Letter from a terrace in Palma 7 The fly and the plane.

                                                                                      8 September, 2017

Good morning,

I think it was Mark Twain who said, “I did not have time to write you a short letter, so I have written you a long one instead.”   Here I have done the opposite. Although I do have time for a long letter, I have written a short one instead.  It will not keep you long but I hope you will enjoy it.

So, take your letter opener, mine is of a beautiful dark wood from Africa,  slide it under the flap of the envelope, cut out the stamp if you want it for your collection, take out the folded sheet and start to read. 

Ah, those were the days, my friend, those were the days!

Last week I took the plane from Palma to Madrid and somewhere over the coast near Valencia I noticed a fly land on my newspaper. It must have flown in with us as we filed into the plane and looked for our seats. It spent the flight going from passenger to passenger, swatted away by some and ignored by others. It then went out with us when we left the plane at Barajas Airport.  It was five hundred miles from home, from the flowers it knew and loved and all the other flies it had flown with around Palma.

Such a change cannot have been easy to deal with.

“As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods.  They kill us for their sport.” said Gloucester in ‘King Lear’. This fly now has to manage in the hubbub and commotion of Madrid far from the sandy beaches near the airport of Palma.

We never know what is in store for us.  We too are shuffled about hither and thither and we have to find our feet after each upheaval.  Ah well, we do our best to get by, and I hope that this fly managed alright in the traffic of Madrid.

Yours sincerely