Too Pooped to Post ...

... so I thought I'd quote this passage from "Remote People" by Evelyn Waugh. On his trip to cover the coronation of Haile Selassie, he notices that his two Armenian guides are much more adaptable to the foreignness of the situation than he ever could be -- and wishes he too could be a "man of the world":

"I suppose everyone at times likes to picture himself as such a person. Sometimes, when I find that elusive ideal looming too attractively, when I envy my friends this one's adaptability to diverse company, this one's cosmopolitan experience, this one's impenetrable armour against sentimentality and humbug, this one's astute ordering of his finances and nicely calculated hospitality, and realize that, whatever happens to me and however I deplore it, I shall never in actual fact become a 'hardboiled man of the world' of the kind I read about in the novels I sometimes obtain at bookstalls for short railway journeys; that I shall always be ill at ease with nine out of every ten people I meet; that I shall always find something startling and rather abhorrent in the things most other people think worth doing, and something puzzling in their standards and importance; that I shall probably be increasingly rather than decreasingly, vulnerable to the inevitable minor disasters and injustices of life -- then I comfort myself a little by thinking that, perhaps, if I were an Armenian I should find things easier."

Now that's writing -- even if he's more famous than our unsung medieval cathedral builders.