My sister-in-law is mystified at being identified as a mechanic.
Such is the world of psychometric testing, particularly when it's yoked to some automatic prose analysis system. I've done more than one Myers-Briggs test; I can never remember what it said, though I'm sure I winced in recognition at being consistently labelled an introvert, and that it didn't leave me aghast, or rolling on the floor in laughter.
This, on the other hand, seems particularly fanciful. I wasn't surprised to find that the results varied according to the prose that's fed into it. Some very dull and factual stuff had me among the INTJ "Scientists", but two separate submissions of this blog had me first among the ENTP "Visionaries":
They highly value knowledge, and spend much of their lives seeking a higher understanding. They live in the world of possibilities, and become excited about concepts, challenges and difficulties. When presented with a problem, they're good at improvising and quickly come up with a creative solution. Creative, clever, curious, and theoretical"
and then among the ESTP "Doers":
The active and playful type. They are especially attuned to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and engaging in physical out-door activities.
The Doers are happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time.
I may be inclined to start things without finishing them, but I have absolutely no problem about sitting still and inactive. The two traits are not unrelated.
What does surprise me (though perhaps it shouldn't) is the suggestion of an inner extrovert, just waiting to burst out of this blog, vuvuzelatastically spurting party poppers and goosing passers-by.
I rather suspect, though, that if I give it another go, it'll tell me I'm something else, but will never be uncomplimentary. So keep trying, Nancy, you could turn out to be among the Performers, Artists, Inspirers or Idealists. Perhaps it just needs to be given a biscuit.
Showing posts with label memes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label memes. Show all posts
Friday, 13 August 2010
Wednesday, 25 March 2009
Subject to a tagging order...
I'm behind with my homework again. More than ten days ago, Ms Scarlet tagged me to write six things of no real importance about myself.
I suppose I could say with a swish that there is nothing about me that is not of real importance, and I will say I'm not playing along with the business of tagging six more people - partly because I can't think of six other bloggers who'd play along and partly because it sounds a bit like a chain letter. So I won't.
But here are my six pointless facts, for what they're worth:
1. My favourite examination technique, when I didn't know where to start, has always been to quibble over the terms of the question.
2. For a time, there was a Lamborghini in my parking space (not mine - would I be so vulgar?)
3. I wouldn't be broken-hearted if I never saw another courgette on my plate.
4. I nearly trod on the Prince of Wales's toes once.
5. I am given to letting out occasional sighs of relief for no apparent reason.
6. I have passed through Ashby-de-la-Zouch, but I have never been to Zennor.
Oh. That wasn't too painful
I suppose I could say with a swish that there is nothing about me that is not of real importance, and I will say I'm not playing along with the business of tagging six more people - partly because I can't think of six other bloggers who'd play along and partly because it sounds a bit like a chain letter. So I won't.
But here are my six pointless facts, for what they're worth:
1. My favourite examination technique, when I didn't know where to start, has always been to quibble over the terms of the question.
2. For a time, there was a Lamborghini in my parking space (not mine - would I be so vulgar?)
3. I wouldn't be broken-hearted if I never saw another courgette on my plate.
4. I nearly trod on the Prince of Wales's toes once.
5. I am given to letting out occasional sighs of relief for no apparent reason.
6. I have passed through Ashby-de-la-Zouch, but I have never been to Zennor.
Oh. That wasn't too painful
Monday, 17 March 2008
Page 123, multiplied
There's a meme going round, which invites people to quote the fifth and sixth sentences (some people suggest more) on page 123 of whatever book they happen to be reading.
I tried this with a couple of books, but the results looked so uninteresting I decided not to bother.
And then I thought, what would happen if you combined the results from books you have been reading recently?
