2015 — 11 May: Monday
I had not realised that Sullivan1 was the chap who set to (rather mournful) music the poem that begins "Seated one day at the organ". That strikes me as a pretty good unconsidered trifle to be a picker-up of.
It looks like...
... being another nice day. And I have rather more sleep under my belt (as it were) this time. That's always good. Meanwhile, having supped my first cup while reading this...
And then, one suspects she simply isn't a reader. Whatever what we might call her accomplishments, one does not sense a printaholic in her: She has other things to do. At the end of the day, what makes a fluent writer is rich exposure to the printed page, certainly during childhood and optimally beyond. I know a number of people whose social media prose is much like Kardashian's2 tweet. They are quite diverse in educational level, temperament, class, and race. What unites them is that none read for pleasure.
... I now know I'm truly a dinosaur. I know (but try hard to avoid) people who don't read for pleasure. Interesting essay. But what would the Inklings have made of it?!
I know it's been...
... a mere 40 days since I last asked what is the point of Iain Duncan Smith. The question bears repeating:
To justify the cuts, the Tories are likely to employ a narrative of skivers v strivers, suggesting a clear division between a large, permanently welfare-dependent group and the rest of the population who pay taxes to support it. The Tories know this is a fiction, but it is a politically useful one.
"Fiction" sounds so much gentler than "lie".
Having waited in...
... just long enough to assure myself that the only snailmail today was an annual statement addressed to dear Mama regarding the genteel increase in value of one of her investments (now shortly to be split 'twixt Big Bro and me) I took myself off for a pootle down into the New Forest while the sun still shone. Sadly, the little book and video shop I'd found in a back street in Ringwood on my visit last September was indeed no more, having gone the way of so many independent book stores in this Benighted Kingdom in the last decade or so. Of course, I was starving by the time I got back, laden with nourishment for the top four inches or so:
The pain of this acquisition was eased by the £10 discount for having filled up all 10 spaces on the Waterstone's card I'd for once remembered to pop into my wallet. Not to mention the £125 that Uncle ERNIE left in my bank a/c overnight. Sweet of him.
What goes around...
Back in the Dawn of Time, when my little ¬blog was just getting off the ground (9th December 2006), I mentioned a memoir by Gardner Botsford that I'd then just snaffled from the branch of Borders that had then just opened in Soton. (It's since closed, inevitably.) More recently (17th April 2015), I snaffled "Between You & Me" by Mary Norris. I leave as an exercise for the reader the connection.
It still stings
I've been acutely aware, all day, that it's exactly 90 months since I lost Christa. Part of me thinks: "That's a long time". Part of me thinks: "It seems like just last month". No part of me thinks: "I don't miss her". What an odd business mortality is.