tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62434689095543278212023-11-16T17:46:48.428+01:00Lap Me In Soft Lydian AirsChristopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14227767014123557100noreply@blogger.comBlogger60125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243468909554327821.post-30003643808176581212023-06-18T17:41:00.000+02:002023-06-18T17:41:19.990+02:00Che hora c'è?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgscxNtLu97RKpZ6dObjC5vd2r8TPfIFRcAdnNiGEmB7juidxpKp3nM5Acb25p8mlcwcgLzLI4_P_u5uhV3gLBxR4u3pI0XvXLz9kBnpPD2tqkZh7jfSonoiM5yLyu4EISTfQuWXkopjGY2/s1600/ahorace.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5614678636988726066" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgscxNtLu97RKpZ6dObjC5vd2r8TPfIFRcAdnNiGEmB7juidxpKp3nM5Acb25p8mlcwcgLzLI4_P_u5uhV3gLBxR4u3pI0XvXLz9kBnpPD2tqkZh7jfSonoiM5yLyu4EISTfQuWXkopjGY2/s400/ahorace.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 196px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 208px;" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">A short but entertaining post elsewhere about very old books sent me looking for mine, which I keep in a cardboard box in my study hoping that generous applications of Oblivion will somehow improve them. I'm really waiting for the day when, unprompted, some specialist bookbinder and gold tooler will restore them to their original pristine state when they came out in:<br /></div><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">1735</span>: Poems by Eminent Ladies, particularly, Mrs Leapor, Mrs Pilkington, Lady Winchelsea<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic;">We allow'd you Beauty, and we did fubmit</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">To all the Tyrannies of it.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Ah! Cruel Sex! will you depofe us too in Wit?</span><br /></div><div style="text-align: right;">COWLEY<br /></div><span style="font-weight: bold;">1759</span>: Plutarch's Lives Vols. 2, 3, 4, 6<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">1763</span>: The English Expositor, being, A Complete Dictionary<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">1774</span>: <span style="font-style: italic;">Homeri Ilias</span> Vols 1 and 2<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">1815</span>: The Satires of Juvenal, translated by James Sinclair, Esq.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">1816</span>: Tales of my Landlord, collected and arranged by Jedediah Cleishbotham, Schoolmaster and Parish-Clerk of Gandercleugh [actually Sir Walter Scott]<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">1818</span>: <span style="font-style: italic;">Carmina Q. Horatii Flacci</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">This last is the Odes of Horace. I did Books 1 and 2 of the Odes as a set book for A level Latin. I wish the examiners had chosen something else, because at 18 I really wasn't old enough to appreciate the mature wisdom, wit and quiet sophistication of these short poems.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Horace apparently was in the excellent habit of putting any writing away for seven years, probably in a cardboard box in his study. At the end of seven years he would retrieve it, and either destroy it, glad that he didn't have to suffer the shame of anyone else looking at it, or rework and polish it, by which time it might be of a standard for publication.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">You may be interested to know that I wrote this post in June, 2004. I wouldn't expect any comments until 2018.<br /></div>Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14227767014123557100noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243468909554327821.post-83194716007497155252023-06-18T17:27:00.003+02:002023-06-18T17:27:47.906+02:00Return to Vienna (2)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioqCyuTXUBJo8BXKYOvB0RoFUfZxgycWA_HgS20luyUwjQ9Q53axnvrqzCk_544STYryRmJdhb0z-8JSSu9HjZRKOO0wvnArwy1fV3Snzu7JIIEa8T9jGEvxUTXkWXaDkj8m5vDwHVbz5e/s1600/P1000293.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5713414905136813090" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioqCyuTXUBJo8BXKYOvB0RoFUfZxgycWA_HgS20luyUwjQ9Q53axnvrqzCk_544STYryRmJdhb0z-8JSSu9HjZRKOO0wvnArwy1fV3Snzu7JIIEa8T9jGEvxUTXkWXaDkj8m5vDwHVbz5e/s400/P1000293.JPG" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 300px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">You mustn't hold it against me, this excessively romantic cast of mind. I couldn't rid myself of it, even if I wanted to. I know, you're all so pragmatic and down-to-earth, so sensible and clear-visioned, you've got your feet so firmly fixed on the ground that the following story may mean nothing to you. In fact, if I were you I should stop reading right now and do something sensible, like make a Yorkshire pudding, clean out the hamsters, pay the electricity bill and get your calceolarias in. Right? You've been warned...<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">* * *<br /></div><br />My first thought after leaving school at 18 was to get myself to Vienna to pay homage at the grave of Beethoven. His music had irradiated me, thrilled me, sent shivers down my adolescent spine, excited me to a world-view of limitless, Olympian joy. He had to be thanked. So I and a particularly complaisant friend set off hitch-hiking to Vienna. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />According to my information at the time Beethoven (d.1827) and Schubert (d.1828) lay side by side in a little park in the 18th district of Vienna. We found them easily, two elongated mounds with lichen-grown, obelisk-like headstones. On Schubert's headstone there was his name and a lyre. On Beethoven's there was his name and the figure of a butterfly carved into the stone. My information (a biography of Beethoven by Marion Scott) interpreted this butterfly as a symbol of freedom. I bowed the grateful knee. And touched my forelock respectfully to Schubert, whose music I loved too, but not with the same ardour that I felt for the Master. Duty done, we came home.<br /><br />Then some years later I read, to my horror, that in 1874 the Vienna city council had opened a new municipal cemetery two or three miles out of town, the Zentral Friedhof, where the great and good, present and past, as well as the humble of Vienna would henceforth be buried. To this end they dug up Beethoven and Schubert from their little private graveyard and transferred what remained of their remains to new resting places with their fellow musicians. The quiet graves beside which I had paid homage had been empty. Schubert's lyre evoked its homophone. Beethoven's butterfly had flown.<br /><br />So last week in Vienna, in fact on my birthday, together with J., I put the record straight. I bought two red roses from a flower stall in the city centre, we took a taxi to the Zentral Friedhof, found the true graves and I laid a rose on each.<br /><br />We came back to the city centre by one of the characteristic Viennese red and white trams. There were no means that we could find for buying tickets, so I'm afraid we bilked the fare. But next day we bought a book of 10 public transport tickets, valid equally for any journey by tram, bus or underground. We didn't use them all, so I suppose our consciences are clear.<br /><br />And I feel I've discharged my obligations, even if it took me half a century to do so. <br /></div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlOMzOCpu_MGY4cwcURNtJPfB6F9JF0HuS_ETIuCQEEmyPlWFjV-0iVVKy1BYJArcxeERkmsuQTmjHRw1WjWPZmh9Av7I0HmFP0vaZSlfoE1xvW21TadEsLzAxcjL-Y24pEkn-ruDM2grG/s1600/P1000294.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5713414912697788642" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlOMzOCpu_MGY4cwcURNtJPfB6F9JF0HuS_ETIuCQEEmyPlWFjV-0iVVKy1BYJArcxeERkmsuQTmjHRw1WjWPZmh9Av7I0HmFP0vaZSlfoE1xvW21TadEsLzAxcjL-Y24pEkn-ruDM2grG/s400/P1000294.JPG" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 300px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a>Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14227767014123557100noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243468909554327821.post-82973590325470891922023-06-18T13:13:00.000+02:002023-06-18T13:13:27.664+02:00Return to Vienna (4)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixP8yW82aQkyOf_iAjjIFCC4AcR9F9Z8U9kWhixfCBQ2dpVBc3xcJa8A05zhU5pE_LKPxBJHYsQruB2vHEbb1a6CWw87YIYmb9eAj4yzHoYvH_sMqIMLHMo-fAIDWkS6j1rGmMdtv5tTFa/s1600/aschnitzel.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5715246789546005810" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixP8yW82aQkyOf_iAjjIFCC4AcR9F9Z8U9kWhixfCBQ2dpVBc3xcJa8A05zhU5pE_LKPxBJHYsQruB2vHEbb1a6CWw87YIYmb9eAj4yzHoYvH_sMqIMLHMo-fAIDWkS6j1rGmMdtv5tTFa/s400/aschnitzel.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 251px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /><div style="text-align: center;"></div><br />Shortly before we left for Vienna Carlotta, a Swiss friend, told me that the best Wiener Schnitzel - literally 'Viennese Slice', thin slices of boned and steak-hammered veal fried in a coating of breadcrumbs - was to be had at a restaurant called Oswald und Kalb, 14 Bäckerstrasse, Vienna. If O und K's was OK, if their Wiener Schnitzel was the best in Vienna, it had presumably to be the best in the world. We found the restaurant, a tiny place with room for about 15 people, and booked in for supper on my birthday.