Birthday + Reluctant Dragon

A lovely birthday this year! I had a chocolate croissant for breakfast (discovered with some dismay that if you put a croissant in a tupperware, it loses its crispness; oh well, will remember this for next time) and a ham and cheese croissant for lunch and two macarons for snack (one pistachio and the other Earl Gray), and dinner at Petite Chou, where I attempted but did not succeed in winning over my compatriots to “appetizer smorgasbord for dinner.” Oh well. Someday I WILL get to try the gougere and the mushroom duxelle and the beef tartare.

I’ve gotten into the habit of saving a short book that I expect I will like to read on my birthday, and this year’s was Kenneth Grahame’s The Reluctant Dragon, an enchanting children’s fantasy illustrated by Ernest H. Shepard of Winne the Pooh fame. It’s really a short story published in book form. A boy befriends a lazy sonnet-writing dragon, only for St. George to ride into town, so the boy has to mediate so St. George won’t slay his dragon friend…

”Haven’t got an enemy in the world,” said the dragon, cheerfully. “Too lazy to make ‘em, to begin with. And if I do read other fellows my poetry, I’m always ready to listen to theirs!”

“Oh, dear!” cried the Boy, “I wish you’d try and grasp the situation properly. When the other people find you out, they’ll come after you with spears and swords and all sorts of things. You’ll have to be exterminated, according to their way of looking at it! You’re a scourge, and a pest, and a baneful monster!”

St. George and the dragon agree to stage a dramatic sham fight before the cheering townsfolk, ending when St. George spears the dragon in a theatrical yet harmless manner, and then dragon and St. George and townsfolk all traipse back to town and have a feast and the dragon gets just a little bit drunk, and sings as St. George and the boy see him home.