So here's a collage from page 123 of some books currently lying about:
"The larger and more colourful a city is, the more places there are to hide one's guilt and sin; the more crowded it is, the more people there are to hide behind. A city's intellect ought not to be measured by its scholars, libraries, miniaturists, calligraphers and schools, but by the number of crimes insidiously committed on its dark streets over thousands of years.[1]
Most of the houses were exactly the same inside and outside, except for those which had been purchased from the council, an achievement often marked by a neon-coloured front door or a wall built around a garden of blue gravel.[2]
Again there was no answer but she took a few steps back and saw the lace curtains on the upstairs window fall back into place. She returned to the door and pressed the buttons simultaneously and continuously for about five seconds, then released them.[3]
She started to explain what had happened and how she'd been trying to get home, but trailed off as she realized that he wasn't listening to her but was staring at the stuffed monkey she had attached to her bag. "Where did you get that?" he said.[4] "Don't worry," Miss Throckmorton replied. "We'll take good care of him."[5]
The pain was terrible. Removing his boot he fingered his worn sock and was relieved to find he wasn't bleeding.[6] "For solidarity". He smiled grimly.[7] Was it trivial that a beatiful woman had wanted him? He suspected that it was.[8]
Clesant dragged himself up and across the floor, he opened the cupboard, and the man bundled in and hid, and that was how it ended. Yes, that's how it ends, that's what comes of being kind to handsome strangers and wanting to touch them.[9]"
[1] Orhan Pamuk, My Name Is Red.
[2] Andrew O'Hagan, Be Near Me.
[3] Jasper fforde, The Fourth Bear.
[4] Catherine O'Flynn, What Was Lost.
[5} Kim Edwards, The Memorykeeper's Daughter.
[6] Beryl Bainbridge, Young Adolf.
[7] C. J. Sansom, Winter in Madrid.
[8] Mark Mills, The Savage Garden.
[9] E. M. Forster, Dr. Woollacott.
I tried this with a couple of books, but the results looked so uninteresting I decided not to bother.
And then I thought, what would happen if you combined the results from books you have been reading recently?
So here's a collage from page 123 of some books currently lying about:
"The larger and more colourful a city is, the more places there are to hide one's guilt and sin; the more crowded it is, the more people there are to hide behind. A city's intellect ought not to be measured by its scholars, libraries, miniaturists, calligraphers and schools, but by the number of crimes insidiously committed on its dark streets over thousands of years.[1]
Most of the houses were exactly the same inside and outside, except for those which had been purchased from the council, an achievement often marked by a neon-coloured front door or a wall built around a garden of blue gravel.[2]
Again there was no answer but she took a few steps back and saw the lace curtains on the upstairs window fall back into place. She returned to the door and pressed the buttons simultaneously and continuously for about five seconds, then released them.[3]
She started to explain what had happened and how she'd been trying to get home, but trailed off as she realized that he wasn't listening to her but was staring at the stuffed monkey she had attached to her bag. "Where did you get that?" he said.[4] "Don't worry," Miss Throckmorton replied. "We'll take good care of him."[5]
The pain was terrible. Removing his boot he fingered his worn sock and was relieved to find he wasn't bleeding.[6] "For solidarity". He smiled grimly.[7] Was it trivial that a beatiful woman had wanted him? He suspected that it was.[8]
Clesant dragged himself up and across the floor, he opened the cupboard, and the man bundled in and hid, and that was how it ended. Yes, that's how it ends, that's what comes of being kind to handsome strangers and wanting to touch them.[9]"
[1] Orhan Pamuk, My Name Is Red.
[2] Andrew O'Hagan, Be Near Me.
[3] Jasper fforde, The Fourth Bear.
[4] Catherine O'Flynn, What Was Lost.
[5} Kim Edwards, The Memorykeeper's Daughter.
[6] Beryl Bainbridge, Young Adolf.
[7] C. J. Sansom, Winter in Madrid.
[8] Mark Mills, The Savage Garden.
[9] E. M. Forster, Dr. Woollacott.
Wednesday, 27 February 2008
Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!
Only a few weeks to register your vote for the Oddest Book Title of the Year.
The Bookseller magazine has been running the competition for quite a while now. In among the laughs and raised eyebrows, I can't help thinking there's a candidate or two for new categories to add to the Calvino meme.
How about:
Books You're Glad You Don't Feel the Need For: A close contest this, for me, between
Cheese Problems Solved and
People Who Mattered in Southend and Beyond: From King Canute to Dr Feelgood.