<br /><br />That evening we were shown to a table for two by Herr O. (or maybe Herr K.) beside the bar. In the window there was a sign saying - I can't remember the exact German - that here was served the best schnitzel in Vienna. I asked Herr O. (or perhaps Herr K.) if this was true: Yes, he said, it is very true. Very, very true. He retired behind the bar to pour himself a generous glass of white wine, and I was astounded to see him light up a cigarette. We've become so used to smoking being banned in public places, even where we live in individualistic France, that we considered leaving in disgust. But we'd placed our order, we respect Carlotta's opinion, and if the best Wiener Schnitzel in the world was on its way to us, maybe it would be better to overcome our dislike of tobacco smoke and make the best of it.<br /><br />Both J. and I are former smokers (I used to smoke a pipe until about 25 years ago) and it's notorious that there are no more fanatical anti-smokers than those that have given up.<br /><br />Our schnitzels arrived, golden, beaming, lovingly prepared and served with pride. The first mouthful reminded me of a superb flavour and texture I hadn't experienced for 50 years. I wish I could describe it to you, but unfortunately I'd hardly eaten a tenth of this glorious offering when some of Herr O's (or possibly Herr K's) pals came in, leant against the bar not two feet from our table, ordered themselves drinks and lit up their vile gaspers, filling our end of the restaurant with noisome smoke. My eyes started to water, my throat to sting, the superb dish was ruined and I couldn't wait to leave. J. was practically apopleptic. I've nothing more to tell except that I honestly don't know whether we'd been served the best schnitzel in the world, and that the walk back to our hotel through the frosty air of the old city of Vienna on a Saturday night was a privilege after the desperate miasmatic stench of Herr O's and Herr K's.<br /><br />I thought Europe was virtually smoke-free. Stringent anti-smoking laws have been made in France, a country notorious for individuals noisily asserting their inalienable right to do whatever they want whenever they want, yet the no-smoking regulations are pretty scrupulously observed. It's the same in Italy, apparently. In my experience things may be a bit more lax in Spain, but I'd always counted Austrians as being fairly ready to toe the line in such things. Clearly not.<br /><br />I mentioned this to Carlotta when we got back. Yes, of course, she said, and added she was very sorry, she just hadn't thought to tell us. But then she's a smoker. <br /><br /></div>Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14227767014123557100noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243468909554327821.post-14871361653650894002023-06-12T15:01:00.021+02:002023-06-18T12:51:42.546+02:00Dup egnops elcaert<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj_SeS_hjXZLw1zS_urGBcTG7FNnXyI3kVunntMrcL19RnxbsVXSf0wbV-KtanenrdGr847ixpqb4hJN6RoPiyiCqRVGteLuMAB-wM5eGPzikjxVU1etLf8JFoyAyG_0m5HIhmxAQU6-0R/s1600/Pud.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408780936752328450" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj_SeS_hjXZLw1zS_urGBcTG7FNnXyI3kVunntMrcL19RnxbsVXSf0wbV-KtanenrdGr847ixpqb4hJN6RoPiyiCqRVGteLuMAB-wM5eGPzikjxVU1etLf8JFoyAyG_0m5HIhmxAQU6-0R/s400/Pud.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 300px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br /><p align="justify">I don't know why palindromes - sentences that read the same backwards as forwards: Gk. 'palin' = 'again': 'dromos' = 'running' - I don't know why palindromes should come to mind today, when a major focus of my attention is tonight's pud. The ever-stunning J. promises treacle sponge and custard. I can't say that this is a common dessert in France; it would be nearer the truth to say that 99.9% of French people are born, live their lives and die without benefit of that gorgeous, warm, womb-retro stodge, clarted with succulent golden syrup, nobly robed in steaming, smiling custard from which I will already have relished the skin from the jug.<br /><br />Maybe it's the admission of a woeful sponge pud gluttony that leads me to a famous palindrome which you sometimes find carved into church fonts:<span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Nipson anomemata me monan opsin</span><br /></p><p align="justify">It's Greek, meaning 'cleanse not only the face but sins also'. (To make it work you have to remember that 'ps' is a single letter in Greek.)<br /><br />So often do palindromes disappoint through being over-contrived and not really meaning very much, ones like</p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Too bad I hid a boot</span><br /></p><p align="justify">or</p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Anne I vote more cars race Rome to Vienna</span><br /></p><p align="justify">- that it comes as a pleasant surprise to learn that W.H.Auden, consummate master of English in all its forms, should be credited with several quite outstandingly original palindromes:</p><p style="text-align: center;"><i>Norma is as selfless as I am, Ron</i></p><p align="justify">or<br /><br /></p><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era? </span><br /></div><br /><p align="justify">I can imagine him sitting back at his desk, out of breath - it does happen - with his struggles to pin down some masterpiece like <span style="font-style: italic;">Musée des Beaux Arts</span> ('About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters...') and suddenly realising that 'Are we not' reads 'to new era' backwards. A little thought, a welcome break from Breughel's <span style="font-style: italic;">Fall of Icarus</span> that he's writing about, and suddenly it falls into place; he reaches for his palindrome book and writes it in. Another day, another palindrome. Yesterday's was:<br /><br /></p><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Sums are not set as a test on Erasmus</span><br /></div><p align="justify">And then, in a moment when a palindromic seism shook him from the nave to the chaps, sending the eye in fine frenzy rolling: T.S.ELIOT becomes TOILEST in palindrome. Maybe not much there, but take the stops and the S away and TELIOT becomes TOILET: the brain boils, the imagination thrums, the synapses sweat and in a monstrous, Rabelaisian parturition he produces </p><p style="text-align: center;"> <i>T. Eliot, top bard, notes putrid tang emanating, is sad. I’d assign it a name: Gnat dirt upset on drab pot toilet.</i></p><p align="justify">Where Auden stood on sponge pudding isn't recorded, as far as I know, but I don't think he can have got through several years of boarding school without frequent exposure to this classic of English cuisine. As for me, I'm really looking forward to tonight's treat, although I may have to dose myself with Nocsivag: I occasionally suffer from reflux, and I wouldn't want my treacle sponge, palindrome-like, coming back on me, never mind the gnat dirt.<br /></p>Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14227767014123557100noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243468909554327821.post-30751767725429148442021-12-10T12:16:00.000+01:002021-12-10T12:16:37.601+01:00Les Jeudistes Scottish Choir Tour No. 3<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUhrOx6ut2td9QaVbnxieRDV1G8nTQCo_2-WwLaGBjqHTK_VjQIQUxx7AuiCBTod8-CjpTOwE240xNvrzn_8nIvjQmrfZoXWTEij2-8qrRMGu6sanA_tHKj47cciVOYknKFjZ_L1flgrQa/s1600/aullapool2.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5608746581783415474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUhrOx6ut2td9QaVbnxieRDV1G8nTQCo_2-WwLaGBjqHTK_VjQIQUxx7AuiCBTod8-CjpTOwE240xNvrzn_8nIvjQmrfZoXWTEij2-8qrRMGu6sanA_tHKj47cciVOYknKFjZ_L1flgrQa/s400/aullapool2.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 300px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><span style="color: #660000;">Tir nan Og</span>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">Ullapool, far away on Scotland's remote north west coast, has a dreamy, Local Hero quality to it, a siren-song that calls you to ditch everything and just lap yourself in the still waters of Loch Broom, cradle yourself in the mountains of Wester Ross and stay there forever. There's a Gaelic expression for it: Tir nan Og, which means something like the 'country of the ever-young'. Or fairyland.
It's not like that at all, of course. Things are seldom what they seem. Les Jeudistes enjoyed the 50-mile drive there, oohing and aahing at the North Highland scenery, especially when after miles of bleak moorland you suddenly begin to descend towards the Atlantic coast with its temperate climate (thank you, Gulf Stream), lush vegetation and seductive views of the little town and port of Ullapool. And maybe in keeping with the unreality of all this there's nowhere to pull in and take photos. Except maybe of the road sign that says 'A835 Stornaway/Steòrnabhagh', which is about 50 miles away by sea across the Minch. To be fair, the road sign shows an image of a car ferry. Place names are given in English and Gaelic in this part of the world.
We're due to share the concert programme with a New Age folk-band calling themselves Pineapple Tuxedo, and it would need someone like <a href="http://geoffstellyblog.blogspot.com/">Geoff</a> with his encyclopedic knowledge of such things to explain why. And a Gaelic choir, calling itself <span style="font-style: italic;">Coisir ghaidlig an iar tuath</span>. (I'll spare Geoff that one.)
