The conversation is taking place in the hot tub in the back garden of the Messengers’ country cottage. The ground slopes quite steeply away from the rear of the house, and a timber balcony has been constructed with steps that lead down to the garden. Halfway down there is a kind of mezzanine deck in which a redwood tub, some seven feet in diameter and five feet deep, has been fitted flush with the surface. A bench runs round the inner circumference, on which Helen and the Messenger family are companionably seated, hip to hip. The hot water bubbles up between their legs and sends wraiths of steam into the cold air. It is late afternoon, or early evening, and already dark. The only illumination comes from the blue light fitted inside the tub below the waterline, and the lanterns with thick amber glass cowls fixed at intervals on the staircase and along the decks.
Carrie clambers out of the tub, steadying herself with a hand on Ralph’ shoulder. The water streams from her tight, dark swimming costume and pallid heavy limbs. She wraps herself in a towelling robe and thrusts her feet into a pair or rope-soiled mules. ‘Time you kids got out too,’ she says.
Form the book ‘Thinks’ by David Lodge

One redeeming feature of the expedition was that I saw Gloucester Cathedral for the first time. It’s not huge, but beautifully proportionated, built of mellow Cotswold stone, with a remarkable square Perpendicular tower that has delicate fretted stonework running round the top like a balustrade. The cloisters are exquisite – among the finest in the country my Visitor’s Guide claimed, and with justification, I should say. Edward II is buried here. All I know about him is from Marlowe’s play, which may not be reliable, but makes him seem like a real person who once lived and breathed, not just a name in a history book. It seemed extraordinary to stand beside the remains of somebody who lived seven hundred years ago, and know who he was. If Ralph Messenger is right, the atoms of his dust are indestructible. But it is my mind that preserves his identity, and makes a connection between us.
As I trod the worn paving of the ancient aisles, pausing at intervals to admire fine brasses and carved statuary, another literary association came to mind. In the Golden Bowl Charlotte and the Prince begin their adulterous affair at Gloucester, delaying their return to London from a houseparty on the pretext of viewing the cathedral- and there’s a reference to the tomb of Edward II, I’m sure. Did they really visit,it, to give circumstantial plausibility to their story when they returned to their respective spouses, or did they spend every stolen moment in their room at in the inn selected by the resourceful Charlotte? I don’t have the novel to hand to check . James probably doesn’t say, anyway.
I had lunch afterwards at the Cosy Pew Café, just round the corner from the Cathedral, poring over every word in the guide because I had brought nothing else with me to read. I wondered despondently if this was the spinsterish future that awaits me: collecting cathedrals and reading at the table in twee restaurants.

I’d been In Cheltenham only once before, a few years ago, to do a reading at the Literary Festival, and was hardly there long enough to acquire much sense of the place. This morning I drove helplessly round the one-way streets for some time until I spotted the neoclassical hulk of the Town Hall where they hold the Festival events ( a building of dingy brownish stone, with a pompous oversized portico, that looks clumsy against the surrounding Regency terraces of white stucco) and then I knew where I was. I left the car in the first car park I came to, and made for the town centre. It was a cold day, but dry and sunny, and I spent an enjoyable hour hour or so strolling along the Promenade, browsing in Waterstone’s buying a blouse in Laura Ashley and a pair of trousers in Country Casuals, having a light lunch in a café served by waitresses in old-fashioned uniforms with white aprons. I briefly explored a long , two-storied shopping mall discretely hidden in a parallel street, but quickly retreated from its airless atmosphere and tinkling muzak. I followed a sign to the Art Gallery and Museum, which specializes in the history of domestic art and design – appropriately enough because everywhere you go in Cheltenham you see restoration and refurbishment of the old houses and terraces going on, inside and out, a kind of collective cult of the House Beautiful.
From the book “Thinks” by David Lodge

The proof of the experiment is if their behaviour seems interesting, plausible, revealing about human nature. Seems to whom? To the ‘reader’ – who is not Mr Cleverdick the reviewer, or Mr Sycophant the publicist, but some kind of ideal reader, shrewd, intelligent, demanding but fair, whose persona you try to adopt as you read your own work in the process of composition. I sort of resent the idea of science poking its nose into this business. Hasn’t science already appropriated enough of reality ? Must it lay claim to the intangible invisible essential self as well?
I’m a self-taught two-finger typist, prone to error (for which reason I Thank God – and science- for the invention of the word-processor). But some words I always seem to mistype. One of them is ‘science’ which invariably appears on the screen of my computer as ‘scince’, with a reproachful red wiggly line drawn under it by the automatic spell-checker. I duly correct it, but there is something onomatopoeically appropriate about ?scince? (pronounce skince) which I am sorry to lose: it expresses the cold, pitiless, reductive character of scientific explanations of the world. I feel this hard, cold, almost ruthless quality In Ralph Messenger. His reaction to Martin’s death, when the subject came up in the course of lunch, was like having a bowl of icy water dashed in one’s face.It shocked and angered me – I almost got up and left him at the table. But I’m glad I didn’t. I might never have seen the Karinthy mural, for one thing. It provoked all kinds of ideas.
From the book ‘Thinks? by David Lodge