Books You Suspect Might Be More Trouble Than They're Worth If You Read Them on the Tube:
Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues
Books That Are Likely to Prove a Severe Disappointment:
I Was Tortured by the Pygmy Love Queen
The Bookseller magazine has been running the competition for quite a while now. In among the laughs and raised eyebrows, I can't help thinking there's a candidate or two for new categories to add to the Calvino meme.
How about:
Books You're Glad You Don't Feel the Need For: A close contest this, for me, between
Cheese Problems Solved and
People Who Mattered in Southend and Beyond: From King Canute to Dr Feelgood.
Books You Suspect Might Be More Trouble Than They're Worth If You Read Them on the Tube:
Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues
Books That Are Likely to Prove a Severe Disappointment:
I Was Tortured by the Pygmy Love Queen
Monday, 14 January 2008
Five things
Claude says she's not a fan of memes. I know what she means - I've read a few and thought I couldn't possibly do them. Why would I tell complete strangers n things no-one knows about me (those would be either not worth knowing, or private) or n things to do before I die (I tend to be timid but impulsive rather than an ambitious planner)?
Of course, I could have started a blog in an entirely different personality - the lovechild of an oil sheikh and a filmstar, perhaps, who plans to tap-dance with the Dalai Lama and play the spoons at a Buckingham Palace banquet. But I could never keep it up. Fiction isn't me - I'd rather evade than invent.
Come to think of it, I have occasionally had a yen to learn to play the spoons (but then again, to paraphrase PG Wodehouse, a gentleman is one who knows how to play the spoons - but doesn't). That, and being the last person in Britain to talk about "listening to the wireless".
Strangely, the only memes I've tried have been those on Claude's blog, and now she's specifically challenged me to have a go at:
Five things in my life that I would never have imagined at the age of 25
Hmm..
25 - the mid-1970s, still finding my feet in my first job, not finding my feet socially or emotionally.. the whole idea of being nearly 60 was unimaginable, never mind trying to imagine what my life would be like.
1. Technology
This is so obvious - and diamondgeezer has written about it so well - that I thought to leave it out: but my memories go back so much further than his. We wrote letters and cheques; we queued at banks to pay money in and take cash out. Making phone calls away from home was a lottery: getting the door of the phone-box open could be a struggle, and what you might find in it a challenge - and that's assuming you had the small change to put in the slot. When I was 25, I didn't have (didn't expect to have) my own washing machine, and took the weekly visit to the launderette as a handy occasion to catch up on my reading; impossible to imagine the dishwasher I have loved but rejected as expensive and wasteful (well, that's love for you).
Most of all, of course, I couldn't have imagined I'd be working on the internet, without being one of those hidden acolytes of the humming roomful of card-readers and tape-drives known as The Computer and its arcane languages. (Let people have their own computer? On their own desks? Madness!). In one of my early jobs, I was in charge of the storage box full of the Gestetner stencils we used for form letters and updated every year till they fell apart: it's a wonder we weren't all high as kites on the fumes of correcting fluid. To think of working almost entirely without paper files, as I do, would have been fantastical.
2. Property
My parents always rented their home. I suppose I absorbed the general feeling of the 60s and 70s that all the financial advantage was in buying if you could, but at barely three years into my first job, somewhere I didn't really intend to stay, I really couldn't see where, let alone how, I was going to get a foot on the ladder. I did in the end, but in 1973, where I'm living now was a derelict factory, and the area would have been thought a slum.
That said, what would really have surprised me is that later generations would actually find all this a bit harder than ours did, notwithstanding the unstable inflation and interest rates of the 70s and 80s. On the one hand, getting some sorts of credit is far too easy now: but to think you would need to have saved more than a whole year's worth of more than the average salary as a deposit before you could get a mortgage!
3. Travel
I never expected to have a job that required international travel, but for some years, I did get to a range of places in Europe and Asia, and once to Buenos Aires. And before the Channel Tunnel and cheap flights, it was out of the question to think of nipping off to Paris for a weekend with as much ease as to Manchester. Even more striking would have been the idea that the Wall would be barely a memory, and all the capitals of central and Eastern Europe as easy to visit as, well, anywhere else. I saw the Wall from both sides. If there is one great moment in my life, it is that autumn of 1989.
