Bland Beginning (2013)
“To the left of his plate the daily newspaper must be folded; in front of him the jug filled with cream for his porridge or cereal; to the right the rough-cut marmalade, the honey and the sugar, Such a particularity of arrangement was essential to his well-being in the early morning.
This morning all was as he wished it. The coffee brought by the maid was of exactly the right strength, and heated to a temperature that permitted it to be drunk immediately without the least sensation of scalding o...n the tongue; the porridge was thick, yet perfectly smooth and consistent; when the toast came, each piece was warm and done to the same shade of medium brown. Yet Michael Blackburn’s forehead on this morning was marked by two small perpendicular ridges of worry just between the eyebrows. He looked with much less than his usual interest at the record of cradles, orange-blossoms and graves in The Times, and read his assorted letters with indifference. His mind turned to the past and to death: to the miserable end of the reckless, dissipated and generous man called Leon Amberside, to the sudden and terrible death of his old friend James Cobb, and to the fate of the little cripple whom he had snubbed.MoreLess
This morning all was as he wished it. The coffee brought by the maid was of exactly the right strength, and heated to a temperature that permitted it to be drunk immediately without the least sensation of scalding o...n the tongue; the porridge was thick, yet perfectly smooth and consistent; when the toast came, each piece was warm and done to the same shade of medium brown. Yet Michael Blackburn’s forehead on this morning was marked by two small perpendicular ridges of worry just between the eyebrows. He looked with much less than his usual interest at the record of cradles, orange-blossoms and graves in The Times, and read his assorted letters with indifference. His mind turned to the past and to death: to the miserable end of the reckless, dissipated and generous man called Leon Amberside, to the sudden and terrible death of his old friend James Cobb, and to the fate of the little cripple whom he had snubbed.MoreLess
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