Neptune 3

Last day of the festival - so soon over. I enjoyed yesterday night's readings, or rather a surprisingly large proportion of the two and a half hour session. So much depends on the English translation and there were enough good ones. The young Polish poet had a particularly good one - he might have written them in English! Funny, philosophical ironies with an assured sense of grace.

But since each reading is just five minutes and the text is there in front of you most of it is clear. OK, maybe too long but worthwhile.

Slept well, then the last conference session this morning. Two minor points. One, the presentation that consisted of a long witty sketch of the Romanian character, that was much appreciated by the Romanians who obviously recognised themselves. Then I suddenly thought it might be possible that any group would recognise itself in the same description - given a wide enough range of characteristics we read ourselves into them, especially if told the description was particularly of us.

The other was a happy exile story like an extremely long joke, in which every chance meeting turned out in the speaker's favour, each grander and more farcically glorious than the last. And what happens if you step out of this building and are run over by the bus? I thought. That would be a cliché of course. But what if we rewrote and rewrote the script a dozen times?
Ah then, we might have a postmodern classic on our hands.

The sea is a light translucent green. The young Montenegran novelist tells me the national stadium seats only 15000 people and that English FA have asked for 30000 of them.