4. Security without a career
I was raised to put a very high priority on financial security ("Never have more than two things on hire purchase at the same time" was one of my mother's sayings). Security lay in a permanent job with an organisation, though of course we were more conscientious than to "Sit on your arse for fifty years, and hang your hat on a pension.".
So I became a university administrator, with a secure (if not wildly generous) pay scale and a pension scheme that looks positively Utopian nowadays. And yet, at 50 I took a deep breath and left to do another degree and change my line of work. Not perhaps as dramatic a change as it sounds, since I'm now working on the website of a government department. But I'm a sort of permanent temp, a semi-detached fixture that might possibly become fully detached at a couple of weeks' notice. What makes that possible, of course, is having paid off the mortgage, and built up some savings. I may not sit at home caressing my bank books (it's a long time since I've seen one of them), but I'm a great fan of deferred gratification. Or at least, some careful evaluation of what might be really gratifying before parting with the bawbees.
5. Contentment
And this is the most surprising of all - and perhaps the most difficult to write about. I've always been relatively solitary. At 25, that seemed - felt - abnormal, and then and for some years afterwards I made myself quite unhappy about it; but through various ups and downs over the decades, I've arrived at a point where, actually, I'm comfortable with who and what I am. Smug, even.
Of course, I could have started a blog in an entirely different personality - the lovechild of an oil sheikh and a filmstar, perhaps, who plans to tap-dance with the Dalai Lama and play the spoons at a Buckingham Palace banquet. But I could never keep it up. Fiction isn't me - I'd rather evade than invent.
Come to think of it, I have occasionally had a yen to learn to play the spoons (but then again, to paraphrase PG Wodehouse, a gentleman is one who knows how to play the spoons - but doesn't). That, and being the last person in Britain to talk about "listening to the wireless".
Strangely, the only memes I've tried have been those on Claude's blog, and now she's specifically challenged me to have a go at:
Five things in my life that I would never have imagined at the age of 25
Hmm..
25 - the mid-1970s, still finding my feet in my first job, not finding my feet socially or emotionally.. the whole idea of being nearly 60 was unimaginable, never mind trying to imagine what my life would be like.
1. Technology
This is so obvious - and diamondgeezer has written about it so well - that I thought to leave it out: but my memories go back so much further than his. We wrote letters and cheques; we queued at banks to pay money in and take cash out. Making phone calls away from home was a lottery: getting the door of the phone-box open could be a struggle, and what you might find in it a challenge - and that's assuming you had the small change to put in the slot. When I was 25, I didn't have (didn't expect to have) my own washing machine, and took the weekly visit to the launderette as a handy occasion to catch up on my reading; impossible to imagine the dishwasher I have loved but rejected as expensive and wasteful (well, that's love for you).
Most of all, of course, I couldn't have imagined I'd be working on the internet, without being one of those hidden acolytes of the humming roomful of card-readers and tape-drives known as The Computer and its arcane languages. (Let people have their own computer? On their own desks? Madness!). In one of my early jobs, I was in charge of the storage box full of the Gestetner stencils we used for form letters and updated every year till they fell apart: it's a wonder we weren't all high as kites on the fumes of correcting fluid. To think of working almost entirely without paper files, as I do, would have been fantastical.
2. Property
My parents always rented their home. I suppose I absorbed the general feeling of the 60s and 70s that all the financial advantage was in buying if you could, but at barely three years into my first job, somewhere I didn't really intend to stay, I really couldn't see where, let alone how, I was going to get a foot on the ladder. I did in the end, but in 1973, where I'm living now was a derelict factory, and the area would have been thought a slum.
That said, what would really have surprised me is that later generations would actually find all this a bit harder than ours did, notwithstanding the unstable inflation and interest rates of the 70s and 80s. On the one hand, getting some sorts of credit is far too easy now: but to think you would need to have saved more than a whole year's worth of more than the average salary as a deposit before you could get a mortgage!