One, two, three, testing, testing… [belches] Pardon me! It’s, what, 6.51 p.m. on Wednesday 26th February… I’m still in my office, instead of at home, warming my bum in front of the fire and enjoying the first drink of the day, because we have a problem in the Brain… I got a message this afternoon that Captain Haddock had crashed, but it seems to be a hardware failure or possibly wiring… there are technicians and sparks crawling all over the place at the moment trying to locate the source of the trouble and I don’t feel like going home until I know that it’s been fixed … the thought of an electrical fire breaking out in the Brain in the middle of the night is scary, unlikely as it is… So I called Carrie to say I’d be late and settle down to do some work on staff assessment I’ve been putting off… so many fucking forms these days… but when I unlocked the filing cabinet where I keep confidential material my eye fell on the old Pearlcoder and I couldn’t resist listening to the tape I recorded last Sunday morning. I played back the tape on the recorder just now , and I must say it was absolutely riveting… though of doubtful experimental value …not that I’ll ever be able to quote much of it in a paper, it’s far too personal, too revealing, not to say raunchy at times… but it was fascinating to… to as if were eavesdrop on one’s own thoughts.
From the book ‘Thinks’, by David Lodge

‘You don’t mind walking?’ he asks, as they descend the stairs to the lobby.
‘No, not at all.’
‘There is a shuttle bus in…’He glances at a chunky stainless steel watch.?About ten minutes.’
‘No, I like to walk,’ she says. ‘It’s the only exercise I get’
‘Me too. I always walk on campus unless its raining.’
It isn’t raining outside, but looks as if it might soon. A damp wind is blowing across the campus under scudding grey clouds. They walk along the path that skirts the lake, moving into single file every now and again as a tinkling bell warms them of the approach of a cyclist. It being a Wednesday afternoon, there is evidence of sporting activity. Shouts and cries carry faintly from the playing fields on the eastern perimeter, and a rugby ball rises and falls in a spinning arc against the sky. On the lake, some students in wetsuits are windsurfing. The brightly coloured shards of their sails against the dark water make a pleasant picture, but the lake is hardly big enough for the purpose: no sooner have the craft got up some speed than they have to make quick turns to avoid hitting the bank, or each other. Capsizes are frequent.
‘ I know what this place reminds me of,’ Helen says suddenly. ? Gladeworld. Have you ever been?
‘N0, what is it.?’
‘A sort of up-market holiday village. I went with my sister’s family last summer. It was in a biggish bit of wooded country, surrounded by a wire fence. You live in little houses built between the trees. In the middle there’s a huge plastic dome with a kind of swimming pool cum botanical gardens underneath it with a lots of water chutes and whirlpools and suchlike. And there’s a supermarket and restaurants and sports halls – and an artificial lake for sailing and windsurfing that isn’t quite big enough. That’s what reminded me. That and the bicycles. You’re not allowed to drive your car at Gladeworld once you’ve unloaded it. Everybody rents bicycles, or walks. Everything you need for your holiday is inside the fence. You never need to go outside.’
From the book ?thinks’, by David Lodge

