It fell to me to do the Karate run the other day. (I occasionally tend to three children. Dull story.) The boys do the karate, and I keep the girl amused. No sweat. We happened to be watching the lesson, and she remarked on one of the boys (for the class was composed entirely of the little beasts) saying that it was the chap in the white shirt. Of which there being many, I asked for further classification. Look, she said, the one with the blue belt, doing the kick. I saw exactly the fellow she meant.
She was pointing out the only boy black boy in a sea of white.
It clearly didn't occur to her that this was a valid distinction, or if she even saw it, it was not worthy of notice. This cheered me up NO END.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Is it just them, or is it all of them?
There's this bloke in the village - pleasant fellow, tall, fair, nice looking. Pung, his name is.* He and his wife are independent barristers, they have two kids, a bunch of grandmas and a lodger. He is quintessentially English - courteous, unassuming, a self-deprecating sense of humour and - this is where it goes off the rails a tiny bit - he is an armchair Liberal Democrat.
Or was. He, it transpires, had been dallying with the idea of actually getting up out of his armchair, and actually standing (for parliament - this metaphor could run and run). What with election fever gripping the nation, for a few days anyway, our man hurtled into action, dishing out questionnaires and buttonholes and glad hands like a man possessed. And at every turn, well some turns anyway, he was asked if he was working with Tonk**.
'Tonk??' Pung would cry. 'Who he?'
'Dontcherno?' would come the startled reply. 'He's Ming's*** right hand man, his policy adviser, the speechwriter who inserts all the jokes that Ming takes out. He lives just round the corner.'
How about that then. A local bloke wanting to stand for Lib Dem MP didn't know that Menzies Campbell's chief policy adviser was living in the same village, and the chief policy adviser didn't know that a local bloke was wanting to stand for Lib Dem MP.
Is this just the Lib Dems, or the Labs and Cons too? It doesn't inspire confidence, it has to be said.
* No of course it isn't.
** Not his real name either.
***Nope, not his real name, but his real nickname.
Or was. He, it transpires, had been dallying with the idea of actually getting up out of his armchair, and actually standing (for parliament - this metaphor could run and run). What with election fever gripping the nation, for a few days anyway, our man hurtled into action, dishing out questionnaires and buttonholes and glad hands like a man possessed. And at every turn, well some turns anyway, he was asked if he was working with Tonk**.
'Tonk??' Pung would cry. 'Who he?'
'Dontcherno?' would come the startled reply. 'He's Ming's*** right hand man, his policy adviser, the speechwriter who inserts all the jokes that Ming takes out. He lives just round the corner.'
How about that then. A local bloke wanting to stand for Lib Dem MP didn't know that Menzies Campbell's chief policy adviser was living in the same village, and the chief policy adviser didn't know that a local bloke was wanting to stand for Lib Dem MP.
Is this just the Lib Dems, or the Labs and Cons too? It doesn't inspire confidence, it has to be said.
* No of course it isn't.
** Not his real name either.
***Nope, not his real name, but his real nickname.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Condolences
How on earth do you write a letter of condolence when you are pretty sure that the bereaved person is actually giddy with glee?
My cousin in South Africa had a marriage which had been going sour for a long time. She's 49, has two children in their early twenties, and a husband who was a model of unreconstructed afrikaner boer. Not interested in his growing children, he required a tidy house, a beer, a relax and hot food at the end of his working day, and sex every other day, regardless of how she felt. And as many affairs as he felt like. (Any male readers out there? NO. THIS IS NOT A CIVILIZED ATTITUDE.) She has been trying to get out for the last five years or so, but he has been - well, unhelpful. For the last couple of years she has been living in friends' houses, sleeping on sofas.
He died two days ago. His son found him in the morning, still in his tracksuit from the previous night's jog. He was 53. (And his name was Frikkie. South Africans have an outlandish idea of what is acceptable in a name for a male.)
Knowing that her e-mail address is a work one and not secure, and even though I bet she is probably doing cartwheels of joy, I had to go with the 'I'm so very sorry' schtick, when what she wants is an airline attendant called Sebastian in extremely tight leather trousers singing 'Ding, dong, the wicked witch is dead!'
My cousin in South Africa had a marriage which had been going sour for a long time. She's 49, has two children in their early twenties, and a husband who was a model of unreconstructed afrikaner boer. Not interested in his growing children, he required a tidy house, a beer, a relax and hot food at the end of his working day, and sex every other day, regardless of how she felt. And as many affairs as he felt like. (Any male readers out there? NO. THIS IS NOT A CIVILIZED ATTITUDE.) She has been trying to get out for the last five years or so, but he has been - well, unhelpful. For the last couple of years she has been living in friends' houses, sleeping on sofas.
