Well, I missed Bastille Day, but I just remembered one of the best ever "things could be worse" examples:
You all know, Thomas Carlyle's huge manuscript of The French Revolution was accidentally burned by a servant.
Imagine the appalling pre-carbon-paper vulnerability of writing. And Carlyle's guts in writing the damn thing all over again.
The one gives me a shivery evil thrill-- and the other makes me weak-kneed with admiration.
Anyway, that story makes me know I'm so "lucky, lucky, lucky," as sung operatically by Dawn French [no relation to the revolution].
2 comments:
Okay, here's one that still makes me feel lucky lucky lucky. A warning to the faint of heart: don't read on if you are squeamish about freakish (though not lethal) accidents.
Many years ago, we rented a duplex in an old 19th-century house owned by a woman and her husband, who used to be a chimney sweep. He told us that, one day, up on scaffolding to clean out the house's chimney, the scaffolding collapsed under him and he fell all the way down from the roof of this tall, 3-story home onto a bush with lots of spikey growths....and was impaled up his....derriere, shall we say. And lived!
Gee, I don't remember that story!
Yeah, it would make one feel lucky. (Yikes.)
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