Mrs Dalloway, or Ignorance is Bliss

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I used to go to work early, and even then, I was not ready. So I would pop in Taylor's on St Giles and get an espresso.

Then, I would go to my place – I wish I'd say my favourite place but it's a graveyard and I'm no Goth – under that fig tree, just outside the graveyard, against the small wall. I would enjoy my strong coffee with a cigarette, the taste of each other mingling nicely together and progressively waking me up.

And almost every morning, by the dot of 8 am, Mrs Dalloway would appear.

I did call her Mrs Dalloway because she would walk fast, as if she'd "get the flowers" herself, like in the begining of that novel by Virginia Woolf.

And yes, immanquablement, invariablement, Mrs Dalloway would appear ; a long, tall woman with fair hair, vaguely looking like a prettier Virginia Woolf with a rucksack on her back, wearing a shirt but with sport shoes, à la New Yorkaise.

And yes of course, I had to quote an English author, perhaps the most English of authors, Virginia Woolf. We are in Oxford after all, difficult not to think about all this, with all that weight of Englishness around...

So I would enjoy, once a day, the sight of a rather beautiful English woman about to get some flowers. That suited me just fine, in that little routine I had created for myself before going to work. I do enjoy beauty, in all its forms, and it would cheer me up for a good part of the day to come.

But, one day, and after my routine got broken, (or rather was the same but happening half an hour earlier so I would not see my Mrs Dalloway anymore), one day, I see Mrs Dalloway in my library, walking fast towards the Director's office on the same floor.

Shock, horror. Mrs Dalloway must have a name, and it is not that, and though she still looks as she's going to get the flowers herself, she's there to speak to the director (and I know very well the director does not sell flowers as part of her job).

Oh what a disappointment! Mrs Dalloway has disappeared now, and this gracious woman, well, I cannot say that anymore because we are work related somehow... This gracious woman's – stop! – , this colleague, has got a name, and it is not Mrs Dalloway!











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