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<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbO_mAW4pOballqHIMQylIP3XTXpOv-nGKWR3m18elxEXu9Rjp9a2p-nLm6BoKdUDsnxX_miIrnspjgXcjj6Ikpuhtk0rYANVg5fhlEJBCLJLw9owDDDq6A67IKXUatfqbA3lJPtDhn3fo/s1600/aullapool3.jpeg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5608746587030383810" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbO_mAW4pOballqHIMQylIP3XTXpOv-nGKWR3m18elxEXu9Rjp9a2p-nLm6BoKdUDsnxX_miIrnspjgXcjj6Ikpuhtk0rYANVg5fhlEJBCLJLw9owDDDq6A67IKXUatfqbA3lJPtDhn3fo/s400/aullapool3.jpeg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 194px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 260px;" /></a><span style="color: #660000;">Ullapool High School</span>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">We rehearse in the almost brand-new theatre attached to Ullapool High School. Hardly anyone has a local accent, virtually everyone we meet speaks the speech of southern England. Have they all been seduced by Tir nan Og? We meet members of the Gaelic choir. They're all super people, we get on very well. There's an American among them, and I think instantly of Local Hero. Few, if any, speak a word of Gaelic. The songs they sing they've learnt by rote. They have the gist of what they're singing about, but not much more. They rely entirely on their elegant and very musical conductor, Lisa Macdonald, who is a native speaker.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6ATekUfTSY4a2Qm6ceRWIKlV08abu48e0YYnU-z2PHakj3Yy13JOeg6a2XMJdc6RFOUenBMijdTVki7YGYjs68oRsglCtr9VdTsLz459roh9tRyAU5P87KfzcEg7ukn9QZdCEE9O9hDMY/s1600/aullapool1.jpeg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5608746579772587074" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6ATekUfTSY4a2Qm6ceRWIKlV08abu48e0YYnU-z2PHakj3Yy13JOeg6a2XMJdc6RFOUenBMijdTVki7YGYjs68oRsglCtr9VdTsLz459roh9tRyAU5P87KfzcEg7ukn9QZdCEE9O9hDMY/s400/aullapool1.jpeg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 194px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 259px;" /></a>
<div style="text-align: justify;">Between rehearsal and concert we stroll down to the water's edge. It's still, sunny and so warm. We sit on the sea-wall, drinking in the view up Loch Broom, lifting up our eyes to the hills. The pull of Tir nan Og is very strong. We could sit here, a happy little band of musicians enjoying each others' company, for ever. It's hard to pull ourselves away, return to the theatre, put on uniform and take the stage. Pineapple Tuxedo (P Tux for short) kicks off, bass guitar, electric guitar, accordion and bagpipes played without the drones. We follow with all my Shakespeare songs, and I'm conscious how curiously incongruous they are in this never-never land.
At the interval there's a big surprise. The pipes and drums of Ullapool High School, girls and boys, are drawn up for us in horse-shoe formation on the front concourse, 17 pipers and a dozen drummers including a small lad with a bass drum so large that he probably sleeps in it and rolls to band practice like a hamster in a wheel. They play several military marches, some in the wild harmony that the limited bagpipe scale allows, and far from being dressed in kilt, tunic and plaid like soldiers they're all in ordinary clothes, jeans, trainers, football strip tops and so on. At the end they form up in ranks and march off into the distance, maybe into the very heart of Tir nan Og. But more likely to home, chicken nuggets, Coca-Cola and the X Factor, or whatever. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiUvgFUHz5RBkHOBHmrX4MB6hVEZ1ChdHqUdNv8Gw2CJ6-2vlriUX-OXGX5MdgZviGUo1R_wJ3XttMTbNPDZ3jNqtr2RdLsCN_RgAXme5BGV3J3up--jUAD23tPOhCZgP4Shmy7qPwXLdFnaOz_y7zY6TiKuyLKKdyvY07Jetr_-_uevuMtCHVeLFuegQ=s2048" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiUvgFUHz5RBkHOBHmrX4MB6hVEZ1ChdHqUdNv8Gw2CJ6-2vlriUX-OXGX5MdgZviGUo1R_wJ3XttMTbNPDZ3jNqtr2RdLsCN_RgAXme5BGV3J3up--jUAD23tPOhCZgP4Shmy7qPwXLdFnaOz_y7zY6TiKuyLKKdyvY07Jetr_-_uevuMtCHVeLFuegQ=s320" width="320" /></a></div> <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In the second half the Gaelic choir sings, maybe a bit diffidently, finishing with a <span style="font-style: italic;">phuirt-a-beul</span>, very rhythmical singing that does duty for dance music when no instruments are available. Les Jeudistes are fascinated. They've never heard anything like this before, a rapid, urgent, toe-tapping succession of sometimes nonsense syllables. Could we do that? they ask, and I skirt round the enormous effort needed to learn this hyper-exotic music at such a far-distant remove from my beloved Brahms or Schubert by saying maybe they could persuade the lovely Lisa Macdonald to come and teach us.
We follow with our Occitan songs. We're on level ground with the Gaelic choir here. None of us is a native Occitan speaker. It's all an elegant pretence, one I sometimes feel quite uneasy about, especially when it comes to bilingual road-signs. All the same at the end of the concert I put a few words of Gaelic together, almost my entire vocabulary: <span style="font-style: italic;">Gaidhlteachd gu brath! Tapadh leat, agus oidhche mhath</span>. ('Gaeldom for ever! Thank you, and good night.' Sorry, my spelling might be a bit wonky). I might as well have spoken to my knees for all anyone in the audience could make head or tail of this. The one person who might have understood, Lisa Macdonald, had to go home early to relieve her babysitter.
That's Tir nan Og for you. You have to face up to reality some time.
</div>Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14227767014123557100noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243468909554327821.post-28436748565242575052012-05-12T11:14:00.000+02:002012-05-12T11:14:44.138+02:00Blockhead (Size 5)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuaN5vFzAJ2O4_PXkj8VUlC8nWIFUEkx2uhBMWE60y72rYA4ecGf1PC3gvt9bSHYQKZyo0FxwfbfLiLPSxAodsxLITajUg012K1xV1GYwqMp02EMIGc5R0t_Q3aBzAaKGpznRdi7EFPWFm/s1600/ashoe.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuaN5vFzAJ2O4_PXkj8VUlC8nWIFUEkx2uhBMWE60y72rYA4ecGf1PC3gvt9bSHYQKZyo0FxwfbfLiLPSxAodsxLITajUg012K1xV1GYwqMp02EMIGc5R0t_Q3aBzAaKGpznRdi7EFPWFm/s1600/ashoe.jpeg" /></a></div>
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<br /><br /><i>No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.</i><br /> Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784)<br /><br />SOME years ago when my books were still in print I made a calculation of how much I earned per hour from writing them. I did this by adding together all the royalties I'd received and dividing the total by the number of hours I thought I might have spent at the keyboard. I cheated, I suppose, by adding in the fees I'd received from serialisation - which used to happen in French interest magazines - and odd other appearances in print.<br /><br />It came to 8p.<br /><br />THE moral of this, if any, is possibly pointed in the diary entry of Sir Harold Nicolson for May 12th, 1937, the day of George VI's coronation, to which both he and Ramsay MacDonald, a previous Prime Minister, had been invited:<br /><br /><i>I go to see Ramsay MacDonald for a moment and find him sitting in his room punching a hole in his sword-belt and looking very distinguished in a Trinity House uniform. I tell him how well he looks. '</i>Yes<i>,' he answers, '</i>when I was a visitor to a lunatic asylum I always noticed how well the worst lunatics looked.<i>'</i><br /><br />AND today I've made the acquaintance of George Wither (1588-1667), a minor English poet who spent much of his life in prison for writing libellous verses, identifying leading members of English society with Lust, Lechery, Revenge, Gluttony and Hate. I am honoured to quote the only poem known to me in which the poet gives his love's shoe size:<br /><br /><span style="background-color: white;">I LOVED a lass, a fair one,</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">As fair as e'er was seen;</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;"> She was indeed a rare one,</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">Another Sheba Queen: </span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">But, fool as then I was, </span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">I thought she loved me too:</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;"> But now, alas! she 's left me, </span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">Falero, lero, loo! </span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">Her hair like gold did glister,</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">Each eye was like a star,</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">She did surpass her sister, </span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">Which pass'd all others far; </span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">She would me honey call,</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">She'd—O she'd kiss me too!</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">But now, alas! she 's left me, </span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">Falero, lero, loo! </span><br style="background-color: white;" /><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">Her cheeks were like the cherry,</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">Her skin was white as snow;</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">When she was blithe and merry</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">She angel-like did show;</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">Her waist exceeding small,</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">The fives did fit her shoe:</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">But now, alas! she 's left me,</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">Falero, lero, loo! </span><br style="background-color: white;" /><br />On one occasion when Wither was banged up in the Tower of London in the shadow of the headsman's axe, another almost equally bad minor poet, Sir John Denham, begged King Charles I to spare Wither's life, on the grounds that as long as Wither lived, Denham would not be accounted the worst poet in England.<br /><br />I don't know why I'm telling you all this.<br /><br /><br /><br /></div>Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14227767014123557100noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243468909554327821.post-69935633362335517372012-03-16T16:29:00.003+01:002019-02-19T18:42:49.835+01:00Through a local lens No. 11<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNBq4jDQzKAat4oDi2QbAGspYMRDH3qL6PZhvksHAumuqA7O0RAveeopUuYr2Spub8iUSF7XyF86XOY4FkVg1koKMkj73FqdSUJsl-lCcCFPVdAZC6nbJkMS5LLjYzpdCygGzbpIVdmnHs/s1600/asalamander.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5720517945722340770" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNBq4jDQzKAat4oDi2QbAGspYMRDH3qL6PZhvksHAumuqA7O0RAveeopUuYr2Spub8iUSF7XyF86XOY4FkVg1koKMkj73FqdSUJsl-lCcCFPVdAZC6nbJkMS5LLjYzpdCygGzbpIVdmnHs/s400/asalamander.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 300px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
