IMPORTANT QUESTIONS

When I was a teenager I knew everything, and would have been insufferable to myself now. This is not unusual. Teenage boys, are, in the main, unlikeable little sh*ts, and deep into adulthood we resent the exceptions.

[Exceptionalism can run in both directions: Donal Trump and Mitch McConnell are still insufferable.]


Unlike most unlikeable little sh*ts, I wasn't exposed to Monty Python till adulthood. Everything that starts with three questions must, inevitably, lead one to Saint Attila.


What is your name? What is your favourite colour? What is the airspeed velocity of a swallow?


The world long ago revolved around book rooms, comfy chairs in which to read while smoking one's pipe, hot caffeinated beverages, plates of buttered toast with Dundee marmalade, and deep fried unidentifiable objects.

Books came from Blackwells in England. Reference, dictionaries, Simenon, Nabokov, cuisine, scientific subjects, mediaeval and colonial history.
Comfy chairs (in book rooms) were all over the place.
Dundee marmalade also came from England.
As did varieties of decent tea.

Deep fried things are the Dutch National Cuisine. We lived in Holland at the time. The non-deepfried stuff is snert, eels, herring, or Indonesian food.

In retrospect it seems rather limited.


Nowadays you cannot smoke inside anymore, unless your apartment mate has left for work and it's your day off. So after two or three in the afternoon there will be no pipe lit up near the chair or the books. Haven't seen Dundee marmalade in a while, but there are many other things to put on toast.

The last two or three pipefulls of the day tend to be cold affairs.
Entirely without books. After the tea-cup is empty.
Outdoors, in a virtual Siberia.


The number of questions has considerably expanded, and I no longer know everything. I have a number of favourite colours presently.


But, via friends, I now know this: An unladen swallow will fly from 9 to 12 meters per second, depending on what it recently ate, whether it is being pursued, or how much of a hurry it is in. Elevation, humidity, temperature, coconuts, and the bird's age and size are also factors to consider.

So anywhere between 32 km p/h. and 41 km p/h.



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