High life | 9 July 2011

Exactly 50 years ago last Friday night going into Saturday morning — 1 July into the 2nd — in Ketchum, Idaho, Ernest Hemingway asked his wife Mary to sing an Italian song, ‘Tutti mi chiamano bionda’, everyone calls me blondie. After they had both gone up to bed he silently padded down the stairs, stepping softly so as to make no sound, went to the basement storage room, took out a double-barrelled shotgun, inserted two shells, went back up to the hall, leaned against the hard steel with his forehead and pulled the trigger. The newspapers reported it as an accident. I read about it the next day in my aunt Sophia’s garden in Athens, and decided right then and there that the writing life was the one for me.

Strange coincidence that half a century later the dates of the week would be identical. Fifty years might seem a lifetime to you young whippersnappers, but it’s only yesterday to me.