But throughout my life I have rarely if ever achieved what I wanted by tackling it in a logical fashion. - Gerald Durrell

One day we had one of those freak storms when the sky turned blue-black and the lightning fretted a silver filigree across it. And then had come the rain - great, fat, heavy drops, as warm as blood. When the storm had passed, the sky had been washed to the clear blue of a hedge-sparrow's egg and the damp earth sent out wonderfully rich, almost gastronomic smells as of fruit-cake or plum pudding; and the olive trunks steamed as the rain was dried off them by the sun, each trunk looking as though it were on fire.

you reached a small half-moon bay, rimmed with white sands and great piles of dried ribbon-weed that had been thrown up by the winter storms and lay along the beach like large, badly made birds’ nests.

— Estos unicornios son todos iguales — comentó Loro con tristeza — ­, más vanidosos que un pavo. Dales un espejo, o simplemente cualquier cosa en la que puedan verse reflejados, y se quedan como hipnotizados. — Pero éste no es más que un niño — dijó Penélope — , y hay que reconocer que es realmente guapo.