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This afternoon while rootling about behind the house tidying up after the winter I was vouchsafed the vision of a salamander, photo above.<br />
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According to the old Oikopoiesis legend, to those who are privileged to see salamanders, fabulous wealth is promised. That or eternal condemnation to write quirky and facetious blog posts. It's one or the other. There's no choice. I wonder which will come my way?<br />
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And mention of visions leads me to something strange I read recently in Graham Robb's book, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Discovery of France</span>. In 1858 Catholic France was astir with stories of a 14-year-old girl, Bernadette Soubirous, who lived in the foothills of the Pyrenees in a - then- nasty little village called Lourdes. Visions of the Virgin Mary appeared to her and to her sister and a friend on almost twenty different occasions. Less publicised was a similar apparition 12 years earlier, when the Virgin Mary appeared to a boy and girl looking after sheep near Grenoble. They threw stones at her and she went away.<br />
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Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14227767014123557100noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243468909554327821.post-7947643615662026972012-03-11T14:45:00.004+01:002012-03-11T15:25:51.262+01:00Return to Vienna (7)<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNjXI3MsXHiKoNjFVhj8DH1M07C-c42zjLuIJhJkgUfskiVe4-H6LZeqjtOpLEaT41SBTUk3TuLfOM20ejjMsOvVB69PB2_PT-U9uO1tQ6zU7hhOdoJFdYP3W8qtpgZJUP0CMwC_HyDH4v/s1600/dreimaederlhaus.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNjXI3MsXHiKoNjFVhj8DH1M07C-c42zjLuIJhJkgUfskiVe4-H6LZeqjtOpLEaT41SBTUk3TuLfOM20ejjMsOvVB69PB2_PT-U9uO1tQ6zU7hhOdoJFdYP3W8qtpgZJUP0CMwC_HyDH4v/s400/dreimaederlhaus.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5718635660579857810" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">Was Schubert ever fou as a wulk here?</span><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">All right, nearly finished. Thank you for staying the course, if you have. 6 days (actually Friday evening - Wednesday morning) was quite long enough to become completely inebriated with all Vienna had to offer, particularly to one of my romantic and musical leanings. Inebriated? The very word sent me to Roget's Thesaurus, where it seemed to me that fully to convey the sense of Viennese intoxication what I needed to do was to copy out the entire adjectival §949:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Drunk, inebriated, intoxicated, inder the unfluence, having had a drop too much, in one's cups, in liquor, the worse for liquor, half-seas over, three sheets to the wind, one over the eight, boozed up, ginned up, liquored up, lit up, flushed, merry, happy, mellow, high, full, fou, tanked up, bevvied up...</span><br /><br />*takes sip of Alka Seltzer*<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">...tipsy, tiddly, squiffy, tight, half-cut, well-oiled, pickled, arseholed, canned, bottled, stewed, smashed, wasted, legless, sloshed, sozzled, soaked, soused, plastered, stinko, stinko paralytico, blotto, stocious, under the table, fou as a wulk..</span>.[erm, what?]<br /><br />*takes another sip of Alka Seltzer*<br /><br />So on our last morning in Vienna we spent an hour or two wandering around the Ringstrasse, noting that in front of the Town Hall they'd made a massive public outdoor ice-rink, with be-skated classes of infants being shepherded round; breakfast in the Café Landtmann, 'coffee-house of Vienna's intelligentsia', the guide book said; across the street to the Mölker-Bastei where the Emperor Franz-Josef survived an assassination attempt in 1853 (a tailor tried to stab him with a pair of scissors); into a house where Beethoven once lived on the top floor, but not in the apartment across the landing now made into a tiny museum with a Streicher piano as almost the only exhibit, which the notice said once belonged to Beethoven, but it certainly did not: he never owned one of that make; past another wedding-cake-like house, the Dreimäderlhaus (photo above), where Schubert was notable for not having had three girlfriends at one go despite the claims made in <span style="font-style: italic;">Lilac Time</span>; and so back to our hotel via the Vienna Stock Exchange to pick up our luggage and take a taxi out to the airport.<br /><br />We checked in, went through security and into the departure area in search of lunch, a final Wiener Schnitzel. The restaurant was decorated here and there with cartoons, photos and other memorabilia of two other composers with strong Viennese connections. Please believe me: it was called the Brahms und Liszt.<br /><br />Exactly so.<br /><br />On the way back we flew high over the Danube. From that height it really is blue.<br /></div>Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14227767014123557100noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243468909554327821.post-53128705705488561362012-03-09T11:08:00.006+01:002012-03-09T15:20:43.863+01:00Return to Vienna (6)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWRFBJ43IFXsrh1co12hQ55kqya49V12f8vIMKDtSUQx2XL38suDaXGh8_05Ce5cWzFxrAsLkAcZ7QzgZPpyF6XfOFavFgzeHBhi6uEhLsw6VuqlIE86DaD9DqHFKYXkZ6xFSMHjgUuC9Z/s1600/amagic.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 276px; height: 182px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWRFBJ43IFXsrh1co12hQ55kqya49V12f8vIMKDtSUQx2XL38suDaXGh8_05Ce5cWzFxrAsLkAcZ7QzgZPpyF6XfOFavFgzeHBhi6uEhLsw6VuqlIE86DaD9DqHFKYXkZ6xFSMHjgUuC9Z/s400/amagic.jpeg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5717840061055621042" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;">J. has never been much drawn to specifically Viennese dance music, the music of the Strauss family with all those waltzes and polkas, galops and quadrilles, whereas I'm a hopeless case, pathetically addicted to it. So it was particularly noble of her to sit through a sparkling performance of Johann Strauss' <span style="font-style: italic;">Die Fledermaus</span> for my benefit. While in Vienna we noticed that an opera by Vivaldi called <span style="font-style: italic;">Il Giustino</span> was on for one night only at the Theater an der Wien. Neither of us had ever heard of it, but Vivaldi is a name that usually means your ticket money won't be wasted. And seeing that she'd stood (actually sat, in a red plush box chair) by me while I indulged my addiction, the least I could do was to stand by her in her love of Baroque opera. So we bought a couple of tickets, the last available in the second row of the stalls.<br /><br />I don't dislike Baroque opera, I just find other periods more interesting. (Except Wagner. If my advanced age allows me one or two little indulgences, one of them is by-passing Wagner. I can only apologise to the myriad of Wagnerians who come here with every new post: all I can say is that you've got all the more of him to yourselves.)<br /><br />But the Theater an der Wien drew me irresistibly. For those that set store by these things, it's a kind of Holy of Holies. I expect the theatre has burnt down and been rebuilt, or closed down by the censor or gone dark or broke in its 210-year history, but I don't care: not only did <span style="font-style: italic;">Die Fledermaus</span> have its première here, the first performance of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Magic Flute</span> took place here, and Mozart himself on one occasion shortly before his death crept into the orchestra pit to play the glockenspiel, the magic bells that made Monostatos and his goons dance. Beethoven, on whose grave I had placed a rose a few days earlier, conducted the first performance of <span style="font-style: italic;">Fidelio</span> there, a few weeks after Trafalgar. (Unlike the French fleet at Trafalgar, it didn't go down very well: the audience was mostly made up of invading French soldiers.) And there we were, just a few metres from where these legendary things had happened.