I knew that Stephen King considered "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again" Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca) to be the best opening line of any novel, and I agree with him. What I didn't know was that this is an iambic pentameter, and the last line of the book, "And the ashes again blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea" is also in metrical form; almost but not quite an anapestic tetrameter"(Wikipedia).
Last night I dreamt I went to Hill House again. Also in attendance were my mother (Mose) and my brother and sister. More surprisingly, my dear friend Germaine was also of the party. She is now 98 years old and I spent much of the night and my dream trying to caculate how old Mose would be if she were alive today. Eventually I worked out she would be 111.
Things started off well enough but gradually grew more tense as none of us could think of anything to say to Germaine and we were all quite relieved when my brother most kindly offered to drive her home - a very stout gesture when one considers that the journey from Essex to Dijon takes at least seven hours. (At the moment it would take four weeks longer when one factors in the two weeks Germaine would have to spend in quarantine after alighting in the land of our "nearest and dearest friend", in the words of Boris Johnson.)
The dream ended with my brother leaving Germaine in the local friendly Lidl supermarket before setting off to England and the prospect of another two weeks in quarantine.
Last night I dreamt I went to Hill House again. Also in attendance were my mother (Mose) and my brother and sister. More surprisingly, my dear friend Germaine was also of the party. She is now 98 years old and I spent much of the night and my dream trying to caculate how old Mose would be if she were alive today. Eventually I worked out she would be 111.
Things started off well enough but gradually grew more tense as none of us could think of anything to say to Germaine and we were all quite relieved when my brother most kindly offered to drive her home - a very stout gesture when one considers that the journey from Essex to Dijon takes at least seven hours. (At the moment it would take four weeks longer when one factors in the two weeks Germaine would have to spend in quarantine after alighting in the land of our "nearest and dearest friend", in the words of Boris Johnson.)
The dream ended with my brother leaving Germaine in the local friendly Lidl supermarket before setting off to England and the prospect of another two weeks in quarantine.
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