He died two days ago. His son found him in the morning, still in his tracksuit from the previous night's jog. He was 53. (And his name was Frikkie. South Africans have an outlandish idea of what is acceptable in a name for a male.)
Knowing that her e-mail address is a work one and not secure, and even though I bet she is probably doing cartwheels of joy, I had to go with the 'I'm so very sorry' schtick, when what she wants is an airline attendant called Sebastian in extremely tight leather trousers singing 'Ding, dong, the wicked witch is dead!'
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Bleak House
The best thing about having a rattle-trap of a car (in them thar days. I drive a sensible car now.) was the sound effects. Or rather, what the engine noise did to the music.
I'm not much of a one for pop music. Late baroque / classical gets my vote, with the occasional nod to Late Classical / Romantic types like Verdi. So I'm talking about music with a lot of layers. Complexities. Dimensions. Stuff it actually pays to listen to -I mean it doesn't really do as aural wallpaper.
So, cruisin' an' playin' my radio, it became apparent that the engine noise was masking certain musical frequencies, usually the highest ones, the ones that played the recognisable tune. And what I was left with were the lower lines. Not helpful if I was listening to a sonata of any sort, or, say, one of Bach's cello suites, but a symphony? Wow. My head could fill in the missing parts but all of a sudden I could hear the music from a totally unfamiliar angle - the bass lines, the harmonies, the musical sub-plots - and my admiration and reverence for Beethoven and Haydn and Mozart and Verdi exploded.
Same sort of thing is happening now. I finally started watching the recent BBC take on Bleak House. I put it off for ages because the novel is one of my favourite Dickenses and I didn't want a disappointment (and I have fond memories of the last one they did). But Wow again - the adaptation is excellent, it looks gorgeous, the acting is top notch AND it's doing that thing that my car engine did. It's changed my focus on the book, and made me see structures and characterisations that I hadn't seen before. I never expected to feel a flash of sympathetic understanding for Tulkinghorn, or to despise Richard Carstone quite so heartily, or to see the malice seeping from Skimpole so clearly.
And best of all, it makes me want to re-read the book NOW. Can't say fairer than that.
I'm not much of a one for pop music. Late baroque / classical gets my vote, with the occasional nod to Late Classical / Romantic types like Verdi. So I'm talking about music with a lot of layers. Complexities. Dimensions. Stuff it actually pays to listen to -I mean it doesn't really do as aural wallpaper.
So, cruisin' an' playin' my radio, it became apparent that the engine noise was masking certain musical frequencies, usually the highest ones, the ones that played the recognisable tune. And what I was left with were the lower lines. Not helpful if I was listening to a sonata of any sort, or, say, one of Bach's cello suites, but a symphony? Wow. My head could fill in the missing parts but all of a sudden I could hear the music from a totally unfamiliar angle - the bass lines, the harmonies, the musical sub-plots - and my admiration and reverence for Beethoven and Haydn and Mozart and Verdi exploded.
Same sort of thing is happening now. I finally started watching the recent BBC take on Bleak House. I put it off for ages because the novel is one of my favourite Dickenses and I didn't want a disappointment (and I have fond memories of the last one they did). But Wow again - the adaptation is excellent, it looks gorgeous, the acting is top notch AND it's doing that thing that my car engine did. It's changed my focus on the book, and made me see structures and characterisations that I hadn't seen before. I never expected to feel a flash of sympathetic understanding for Tulkinghorn, or to despise Richard Carstone quite so heartily, or to see the malice seeping from Skimpole so clearly.
And best of all, it makes me want to re-read the book NOW. Can't say fairer than that.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Recent boats I have missed
Why on earth bother to take out large ads telling me that John Lithgow (John Lithgow! Himself!) will be doing Malvolio at Stratford when they know damn well that the run lasts one more week and all the tickets have gone anyway? Just what is that supposed to prove? Is it some sort of bottom line thing? Measuring their success by my disappointment? And I was, you know. Gutted.
And the Terracotta blimmin' Army. Turn your back for a minute and all the tickets have gone. Pfft. Just like that. Well, apart from the two on eBay, and I can't go that day. (Why only the two on eBay? I'd have thought there'd be a roaring trade in them. No tickets at all for Twelfth Night. Just what good is eBay anyway? Can never find anything I want.)
Hmph.