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Il Giustino</span> was given in concert version, no scenery or action. It all seemed pretty exemplary to me, and J. was delighted with it. I'm afraid my attention strayed now and again, seeing in my mind's eye the slight figure of Mozart just beyond us in the pit, stooping over the glockenspiel and casting an occasional complicit eye up to the stage, or the stocky Beethoven on the rostrum, conducting as he did with his whole body, crouching down for soft passages and leaping up for the more excited bits. Happy days.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5POhO36fH8NUQOjwSrNBJ2FqDepK47dQiS93dQjs-R2xx6RYwB_p5jIHmkmyrMcvOZpZbE3r7wiK0EadcvcsshcFonmqVa4oRuhlmqHRwgqyiz4wyVJRT7tiKOYHlNQvTGUOt2tzM7un2/s1600/beethovenConducting.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 310px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5POhO36fH8NUQOjwSrNBJ2FqDepK47dQiS93dQjs-R2xx6RYwB_p5jIHmkmyrMcvOZpZbE3r7wiK0EadcvcsshcFonmqVa4oRuhlmqHRwgqyiz4wyVJRT7tiKOYHlNQvTGUOt2tzM7un2/s400/beethovenConducting.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5717840064428920018" border="0" /></a><br />At home a day or two later J., while searching for more information about <span style="font-style: italic;">Il Giustino</span>, discovered a strange, not to say bizarre, website: while it's normally forbidden to film operatic performances, no restrictions apply to filming curtain calls. And here was the curtain call from that very performance that someone just behind us had filmed. Are those our heads on the extreme left? And could this be the least interesting video ever posted?<br /></div><br /><br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/DZYQXA9OheQ?rel=0" allowfullscreen="" width="560" frameborder="0" height="315"></iframe></div>Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14227767014123557100noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243468909554327821.post-69793767513665709062012-03-05T15:14:00.005+01:002012-03-05T19:53:48.151+01:00Return to Vienna (5)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfzUUb68pPul3TgZ6c90wCghVRQr8H7kh3awH7j4mrafVNOMY6tP8eiwoR_v-yzrKQUy7mM-zEORRKXWN2pvxPTb1sxIQ3j7Txg8NjgfwdjUq-mDo64ywZcIPpriWCDPIGEW_UGd3Nk5V6/s1600/avolksoper.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 268px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfzUUb68pPul3TgZ6c90wCghVRQr8H7kh3awH7j4mrafVNOMY6tP8eiwoR_v-yzrKQUy7mM-zEORRKXWN2pvxPTb1sxIQ3j7Txg8NjgfwdjUq-mDo64ywZcIPpriWCDPIGEW_UGd3Nk5V6/s400/avolksoper.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5716416841187950242" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Having mastered the routes and workings of the Viennese underground, we set off in good time, picked up our tickets at the box office, and, having almost an hour until curtain-up, J. and I went across the road to a café-restaurant. In keeping with the culprit of the show, the villain of the piece we were going to see, we asked for champagne, but the waiter apologised: they didn't stock champagne, but would we like a glass of <span style="font-style: italic;">Sekt</span> instead? <span style="font-style: italic;">Sekt</span> is a bubbly champagne substitute, top hole for giving you a terrible headache. We opted for a glass of white wine instead, and a single serving of <span style="font-style: italic;">apfelstrüdel</span> with two spoons, so that we could share it. This <span style="font-style: italic;">apfelstrüdel</span> turned out to be very like English apple pie, especially as it was served with what they called hot vanilla sauce, which was no less than custard. So an evening dedicated to nostalgia started unexpectedly well.<br /><br />30 minutes later we took our seats, having been shown to a box furnished with red plush carpet, red plush chairs and a red plush balcony to lean on. A few minutes' wait while members of the orchestra drifted in, tuned their instruments, ran over tricky passages just to be sure, the houselights dimmed, the conductor strode in, took a bow, lifted his baton...<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">* * *<br /></div><br />46 years earlier I too had lifted my baton at that point, not in Vienna but in West London, for a student production (photo below) of <span style="font-style: italic;">Die Fledermaus</span>, preparation for which entailed missing every lecture for almost a complete term. The authorities were very understanding: obviously putting the music of quite a tricky operetta together, rehearsing the chorus and soloists, gathering and rehearsing the orchestra, organising the ballet, all these were excellent training for the headship of school music and drama departments to which we would undoubtedly be appointed in double quick time, given our energy and effervescence.<br /></div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdTGBUazEY-jSp7-0at6La39jep5AABItgzUDzxjak8Q9rx9_10XMzCCiGQ-eQhq5MrgfAvz5kjLG4L8GRqLFF39VftWAX3lMCkI1dQ72Afr3bhwWTu7lLl6nfYKWSvrtKDADzmkE5Vn1Z/s1600/03-05-2012+03%253B03%253B13PM.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 321px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdTGBUazEY-jSp7-0at6La39jep5AABItgzUDzxjak8Q9rx9_10XMzCCiGQ-eQhq5MrgfAvz5kjLG4L8GRqLFF39VftWAX3lMCkI1dQ72Afr3bhwWTu7lLl6nfYKWSvrtKDADzmkE5Vn1Z/s400/03-05-2012+03%253B03%253B13PM.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5716416855331129874" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Or something like that. I still have the programme (cover below) of that student production. There are names in it you might just recognise: Roger Sloman, Christopher Strauli, Patricia Hodge, Røgnvaldur Areliusson, Rosemary de Pemberton. Actually, I don't know what became of Rosemary, but with a name like that she ought to have gone far. Few of those involved actually became teachers.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />It was a legendary production set in halcyon days. Cast members found themselves caught up in a Viennese whirl, fell in and out of love with each other. Beefier members entered a local 7-a-side rugby tournament. There was a glorious reunion several months later at the wedding of two of them who'd stayed the course. People took each other for full-fig birthday dinners to a Soho restaurant called Old Vienna. <span style="font-style: italic;">Corps de ballet</span> members swooned over photos of Nureyev, then in his prime. The whole production became an icon of unity and teamwork, bonded more strongly by knowing that in a few months many of us would have left, students no longer. As two lines from the libretto ran:<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Glücklich ist, wer vergisst</span><br style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Was doch nicht zu ändern ist.</span><br /><br />[Happy is he who can disregard<br />What can't be changed.]<br /><br />* * *<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">So a return to all this in Vienna, birthplace and setting of <span style="font-style: italic;">Die Fledermaus</span>, in the Volksoper, was particularly heady and poignant, and, sentimental soul, I felt the starting tear for the memory of all those old friends, some no longer with us, as the famous overture started and the tangled plot started to unravel its threads of revenge, lies and perfidy, famously exorcised by Dr Falke the avenger's climactic call to brother- and sister-hood towards the end of Act 2, and in the finale the attribution, however improbable, of these follies to the effects of champagne.<br /><br />But to bring us down to earth, there was an unfortunate occurrence. Minutes before curtain-up, there was a slight disturbance behind us in our box, and an elderly lady appeared, accompanied by (I suppose) her daughter and a friend. The elderly lady was on crutches, and the 3 chairs in the box were already taken, so that she was obliged to stand. J. and I looked at each other: should one of us offer the elderly lady our chair? We had come all the way from France for this, a special and quite expensive birthday treat booked months in advance. Should we make this sacrifice? There was a third person in the box, a stout German, middle-aged, sleek and pomaded. I'm afraid we left it to him to offer his chair. He didn't. Just before the end of Act 1 there was a crash and exclamations of pain behind us. The elderly lady, unable to stand any longer, had collapsed. Her daughter came to the rescue, and I don't think any great harm was done. But J. and I felt bad about it, all the same. What would you have done?<br /></div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPUd2K-XvhIEqjh2nE8fK24ORpGQMR1Eg3sVD0C1Yruj1AVgXglizDMSCaEXrJFMoCFsTJDaYIP5q17jfcM-nfvi5En3puFo_J53jn6e5ero5SONW2bJZneja8LzLFjc22EGd-BiWRCFLy/s1600/03-05-2012+03%253B03%253B13PM2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 325px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPUd2K-XvhIEqjh2nE8fK24ORpGQMR1Eg3sVD0C1Yruj1AVgXglizDMSCaEXrJFMoCFsTJDaYIP5q17jfcM-nfvi5En3puFo_J53jn6e5ero5SONW2bJZneja8LzLFjc22EGd-BiWRCFLy/s400/03-05-2012+03%253B03%253B13PM2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5716416844265928386" border="0" /></a>Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14227767014123557100noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243468909554327821.post-52858276016999496192012-02-28T10:15:00.006+01:002013-05-07T19:06:17.240+02:00Return to Vienna (3)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoLqto7HeR_RtPK_WR-gQoUqhY9duEbHGXkAAvEu0nifTPSd0fAaeCFn6vBu0cVx6kkX5wm2a3NCjD00uoDq0ZlY6COpchr1LatBnqa17AD66vSig1y0xg8sytbsXiRsLR51dnwVK2DEo5/s1600/P1000355.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5714114341008484386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoLqto7HeR_RtPK_WR-gQoUqhY9duEbHGXkAAvEu0nifTPSd0fAaeCFn6vBu0cVx6kkX5wm2a3NCjD00uoDq0ZlY6COpchr1LatBnqa17AD66vSig1y0xg8sytbsXiRsLR51dnwVK2DEo5/s400/P1000355.JPG" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 300px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
