Sunday, November 09, 2008

Pink milk for breakfast

An elegiac piece, by Elizabeth Day for the Observer Review, about Roald Dahl's widow:
He would produce pink milk for breakfast or make jelly with hundreds and thousands suspended in the gelatine.

'He would make the most mundane thing seem fantastic because he would reinterpret it.' On a trip to Zurich to meet Dahl's European literary agent, they caught a funicular railway and noticed that each time the train stopped at a certain platform, the driver would get out, put his hand up into a ceiling beam and pull out a part-smoked cigar. 'He lit it, had two puffs, put it back and got back into the train to drive down again,' says Felicity. 'All day he did this - up and down. When we got back to the city, Roald bought the most expensive Monte Cristo cigar. We went back up the funicular. At the platform, he took the old stubby cigar out and put the new one up in the beam. Then we went back to the hotel. He didn't wait to see the driver's reaction. That's the sort of guy he was. He was always looking to help people and just make their day a little more interesting, because most people's days were very dull.'

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