Available for freelance writing commissions on a variety of subjects including family history, nostalgic Belfast and its famous people, shops, shoppers & shopping, the golden age of Hollywood (esp westerns) and humorous pieces on life's weird and wonderful. Op-eds, columns, non-fiction book reviews too.
joecushnan@aol.com & @JoeCushnan
I have a portfolio of features, reviews, poetry and short fiction published in all sorts of places - Belfast Telegraph, Tribune, Ireland's Own, Dalhousie Review, Fairlight Books, Reader's Digest, Reality, Lapwing Poetry, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Spillwords, Dear Reader, Amethyst Review, to name a selection. Oh, and the odd BBC radio contribution.
This is a series of very, very short items that have nothing to do with the current news agenda. Swift diversions for a moment or two.
Apropos of Nothing #33 – 20 May 1890
Around 20 May, 1890, Anton Chekhov travelled from Moscow to Tomsk, a place he deplored. His journey was not always a comfortable one, as he indicated in a letter:
“I’ve been hungry as a horse all the way. I filled my belly with bread in order to stop thinking of turbot, asparagus and suchlike. I even dreamt of buckwheat kasha. I dreamt of it for hours on end. I bought some sausage for the journey in Tyumen, if you can call it a sausage. When you bit into it, the smell was just like going into a stable at the precise moment the coachmen are removing their foot bindings; when I started chewing it, my teeth felt as if they had caught hold of a dog’s tail smeared with tar. Ugh! I made two attempts to eat it and then threw it away.”
Anton Chekhov
Source: A Journey to the End of the Russian Empire
No comments:
Post a Comment