We're in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, a vast, mind-numbing palace of art, conceived in a lavish style of overblown magnificence I can only call Imperial Viennese. I've never seen anything like it anywhere else in the world. But inside it's comfortable and un-cathedral-like, and above all warm after the glacial wind outside, and it's all on a reasonably human scale, as though the architects insisted that man should be the measure of all things.<br />
<br />
A massive central hall is open to the domed ceiling three storeys above, painted with an extraordinary <span style="font-style: italic;">trompe l'oeil</span> called <span style="font-style: italic;">The Apotheosis of the Renaissance</span>, where Leonardo, Michaelangelo, Raphael and others and their models and so on are seen from below as though in a sort of heaven. (And very cleverly painted so that decency is preserved and, crick your neck as you may, you can't see up their togas or tunics.) This hall is flanked by white marble stairs wide enough for at least six crinolines abreast: ultramarine and white marble columns support the arches on which the upper floors rest. The spandrels (the triangular-ish spaces between the vertical columns and the tops of the arches) have been decorated by Gustav Klimt, his brother Ernst and a third Viennese artist called Franz Matsch to illustrate the history of art. Ancient Egyptian art, as accounted for below, appears to have appealed particularly to Gustav Klimt.<br />
<br /></div>
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1Rxz3vYrlrC9cTesXJaOrLVlH7WPOw6nmPJ0HjFjyDjfgEoMYAW33906KQcJx_tFP-7wqdYTeEHWCG0LbELsQRDzzgYLHZeYriNM8ln0ehttWk0WyNAPkaz2JrbQU2F2MV18pC-MuVQRZ/s1600/P1000361.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5714114311683407730" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1Rxz3vYrlrC9cTesXJaOrLVlH7WPOw6nmPJ0HjFjyDjfgEoMYAW33906KQcJx_tFP-7wqdYTeEHWCG0LbELsQRDzzgYLHZeYriNM8ln0ehttWk0WyNAPkaz2JrbQU2F2MV18pC-MuVQRZ/s400/P1000361.JPG" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 300px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
There are about three British paintings among the hundreds of Italian, Flemish, Dutch, German and Spanish masters. It doesn't matter. We've learnt the hard way that the more paintings you try to take in, in huge collections like this one, the less they begin to mean. We reach saturation point very early, so we've come with a specific intention: we only want to see the Brueghels and the Vermeers.<br />
<br />
It turns out that there's only one Vermeer, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Artist's Studio</span>. It's much bigger than we expected it to be. There doesn't appear to be any restriction at all on taking photographs, so here it is:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrU73U2gjq4hiifF9RazidUNwpAJVDA0JPB5EESkgH5ZhsI0tQQqEBDxBtf7d_nq-fy_2AOgbb_E_ped0b6oQWhqTJlfO4S5tw5Ljv5KcKkVNCGkaN93tgJ2fKEvgIjNxYGj4X5gRLefFJ/s1600/P1000399.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5714116737470818818" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrU73U2gjq4hiifF9RazidUNwpAJVDA0JPB5EESkgH5ZhsI0tQQqEBDxBtf7d_nq-fy_2AOgbb_E_ped0b6oQWhqTJlfO4S5tw5Ljv5KcKkVNCGkaN93tgJ2fKEvgIjNxYGj4X5gRLefFJ/s400/P1000399.JPG" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 300px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
As the for Brueghels, they too are huge, much bigger than expected. All the famous images are here, <span style="font-style: italic;">Winter Sports</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Hunters in the Snow</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Children's Games</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Tower of Babel</span>. And the <span style="font-style: italic;">Peasant Wedding</span>, the one where there's an unexplained extra leg underneath the tray (actually a door taken off its hinges) from which they're serving what looks like porridge. Is this Brueghel's joke? I buy a T-shirt for my son Andrew with the <span style="font-style: italic;">Tower of Babel</span> printed on it. It seems very suitable for one whose business is largely localisation, the trade term for commercial translation.<br />
<br />
All Vermeered and be-Breugheled up, we go for lunch in the restaurant. I have goulash followed by<span style="font-style: italic;"> palatschinken</span>, sweet pancakes with apricot jam. (It is Shrove Tuesday, after all.) On the next table are three Japanese. They have no German and very little English. They are clearly tempted by the obscenely mouth-watering display of confectionery, <span style="font-style: italic;">Mozart bombe</span>,<span style="font-style: italic;"> gebackener Topfentorte</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Klimt Torte</span>. The waiter asks them what they would like. My localisation experts advise me that in Japanese all words end either with a vowel or with the letter N. Assuming that English must be the same, our neighbours point and say 'Cakie'.</div>
<br />
<br />
Cakie? the waiter asks, uncertain that he's heard right. They nod enthusiastically. Wouldn't you?<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-5KnPMeK521yaKpH1v4ptF5me1xkXnk2mhJRPwP5Qsx7jc6Sy7bvuTkmE0COO6Noxfdsk13YCvxl0AAiLul4__lkkVWiCr04QzTuEtuYWbpFsPutpPeM8DAM4zmRlvgbHOahvdWDdLCQJ/s1600/P1000395.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5714114327076549714" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-5KnPMeK521yaKpH1v4ptF5me1xkXnk2mhJRPwP5Qsx7jc6Sy7bvuTkmE0COO6Noxfdsk13YCvxl0AAiLul4__lkkVWiCr04QzTuEtuYWbpFsPutpPeM8DAM4zmRlvgbHOahvdWDdLCQJ/s400/P1000395.JPG" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 300px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a>Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14227767014123557100noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243468909554327821.post-79135876393820232822012-02-23T12:28:00.006+01:002022-05-13T09:19:09.201+02:00Return to Vienna (1)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2wJktpxEL8RX8BunlyUGBFcMMN4b8F9EoinNBUTtHZbFE8y981UMXHLVytxjSG296RXcr2LiOR_rNhMf_mhm6GLpzI7pt8eT0Kea8RrbO_cmz4D4HJpSpyGUP7WL1vAah08tfgBBB3msD/s1600/abeeth.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5712291547605765378" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2wJktpxEL8RX8BunlyUGBFcMMN4b8F9EoinNBUTtHZbFE8y981UMXHLVytxjSG296RXcr2LiOR_rNhMf_mhm6GLpzI7pt8eT0Kea8RrbO_cmz4D4HJpSpyGUP7WL1vAah08tfgBBB3msD/s400/abeeth.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 267px;" /></a><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I hadn't been back to Vienna for 51 years. With the utmost generosity J. took me there for a long weekend to mark my birthday. What happened will probably occupy blog posts for weeks. For now, the events of those crowded and climactic few days were encompassed - well, more or less - on the Do Not Disturb card the hotel invited us to display outside our door each morning. (If we weren't ready for the chambermaids, that is: for the record, there was an alternative card which read Please Clean My Room.)<br />
<br />
DO NOT DISTURB -<br />
<br />
I am reading a mystery novel<br />
I am collecting my thoughts<br />
I am contemplating my future<br />
I am remembering things past<br />
I am so happy to be in my room<br />
I am trying to concentrate<br />
I am enjoying a pastry<br />
I am being inspired by a book<br />
I am listening to music<br />
I am planning my evening out<br />
I am watching a great film<br />
I am thinking about a career change<br />
I am reflecting on my decisions<br />
I am sitting in the lotus position<br />
I am tasting a glass of wine<br />
I am enjoying coffee<br />
I am stimulating my curiosity<br />
I am writing a love letter<br />
I am dreaming of a bright tomorrow<br />
<br />
<br /></div>Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14227767014123557100noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243468909554327821.post-48892645947104227062011-08-07T15:34:00.006+02:002012-10-23T12:41:27.544+02:00What's Your Problem? Lydian Airs' Useful Guide to Patron Saints<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRA9Whlqdc6SxKw77i4Wwcux14nWiSNzG-YTFZOVlvfOaothCTInDMpEueXLsqOajAG2ufsRZWRJvSbSLgaCXr-OGcbcDsdN3a2l2xY1r1qNatqXgSfuoMCSymc-sSnih3GRbQPB-hDR9c/s1600/asaint2.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5638107200961671442" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRA9Whlqdc6SxKw77i4Wwcux14nWiSNzG-YTFZOVlvfOaothCTInDMpEueXLsqOajAG2ufsRZWRJvSbSLgaCXr-OGcbcDsdN3a2l2xY1r1qNatqXgSfuoMCSymc-sSnih3GRbQPB-hDR9c/s400/asaint2.