Idle Days in Patagonia & First Impressions of Downtown Jiangyin

 The Darnedest thing. At least I think it was. I found a travel writing anthology on archive.org.  It was entitled Modern Travel Writing — a title which would have scared me off if it had been written after 1980, but thankfully it was published in the 1920s. So, there was no way it could have been woke.  In the anthology, was a passage from Idle Days in Patagonia by W.H. Hudson.  It was so good that I searched archive.org again and found a pdf copy that  I could download and read.  Halfway through reading the book, My favorite blogger David Warren of Essays in Idleness published an entry where he mentioned that W.H. Hudson’s book was a model for his writing.  I thought it was great that for once I read an obscure book before David Warren recommended it.

I’m just back from the pub where I made my previous entry.  I have taken a DiDi downtown and back.  I went to the pub to have a beer and walk about what I suppose was downtown Jiangyin.  My impressions?  It was dark, not at all well lit.  The bar street seemed to have seen better days before Covid.  The streets in the area were winding and narrow. I lost my bearings and found myself walking down the street that the pub was on, not knowing till I saw the pub where I was.  I thought I was going down a street that was a block over from the street where the pub was.  Better than being really lost I suppose.

I’m now a DiDi rider (like an Uber rider) in Jiangyin because my wife has the car in Wuxi and the public transportation near the Jiangyin apartment is not good.  I will also become a public bicycle rider once I get registered for the the Jiangyin public bike app.  There is no subway station to which I can walk.

One more thing to mention.  I have taught students at my new school this phrase: “Because Covid!” There was no point in asking them if they had had a good summer.  They didn’t because Covid!