Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
It was me at my wretched keyboard!
I know, it's gone half past three and I just can't go to sleep, so I've come down to make myself a cup of tea and hopefully relax and go back to bed.
I'm teaching tomorrow.
The lines above (the first three) are from The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe, and are possibly some of the most famous lines in American poetry.
There was a brilliant parody in an early Simpsons episode.
Actually I've got rather a soft spot for members of the corvidae family.
One of my favourite paintings is one by Alexei Savrasov called Грачи прилетели or The Rooks Have Come Back. It shows a rather horribly bleak wintry snow-laden landscape with what looks like dozens of carrion crows ready to pick at some dead thing.
In fact, in Russian literature and poetry their return indicates that they are to make their nests in the birch trees, and so heralding spring.
Which all goes to show how we can all misinterpret signs whether literary, cultural or indeed economic.
So now that the figures show that we are starting to come out of recession, only a fool (or indeed a Tory) would suggest we should make cuts in the public sector straight away.
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