And the Terracotta blimmin' Army. Turn your back for a minute and all the tickets have gone. Pfft. Just like that. Well, apart from the two on eBay, and I can't go that day. (Why only the two on eBay? I'd have thought there'd be a roaring trade in them. No tickets at all for Twelfth Night. Just what good is eBay anyway? Can never find anything I want.)
Hmph.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
You do the math
Significant Other and I have decided that, actually, it's quite rude to take wine when invited to a dinner party. It implies that one's host is either too poor to afford a bottle, or will provide rubbish wine, or, indeed, is too stupid to notice that you have brought a bottle of undrinkable because CHEAP vino di merda.
But you have to take something, neh? A little box of six handmade chocolates, a teeny posy of seasonal flowers, maybe organically cultivated, fairly traded pecan nuts wrapped in handblocked mango-leaf paper. You know the sort of thing. Which is all wonderful, but how do you carry it? How do you present it to your host? Especially when that box of handmade chocolates is actually quite teeny when compared with a bottle.
Well, you put it in a brown paper bag, don't you? Not just any old bag mind you, but something a little more classy, bit more up-market, know wha' I mean? Something with handles.
Google, bless it, came up with a number of possibilities. Comparison being the order of the day, and remembering that package and postage count, calculator at the ready, I found some good quality, well-constructed nice looking bags at seven pee a pop. Seven! What a great deal, eh? In went the order, Paypal did its thang, and here I am, awaiting delivery of 500 small brown paper bags, with handles, due tomorrow.
Hang on a mo' though. 500? Five? Hundred? OK. Just how many DPs do we get invited to anyway? Seriously. At a generous estimate, I'd say five a year. Including reciprocation, (where a brown paper bag with handles wouldn't count) that makes 10 social occasions a year - sounds about right. Which means we would use the final bag in 83 years and four months time.
Holy crap! I Just thought - how big is the package going to be?
But you have to take something, neh? A little box of six handmade chocolates, a teeny posy of seasonal flowers, maybe organically cultivated, fairly traded pecan nuts wrapped in handblocked mango-leaf paper. You know the sort of thing. Which is all wonderful, but how do you carry it? How do you present it to your host? Especially when that box of handmade chocolates is actually quite teeny when compared with a bottle.
Well, you put it in a brown paper bag, don't you? Not just any old bag mind you, but something a little more classy, bit more up-market, know wha' I mean? Something with handles.
Google, bless it, came up with a number of possibilities. Comparison being the order of the day, and remembering that package and postage count, calculator at the ready, I found some good quality, well-constructed nice looking bags at seven pee a pop. Seven! What a great deal, eh? In went the order, Paypal did its thang, and here I am, awaiting delivery of 500 small brown paper bags, with handles, due tomorrow.
Hang on a mo' though. 500? Five? Hundred? OK. Just how many DPs do we get invited to anyway? Seriously. At a generous estimate, I'd say five a year. Including reciprocation, (where a brown paper bag with handles wouldn't count) that makes 10 social occasions a year - sounds about right. Which means we would use the final bag in 83 years and four months time.
Holy crap! I Just thought - how big is the package going to be?
Friday, September 21, 2007
My Mother-in-Law
or:
A Problem Shared is a Problem Doubled.
After much thinking, I've decided to use the words she herself used. You don't know the players, and the incident concerned is not, sadly, isolated. The woman under discussion, let's call her Jane, whom I have met a few times, is small and pretty and engaging and funny and generally charming. She has a feckless husband, three problem children and is prone to quite serious accidents. She is a friend of MiL's DD (Dear Daughter).
The scene: our dinner table, over cheese and biscuits.
MiL: DD told me that years ago Jane was assaulted and buggered with a bottle. No wait - it may have been the other end, but there . . .
My jaw still drops when I replay that conversation in my head. How could she do that?
Isn't it a wonderful thing to have friends? People with whom you feel safe enough to expose your frailties, who will love you anyway, and with whom the sharing of a problem is indeed a burden lifted. It is also a wonderful thing to have a mother with whom you can discuss pretty much anything, without fear of betrayal. No wait . . .
See? Right there. That's the problem with saying anything to anyone. They pass it on to someone they trust, who passes it on to someone else, who doesn't know you well, if at all, and suddenly The Thing that rules the dark corners of your life is the subject of after-dinner conversation among your slight acquaintance.
Hey, did you hear that Isabel had eight miscarriages? Eight! No, but I heard Joe was impotent. Hasn't been able to get it up in two years. Oh, and Steve still wets the bed! And he's twenty-nine! And Barbara can't stand her own daughter, who let's face it is a bit of a slut. Oh, and Jane got buggered by a bottle. Wow, that's really bad luck. Coffee, anyone?
