Mortality, intimations of; also, defiance in the teeth of

[desperance]

Ah. First gin of the day.

I neeeed it, 'k? It has just been borne in upon me that I am (probably) doomed to die on an American road. Because

(a) I am an inveterate jaywalker, and you can't shed fifty years of habit all in a rush;

(b) I cannot read American traffic (it's not like Europe, where they also drive on the wrong side of the road but I understand them none the less; there must be some fundamental difference in rules or manners here, because I misread every junction); and

(c) Californian drivers don't bother to indicate, except when they're bullying their way across lanes of traffic in defiance of common sense, common courtesy and very probably the laws of the land.

So, yup. Gin.

But tho' I die, I shall die with lovely things inside me. Right now, I have about two hours before klwilliams comes home from work and calendula_witch arrives for a few days' stay; and I am filling in this time by making a lamb tagine with figs and apricots, and chicken in orange sauce. For which I have just picked nine oranges, sun-warm from the tree. It's, um. Not like life in Newcastle.