"My Family and Other Animals"

[fiefoe]

The start of Gerald Durrell's Corfu trilogy reads like a cross between "A Year in Provence" and "Under the Sea Wind", with more sibling antics thrown in, (but those were no match for the epic lizard vs mantis fight.)

• Like a gentle, enthusiastic, and understanding Noah, she has steered her vessel full of strange progeny through the stormy seas of life with great skill, always faced with the possibility of mutiny, always surrounded by the dangerous shoals of overdraft and extravagance, never being sure that her navigation would be approved by the crew, but certain that she would be blamed for anything that went wrong.
• For my mother there was a rich, bubbling cold, and a twinge of rheumatism to season it.
• France rain-washed and sorrowful, Switzerland like a Christmas cake, Italy exuberant, noisy, and smelly, were passed, leaving only confused memories. The tiny ship throbbed away from the heel of Italy out into the twilit sea, and as we slept in our stuffy cabins, somewhere in that tract of moon-polished water we passed the invisible dividing line and entered the bright, looking-glass world of Greece.
• the island sloped gently down, blurred with the silver and green iridescence of olives, with here and there an admonishing finger of black cypress against the sky.
• Halfway up the slope, guarded by a group of tall, slim cypress trees, nestled a small strawberry-pink villa, like some exotic fruit lying in the greenery. The cypress trees undulated gently in the breeze, as if they were busily painting the sky a still brighter blue for our arrival.
• Roses dropped petals that seemed as big and smooth as saucers, flame red, moon white, glossy, and unwrinkled; marigolds like broods of shaggy suns stood watching their parents’ progress through the sky.
• On the rose stems, encrusted with green flies, lady-birds moved like newly painted toys;
• Gradually the magic of the island settled over us as gently and clingingly as pollen. Each day had a tranquillity, a timelessness, about it, so that you wished it would never end. But then the dark skin of night would peel off and there would be a fresh day waiting for us, glossy and colourful as a child’s transfer and with the same tinge of unreality.
• Roger would creep up to Achilles (the turtle) and lick his front vigorously in an attempt to get the grape juice that the reptile had dribbled down himself. Achilles, affronted at such a liberty, would snap at Roger’s nose, and then, when the licks became too overpowering and moist, he would retreat into his shell with an indignant wheeze, and refuse to come out until we had removed Roger from the scene.
• Good-natured whales allowed unseaworthy galleons, armed with a forest of harpoons, to pursue them relentlessly; bland and innocent-looking octopi tenderly engulfed small boats in their arms; Chinese junks, with jaundiced crews, were followed by shoals of well-dentured sharks... They were maps that lived, maps that one could study, frown over, and add to; maps, in short, that really meant something.
• No, my interest in what I considered to be a very badly planned expedition lay in the fact that I knew the name of each and every elephant. I also knew that Hannibal had appointed a special man not only to feed and look after the elephants, but to give them hot-water bottles when the weather got cold.
• Treading water and peering down, we could see below the shining, narrow fronds of green and black weeds growing close and tangled, over which we hung like hawks suspended in air above a strange woodland.
• It was this water-pistol habit of theirs that led us to invent a game. Each armed with a sea-slug, we would make our weapons squirt, noting how and where the water struck the sea. Then we moved over to that spot, and the one who discovered the greatest amount of sea fauna in his area won a point.
• when they saw that Nelson was so little affected by the whole thing that he was sitting on the bridge labelling his birds’-egg collection, they decided that there was really nothing to be scared about …’
• The sea was like a warm, silky coverlet that moved my body gently to and fro. There were no waves, only this gentle underwater movement, the pulse of the sea, rocking me softly.
• What a wine … like the blood of a dragon and as smooth as a fish …
• Eventually the warm wind and the rain of winter seemed to polish the sky, so that when January arrived it shone a clear, tender blue … the same blue as that of the tiny flames that devoured the olive logs in the charcoal pits. The nights were still and cool, with a moon so fragile it barely freckled the sea with silver points. The dawns were pale and translucent until the sun rose, mist-wrapped, like a gigantic silkworm cocoon, and washed the island with a delicate bloom of gold dust.
• In the water-filled ditches the frogs that looked newly enamelled snored a rapturous chorus in the lush weeds.
• Luckily, however, he never succeeded, and eventually, looking more harassed than ever, he would drop the insect to the ground and fly off hurriedly in search of something else. I was very grateful to this (daddy) swallow, for he provided me with three species of butterfly, six dragon-flies and two ant-lions which were new to my collection.
• He was, in fact, performing a very necessary and humane service, as anyone who had seen the cats would agree. So my lessons in French were being continuously interrupted while the consul leaped to the window to send yet another cat to a happier hunting ground.
• ‘I have always been … er … you know … attracted …’ ‘Hurry up, Theo, or you’ll miss it,’ we would chorus. The entire family then vacated the table, and, gathering Theodore en route, we sped up the four flights of stairs, Roger racing ahead, barking joyfully. We burst into the attic, out of breath, laughing, our feet thumping like gun-fire on the uncarpeted floor, threw open the windows, and leaned out, peering over the olive tops to where the bay lay like a round blue eye among the trees, its surface as smooth as honey. The plane, like a cumbersome overweight goose, flew over the olive groves, sinking lower and lower. Suddenly it would be over the water, racing its reflection over the blue surface. Slowly the plane dropped lower and lower. Theodore, eyes narrowed, beard bristling, watched it with bated breath.
• He (the owl) would ride on Roger’s back, clinging tight to the black wool; if, as occasionally happened, Roger forgot his passenger and went too fast, or skittishly jumped over a stone, Ulysses’ eye would blaze, his wings would flap in a frantic effort to keep his balance, and he would click his beak loudly and indignantly until I reprimanded Roger for his carelessness.
• Presently, as if obeying a signal, they turned and headed out of the bay towards the distant coast of Albania, and I trod water and watched them go, swimming up the white chain of moonlight, backs agleam as they rose and plunged with heavy ecstasy in the water as warm as fresh milk. Behind them they left a trail of great bubbles that rocked and shone briefly like miniature moons before vanishing under the ripples. After this we often met the porpoises when we went moonlight bathing,
• and when you dived as you hit the surface it seemed as though you had plunged into a frosty furnace of glinting light. {My 3rd or 4th book within the year that describes bioluminescense.}
• ‘But don’t be stupid, Larry. We can’t keep moving. We moved here in order to cope with your friends.’ ‘Well, now we’ll have to move to cope with the relations.’
• made his skin look so fine and thin that you felt it should be transparent so that you could see the viscera, coiled neatly as a butterfly’s proboscis, in his fat tummy.
• Aspirin is so good for roses. Drachma pieces for the chrysanthemums, aspirin for roses, brandy for sweet peas, and a squeeze of lemon-juice for the fleshy flowers, like begonias.
• It seemed to me, in the gloom, that the flowers had moved closer to her, had crowded eagerly about her bed, as though waiting for her to tell them something. A ravaged old queen, lying in state, surrounded by her whispering court of flowers.
• ‘What a masterly understatement,’ he said at last; ‘you are always ready with the apt platitude to sum up a catastrophe. How I envy you your ability to be inarticulate in the face of Fate.’
• Here, if you felt hungry, you could wade out into the shallows and catch fat, transparent shrimps that tasted as sweet as grapes when eaten raw, or you could dig down with your toes until you found the ribbed, nutlike cockles. Two of these, placed end to end, hinge to hinge, and then twisted sharply in opposite directions, opened each other neatly; the contents, though slightly rubbery, were milky and delicious to eat.