A Problem Shared is a Problem Doubled.
After much thinking, I've decided to use the words she herself used. You don't know the players, and the incident concerned is not, sadly, isolated. The woman under discussion, let's call her Jane, whom I have met a few times, is small and pretty and engaging and funny and generally charming. She has a feckless husband, three problem children and is prone to quite serious accidents. She is a friend of MiL's DD (Dear Daughter).
The scene: our dinner table, over cheese and biscuits.
MiL: DD told me that years ago Jane was assaulted and buggered with a bottle. No wait - it may have been the other end, but there . . .
My jaw still drops when I replay that conversation in my head. How could she do that?
Isn't it a wonderful thing to have friends? People with whom you feel safe enough to expose your frailties, who will love you anyway, and with whom the sharing of a problem is indeed a burden lifted. It is also a wonderful thing to have a mother with whom you can discuss pretty much anything, without fear of betrayal. No wait . . .
See? Right there. That's the problem with saying anything to anyone. They pass it on to someone they trust, who passes it on to someone else, who doesn't know you well, if at all, and suddenly The Thing that rules the dark corners of your life is the subject of after-dinner conversation among your slight acquaintance.
Hey, did you hear that Isabel had eight miscarriages? Eight! No, but I heard Joe was impotent. Hasn't been able to get it up in two years. Oh, and Steve still wets the bed! And he's twenty-nine! And Barbara can't stand her own daughter, who let's face it is a bit of a slut. Oh, and Jane got buggered by a bottle. Wow, that's really bad luck. Coffee, anyone?
Monday, September 17, 2007
Old Potatoes
See what happens when you leave stuff you should be cherishing and looking after and keeping up to date, or at least cutting up, boiling and eating, neglected for too long? It grows long white funny bits, and no-one wants to know any more. (Makes a pretty picture though, neh?)On the subject of vegetables, the other day I found myself in tears while I was chopping the onions for supper. They were my own very first home-grown onions (an abundant crop - thank goodness I make terrific red onion marmalade) and it occurred to me that I hadn't cried over an onion in absolutely ages. Now, the thing about the huge supermarkets is that they are, to a significant degree, consumer lead. Did enough of us really get up on our hind legs, and whine that we didn't wike onions that made us cwy? Weally? And did the supermarket behemoths, in all their might and majesty, command an eradication of sulfenic acid? I mean, don't get me wrong, the tears I cried were oh-oh-that-burns-argh-ouch-bloody-hell-fucking-onions tears, right enough, but until that moment I had forgotten that that is what onions are supposed to do. Fucking supermarkets.
Golly, so much to say - the latest appallingness of my MiL, The Adventures of Mango in Wonderland, iTunes - Just How Far Behind The Times Am I?, FaceBook - Is It Just Me, Or Is It Really Rubbish?, the cultural indigestion caused by seeing HP5 and Downfall in the same week - where do I start?
Monday, September 03, 2007
Monday, August 20, 2007
Blog? What blog??
. . . ah yes - this one.
What's to say? It rained, the sun shone, it rained again. SO got a job - did I mention that? Actually I did, elsewhere on the interweb-thingy, saying, approximately, that he had a new, exciting, slightly-over-his-head (but-in-a-good-way) senior senior job with (insert company name here) (AND THEN TURN IT INTO A LINK).
Oh No! I had completely forgotten the sort of software (see? I know it exists but I have NO idea of what it's called) that trawls the web looking for mentions of your website. One way of looking at it is that his new employers know I just called my Significant Other incompetent in front of the whole world.
OR, and this is the interpretation I myself prefer, the company is actually so huge that they probably don't run this software anyway.
Thank goodness my infinitely competent sister went vociferously for option b). SO much prefers to believe anything when I'm not the one saying it.
Also, well, I guess there were the Perseids - SO and I lying on the trampoline at eleven o'clock at night, not nearly well wrapped up enough, staring into the light-polluted sky and marvelling at the unparalleled beauty of the aeroplane lights - a major benefit of living so close to a flight path. Our viewing was totally undistracted by random shooting stars, thank goodness. They get so in the way of a decent bout of plane-spotting, dontcha find?
What's to say? It rained, the sun shone, it rained again. SO got a job - did I mention that? Actually I did, elsewhere on the interweb-thingy, saying, approximately, that he had a new, exciting, slightly-over-his-head (but-in-a-good-way) senior senior job with (insert company name here) (AND THEN TURN IT INTO A LINK).
