Security of Tenner

Turned out all right yesterday – I found a tenner I didn’t know I had.  Plus, the food at Asda turned out cheaper than I’d anticipated.  As I left the checkout I thought with a twang of all the reasons why it might be cheap – using the roads as storage, squeezing their suppliers (and not in an affectionate way), not paying their staff very much.. and so on.  Of course, I don’t know for sure – but these are the things supermarkets tend to do.  But as I pushed the trolley through the doors and past the new cafeteria (they used to have vending machines, now they do six kinds of coffee and “brioches”) I decided not to feel guilty.  I don’t use supermarkets very often, after all.

Feeling a little tents?

My head is full of tents and fixing them and packing them and how we’re going to get all our stuff into the Vauxhall Corsa which was the cheapest deal we could find for ten days’ hire, so excuse me if I don’t write any more.  Except to tell you about my favourite joke in Futurama www.futurama-madhouse.com.ar/scripts/4acv17

What the hell is a brioche?

Money, money, money

Going camping on Friday, me and the daughter.  Checked the bank account yesterday – as things stand we can either buy petrol to get us there or eat while we are there.  A rather benign version of the dilemma which must face lots of genuinely poor people every day.

What’s so special about the Greeks? www.lifeofchrist.com/teachings/sermons/mount/

It’s at times like these (but not only at times like these) that I think what an insane system we live under.  I’m not talking about capitalism, or even global capitalism – I’m just talking about the whole concept of money.  That without money you can’t eat.  I’m feeling rather Biblical today, what with the meek inheriting the earth and thinking about th love of money being the root of all evil.  bible.cc/1_timothy/6-10.htm

Ebagum Trebor

In ten seconds or less, can you work out of which “world leader” II use the term with heavy irony) this is an anagram?  (Did you notice the preposition there, up with which I did not end mysentence?)  OK have you got it yet?

Sometimes when I look at the world I think it is not so much money but the love of political power that is the root of all evil.  Certainly it seems so when you look at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mugabe

Did you work it out yourself?  Be honest.  Although, let’s face it, Mugabe is way, way beyond a joke.

Waiting for the News are you?

Ok here’s today’s brain teaser – in which popular children’s programme did characters sometimes turn to the camera and say this?

Work it out yourself – don’t Google it!  It’s better for your brain.

Off now to do some mantras

Om, I am truly wealthy; Om, I am truly rich…  (copyright Swami Madonnananda)

Watcha Meant?

When I first came across a Glen Campbell record and read the title Wichita Lineman, www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qoymGCDYzU not knowing what Wichita was, this kind of spilled over into not understanding the second word. (I’ll spare you all my thoughts on the importance of context in understanding words – when my daughter was learning to read she seemed oblivious to context and that was one of the things we tried to teach her.) So in my mind this became “Wichita linny-man” except that the word “wichita” got somehow fumbled as I’d never heard it pronounced.

It ought to be obvious to the most casual observer of this blog that words and word-play are a vital part of my existence. They are also the bane of my life. When I was young, before I learned to control words by writing them down, I was completely at their mercy. Alliteration, for example, used to leave me poleaxed: if I needed to say something like “free on Friday afternoon” – I couldn’t. I’d have to resort to circumlocutions such as “available on the last day of the week once I’ve had lunch”. And I used to wonder why people thought I was strange.

Lap dancing

Good news!  Seems the government are having a rethink.  You need to contact your local council now as they have to respond to the government by 15th August.  Further info contact the Fawcett Society (http://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/index.asp?PageID=631

They also have a template for writing to your council.  http://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/documents/SATC%20Template%20letter%20to%20local%20newspaper.doc

Want to finish with a lap-related pun but can’t

Deja vu

Computer unreasonably slow – aha! Dr Who last night – Mark must be downloading. Yep. Peer at the screen (forgot glasses). All I need to do is recognise the word Stop. Ought to be easy enough – I’m better at word-recognition since my eyesight deteriorated. (It’s just occurred to me that if you put together “interior” and “decorate” you get “deteriorate”. I’m sure Mark would appreciate that thought.) Back to the screen – and I’m not recognising anything. And then the truth dawns – it’s all in bloody Romanian again. Or Esperanto. Or possibly Sanskrit. To be honest, I’d have a better chance if it was Sanskrit.

Mark claims that the server does it all by itself. “I didn’t ask it to be in Romanian” (Sanskrit, Greek, Esperanto), he said, in injured tones. Do we believe him?

Hmm.

P’tui-vision

There’s a guy on youtube who is a natural entertainer. www.youtube.com/charlieissocoollike Daniel says he’s actually been on television. If so, I hope they don’t just chew him up and spit him out like so many talented (and, let’s face it, untalented) people.

Teacher training day today. Need to make my thermos.

Toodle pip!

Wit and Wendy

Other Spoonerisms about the weather – fost and frog, shattered scourers, slice and eat. Let me know if you have any more.

Wit and Wendy is of course a reference to Wendy Cope, whose poem “I am a poet and I like bananas” is one of my favourites http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/859.html

I was going to write a hommage entitled “I am a poet but I am dyslexic” which went like this:

I am a poet but I am dyslexic

I am dyslexic but am I a poet?

a tepot am I: but a dyslexic?

…and so on, with ever more bizarre convolutions of the available letters.  I thought it had legs, but I never got it off the ground (ha ha).

Wendy Cope’s finest hour in my view is her parody of The Wasteland.  I have long suspected that TS Eliot is overrated: now I’m convinced.  www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/859

The last line never fails to make me laugh.  For my money, she is worth ten of Eliot.

