I woke up to the horrendous discovery that we were out of soya milk. Woe! Woe! We have cow’s milk but I’ve lost my taste for that, aside from which it gives me a runny nose and sneezes. It’s a funny thing but the effects of a dairy allergy are widely accepted in ‘alternative medicine’ but hardly at all in conventional medicine. But there it is: I have only to daub a pat of butter on my toast to experience a frog in the throat. Cheese gives me sneezes and milk makes my nose run. I know this from long experience but will the doctors believe me? They will not. They look sceptical and mutter hay fever under their breath. I’ve given up mentioning it.
So, since I’m reluctant to put cow’s milk in my tea I must either have peppermint or sally forth and buy some more of the soya variety. It’s an odd thing because in the beginning I didn’t like it at all but now I prefer it.
Not all cheeses are created equal of course. Goat’s cheese is better than cow’s and sheep’s is better than either. Feta is bedda than cheddar, basically. But I can’t stand black tea.
Ah, woe is me!
This is not what I was going to write about today at all but never mind; blogging is what happens to you when you’re busy thinking of other things. What I was going to write about was this: it happened this morning when I was trying to drink my too-strong tea that OH read out something about Will Self. ‘Will Self’s writing is completely joyless,’ it said, and it struck me that that was absolutely right. It is joyless. There’s no pleasure, no fun, no happiness in what he writes, only a dry, ironic sort of wit and a fantastic display of cleverness. He doesn’t seem to like anyone or anything very much and I get the impression that if I were to meet him I’d want to hide in a corner rather than be subjected to such merciless scrutiny.
Here’s a post I wrote about him last year. I used a number of adjectives then, including scornful, scathing and overly-critical. But joyless really seems to sum it up.
It’s here in the middle of this podcast that they slag off Will Self and compare his verbiage to the poetry of Vogons. It’s coincidentally a podcast dedicated to the universe of Douglas Adams, giving some advice to help you live in it.It’s about 20 minutes in.
Last night OH and I, being on a Peter Morgan kick (the guy I told you about yesterday who wrote The Queen et al – are you paying attention?) watched ‘The Deal,’ the story of the early careers and friendship of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair and the deal they made that in a leadership race Blair would stand aside and let Brown win; a deal which if it existed (and according to Wikipedia it did), Blair evidently broke. The film is one of a Blair trilogy which culminates in ‘The Queen’ but perhaps should have continued to the Iraq war and his subsequent downfall. Blair has been in the outer darkness now for a long time but doesn’t actually realise it and keeps popping up with Ideas to Save the Party and the Country.
Coincidentally – or not? maybe there are no coincidences – OH this morning directed me to another podcast (OH loves podcasts; I’m a bit meh) about how over the last 40 years things politically have slid to the right like a great uncontrollable mudslide; starting with Thatcher, continuing with Blair and still sailing inexorably on with Johnson into a blood-red, ghostly white and deep blue sunset. It’s called ‘That Option No Longer Exists.‘
So that’s today. It’s cold and wet here in blogland so stay safe, wrap up and don’t go outside without a mask.But if you’re going to the shop, can you get me some soya milk?
Thanks.
Kirk out
Sarada Gray 