Oh No! I had completely forgotten the sort of software (see? I know it exists but I have NO idea of what it's called) that trawls the web looking for mentions of your website. One way of looking at it is that his new employers know I just called my Significant Other incompetent in front of the whole world.
OR, and this is the interpretation I myself prefer, the company is actually so huge that they probably don't run this software anyway.
Thank goodness my infinitely competent sister went vociferously for option b). SO much prefers to believe anything when I'm not the one saying it.
Also, well, I guess there were the Perseids - SO and I lying on the trampoline at eleven o'clock at night, not nearly well wrapped up enough, staring into the light-polluted sky and marvelling at the unparalleled beauty of the aeroplane lights - a major benefit of living so close to a flight path. Our viewing was totally undistracted by random shooting stars, thank goodness. They get so in the way of a decent bout of plane-spotting, dontcha find?
Friday, August 10, 2007
You win some, you lose some
We missed Audley End. Extremely irritatingly, it was shut. Three days a week! Ha - I knew we were right to join the National Trust. Those English Heritage dossers are an idle bunch.
To SO's delight, the next possibility was Duxford Air Museum (by that point I didn't care, as long as it involved lunch). Being as how the major exhibits are all aircraft, the place is huge. We got to see inside a prototype Concorde, and ride on an electric train from one end of the museum to the other.
I found myself profoundly disturbed by the Land Warfare exhibition, which concentrated on WWII and the Normandy Landings. (I know. At my great age.) I know we weren't in there for that long, and certainly didn't see absolutely everything, but nowhere in all the diagrams and pictures and video footage that I saw was there any mention of the lives that were lost. No idea at all of the scale of human destruction. Yes, I understand that small children would be quite unjustifiably frightened by graphic representations, but no mention of the dead at all? It seems such a blatant omission, and such a cynical one. I don't understand why veterans' groups don't make a bigger deal of this.
To SO's delight, the next possibility was Duxford Air Museum (by that point I didn't care, as long as it involved lunch). Being as how the major exhibits are all aircraft, the place is huge. We got to see inside a prototype Concorde, and ride on an electric train from one end of the museum to the other.
I found myself profoundly disturbed by the Land Warfare exhibition, which concentrated on WWII and the Normandy Landings. (I know. At my great age.) I know we weren't in there for that long, and certainly didn't see absolutely everything, but nowhere in all the diagrams and pictures and video footage that I saw was there any mention of the lives that were lost. No idea at all of the scale of human destruction. Yes, I understand that small children would be quite unjustifiably frightened by graphic representations, but no mention of the dead at all? It seems such a blatant omission, and such a cynical one. I don't understand why veterans' groups don't make a bigger deal of this.
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
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Sunday, August 05, 2007
Daisy, Daisy
Our friend Daisy, who is one week short of her fourth birthday, and has a twin brother (Current Thinking has it that, developmentally at this age, twins generally lag about six months behind singletons), has just mastered the art of riding a bike without stabilisers. (Which I think is bloody good going. There's one in the eye for for Current Thinking.)
While her parents stood in the garden chatting, Daisy rode her bike straight into the back of her Dad's legs, and fell off. Bouncing up, hands on hips, she berated him 'DAD! You MUST learn to look where you are going!
Under his breath, Daddy retorted 'Hmph! Women drivers!'
We are off to visit the parents-in-law for a few days. Weep for me.
While her parents stood in the garden chatting, Daisy rode her bike straight into the back of her Dad's legs, and fell off. Bouncing up, hands on hips, she berated him 'DAD! You MUST learn to look where you are going!
Under his breath, Daddy retorted 'Hmph! Women drivers!'
We are off to visit the parents-in-law for a few days. Weep for me.
Friday, August 03, 2007
We're Back
Two whole days ago, and we've been having a well-earned rest after the rigours of the holiday. On the left, a picture taken on our first, and on the right, a picture taken on our last day. Ha flippin' ha, eh? Well, I guess it was bound to happen.
We went to the Blue Reef aquarium in Newquay, which is the most charming aquarium I've ever visited - small, but perfectly formed. This by way of an excuse to show you my favourites, the jellyfish.And we saw the Green Flash! It was quite, quite perfect. (SO didn't believe me, a) that it existed, and b) he banged on about latitude and atmospheric conditions and blah blah blah. Imagine my intense irritation when, on the first possible evening, I had my camera to my eye, and missed it, AND HE SAW IT. Aaaarghh!) I learned my lesson the next night though, and was privileged to see, for a fraction of a second, the most beautiful green.