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 322px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">AGUE</span> St Pernel and St Petronella cure<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">BAD DREAMS</span> St Christopher protects from<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">BLEAR EYES</span> St Ottilic and St Clare cure<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">CHASTITY</span> St Susan protects<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">CHILDREN</span> St Germayne. But unless the mothers bring a white loaf and a pot of good ale, Sir Thomas More says, 'he wyll not loke at 'em' (p.194)<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">CHOLERA</span> Oola Beebee is invoked by the Hindoos for this malady<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">DANCING MANIA </span> St Vitus cures<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">DEFILEMENT </span> St Susan preserves from<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">DISCOVERY OF LOST GOODS</span> St Ethelbert and St Elian<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">DOUBTS</span> St Catherine resolves<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">GOUT </span> St Wolfgang, they say, is of more service than Blair's pills<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">GRIPES</span> St Erasmus cures<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">IDIOCY</span> St Gildas is the guardian angel of idiots<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">INFAMY</span> St Susan protects from<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">MADNESS</span> St Dymphna and St Fillan cure<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">MICE</span> St Gertrude and St Huldrick ward them off. When phosphor paste fails, St Gertrude might be tried, at any rate with less danger than arsenic<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">MUMBLING</span> St Modget will hear<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">NIGHT ALARMS</span> St Christopher protects from<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">PUMPKINS</span> St Rusticus limits undesir'd growth<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">QUENCHING FIRE</span> St Florian and St Christopher should not be forgotten by fire insurance companies<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">SCABS</span> St Rooke cures<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">SORE THROATS</span> St Blaise, who (when he was put to death) prayed if any person suffering from a sore throat invoked him, he might be God's instrument to effect a perfect cure<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">SUDDEN DEATH</span> St Martin saves from<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">TEMPERANCE</span> Father Matthew is called 'The Apostle of Temperance' (1790-1856)<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">TOOTH-ACHE</span> St Appolonia, because before she was burnt alive all her teeth were pulled out<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">WEALTH</span> St Anne<br />
<br />
(From <span style="font-style: italic;">The Reader's Handbook, of Famous Names in Fiction, Allusions, References, Proverbs, Plots, Stories, and Poems</span>. By the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. (1898)Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14227767014123557100noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243468909554327821.post-61271719944971425492011-08-03T21:53:00.003+02:002018-11-29T12:43:54.141+01:00Brifknefs in the Lifts of Venus<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMJg3TSQTc01KsK_uS9pM5h2CQZVL1jh_T-1S7e4LA_AM68EGbZqMcAF4GwIrCd4bCKNPTp_oBXCRegx4o6fwosGa5hdtk4W0q-pHVFa7Pp1j7bvFtHrZCJSLyjynKcXhAPC-q9oUIMxh4/s1600/abottle.png"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5636720558414114306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMJg3TSQTc01KsK_uS9pM5h2CQZVL1jh_T-1S7e4LA_AM68EGbZqMcAF4GwIrCd4bCKNPTp_oBXCRegx4o6fwosGa5hdtk4W0q-pHVFa7Pp1j7bvFtHrZCJSLyjynKcXhAPC-q9oUIMxh4/s400/abottle.png" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 160px;" /></a><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I've been reading <span style="font-style: italic;">The Shocking History of Advertising!</span>, by E. S. Turner, a versatile writer and journalist who penned his last full stop in 2006 at the age of 97.<br />
<br />
He quotes from <span style="font-style: italic;">The Spectator</span> of about 1740:<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Famous Drops for Hypochondriac Melancholy</span>: Which effectually cure on the Spot, by rectifying the Stomach and Blood, cleanfing them from all Impurities, and giving a new Turn to their Ferment, attenuating all vifcous and tenacious Humours (which make the Head Heavy, clog the Spirits, confufe the Mind, and caufe the deepeft Melancholly, with direful Views and black Reflections), comforting the Brain and Nerves, compofing the hurried Thoughts, and introducing bright lively Ideas and pleafant Brifknefs, inftead of difmal Apprehenfion and dark Incumbrance of the Soul, fetting the Intellectuals at Liberty to act with Courage, Serenity and fteady Cheerfulnefs, exciting Agonifts in the Lifts of Venus to great Deeds, and caufing a vifible, diffufive Joy to Reign in the Room of uneafy Doubts, Fear, &c., for which they may be truly efteem'd infallible. Price 3s 6d a Bottle, with Inftructions. Sold only at Mr Bell's, book-feller at the Crofs Keys and Bible in Cornhill, near the Royal Exchange.</span><br />
<br />
Sounds exactly what's needed. I think I might order fome.</div>
Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14227767014123557100noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243468909554327821.post-86222305061781307652011-07-18T18:30:00.010+02:002022-01-28T12:35:54.045+01:00Through a local lens No. 9<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn5spH624gAk0_sJcu0SJlW-nlXSF9hVx0ENOtY_b1cz7kGgSczAPeZhU1oP3HZ-U0SZ0bCYUngGcEM9hir5Yg_1KBAqfug2ktTTxBEwoan_IdAAMf7lfLMR-e5Z0_7fJW5sLkvlnSUP-Z/s1600/apont.jpeg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5630731060750061666" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn5spH624gAk0_sJcu0SJlW-nlXSF9hVx0ENOtY_b1cz7kGgSczAPeZhU1oP3HZ-U0SZ0bCYUngGcEM9hir5Yg_1KBAqfug2ktTTxBEwoan_IdAAMf7lfLMR-e5Z0_7fJW5sLkvlnSUP-Z/s400/apont.jpeg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 194px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 259px;" /></a><span style="color: #660000;">Le Pont du Diable, the Devil's Bridge, Olargues</span></div>
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This bridge, according to a legend carefully fostered by the Office de Tourisme, took a very long time to finish because of an unusual phenomenon largely unknown to today's building trade.<br />
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As fast as the 12th century masons put this bridge up by day, the Devil came by night and threw the newly-laid masonry into the river below.<br />
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Tiring of constantly helping the builders to fish blocks of limestone out of the river, the villagers consulted the one amongst them who might have the readiest access to the Devil. So the village priest sought him out, and a pact was made whereby the Devil would allow completion of the bridge on condition that he could claim body and soul of the first living creature to cross the bridge when it was finished.<br />
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On the day the bridge was completed the villagers gathered at one end while the Devil, come to claim his due, stood at the other. The two parties advanced towards the middle, the Devil with arms outstretched to receive his sacrificial victim, while the villagers shuffled forward uneasily.<br />
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When they were but half-a-dozen ells apart, near enough for the villagers to be almost overcome by the stink of the antichristian mercaptan, the villagers' ranks suddenly opened, and a cat was hurled into the arms of the Devil.<br />
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The Devil, outwitted and snarling with disappointed rage, vanished in a miasma of putrid smoke. The bridge has been open to traffic ever since, but nowadays few feel the need to carry a cat with them just in case. Given the number of strays about the village, you would have thought the Office de Tourisme could have hired them out to gullible or romantically minded tourists, or those in deep trouble, as <span style="font-style: italic;">laissez-pussers</span>.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVDAJwQiLRGSuBJoSb5wqT9n5NQ6pot9Fu66as2gCA6_lVuyVI2xpnN3oXtYZl3qOfbw2ikvtpc5O1e4GLKtOg-e0OvUFlExXBxcghCJ9BqbLsS72xF5HzDrwk2XZCQVDjK_2gmp5-gDmT/s1600/apont3.jpeg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5630731063328633490" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVDAJwQiLRGSuBJoSb5wqT9n5NQ6pot9Fu66as2gCA6_lVuyVI2xpnN3oXtYZl3qOfbw2ikvtpc5O1e4GLKtOg-e0OvUFlExXBxcghCJ9BqbLsS72xF5HzDrwk2XZCQVDjK_2gmp5-gDmT/s400/apont3.jpeg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 194px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 259px;" /></a>This photo, with the classic view of the village and the Devil's Bridge, was taken by my friend Jean-Claude Branville, a man of many talents and a distant cousin of St Theresa of Lisieux. The logo in the bottom right-hand corner is that of Les Plus Beaux Villages de France, The Most Beautiful Villages of France, of which Olargues is one out of about 150, to some extent due to Jean-Claude's efforts.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjymWlXxPWwSjV9Y2IJc2g3LJCJSfsJzPBGzljkACLJIrJYlgOp_zsqdPldtB4bOAkMcHDny_tdOjV-6noOtTm-zl_-UmDrl9ESixOXw0uhqOiH_OyAKj9VVesMx0u7nCgWChXnnwSypKr6/s1600/apont2.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5630731332768293618" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjymWlXxPWwSjV9Y2IJc2g3LJCJSfsJzPBGzljkACLJIrJYlgOp_zsqdPldtB4bOAkMcHDny_tdOjV-6noOtTm-zl_-UmDrl9ESixOXw0uhqOiH_OyAKj9VVesMx0u7nCgWChXnnwSypKr6/s400/apont2.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 300px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a>This is the view of the bridge from the <span style="font-style: italic;">terrasse</span> of one of our favourite restaurants, Fleurs d'Olargues. It's the Devil's own job to get comfortable in those chairs. Maybe....?<br />