That’s enough lit. crit. for one day, my little culture vultures!

I must away….

In Search of the Time to Read Proust

It took me eight years to read “A la recherche du temps perdu”. www.tempsperdu.comBy chance I started with the last volume (that was the only one they had in the library, though I now own all seven). When I read those last (in English) two words, “In Time”, it felt like a bullet through the forehead; like the final resounding chord of a symphony, like that last, long-fading chord in the Beatles’ “Day in the Life”. I was poleaxed. For several moments I couldn’t move, speak or even think. I’m not exaggerating.

One Hundred Years of Reading

But I haven’t finished “Cien Anos de Soledad”, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Hundred_Years_of_Solitude not even in English. It’s too hard to work out who everyone is. And I feel like I should read it in Spanish. But reading Proust in French is, as they say, hors de question. There’s a book – I think it’s Alain de Botton’s book on Proust en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_de_Botton – where a typical Proust sentence is printed like one of those shape poems, curling round and round on itself, taking up the whole page. I love Proust, couldn’t live without him – but, en francais? Impossible!

The Existence of Blog

If blog didn’t exist, we would have to invent it. What did I do in the days before blog? I was lost, wandering, searching…sure, I had my diary, but nobody else read it.

What I’m working on

Essay on Lawrence; several short stories, a radio play called Anyone Can Sit Anywhere, plus…

I’m going to write a monologue about a woman who’s hanging on the phone waiting to talk to a customer services adviser. Sort of like an Alan Bennett talking heads thing. en.wikipedia.org

If I keep moving, the rejections won’t hit me so hard! That’s the theory, anyway!

have a good one

Tugoflove

This was the headline in a tabliod newspaper:  TUGOFLOVE CHILD. In my mind this had to be pronounced “tew-go-flove”.  What was “tugoflove” and how could a child be one?  Not wishing to be snobbish but how could a word in a tabloid headline so baffle me?  For monts I went around asking “what is tugoflove>”  I asked friends, I consulted dictionaries.  (This was decades before Google.)

Time passed and I forgot about it.  Then one day I saw the headline again, properly spaced:

tUG OF LOVE CHILD IN COURT BATTLE

This has given rise in our household to a number of eccentric verbs.  For example:

to derf - to feed sufficiently

past participle – derfed

opposite – underfed

to misle (rhymes with drizzle) – to lead astray

past participle – misled

to infrare – to be outside the spectrum

past participle – infrared

Know any more?  Let me know!

Improbable dialogues No. 1

-  What’s that? he asked, pointing to a fat volume on the table

-  It’s a thesaurus, I said.

-  I thought that was some kind of dinosaur.

I smiled, a smile as thin as the joke.

-  No, I said, it’s me who’s the dinosaur.

-  Oh?

-  Yes.  Most people don’t bother with the book.  They just go on-line.

-  Oh, I see.  He paused.  Can I borrow this?

-  Why?

-  I want to look up “joke”.

-  You should, I said.

Jack the Lad

This was the original title of a story I’ve just finished, and which is going to a competition.  It’s a sort of ghost story, a sort of whodunnit – or wad unit, if you didn’t get that joke (jape, jest, pun, prank, double entendre) before.  It’s about Jack the Ripper.

Dead Medium Lives Next Door

Turns out that next door to us in the 1930’s lived a medium who had something to do with the case.  If that’s not an invitation to a short story, I don’t know what is.  Speaking of which…

When I grow up…

Bought a collection of short stories yesterday, prizewinners in the national Short Story Competition. (see www.theshortstory.org.

The intro was about how the short story is less highly-regarded nowadays.  I think they’re quite right.  Although I’m good at short stories, I can’t help feeling that I haven’t quite grown up yet.  Because I haven’t written a novel.

Ah well.  Here’s to childhod – before I go senile

Pip pip!

Welcome back

-  So, Liz – it’s a while since we spoke.  How’s it going?

-  Oh, fine.  I’ve sent a lot of stuff off -

-  Uh huh.  That’s good

-  And I’m doing a lot.  I’ve got about six short stories on the go…

-  Six, eh?

-  Yeah.  Er, one’s about  – well, the time I lived in a yoga centre

-  Mm.  Unusual

-  Yeah, and there was this guy – a musician

-  Oh, right.  Sounds fascinating.

-  No, wait – it’s about abuse

-  Abuse, eh?  That’s different.  Lots of gory guilty details, huh?

-  No, not really.  I mean, it’s quite low key

-  Great, great,   So what else’ve you got?

-  there’s one called “Lions”.  It’s about my childhood

-  Mauled by a lion, were you?  That’d play well.  Scarred for life, both physically and mentally…

-  Ha, ha.  Erm, actually it’s about the time I stole my grandmother’s wedding ring… It’s very symbolic

-  Symbolic is good.

-  Yeah -

-  In low-budget Swedish cinema.

-  Oh.  Right.  Well, I…  Yes, I see.  Well, I also have a story about – well, it’s sort of science fiction.  It’s about the study of thought – you know, how people think.  There’s this museum and…

-  Huh.  I think I see where this is going.

-  No, you don’t!  I mean, with respect, you don’t – you see, there’s a twist…

-  Liz.  What I’m about to say now is for your own good.

-  No, please don’t say that!

-  Right.  Ok.  Well, I think we’re about done here

-  No, wait!  I – there’s more!  I’m working on a radio play!  It’s about social class and finding your way…

-  Of course it is.  Well, do you think you can “find your way” to the door?

-  Proust had trouble getting published, you know!

-  Who?

- OK.  Like you say, I think we’re done.

-  Bye Liz

-  Yes indeed.  Goodbye.