Death is no joke. That doesn’t mean it’s not funny on occasion. I was in a room in Paris when the ghost of Rabelais came to visit me. This made me laugh, but my laughter wasn’t carefree. I was a student at the time and all I could afford to rent was that tiny attic.
Stretched on my bed, I was contemplating the sky through the narrow window in the sloping roof and wondering if somehow people had got it wrong, the sky I mean, and that the background colour was grey while the clouds were blue. It was mildly possible.
The essential thing wasn’t the truth or falsity of the idea but whether I could persuade anyone to believe it. Which of my fellows would spend at least a few days thinking that a glorious sunny afternoon was an overcast one after I shared this secret with them?
I am a practica
