Lunchtime read: For Esme with Love and Squalor and other stories

Today has not been a good one for reading but it was possible to slip in a short bit of Salinger and another story featuring a member of the Glass family. This time the focus falls on Boo Boo who seems to be struggling to relate to a Seymour of her own, her four-year-old son who keeps threatening to run away.

Highlights from Down at the Dinghy

* The story starts with two domestic helps chatting about a problem that becomes clear after Boo Boo comes home and openly starts discussing the latest antics of her son Lionel who likes pickles and running away, once as far as Central Park

* Boo Boo discovers her son sitting in a dinghy waiting to sail away and so she tries to connect with him on his own level by pretending to be an admiral and then discovers that what is eating Lionel is that he has overheard the home helps being critical of his father

* Boo Boo comforts her son and tells him they are going to go back to the house and then go and pick his father up from the station and Lionel runs back to the house

On the face of it here is a story about a boy who others are describing as disturbed but who in fact is just not being spoken to in the right way and once his feelings are unlocked he is just looking for love and reassurance.

More tomorrow…