De Britse schrijfster Paula Hawkins werd geboren op 26 augustus 1972 en groeide op in Salisbury (het huidige Harare in Zimbabwe) in Rhodesië. Zie ook alle tags voor Paula Hawkins op dit blog.
Uit: Confessions of a Reluctant Recessionista
“Cassie Cavanagh loves her Louboutins God, they’re beautiful. They are quite possibly the most beautiful shoes I have ever seen in my entire life. Last night, after I’d come home and tried them on with just about everything in my entire wardrobe (there is nothing they don’t look good with), I put them on the coffee table in the middle of the living room and just sat there, looking at them. They were still sitting there when Ali arrived. Tad luck,’ was the first thing she said when she came into the room.
‘Bad luck?’ ‘Shoes on the table,’ she said, knocking them to the floor. ‘You’re just jealous.’ ‘Jealous, my arse. You won’t be able to walk fifty yards in those things. They’ll cripple you.’ ‘They’re taxi shoes, Al. I don’t intend to walk fifty yards in them. It’s just taxi to bar, bar to taxi, taxi to front door. That’s about thirty yards max over the course of an entire evening. Anyway, Dan can always carry me …’ All slumped down onto the sofa, stretching out her legs and kicking off her own rather elegant heels. ‘You’re right, you cow. You are lucky, having someone to spoil you, even if he is constantly admiring his own assets. I am jealous. Some days I feel like no one would notice if I turned up at the pub barefoot.’ This is not true. At five nine with a pair of legs to make Gwyneth Paltrow turn green with envy, All never passes unnoticed. She’s just so used to being one of the boys, which is virtually a job requirement when you do what she does, that she sometimes forgets the impact she makes on the opposite sex. ‘You had a long day?’ I asked, handing her a glass of champagne. ‘The longest. Had to get up at quarter to five in order to get a decent run in before I left for work, got stuck on the Northern Line for twenty minutes on the way in, which meant I missed half the morning meeting, got bollocked by Nicholas, had endless calls with impossible-to-please clients, no time for lunch, no time to pee …’ Ali and I met at Hamilton Churchill, the investment bank where we work. She’s the high-powered one —she’s a trader — and I’m just a lowly PA, but I know whose job I’d rather have. My boss might be a complete pain in the arse, but I don’t have to be at work at six thirty every morning, I don’t have to spend all day yelling into a phone, I don’t have the responsibility of buying and selling millions of pounds’ worth of stock, of trying to call the market, to sort the good tips from the bad, trying to please my clients while also pleasing my bosses. Granted, I don’t earn a six-figure bonus either, but I get by. Plus, I am fortunate to have a boyfriend, Dan, who is also a trader – and in addition to being extremely attractive he’s also very generous, hence the Louboutins. Generous as he is, I have to admit that the shoes came as a bit of a surprise. It wasn’t as if it was my birthday, or an anniversary or even Valentine’s Day –just a plain old Wednesday in October. We went out to dinner and when we got back to his flat, there they were, all wrapped up with a crimson bow, sitting in the middle of the bed. My friends won’t believe it, but he can be very romantic.”
De Duitse dichter en schrijver Walter Helmut Fritz werd geboren op 26 augustus 1929 in Karlsruhe. Zie ook alle tags voor Walter Helmut Fritz op dit blog.
Het open raam
Het venster wordt geopend naar de nieuwe dag waarop er veel dagen zijn; naar een man en vrouw die langs de kust lopen; naar de Rijn, die zelfs bevaarbaar bleef als het land onder ijs en sneeuw lag. Stroomopwaarts en stroomafwaarts ademende nabijheid en weids uitzicht, dat eraan herinnert dromen en verdwijnpunten serieus te nemen. Het water draagt zijn zand, zijn duisternissen en lichten met zich mee. De ogen volgen een van de schepen, van waaraf iemand zwaait. Met duizelingwekkend leven beweegt de rivier zich voort als de moorddadige eeuw die zich uit de voeten maakt. Geluid van golven. Golftoppen die glinsteren en breken. Ervoor staat nu een roedel woedende honden.
Vertaald door Frans Roumen
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 26e augustus ook mijn blog van 26 augustus 2021 en ook mijn blog van 26 augustus 2020 en eveneens mijn blog van 26 augustus 2018 deel 1 en eveneens deel 2.