Our way home, on a very beautiful and warm day, took us through Lacock, where part of Harry Potter had been filmed. The Cloisters, and the rest of the Abbey, are indeed fascinating, but the item that caught my eye was the Monastic Drain.What?
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Nearly halfway there . . .
I'm bloody EXHAUSTED. Every time I forget that, while on the whole our holidays together are a success, SO's and my approaches to our joint time off differ in one or two key aspects. Well, one aspect really. He is SO BLIMMIN' UP-AND-AT-'EM! Can't have five minutes go by without hearing 'So what are we going to do today?' My favourite answer, always bitten back, is 'Bloody NOTHING! Why can't we just read our books for a bit!'
Especially as, oh yes, did I mention it's RAINING? (OK, not the entire time. Yesterday was quite nice, but that meant that Watergate Bay, which is indeed very lovely, was extremely crowded. Still lovely though.) Lovely weather for finding somewhere comfy, with a ready supply of good coffee, and reading.
Not a chance in Hell.
Day One - a cold, windy beach, Day Two - A cold, damp and VERY windy day mooching around Newquay, NOT finding a decent cup of coffee, a pair of Crocs that didn't make me look like Donald Duck or even a half-way decent boat in the harbour to look at. Bleurgh. Day Four - Watergate, and lovely. Day Four - ah. Now this was great. We visited Trerice again. It is SO PERFECT. If we could, we'd buy the place off the National Trust and set up home there. The grounds are laid out with a perfect balance between decorative, working and recreational, and the house itself is small (for an Elizabethan manor) and elegant. Go see this place. It's balm to the troubled soul, and to the weary, peace.
Dunno why I'm posting, when I could be reading Rankin Davis' 'Hung Jury'. So far, so gripping.
Especially as, oh yes, did I mention it's RAINING? (OK, not the entire time. Yesterday was quite nice, but that meant that Watergate Bay, which is indeed very lovely, was extremely crowded. Still lovely though.) Lovely weather for finding somewhere comfy, with a ready supply of good coffee, and reading.
Not a chance in Hell.
Day One - a cold, windy beach, Day Two - A cold, damp and VERY windy day mooching around Newquay, NOT finding a decent cup of coffee, a pair of Crocs that didn't make me look like Donald Duck or even a half-way decent boat in the harbour to look at. Bleurgh. Day Four - Watergate, and lovely. Day Four - ah. Now this was great. We visited Trerice again. It is SO PERFECT. If we could, we'd buy the place off the National Trust and set up home there. The grounds are laid out with a perfect balance between decorative, working and recreational, and the house itself is small (for an Elizabethan manor) and elegant. Go see this place. It's balm to the troubled soul, and to the weary, peace.
Dunno why I'm posting, when I could be reading Rankin Davis' 'Hung Jury'. So far, so gripping.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Friday, July 20, 2007
Book Meme
Ten Writers who Need to be Beaten With A Bat Until They Stop.
I'm going to have to stick with seven, because - well, because I can't think of any more. Maybe I'll do the other three later.
1. Thomas Hardy. (Read a lot because I had to - Eng.Lit A-level, then a degree.) The man was an unrelenting doom merchant, so up to his eyebrows in the tragedy of the Common Man he couldn't see the sun shine. (Unless he bent over, of course. No, that was gratuitous.) Jude the Obscure! How penny-dreadful can you get! I can't tell you in detail, of course, you may read it and you really shouldn't be forewarned. The Mayor of Casterbridge - now that was a laugh a page. Like 24 without the mobile phones.
2. Ernest Hemingway. (Read half Death in the Afternoon. Really really coudln't get any further, and I don't give up easy.) Everything First Nations said. Every page reeks of booze and self-justification.
3.Stephen Donaldson. (Read two tomes. Where did my life go!) Thomas Covenant! This should have been so good! Huge sprawling canvas, hero with an interesting flaw, cast of thousands, in-fighting, out-fighting, you name it. But you know what they say - good on paper, lousy in bed. So boring I can't remember how boring it actually was. Still, a page or two and I was sound asleep, so it did have its uses.
4.Cicero. (Latin A-level.) Oh, Cicero. Golden Age of the language, a man right at the heart of the Mightiness That Was Rome, mover, shaker, not given to losing his head. (Or his hands.) But Oh. My. Gosh. All of that fabulous vocabulary, the elegant sentence structure, the meter, the rhythm, and all he could do was character assassination. I'd have voted for Catiline. Mind you, I have not read Imperium, or seen Rome II yet, so there is a chance that years and years and years after leaving school my opinion might be changed. I will, of course, keep you posted. Because you are aching to know.
