Читать книгу The Lost Diaries - Craig Brown, Craig Brown - Страница 45

My father always said that one can never do without common sense in matters great as well as small. He never let anyone in his shop who had not first handed over their shoelaces to my mother at the door. In this way he sought to put an end to petty pilfering. ‘No one can run far without their shoelaces,’ he once said as an elderly lady crashed to the floor, a bag of stolen flour bursting beneath her arm. My father was a man of firm principles and firmer forefinger. Aged ten, I asked him why, when serving the smoked ham, he made a point of placing his right forefinger on the scales. He explained it was to give the customers better all-round service, by helping them pay that little bit extra for quality produce. ‘A finger on the scales is a penny in the till,’ he explained, and it is advice that I have treasured ever since.

MARGARET THATCHER

An actor must be a gazelle at a waterhole, a cabin bursting into flame, a bottle thrown into the ocean, a distant planet newly discovered by an astronomer whose wife has just left him for a younger guy who’s into baseball.

And sometimes, just sometimes, all four at once.

BRAD PITT