In with the new

Before January passes completely from view I want to move the Book Camel blog out onto the track once more.

When the English author, Graham Greene, was having his long-standing love affair with Catherine Walston in the 1940s and 50s, he gave her a notebook diary each year in which he handwrote a quotation for every day of the year. Greene was obviously a very romantic fellow.

I was thinking about that endearing habit, and reading about Greene and Walston at the beginning of January and also wondering what quotes would be appropriate for the first few days of 2010. Here in the hills north of Melbourne the new year came in with a great rush of rain and a storm of thunder and lightning. A storm bold enough to wash away the old year and bring in the new. What words could describe that marvellous scene?

Dicctionaries of quotations offer up many possibilities for describing rain, thunder, lightning and storms. I liked Shelley, from The Cloud throwing up the echo of thunder:
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder...
Then his vigorous rhymes:
I wield the flail of the lashing hail
And whiten the green plains under
And then again I dissolve it in rain
And laugh as I pass in thunder.
That, I think, will serve quite well as my quotation for the start of the new year, 2010.

The book about Greene and Walston is The Third Woman - The Secret Passion that Inspired The End of the Affair. It's by William Cash and available from the Book Camel.