A chronic battle with directional dyslexia has brought a ignominious end to freelance food writer Diana Burrell, who stepped out in front of one too many black cabs while eagerly bounding across Portobello Road in Notting Hill, shouting to her travel companion Alison Wellner, “Oh my God, it’s another bookstore!”
Says Wellner, “Diana passed on to a good place — where every meal begins and ends with pudding, where everyone’s ironic and understated, and shopkeepers mind their own business — with a smile on her face. She clutched a sackful of cookbooks purchased at Books for Cooks to her chest and as she departed, she said, ‘Either that mall goes, or I go.‘ ” Wellner passed condolences, as well as charge card receipts, to Burrell’s family, who weren’t entirely surprised by her demise or the amount she spent on books. “She could never tell her right from her left, and she was always a bit profligate around a bookshop,” said a family member who wished to remain anonymous. “I mean, two copies of Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management?” The family member snorts. “Like we’ll be fighting over them in the will.”
Rather than going through the expense of shipping her remains back home, her family decided to scatter her ashes in the River Thames, along with her books, jams, teas, and a Christmas plum pudding from Fortnum & Mason that no one stateside would claim. Shopkeepers and booksellers lined the streets as her funeral cortege passed by, and in a rare outburst of emotion, wiped away tears knowing that an era of economic prosperity had fluttered through their fair city all too briefly.
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Nowhere does this obit mention Burrell’s fondness for Monty Python. Just goes to show, you can’t believe everything you read nowadays.
Wait! Wait! I’ll take the Mrs. Beeton’s and the plum pudding!
Hilarious!
Hilarious. And oh so familiar. I lived in London for a semester and nearly died. I’d managed to wrap my brain around the driving on the left bit but forgot about the bus lane.
Fortunately, my boyfriend at the time pulled me back but I can still see the driver’s panicked expression.
I’ve lived here 6 years and I still look both ways before crossing any street. It’s just a good idea; despite the signs, you never know where traffic is going to come from.
But at least when I buy too many books, I have a convenient place to keep them.
Toni, you’ll be glad to hear — was but a flesh wound. I have returned to the land of the living, as a zombie of course. Today, picture me running around food markets like the denizens of London in 28 Days Later.
Delightful!