5.Paul Coelho. (Veronica Decides to Die. No actually, it's Mangonel who badly needs to pop her clogs.) What is it with this man? He has a HUGE following in South and Central America, every time he farts he must earn a squazillion Oreos, or whatever the local currency is, and The Man. Writes. Pap. Earnest, crap-mystical, feel-good PAP. Life's not like that - it's nasty, brutish and short, and he needs to get that into his rich glass-half-full head.
6.Torey Hayden, Dave Pelzer et al. (None. These guys should be top of my list, and I haven't read ONE.) Look at the list of subjects Wikipedia gives for Hayden - autism, Tourette syndrome, sexual abuse, fetal alcohol syndrome, selective mutism. It makes me so sad and angry that people's hideous experiences should be turned into after-dinner conversation. I don't care that they know what they are talking about, they should have the professional responsibility not to turn suffering on this scale into voyeuristic schlock.
7.St Paul (Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians etc.) Or maybe he should be top. The others exposed human misery, he imposed it. On a colossal scale. Now, I know that what the man achieved is world-shaking. (He was the bloke who broke with the Disciples, who wanted to preach exclusively to Jews, and took The Word to the Gentiles across the known world. Himself. HUGE.) His place in history is assured. But my problem with Paul is that he was writing out of the belief that the Second Coming was due in his own lifetime. All his prescriptions and proscriptions had an acknowleged shelf life of about 50 years. He SPECIFICALLY counselled against social change, because the Kingdom of God was at hand. And 2,000 years later we are still cribb'd, cabin'd and confined by strictures 1950 years past their use-by date. The big trouble I have with any theodicy is that it always reflects what Man wants, not what God wants. And Paul was the bloke who started it. (And no, by 'Man' I do not mean to include women. 'He for God only, she for God in him.' Milton, I know, and beautifully phrased, but poisonous nevertheless.) *
I'm going to have to stick with seven, because - well, because I can't think of any more. Maybe I'll do the other three later.
1. Thomas Hardy. (Read a lot because I had to - Eng.Lit A-level, then a degree.) The man was an unrelenting doom merchant, so up to his eyebrows in the tragedy of the Common Man he couldn't see the sun shine. (Unless he bent over, of course. No, that was gratuitous.) Jude the Obscure! How penny-dreadful can you get! I can't tell you in detail, of course, you may read it and you really shouldn't be forewarned. The Mayor of Casterbridge - now that was a laugh a page. Like 24 without the mobile phones.
2. Ernest Hemingway. (Read half Death in the Afternoon. Really really coudln't get any further, and I don't give up easy.) Everything First Nations said. Every page reeks of booze and self-justification.
3.Stephen Donaldson. (Read two tomes. Where did my life go!) Thomas Covenant! This should have been so good! Huge sprawling canvas, hero with an interesting flaw, cast of thousands, in-fighting, out-fighting, you name it. But you know what they say - good on paper, lousy in bed. So boring I can't remember how boring it actually was. Still, a page or two and I was sound asleep, so it did have its uses.
4.Cicero. (Latin A-level.) Oh, Cicero. Golden Age of the language, a man right at the heart of the Mightiness That Was Rome, mover, shaker, not given to losing his head. (Or his hands.) But Oh. My. Gosh. All of that fabulous vocabulary, the elegant sentence structure, the meter, the rhythm, and all he could do was character assassination. I'd have voted for Catiline. Mind you, I have not read Imperium, or seen Rome II yet, so there is a chance that years and years and years after leaving school my opinion might be changed. I will, of course, keep you posted. Because you are aching to know.
5.Paul Coelho. (Veronica Decides to Die. No actually, it's Mangonel who badly needs to pop her clogs.) What is it with this man? He has a HUGE following in South and Central America, every time he farts he must earn a squazillion Oreos, or whatever the local currency is, and The Man. Writes. Pap. Earnest, crap-mystical, feel-good PAP. Life's not like that - it's nasty, brutish and short, and he needs to get that into his rich glass-half-full head.
6.Torey Hayden, Dave Pelzer et al. (None. These guys should be top of my list, and I haven't read ONE.) Look at the list of subjects Wikipedia gives for Hayden - autism, Tourette syndrome, sexual abuse, fetal alcohol syndrome, selective mutism. It makes me so sad and angry that people's hideous experiences should be turned into after-dinner conversation. I don't care that they know what they are talking about, they should have the professional responsibility not to turn suffering on this scale into voyeuristic schlock.
