Entry 15:

Dear Alexander,

I'm scared of the London Eye (which should be called the London Wheel, shouldn't it, being as how it's a Ferris wheel) because heights always make me feel as if I'm going to pass out and fall off, or somehow inexorably feel compelled to leap to my doom. I know that the ride takes place in an enclosed cabana, like the Roosevelt Island tram in New York, only smaller, but I still have these visions of the glass breaking and ...

What was interesting about the Dome was how universally furious the visitors were about just the thing we have been talking about, the British press. They thought it was disgusting that the newspapers have been so vicious about the Dome, one day reporting that it is too crowded, the next day reporting that it isn't crowded enough, hunting around for disgruntled visitors, calling its new chief executive "Mickey the Gerbil" just because he's French, used to work for Disneyland Paris, and is named Pierre-Yves Gerbeau.

Poor M. Gerbeau. I met him today and thought he was very sweet. He also had a wonderful way of combining a French accent with an American accent and using a strange hodgepodge of English and American expressions. "I took advice from zem on whether I should take ze job," he said, referring to his former bosses at Disneyland, "and zey were very, 'Go for it.' "

Poor baby Harvey, not only to have a name like Harvey Drown, but to be barred from going into the debating chamber with his mother. Although it might be a good place to sleep. I don't really think they should mind his being there--so many of the backbenchers are so immature, with all of their heckling and name-calling, that he should fit in just fine.

As a young mother and a feminist, I feel sorry for Ms. Drown because she couldn't get a babysitter and because her only other option was to take little Harvey to a place as unhygienic as the House of Commons.

Going back to Mickey the Gerbil. Would you explain how the press awards these nicknames to people? I remember when Martin Amis (hey, both of us seem to know an awful lot about Martin Amis) was in the news a couple of years ago for getting some large advance or another for his most recent book, and the British press was discussing how he had hired a tough-talking American to replace his less tough-talking British agent. Suddenly, the papers started referring to the new agent, Andrew Wylie, as the Jackal. It's not as if he'd ever had that nickname before (I once met him and asked him, and he said no, he hadn't). Then I heard something about it on the radio, and the announcer didn't even mention Andrew Wylie's name. He simply said, "Martin Amis' agent, the Jackal," as if, should he appear in the New York Times, we would have to call him Mr. Jackal.

The papers made it sound as if M. Gerbeau became the Gerbil the moment he was born, but I have to believe that one of them made it up and then pretended it had been there all along.

I've never been called the Jackal, or even the Gerbil, for that matter, although when I was 11 a boy I had a crush on called me a dog and made me fall off my bicycle. Did you have a schoolboy nickname, animal or otherwise?

xxxxxxxx sarah