Balcony view

This afternoon, whilst sitting with Mercé Rodoreda
and a cup of coffee on the balcony,
when looking up, once again I felt privileged.

Coffee time with Pavlova & Mr B

Pawlowa
or how to smuggle a donkey halfway around the world
*
Certainly neither the original title (‘The White Umbrella’)
nor the writer (Brian Sewell) would have piqued my interest.
Being sometimes a donkey myself, though,
I could not resist the German title. ;-)
For an enjoyable read ...

Mr B, a fifty-year-old Briton, is travelling with a television crew in Peshawar, Pakistan, to make a film about the country's history. When he sees a heavily laden donkey foal covered in wounds by the side of the road during a car journey, he decides not to take the flight back to London scheduled for the following day. Instead, he wants to walk to London with the young donkey mare, whom he names after the Russian ballet dancer Pavlova because of her long legs. With only the bare essentials, including a white umbrella from the London umbrella shop James Smith & Sons, the two set off.
Translated from the German Wikipedia entry.

Coffee time with Lluís Llach

Les dones de la Principal
*
[There does obviously exist no English version]

Lluís Llach *7 May 1948

Coffeetime "À rebours". ;-)

A rebours.

 Joris-Karl Huysmans (5 February 1848 – 12 May 1907)

Coffee time with Dylan Thomas

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog

Dylan Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953)

Coffee time with Seamus Heaney

The Redress of Poetry

 
Seamus Heaney (13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013)

Coffee time with Antonio Muñoz Molina

The Polish Rider (El jenite polaco) I re-read a few days ago.
This afternoon "The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield" 
enriched my coffeetime. ... Well, not all, but two of them. ;-)