Living without the letter 'a'

I thought it was a writer called Queneau who wrote a whole novel, I think, without using the letter 'e'. It looks like it was. I've looked it up. I'd imagine that's even harder to do in French than it is in English but, what's the point - see below under 'avant garde'.

But then I find that Georges Perec undertook a similar project and find that he looked as mad as Spike Milligan multiplied by Michael Bentine and so it figures.

But earlier this week I was without the use of the first letters on each line of the keyboard. One doesn't need q or z very often but one is left with the choice of cutting and pasting in a's every time one needs to, which is tiresome but you get used to it, or writing sentences like,

It isn't possible for me to use the second most occuring letter in English so I'm expressing myself here without it.

A new keyboard was only £11, arrived quickly and is not only immaculately clean but the most commonly used letters haven't worn off so it's great but I don't always feel like paying £4.50 delivery when I can spend that on some stuff and thus spend over £30 instead. It's only money. Whether it's false economy or not, I dunno.

Another shirt. I haven't even worn the last ones I bought yet. There's a very sad character towards the end of a Sebastian Faulks book, A Week in December, who stays up all night successfully playing the Hong Kong stock markets and as a result has a wardrobe full of  pristine, unworn white shirts for the sake of having them. I hope I'm not in any small way turning into him.

Maybe not. The other item arriving today with the boho chic attire was Tales from the Colony Room by Darren Coffield on the flimsy pretext that it's somehow about 'art'. 

The Gary Schwartz Rembrandt is much heavier on detail than a dilettante like me really needs but I'll plough through it in my own time. Then there's Caravaggio and Vasari. It's getting mighty crowded. Perhaps, by the autumn, I'll have read enough about painters and fall in love all over again with poems, as if it really could be better the second time around.

 

I doubt it but you just can't tell, can you.