3. Travel
I never expected to have a job that required international travel, but for some years, I did get to a range of places in Europe and Asia, and once to Buenos Aires. And before the Channel Tunnel and cheap flights, it was out of the question to think of nipping off to Paris for a weekend with as much ease as to Manchester. Even more striking would have been the idea that the Wall would be barely a memory, and all the capitals of central and Eastern Europe as easy to visit as, well, anywhere else. I saw the Wall from both sides. If there is one great moment in my life, it is that autumn of 1989.
4. Security without a career
I was raised to put a very high priority on financial security ("Never have more than two things on hire purchase at the same time" was one of my mother's sayings). Security lay in a permanent job with an organisation, though of course we were more conscientious than to "Sit on your arse for fifty years, and hang your hat on a pension.".
So I became a university administrator, with a secure (if not wildly generous) pay scale and a pension scheme that looks positively Utopian nowadays. And yet, at 50 I took a deep breath and left to do another degree and change my line of work. Not perhaps as dramatic a change as it sounds, since I'm now working on the website of a government department. But I'm a sort of permanent temp, a semi-detached fixture that might possibly become fully detached at a couple of weeks' notice. What makes that possible, of course, is having paid off the mortgage, and built up some savings. I may not sit at home caressing my bank books (it's a long time since I've seen one of them), but I'm a great fan of deferred gratification. Or at least, some careful evaluation of what might be really gratifying before parting with the bawbees.
5. Contentment
And this is the most surprising of all - and perhaps the most difficult to write about. I've always been relatively solitary. At 25, that seemed - felt - abnormal, and then and for some years afterwards I made myself quite unhappy about it; but through various ups and downs over the decades, I've arrived at a point where, actually, I'm comfortable with who and what I am. Smug, even.
Friday, 4 January 2008
If on a winter's night....
I stop myself, just in time, from simply copying out the best part of a page and a half of Calvino's litany of all the different kinds of books that seem to waylay you in the bookshop. I've evidently come very late to this particular cult, and it would be rather gauche to do something so obvious, however amusing it is to read it for the first time.
Instead, I'm following up a meme based on it that I found on Amy Nelson-Mile's Books blog. Here's what I'd fit into Calvino's many categories:
Books You Needn't Read
Instant celebrity memoirs
Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading
Coffee table books; I have given - and been given - some beautiful ones, but somehow I don't think they get looked at very often.
Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written
Most of those would-be humorous books that are only produced for the Christmas market.
Books Too Expensive Now And You'll Wait Till They're Remaindered
Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback
Luscious cookery books (I confess I didn't buy Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries till I saw it at half-price); and large and important history books (Peter Ackroyd's London: A Biography, for example). An alternative Calvino doesn't mention is Books You'll Put On Reservation At The Public Library - are public libraries not so useful or available in Italy, or was he hoping to encourage book sales?
Books You Can Borrow From Somebody
Well, that answers my question about public libraries - they'd be my Somebody.
Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too
Catch-22. I tried, I really tried, but I just couldn't get into it. Likewise more or less the entire oeuvre of Martin Amis (I can't stand all those "Look, Daddy, no hands" metaphors).
Books You've Been Planning To Read For Ages
Don Quixote - somehow I think I may never get round to it - and Dickens's Our Mutual Friend.
Books You've Been Hunting For Years Without Success
This is a bit of a cheat (because I could easily buy it any time), but I've been waiting for ages for someone to return to the public library Carmen Callil's Bad Faith, which I've now reserved by inter-library loan, so I might get it fairly quickly.
Books Dealing With Something You're Working On At The Moment
These would be exactly the kind of thing I'd look to the library for. But I still occasionally turn for reference (and because it's lovely to look at it, if a bit dated now, to my own copy of Darcy DiNucci's Elements of Web Design.
Books You Want To Own So They'll Be Handy Just In Case
A remainder store occasionally has a book sale where I work, and I actually bought The Times Complete History of the World from them very cheaply. If I ever want to know about the Alans, the empires of Asia or pre-colonial Africa, this will be the place to look.
Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer
Assorted detective stories, and assorted prize-nominated and newspaper-recommended novels I've never caught up with. I might be looking for A Thousand Splendid Suns, The Yacoubian Building, What Was Lost, Wildwood, The Wild Places.
Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves
More of EF Benson's Mapp and Lucia, and Orlando Figes's The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia. That's a weird-looking juxtaposition, but I suppose the former reminds one how lucky we are to be in a position to laugh away some pretty horrible human characteristics.
Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified
I picked up a German overview of "digital literature", complete with CD, when I had some time on my hands and was fascinated by interwebby-techno developments. Still haven't really got into it, let alone follow up on the authors it discusses, and it's probably been long since overtaken by events.
Books Read Long Ago Which It's Now Time To Reread
Tristram Shandy (hmm, compare and contrast with If on a Winter's Night), Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster stories.
Books You've Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It's Time To Sit Down And Really Read Them
A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. I had to read the first two books as set texts once - I keep meaning to catch up with the more louche bits. I even bought a nice new edition in Paris a few years ago. I avert my gaze from it on my shelves - as with quite a large pile of other books waiting to be opened.
Instead, I'm following up a meme based on it that I found on Amy Nelson-Mile's Books blog. Here's what I'd fit into Calvino's many categories:
Books You Needn't Read
Instant celebrity memoirs
Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading
Coffee table books; I have given - and been given - some beautiful ones, but somehow I don't think they get looked at very often.
Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written
Most of those would-be humorous books that are only produced for the Christmas market.
Books Too Expensive Now And You'll Wait Till They're Remaindered
Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback
Luscious cookery books (I confess I didn't buy Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries till I saw it at half-price); and large and important history books (Peter Ackroyd's London: A Biography, for example). An alternative Calvino doesn't mention is Books You'll Put On Reservation At The Public Library - are public libraries not so useful or available in Italy, or was he hoping to encourage book sales?
Books You Can Borrow From Somebody
Well, that answers my question about public libraries - they'd be my Somebody.
Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too
Catch-22. I tried, I really tried, but I just couldn't get into it. Likewise more or less the entire oeuvre of Martin Amis (I can't stand all those "Look, Daddy, no hands" metaphors).
Books You've Been Planning To Read For Ages
Don Quixote - somehow I think I may never get round to it - and Dickens's Our Mutual Friend.
Books You've Been Hunting For Years Without Success
This is a bit of a cheat (because I could easily buy it any time), but I've been waiting for ages for someone to return to the public library Carmen Callil's Bad Faith, which I've now reserved by inter-library loan, so I might get it fairly quickly.
Books Dealing With Something You're Working On At The Moment
These would be exactly the kind of thing I'd look to the library for. But I still occasionally turn for reference (and because it's lovely to look at it, if a bit dated now, to my own copy of Darcy DiNucci's Elements of Web Design.
Books You Want To Own So They'll Be Handy Just In Case
A remainder store occasionally has a book sale where I work, and I actually bought The Times Complete History of the World from them very cheaply. If I ever want to know about the Alans, the empires of Asia or pre-colonial Africa, this will be the place to look.
Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer
Assorted detective stories, and assorted prize-nominated and newspaper-recommended novels I've never caught up with. I might be looking for A Thousand Splendid Suns, The Yacoubian Building, What Was Lost, Wildwood, The Wild Places.
Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves
More of EF Benson's Mapp and Lucia, and Orlando Figes's The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia. That's a weird-looking juxtaposition, but I suppose the former reminds one how lucky we are to be in a position to laugh away some pretty horrible human characteristics.
Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified
I picked up a German overview of "digital literature", complete with CD, when I had some time on my hands and was fascinated by interwebby-techno developments. Still haven't really got into it, let alone follow up on the authors it discusses, and it's probably been long since overtaken by events.
Books Read Long Ago Which It's Now Time To Reread
Tristram Shandy (hmm, compare and contrast with If on a Winter's Night), Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster stories.
Books You've Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It's Time To Sit Down And Really Read Them
A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. I had to read the first two books as set texts once - I keep meaning to catch up with the more louche bits. I even bought a nice new edition in Paris a few years ago. I avert my gaze from it on my shelves - as with quite a large pile of other books waiting to be opened.
