat when I noticed that everyone else at the table had already finished lunch and they were getting up to go. I glanced over at the counter. He was paying and in a second, his eyes would scan the room to find me. I ducked my head. Waited. Any minute now he'd sit down with his tray.
Short Stories from Australasia. My book appeared in front of my eyes. His fingers were the longest I'd seen and his nails were manicured. I hadn't thought he'd bother.

A painter hangs

A painter hangs his or her finished pictures on a wall, and everyone can see it. A composer writes a work, but no one can hear it until it is performed. Professional singers and players have great responsibilities, for the composer is utterly dependent on them. A student of music needs as long and as arduous a training to become a performer as a medical student needs to become a doctor. Most training is concerned with technique, for musicians have to have the muscular proficiency of an athlete or a ballet dancer. Singers practice breathing every day, as their vocal chords would be inadequate without controlled muscular support. String players practice moving the fingers of the left hand up and down, while drawing the bow to and fro with the right arm-two entirely different movements.

Singers and instruments have to be able to get every note perfectly in tune. Pianists are spared this particular anxiety, for the notes are already there, waiting for them, and it is the piano tuner’s responsibility to tune the instrument for them. But they have their own difficulties; the hammers that hit the string have to be coaxed not to sound like percussion, and each overlapping tone has to sound clear.

This problem of getting clear texture is one that confronts student conductors: they have to learn to know every note of the music and how it should sound, and they have to aim at controlling these sound with fanatical but selfless authority.

Technique is of no use unless it is combined with musical knowledge and understanding. Great artists are those who are so thoroughly at home in the language of music that they can enjoy performing works written in any century.

profound loneliness

I have often thought that if Hollywood stars have a role to play, it is to teach us that happiness has nothing to do with fun. These rich, beautiful individuals have constant access to glamorous parties, fancy cars, expensive homes, everything that spells "happiness".

But in memoir after memoir, celebrities reveal the unhappiness hidden beneath all their fun: depression, alcoholism, drug addiction, broken marriages, troubled children, profound loneliness.

we thought

The most orderly son said, "Sure, pa. Two-three hours." The two elderly sons left the campsite and walked down the path to the banks of the Pine River, their boots swishing at thigh line, the most elegant rods pointing the way through scattered limbs, experience on the move. Trout beware, we thought.

"We been carpenters f'ever," he said, the clip still in his words. "Those boys a mine been some good at it too." His head cocked, he seemed to listen for their departure, the leaves and branches quiet, the murmur of the stream a tinkling idyllic music rising up the banking. Old Venerable Himself moved the wicker rocker forward and back, a small timing taking place. He was hearing things we had not heard yet, the whole symphony all around us. Eddie looked at me and nodded his own nod. It said, "I'm paying attention and I know you are. This is our one encounter with a man who has fished for years the river we love, that we come to twice a year, in May with the mayflies, in June with the black flies." The gift and the scourge, we'd often remember, having been both scarred and sewn by it.

no garbage

"Oh, boy," Eddie said at an aside, "there's the boss man, and look at those tools." Admiration leaked from his voice.

Rods were taken from the caring hands, the rope untied, and His Venerable Self, white wicker rocker and all, was lifted from the truck and set by our campfire. I was willing to bet that my sister Pat, the dealer in antiques, would scoop up that rocker if given the slightest chance. The old one looked about the campsite, noted clothes drying from a previous day's rain, order of equipment and supplies aligned the way we always kept them, the canvas of our tent taut and true in its expanse, our fishing rods off the ground and placed atop the flyleaf so as not to tempt raccoons with smelly cork handles, no garbage in sight. He nodded.

We had passed muster.

"You the ones leave it cleaner than you find it ever' year. We knowed sunthin' 'bout you. Never disturbed you afore. But we share the good spots." He looked closely at Brother Bentley, nodded a kind of recognition. "Your daddy ever fish here, son?"

after the crash

A few days after the crash, he stopped at the table I was sharing with Mark from proof reading, and asked if he might sit down. I said the seats were taken and continued eating. He apologised and took his tray off somewhere else.
"What's your problem, Leanna?" asked Mark.
"No problem. It's just that I like to choose who I share my mealtimes with."
"A bit rough on the old chap though."
I shrugged.
It was Mark who told me more about him. He had gone over to scrounge a cigarette. By the time he came back to the table, I had my head stuck into the news-paper.
"Interesting chap. Sub-editor. Been all over the world," said Mark.
I decided to find the newspaper more interesting and finally Mark shut up and finished smoking.
"Asked your name," he said.
"He what?"
"Yeah."
"What'd you say?"
"Leanna, of course."
I folded the newspaper.
"I've loads of work this afternoon."
"Said you look familiar," said Mark. "Like someone he knew."

situation here upon earth

Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose.
　　
From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know that man is here for the sake of other men --- above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, and also for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labors of my fellow men, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received. My peace of mind is often troubled by the depressing sense that I have borrowed too heavily from the work of other men.
　　
To ponder interminably over the reason for one’s own existence or the meaning of life in general seems to me, from an objective point of view, to be sheer folly. And yet everyone holds certain ideals by which he guides his aspiration and his judgment. The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort and happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle.

in such a glamorous

live in Hollywood. You may think people in such a glamorous, fun-filled place are happier than others. If so, you have some mistaken ideas about the nature of happiness.

Many intelligent people still equate happiness with fun. The truth is that fun and happiness have little or nothing in common. Fun is what we experience during an act. Happiness is what we experience after an act. It is a deeper, more abiding emotion.

Going to an amusement park or ball game, watching a movie or television, are fun activities that help us relax, temporarily forget our problems and maybe even laugh. But they do not bring happiness, because their positive effects end when the fun ends.

the remnants of an old lodge

Brother must have passed through the years in a hurry, remembering his father bringing him here as a boy. "A ways back," Brother said in his clipped North Saugus fashion, outlander, specific, no waste in his words. Old Oren Bentley, it had been told us, had walked five miles through the unknown woods off Route 16 as a boy and had come across the campsite, the remnants of an old lodge, and a great curve in the Pine River so that a mile's walk in either direction gave you three miles of stream to fish, upstream or downstream. Paradise up north.

His Venerable Self nodded again, a man of signals, then said, "Knowed him way back some. Met him at the Iron Bridge. We passed a few times." Instantly we could see the story. A whole history of encounter was in his words; it marched right through us the way knowledge does, as well as legend. He pointed at the coffeepot. "The boys'll be off, but my days down there get cut up some. I'll sit a while and take some of thet." He said thet too pronounced, too dramatic, and it was a short time before I knew why.

The white wicker rocker went into a slow and deliberate motion, his head nodded again. He spoke to his sons. "You boys be back no more'n two-three hours so these fellers can do their things too, and keep the place tidied up."

Sundays are different

Sundays in England could be fairly boring in the past. Sunday was always a traditional day for rest and religion. People were supposed to go to church. Shops were not even allowed to open on Sundays until 1994. Even now, shops are only open for a maximum of six hours. Recently there has been debate in England as to whether opening hours should be extended to the same period as on weekdays.

Some people say that religion is now less popular because there are more activities to get involved in. Going to church is no longer a popular activity for many British.

Many British enjoy doing DIY (do-it-yourself) activities on Sundays, like painting, decorating, and building things in the home. Shops that sell DIY tools are always very busy on Sunday mornings.

Transport at the weekends can be more limited than on weekdays. Travelling around both locally and nationally can also be more difficult because repairs to trains and tracks are often done then.

For young people, Sundays are usually a day for seeing friends, playing or watching sport, or shopping and generally relaxing before going back to work or college the following day.