Oh dear. This all started because I was looking at my legs and thinking how nice it is not to have to shave them any more - one of the perks of age. (On the other hand, I have to examine my chin regularly.) So that led me on to think of a phrase I remembered from a long time ago: "armpits like chalices". I thought it came from the Song of Solomon and I was wondering whether this person was old like me, with hairless armpits, or whether they had Gillette razors for ladies in those days.

So first I looked up chalice:

chalice noun historical: a large cup or goblet.• the wine cup used in the Christian Eucharist. ORIGIN Middle English: via Old French from Latin calix, calic- ‘cup’.

And then I wondered where i had picked up the phrase "armpits like chalices". Wow. It's from Elizabeth Smart's book (memoir? soft porn? prose poem? - called a 'cult novel'), By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept (1945). It's about her hysterical, nagging, clinging, (ridiculous) long-term affair with a minor poet, George Barker, who fathered her four children while never divorcing his wife (nor she him). He was not a prolific writer but he was creative in other ways, with an estimated 15 children by several different women. One of them was Smart (but not so). Here is what she wrote when he told her he had been seducdd by a very young man:

"One should love beings whatever their sex”, I reply, but withdraw into the dark with my obstreperous shape of shame, offended with my own flesh which cannot metamorphose into a printshop boy with armpits like chalices."

So how did I imx that up with the Song of Solomon? I asked about the use of chalice in that. Here is what I got:

" Your body is a chalice, wine-filled. Your skin is silken and tawny like a field of wheat touched by the breeze." Not bad. Song of Solomon 7:2

The Grail appeared in a chalice. If you Google chalice (goblet/grail) you'll find some lovely images of them, from various sources. I couldn't figure out how to transfer the pictures.

Chalice is such a lovely word. Claudius planned to off Hamlet with poison in a chalice of wine but, as you remember, Gertrude drank it instead.

Ah, yes, poison in a chalice. That, of course made me think of the Danny Kaye movie, The Court Jester (1955). Kaye (Hawkins) had to learn a code Griselda was telling him so that he could use the correct goblet to poison the villain. The routine went like this:

Hawkins: I've got it! I've got it! The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle; the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true! Right?

Griselda: Right. But there's been a change: they broke the chalice from the palace!

Hawkins: They *broke* the chalice from the palace?

Griselda: And replaced it with a flagon.

Hawkins: A flagon...?

Griselda: With the figure of a dragon.

Hawkins: Flagon with a dragon.

Griselda: Right.

Hawkins: But did you put the pellet with the poison in the vessel with the pestle?

Griselda: No! The pellet with the poison's in the flagon with the dragon! The vessel with the pestle has the brew that is true!

Hawkins: The pellet with the poison's in the flagon with the dragon; the vessel with the pestle has the brew that is true.

Griselda: Just remember that.

Yup.

My mind to me a playground is.

Several weeks ago I succumbed again, to the Times Literary Supplement and I love it and it's killing me. Time and money and inadequacy - what a daunting combination of pressures I feel when I read the TLS, and it happens weekly. I don't know how long I can stand it. I think it was a special, short-term subscription. With my other activity taking up so much time, It often happens that I have two issues to catch up on. Last weekend I had a good time. I came upon a list of 2016 writers I had missed, all British or European, that my parochial papers (Canadian and American) had overlooked. I learned a lot and I also spent a lot, forging into some new to me territory. I will be reporting soon. I described my extravagance to a friend explaining that I'd rather have new books than new clothes but met with no agreement. "Clothes for me," she said. I'm looking forward to my new purchases. In the meantime...

Yes, on the other hand, today I received two issues in the mail so I had to catch up again. I read them tonight and I am very discouraged. I don't know anything. All these experts in so many different fields and even in my own areas of co-called expertise make me feel so humble. I am so grateful when I encounter something I have NO interest in. It's like cheesecake. I am so grateful that I don't like cheesecake. I don't have to resist it. In the case of some subjects, I am so grateful that I can skip over them. Unfortunately there is very little that I am not interested in.

Remember what Robert Louis Stevenson wrote: "The world is so full of a number of things/I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings." (A Child's Garden of Verses (first appearance, 1883) I used to quote that thought as a kind of joyful paean. I read recently that a reader thinks it was satirical. Tonight, it strikes me as rueful.

I found my keys.