Monday, 31 December 2007
Still....
Picking up a challenge from Claude, here's an end-of-year review sort of thing:
Still grateful: that I have my health, most of my wits and the ability to support myself.
Still reading: anything I can lay my hands on.
Still hate: that there are just too many things to read, to look at, to listen to.
Still grateful: that I live where people are free to create so much, and I'm free to read what I like.
Still starting: what I can't finish, half the time.
Still laughing at: the wrong moments. And the ridiculously smug and self-satisfied.
Still hate: the ridiculously smug and self-satisfied when they think everyone not like them is morally deficient.
Still not: voting Conservative. Or smoking.
Still drinking: too much tea.
Still sticking: to my sofa far too much.
Still feeling: peripheral. And occasionally pointless.
Still missing: whatever it was I came in here to find.
Still being: probably too polite for my own good.
Still not wearing: prosthetics of any kind.
Still making: whoopee - quietly and in moderation.
Still wondering: about the choices I didn't make when I stuck to the cosy option.
Still lacking: the self-belief to make those choices.
Still glad: I summoned up the courage to change my life when I did. Even if I should perhaps have done it earlier.
Still working: to live, and not the other way around.
Still will never: vote Conservative. Or smoke.
Still grateful: that I have my health, most of my wits and the ability to support myself.
Still reading: anything I can lay my hands on.
Still hate: that there are just too many things to read, to look at, to listen to.
Still grateful: that I live where people are free to create so much, and I'm free to read what I like.
Still starting: what I can't finish, half the time.
Still laughing at: the wrong moments. And the ridiculously smug and self-satisfied.
Still hate: the ridiculously smug and self-satisfied when they think everyone not like them is morally deficient.
Still not: voting Conservative. Or smoking.
Still drinking: too much tea.
Still sticking: to my sofa far too much.
Still feeling: peripheral. And occasionally pointless.
Still missing: whatever it was I came in here to find.
Still being: probably too polite for my own good.
Still not wearing: prosthetics of any kind.
Still making: whoopee - quietly and in moderation.
Still wondering: about the choices I didn't make when I stuck to the cosy option.
Still lacking: the self-belief to make those choices.
Still glad: I summoned up the courage to change my life when I did. Even if I should perhaps have done it earlier.
Still working: to live, and not the other way around.
Still will never: vote Conservative. Or smoke.
Saturday, 17 November 2007
Where I'm from
I've been wondering whether this blog really has a "voice", or any sort of online personality. A bit of digging suggests people visit because they're interested in the individual events and places I write about; it doesn't look as though visitors feel they require any comment - apart from Daphne (who was obviously brought up proper, and kindly acknowledges my all-too-feeble comments on her blog).
It comes of years of bureaucratic writing. I occasionally slipped a sly joke into para 34 of some committee paper or report (one way of checking whether anyone read it), but on the whole, anything I wrote had to get to the point and summarise facts and arguments as concisely and non-controversially as possible.
So when it comes to writing anything really personal, I welcome the idea of filling in this form - the link to which I picked up from Claude's English blog (now there's discipline - to be able to write blogs in two languages, and make them both interesting, as she does).
Forms I can do. Forms I understand. Heaven knows, I had to construct enough in my time. You wouldn't believe, for example, how difficult it is to collect people's names, given all the different naming conventions and systems. "Christian name" is obviously meaningless in large parts of the world, "surname" seems to be a particularly British usage, "first name" and "last name" have completely different significances in Anglo-Saxon and Chinese cultures, some people still have purely patronymic systems, some people simply use one name, and so on. I felt like giving up when I tried "family name" one year and an American student put in "Bud".
But that's by the by.
Here goes:
I am from mincers, mangles and apple-coring gadgets, from Bemax (ugh) and extract of malt (yum).
I am from a tall, narrow Victorian house, where every move from room to room taught me to plan (never go up or downstairs empty-handed; take what you'll need for the next few hours, or you'll be dashing up and down those cold stairs and landings).
I am from the candle-flowered chestnut tree and a resident blackbird, its summer afternoon song and evening alarm call; from the smell of the flowers on the lime-tree several gardens away; and from the rolling Thames.