Coming here was a terrible mistake, I want to run away, I want to scuttle back home to London – home, yes, that’s my home, not this little tatty little box. Do I dare ? Why not ? I haven’t really started yet. I haven’t met any students, or taken any of the University’s money. They’ll easily find someone else to do the job – there are a lots of excellent writers around who would jump at it. Why not just leave, tomorrow morning early ? I see myself creeping out of the house before it’s light, like a thief, loading my things into the car, shutting the boot lid softly, softly, so as not to alert anybody, leaving a note for Jasper Richmond on the table in the living-room with the house keys. “Sorry, it was a terrible mistake, all my fault, I should never have applied for the post, please forgive me.’ And then pulling the door shut on this Scandinavian rabbit hutch and driving away along the empty service road, scarves of mist round the throats of the street lamps, slowing down at the exit barrier to give a wave to the security man yawning in his brightly-lit glazed sentry box. He nods back, suspects nothing, raises the barrier to let me out, like Checkpoint Charlie in a cold war spy film, and I’m free! Down the avenue, on to the main road, on to the M5, the M42, the M40, London, Bloomfield Crescent, home
except that 58 Bloomfield Crescent has been rented for the next three months to an American art historian on sabbatical and his wife who arrive next Friday. Never mind, send them a fax, ? Sorry, all off, change of plan, house not available after all.’Could they sue me? There’s no legal contract, but perhaps our correspondence would count as one… Oh, what’s the point in pursuing this futile line of speculation when we all know (by ‘we’ I mean my neurotic self and my more rational observing , recording self) we know, don’t we, that this is just a fantasy? And that the real reason I won’t run away tomorrow morning is not because of possible litigation by my American Tenants (or for that matter by the University of Gloucester, who could undoubtedly sue me for breach of contract, thought I very much doubt if they would bother) but because I haven’t got the courage to do it. Because I couldn’t bear the guilt, the shame, the ignominy, of knowing that everybody I know knew that I had funked it, panicked, run away . Imagine to having to ring up Paul and Lucy to tell them, and hearing the disappointment in their voices even as they tried to be supportive of their mad mother. Imagine seeing the ill-concealed smirks and smiles of people at literary parties, as they whispered to each other over their their glasses of white wine. ‘That’s Helen Reed, did you know she went to be a writer in Residence at Gloucester University and ran away on the first day of the semester because she couldn’t face it either,’ And they might add, ‘ not that I blame her, I’m sure I couldn’t face it either,’ but nevertheless they would despise me and I would despise myself.
It was a nice fantasy while it lasted, though. I even chose the tape I would play in the car on the M5, the Vivaldi wind concerti, with their sprightly, cheerful allegro
From the book “Thinks” by David Lodge

I woke this morning feeling slightly hangover and dyspeptic from last night’s consumption of food and wine (I fear I was probably over the limit when I drove myself home, albeit very slowly and carefully) so I went for a walk after breakfast to get some fresh air. The sky was not promising – a quilt of dark grey cloud sagged from horizon to horizon – and it began to rain as soon al I left the house. Trudging round the campus on a wet Sunday morning was not a spirit-lifting experience, but I persevered, making it an occasion to master the geography of the place, and learn the locations of the various departments and faculties. The buildings erected in the sixties and seventies have not weathered well. Their concrete facades absorb the rain patchily, like blotting paper, and the brightly coloured panels and tiles with which they are trimmed, designed to relieve the dominant grey, are chipped and cracked or missing in many places.
From the book ‘Thinks…’ by David Lodge

‘They describe you as a viper,’I said to Mt. Visconti.
‘They?’
‘Well, in fact, it was not the detectives. it was the Chief of Police in Rome.’
‘A Fascist,’ Mr Visconti said.
‘Ah, a collaborator then.’
‘The war was over.’
.A collaborator nonetheless. One collaborates always with the victorious side. One supports the losing.’ It sounded again like a quotation from Machievali.
We were drinking champagne together in the garden, for the house at the moment was impossible. Men were carrying furniture. Other men were up ladders. Electricians were repairing lights and hanging chandeliers. My aunt was very much in charge.
‘I preferred flight to anew form of collaboration,’ Mr Visconti said. ‘One can never tell who will win in the end. Collaboration is always a temporary measure. It’s not that I care much for security, but I like to survive.
From the book ‘Travels with my aunt’ by Graham Greene.

When I opened the door of the flat I found everything in deep darkness. I set an occasional table rocking in the hall and something Venetian tinkled into fragments on the floor. When I drew the curtains the Venetian glasses had no glitter – they had gone dead like unused pearls. There was a scurf of correspondence on the floor among the broken glass, but it consisted mainly of circulars and I didn’t bother to examine them for a moment. I went into my aunt’s bedroom with a sense of shame – yet hadn’t she asked me to see that all was in order? I remembered how meticulously Colonel Hakim had explored the hotel room and how easily he had been outwitted, but I could see no candles anywhere, except in the kitchen where they were of a normal size and weight- presumably a genuine precaution against an electric failure.
I returned to the sitting-room and began to go through the post. One day mu aunt might send me a forwarding address, but in any case I wanted to save anything remotely personal from the scrutiny of Woodrow and Sparrow if they came. My old acquaintance Omo had written, and there were various bills from a laundry, a wine-merchant’s, a grocer’s. I was surprised not to find a bank statement, but remembering the gold brick and the suitcase stuffed with notes. I thought that perhaps my aunt preferred to keep a closer look among the dresses she had left behind, for it would be dangerous to leave cash about in the empty flat.
From the book “Travels with my aunt” by Graham Greene