Out of the Fog

My dear wife used to cast scorn, with abandon, upon the concept of ‘Active Reading’. Oh yes: she was very much your soft-armchair, book-in-bed kind of lady. Not for her the thrills of reading Dostoyevsky in a rubber-ring in the middle of the ocean.

And yet how things change. Yesterday, for instance, I caught her venturing out into the freezing fog with a copy of Mr Frank Key’s Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags. Upon returning, she waxed lyrical on how her active reading had brought a ‘completly new meaning’ to the small but excellent story ‘Note on Pigs’. She first read this tale, about ten days ago, at the zoo. Now, enclosed by fog, she navigated her way through the same words again. The same words, but different. For context, as we know, shapes meaning, which is multifold.