7.St Paul (Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians etc.) Or maybe he should be top. The others exposed human misery, he imposed it. On a colossal scale. Now, I know that what the man achieved is world-shaking. (He was the bloke who broke with the Disciples, who wanted to preach exclusively to Jews, and took The Word to the Gentiles across the known world. Himself. HUGE.) His place in history is assured. But my problem with Paul is that he was writing out of the belief that the Second Coming was due in his own lifetime. All his prescriptions and proscriptions had an acknowleged shelf life of about 50 years. He SPECIFICALLY counselled against social change, because the Kingdom of God was at hand. And 2,000 years later we are still cribb'd, cabin'd and confined by strictures 1950 years past their use-by date. The big trouble I have with any theodicy is that it always reflects what Man wants, not what God wants. And Paul was the bloke who started it. (And no, by 'Man' I do not mean to include women. 'He for God only, she for God in him.' Milton, I know, and beautifully phrased, but poisonous nevertheless.) *
COMING SOON!
8, 9 and 10.
I tag Betty, because. She knows why. And Dave - judging by the books appearing in his sidebar, we have very similar tastes in the good stuff. But do we hate the same crap?
*Dunno why I went with a Milton quote, when Paul himself would have done just as well. Paul did, after all write beautifully. Well, at least according to King James he did.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
In the meantime . . .
Here's a story from my friend E. She can't post this because she blogs real life, and the subject, or an acquaintance, may find it. So I'm going to do it for her!
'Re the ****** rector. I have been collating a list of stories evidencing his ‘eccentricity’. The latest is that from an occasion when there was a visiting children’s choir from Lithuania. They were scheduled to have drinks and nibbles at the Rectory as part of their visit, and arrived, were shown to the drawing room by Mrs Rector, and thence out through the French windows into the garden. In the garden, the Rector waved merrily to them from his task, and said, “With you in a moment!”. Gasps of horror from assembled Lithuanian kiddywinkles, as he was engaged in disembowelling a deer, and was red to the elbows. In his back garden. And actually I think the technical term is ‘gralloching’, and I don’t even know how I know that.'
Ain't country life grand!
'Re the ****** rector. I have been collating a list of stories evidencing his ‘eccentricity’. The latest is that from an occasion when there was a visiting children’s choir from Lithuania. They were scheduled to have drinks and nibbles at the Rectory as part of their visit, and arrived, were shown to the drawing room by Mrs Rector, and thence out through the French windows into the garden. In the garden, the Rector waved merrily to them from his task, and said, “With you in a moment!”. Gasps of horror from assembled Lithuanian kiddywinkles, as he was engaged in disembowelling a deer, and was red to the elbows. In his back garden. And actually I think the technical term is ‘gralloching’, and I don’t even know how I know that.'
Ain't country life grand!
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
The dog is eating my homework
First Nations tagged me to produce a list of ten writers who, in my opinion, need hitting with a bat until they stop.
It's proving unexpectedly difficult. Of course I can think of some, who can't, but ten? Thing is, I don't on the whole remember chapter and verse of writers that make my eyes bleed - I get them out of the way and move on to the next thing. I suppose I could pad the list with generics like 'extreme right-wing authors, such as the architects of Apartheid, the authors of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and Leviticus' but I have a feeling that would be cheating - I think I have to Name Names.
I'm up to seven, and I want to get this over with by Friday, as we leave for Cornwall over the weekend. (Just outside Newquay, since you ask.)
Oh oh oh I forgot to say, the reason I don't know exactly when we are going away, is that SO is in Moscow for the week. Tee hee! He buys a deeply lovely little car, then goes away for a week, and the minute he is back we head west for ten days, not in the car!
It's proving unexpectedly difficult. Of course I can think of some, who can't, but ten? Thing is, I don't on the whole remember chapter and verse of writers that make my eyes bleed - I get them out of the way and move on to the next thing. I suppose I could pad the list with generics like 'extreme right-wing authors, such as the architects of Apartheid, the authors of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and Leviticus' but I have a feeling that would be cheating - I think I have to Name Names.
I'm up to seven, and I want to get this over with by Friday, as we leave for Cornwall over the weekend. (Just outside Newquay, since you ask.)
Oh oh oh I forgot to say, the reason I don't know exactly when we are going away, is that SO is in Moscow for the week. Tee hee! He buys a deeply lovely little car, then goes away for a week, and the minute he is back we head west for ten days, not in the car!
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Mid-life crisis? What mid-life crisis?
A test drive! That's where he said he was going! And did I want to come too! As 'appens I was busy, and came home to find THIS on my doorstep.'I didn't think you'd mind' he said. 'It's an Audi.'
How well he knows me.
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