Oh, it all makes work for the working man to do

So the first half of yesterday was quite lovely, involving as it did lunch with lesser_celery at the Squealing Pig, hanging out at the Harvard School of Public Health, and a book about smallpox. After which things disintegrated rapidly into endless bureaucratic airline fail and health crash. I am nonetheless going tonight to see Opera Boston's Fidelio with fleurdelis28, but if I spend another hour on hold-for-the-next-representative, I'll found a railway.

Discovered this afternoon while bagging leaves: it is not quite possible to filk Rosemary Sutcliff's "The Girl I Kissed at Clusium" to Sydney Carter's "Take Me Back to Byker," but I wish it were. The latter reminded me instantly of the former the first time I heard it.

The army sent me to the east, it sent me to the west
I've left one lass in Trinidad, another in Trieste
And the flaxen-headed lasses of Cologne were kind to me
But the lass I left in Byker is the lass I long to see

Another sign of growing up in books: they should both have reminded me of "The Girl I Left Behind Me."

The girls of Spain were honey-sweet,
And the golden girls of Gaul:
And the Thracian maids were soft as birds
To hold the heart in thrall.

But the girl I kissed at Clusium
Kissed and left at Clusium,
The girl I kissed at Clusium
I remember best of all.