Men And Women Can Never Be Close.

England's Not A Bad Country? It's Just A Mean, Cold, Ugly, Divided, Tired, Clapped-out, Post-imperial, Post- Industrial Slag-heap Covered In Polystyrene Hamburger Cartons. 286

The Middle Years, Caught Between Children And Parents, Free Of Neither: The Past Stretches Back Too Densely, It Is Too Thickly Populated, The Future Has Not Yet Thinned Out.

Lord Knows What Incommunicable Small Terrors Infants Go Through, Unknown To All. We Disregard Them, We Say They Forget, Because They Have Not The Words To Make Us Remember. ... By The Time They Learn To Speak They Have Forgotten The Details Of Their Complaints, And So We Never Know. They Forget So Quickly, We Say, Because We Cannot Contemplate The Fact That They Never Forget.

Poverty, Therefore, Was Comparative. One Measured It By A Sliding Scale. One Was Always Poor, In Terms Of Those Who Were Richer.

There Would Be More Genuine Rejoicing At The Discovery Of A Complete New Novel By Jane Austen Than Any Other Literary Discovery, Short Of A New Major Play By Shakespeare.