I am from fossicking in junk-shops, from music, shouting and sulking.
I am from make-do and mend, never throwing away something that "might come in useful", be it string, brown paper, clothes or the remains of the air-raid shelter.
From learning not to fear the wasps with yellow stripes on black, only those with black stripes on yellow, and concentrating on telling the difference.
I am from somewhere between Congregationalists, Baptists and the low Church of England: conscience comes before pings and pongs; and now I'm the kind of atheist that most irritates the faithful, that tuts over the modern prayer book and watches "Songs of Praise" shouting "Wrong tune! Wrong tune!".
I'm from London, via Edinburgh, South Shields, Kent, Cornwall and Suffolk; from my mother's Queen of Puddings, and my father's beloved pease pudding (once he made it in a pressure-cooker and took off the lid before the pressure).
From the stories of my father's time working as a prisoner of war in German railway yards and a Polish coalmine (which records suggest may have been a much darker experience than he ever told); from a father who barely remembered his father or brother who died in the First World War, and grew up in a household of forceful women, and a mother who, as the only child of the oldest daughter, kept up with cousins and aunts in every continent.
I am from five red ring-binders, full of photocopied certificates and register entries that help identify photographs from the 1860s onwards - and a box full of the unidentified, mysteries to be pursued.
It comes of years of bureaucratic writing. I occasionally slipped a sly joke into para 34 of some committee paper or report (one way of checking whether anyone read it), but on the whole, anything I wrote had to get to the point and summarise facts and arguments as concisely and non-controversially as possible.
So when it comes to writing anything really personal, I welcome the idea of filling in this form - the link to which I picked up from Claude's English blog (now there's discipline - to be able to write blogs in two languages, and make them both interesting, as she does).
Forms I can do. Forms I understand. Heaven knows, I had to construct enough in my time. You wouldn't believe, for example, how difficult it is to collect people's names, given all the different naming conventions and systems. "Christian name" is obviously meaningless in large parts of the world, "surname" seems to be a particularly British usage, "first name" and "last name" have completely different significances in Anglo-Saxon and Chinese cultures, some people still have purely patronymic systems, some people simply use one name, and so on. I felt like giving up when I tried "family name" one year and an American student put in "Bud".
But that's by the by.
Here goes:
I am from mincers, mangles and apple-coring gadgets, from Bemax (ugh) and extract of malt (yum).
I am from a tall, narrow Victorian house, where every move from room to room taught me to plan (never go up or downstairs empty-handed; take what you'll need for the next few hours, or you'll be dashing up and down those cold stairs and landings).
I am from the candle-flowered chestnut tree and a resident blackbird, its summer afternoon song and evening alarm call; from the smell of the flowers on the lime-tree several gardens away; and from the rolling Thames.
I am from fossicking in junk-shops, from music, shouting and sulking.
I am from make-do and mend, never throwing away something that "might come in useful", be it string, brown paper, clothes or the remains of the air-raid shelter.
From learning not to fear the wasps with yellow stripes on black, only those with black stripes on yellow, and concentrating on telling the difference.
I am from somewhere between Congregationalists, Baptists and the low Church of England: conscience comes before pings and pongs; and now I'm the kind of atheist that most irritates the faithful, that tuts over the modern prayer book and watches "Songs of Praise" shouting "Wrong tune! Wrong tune!".
I'm from London, via Edinburgh, South Shields, Kent, Cornwall and Suffolk; from my mother's Queen of Puddings, and my father's beloved pease pudding (once he made it in a pressure-cooker and took off the lid before the pressure).
From the stories of my father's time working as a prisoner of war in German railway yards and a Polish coalmine (which records suggest may have been a much darker experience than he ever told); from a father who barely remembered his father or brother who died in the First World War, and grew up in a household of forceful women, and a mother who, as the only child of the oldest daughter, kept up with cousins and aunts in every continent.
I am from five red ring-binders, full of photocopied certificates and register entries that help identify photographs from the 1860s onwards - and a box full of the unidentified, mysteries to be pursued.
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