12 March 2010

Up, Up and Away!

Has it really been a whole week since we last posted?
How time flies when you're busy making books and preparing to send your publisher and rights team to an overseas book fair.

Sometimes when you've had your head down and your blinkers on you need to take a break and look at things from a different angle; you need a new perspective, a new horizon.

Herewith, a photo essay from an airborn Onion:


Ladies and gentleman... hot-air balloon is the only way to travel.



The House of Onion from above.
If you compare this with our blog banner, you'll see it's basically the reverse view (only with fewer giraffes, elephants and punctuation-mark deliveries).



The MCG! The MCG! The Hallowed Turf. And the new soccer stadium in progress. You can just see St Pat's Cathedral, but not quite The House, on the far far right edge of the picture, just above the edge of the basket.

--------------------


Back on the ground again:
Me - 'I'm back from ballooning.'
Colleague E - 'Ooo how was it. Did you think about Lee Scoresby?'

And that conversational gambit right there is one of the main reasons it's such a pleasure to come to work at the House of Onion.

So...
  • Lee Scoresby
  • Phileas Fogg
  • Derryn Sharp
  • (Perhaps best not to mention Ian McEwen's Enduring Love at this juncture, as that particular ballooning expedition ended rather badly.)

Who are other great aeronauts in literature?*




* and how many of you learned the word aeronaut from Charlotte's Web?

4 comments:

A latte beckons said...

The Wiz of Oz.

Dido Twite, in Black Hearts in Battersea.

Winnie-the-Pooh!

And oh, you are so LUCKY!!

The Alien Onions said...

Kate - Oh yes, Pooh! How sweet to be a cloud, floating in the blue...

--SC

Celine said...

(what a dreamy way to start my day! Huzzah for balloons and all other flying apparatus) Can't think of any aeronauts - but other noteworthy vertically mobile heroes are:

Ned and Nancy Clancy from 'Ned Kelly and the City of The Bees'

Barbican and co, in 'From the Earth to the Moon and Journey Round The Moon'

Charlie and his glass elevator!

Mike said...

Have just read two books on world War One and was a bit horrified to discover that while one side or the other were firing mortar bombs at each other, hot air balloons were (still) being used for surveillance. Larks!