Curious sensation of driving underwater
"Within the [city] walls, virtually the only piece of the old fabric that remains intact is the crisscross network of its streets, the straight avenues that run for miles between the gates. These avenues are lined with spreading plane trees whose branches meet across the road. In summer, when the trees are in leaf, it is quite dark underneath, so that in a car you have the curious sensation of driving underwater."
A baboon in the narrowest sense
"All the patients and nurses in the room were staring at the baboon with undisguised prurience. It was the opening he had been waiting for. 'This is rampant discrimination,' he shouted, with gleeful rage. 'I realize that I may be—in the narrowest sense of the word—a baboon, but are you really going to refuse me treatment just because I don't look like you?'"
Proof of particular affection
"Occasionally, if he wanted to show proof of particular affection, Mr Thundermug would sidle up to the teacher as they sat together on the sofa and stroke her hair with his long, delicate fingers, just as he used to groom and pick the lice out of his wife's coat. This had startled Miss Young at first, but he did it so rarely and with such wistful sincerity in his eyes that it always made her tremble with delight, although she was careful to preserve the severe straight face which she had been taught to adopt at her teacher-training college. She was supposed to reciprocate by feeding him grapes or pieces of apple, which she lowered gingerly between his open jaws; or he would stretch out luxuriantly on the sofa while she stroked the warm, tender skin of his chest, which reminded her of chamois leather."
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Source: Mr Thundermug: A Novel by Cornelius Medvei, HarperCollins Publishers, 2007. Listen to a National Public Radio interview with the author here. Read about less eloquent, less fictional baboons here.
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