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There's a line from one of Hilaire Belloc's <span style="font-style: italic;">Cautionary Tales</span> concealed in this post. If you spot it you're entitled to <span style="font-style: italic;">either</span> a warm smile <span style="font-style: italic;">or</span> a devilish grin. Please indicate your choice with your entry, as stocks are limited.</div>Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14227767014123557100noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243468909554327821.post-4728542955040581082011-07-12T14:50:00.007+02:002011-07-13T19:35:02.781+02:00A wry glance<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAfFK4ZhYX5v73eZQbYktnBCJ355L7T23n-74Ijthxh6bE59RPzv8Z-HrAaSXzyrppzMvrU6nVJn2n_7LxTMQKqQDzifsoDPFe13LTivZ8DAgTuo5TX5DX3w_RTxhA09eXZiTgm2lL9_jp/s1600/awry.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAfFK4ZhYX5v73eZQbYktnBCJ355L7T23n-74Ijthxh6bE59RPzv8Z-HrAaSXzyrppzMvrU6nVJn2n_7LxTMQKqQDzifsoDPFe13LTivZ8DAgTuo5TX5DX3w_RTxhA09eXZiTgm2lL9_jp/s400/awry.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5628447699847289346" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">This arrived a couple of weeks ago...</span><br /><br /><div style="font: 10pt arial;">----- Original Message ----- </div> <div style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(228, 228, 228); font: 10pt arial;"><b>From: D</b> </div> <div style="font: 10pt arial;"><b>To:</b><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"> C</span></span><span style="text-decoration: underline; font-weight: bold;"></span> </div> <div style="font: 10pt arial;"><b>Sent:</b> Monday, June 27, 2011 5:14 PM</div> <div style="font: 10pt arial;"><b>Subject:</b> What is Scotsman's image of "comin' through the rye?"</div> <div><br /></div> <div class="WordSection1"><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="font-family: courier new; text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal">Hi C,</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="font-family: courier new; text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"> How are you? We hope you are enjoying your summer so far. You will probably chuckle when you read what I am concerned about. I thought of you recently when G. read Salinger’s “Catcher in The Rye.” I have heard enough about the novel since it first came out that I feel like I read it, but I know I didn’t. While we talked about the novel and its title, I realized that I did not really know what Burns’s line means, “When a body meets a body comin’ through the rye.” Because I grew up in a part of the country where there are many descendants of Scottish immigrants from both Ulster and Scotland itself, I heard the song already as a little child. As a child I imagined the rye stalks being taller than people. I imagined that a person would wade through the rye not being able to see where he was going and occasionally run into another person who also happened to be wading through. I have never seen a rye field, but G. has seen them in Germany. She says the rye is typically about 25 or 30 inches tall or so. Any now my question. When a Scotsman in Scotland reads Burns’s line, what image does he have of people coming through the rye? It seems that if people simply walked across a rye field, the farmer would do something to stop them from damaging his crop. Or are there big rye areas with numerous rye fields separated by paths? Or did Burns mean something metaphorical or allegorical?</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="font-family: courier new; text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"> Cheers, D</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">I got round to replying this morning. It took me fully from 9.15 to 1pm to put this together...</span><br /></p><div>Hello D,</div> <div> </div> <div style="text-align: justify;">Thank you so much for this, and sorry to have taken so long to reply. The question you pose is quite complicated and I can't do more than offer a few observations. In the early 1780s Robert Burns wrote his own version of a south of Scotland folksong, of which there existed many variants, which was so well-known at the time that eventually it became, duly bowdlerised, a children's song. The original, as published in <em>The Merry Muses of Caledonia</em> in 1800 (although in existence for many years before that), was downright bawdy. Burns may have had a hand in editing and even adding to it:</div> <div> </div> <div><em><br />O gin a body meet a body</em></div> <div><em>Comin thro the rye:</em></div> <div><em>Gin a body f*ck a body,</em></div> <div><em>Need a body cry.</em></div> <div> </div> <div><br />Chorus:</div> <div><em>Comin thro the rye, my jo,</em></div> <div><em>An comin thro the rye;</em></div> <div><em>She fand a staun o' staunin graith,</em></div> <div><em>Comin thro the rye</em></div> <div><em></em> </div> <div><em><br />Gin a body meet a body</em></div> <div><em>Comin thro the glen:</em></div> <div><em>Gin a body f*ck a body</em></div> <div><em>Need the warld ken.</em></div> <div> </div> <div><br />(Chorus)</div> <div> </div> <div><br />And so on for another three uninspiring verses...</div> <div> </div> <div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Pause for glossary: <span style="font-style: italic;">Gin</span> (hard G, as in 'begin') = if, should: <span style="font-style: italic;">a body</span> = someone:<span style="font-style: italic;"> jo</span> = darling, love: <span style="font-style: italic;">fand</span> = found:<span style="font-style: italic;"> staun</span> = something upright: <span style="font-style: italic;">staunin</span> [play on words] = standing/astonishing: <span style="font-style: italic;">graith</span> = growth: <span style="font-style: italic;">warld</span> = world, everyone: <span style="font-style: italic;">ken</span> = know:</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div> </div> <div><br />Burns used the above as the basis for a much more subtly suggestive poem of his own:</div> <div> </div> <div><em><br />O, Jenny's a' weet,<sup> </sup>poor body,<br />Jenny's seldom dry:<br />She draigl't a' her petticoatie,<br />Comin thro' the rye!<br /></em><br />Chorus:<br /><em>Comin thro' the rye, poor body,<br />Comin thro' the rye,<br />She draigl't a' her petticoatie,<br />Comin thro' the rye!<br /><br />Gin<sup> </sup>a body meet a body<br />Comin thro' the rye,<br />Gin a body kiss a body,<br />Need a body cry?</em><br /><br />(chorus)<br /><br /><em>Gin a body meet a body<br />Comin thro' the glen,<br />Gin a body kiss a body,<br />Need the warld ken?<br /></em><br />(chorus)<br /><br /><em>Gin a body meet a body<br />Comin thro' the grain;<br />Gin a body kiss a body,<br />The thing's a body's ain.<br /></em><br />(chorus)<br /><br /><em>Ev'ry Lassie has her laddie,<br />Nane, they say, have I,<br />Yet all the lads they smile on me,<br />When comin' thro' the rye.</em></div> <div><em></em> </div> <div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Glossary:<span style="font-style: italic;"> a'</span> = all: <span style="font-style: italic;">weet</span> = wet:<span style="font-style: italic;"> draigl't</span> = (be)draggled: <span style="font-style: italic;">ain</span> = own; [the line means 'it's no one else's business']: <span style="font-style: italic;">nane</span> = none. <span style="font-style: italic;">Warld</span> is pronounced in two syllables, 'wah' and 'rlld'.<br /></div></div> <div> </div> <div style="text-align: justify;"><br />So there's a strong sense of an earthy sexuality in both the original folksong and Burn's version of it. Jenny is the village tart, or at least generous with her favours. The tune to the original, incidentally, is pentatonic, suggesting great antiquity.</div> <div> </div> <div style="text-align: justify;"><br />Both versions also evoke secrecy and concealment with 'rye' and 'glen', both enclosed places away from prying eyes. In Burns' time and for long after rye and other cereals ('rye' is clearly more convenient for rhyme than 'oats' or 'barley') were grown with stems 5' to 6' high. Moreover, the contemporary method of ploughing (called 'rig and furrow') left much wider passages between the stands of cereal, sown haphazard by broadcasting rather than in neat rows, as via a modern seed drill. A field of cereal was thus a good place to hide in, and the likelihood of trampling much less than we would expect nowadays. Your childhood imagination was, maybe unwittingly, 100% accurate. The stalks were chopped and used as winter animal feed. (Waterloo was fought in mid-June: Wellington's troops used the concealment offered by long-stemmed cereals, almost ready to harvest, to great effect.) 'Glen', also good for rhyme, means 'valley', usually a narrow one. 'Strath' would be used for a wide valley. Where there's a valley, there's water, and consequently trees and bushes offering concealment, in addition to the enclosing hill- or mountainsides. There may be further sexual overtones here. </div> <div> </div> <div style="text-align: justify;"><br />I'm not certain that J. D. Salinger was aware of any of this in 'The Catcher in the Rye', although I think he probably guessed at the implications and overtones of the poem(s), even if Holden Caulfield 'misheard' it, and saw how applicable the image was to his novel.</div> <div> </div> <div><br />I hope this helps.</div> <div><br />[...]<br /></div><div>Christopher<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">Thank you for reading this far, if you have. Please don't feel the need to include the word 'draigl't' in any comments you might be kind enough to make. </span><br /></div></div> <div> </div> <div> </div><p class="MsoNormal"> </p></div>Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14227767014123557100noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243468909554327821.post-48883468764726651352011-07-11T09:45:00.005+02:002011-07-11T15:52:38.761+02:00End Of The World Found On Moon<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguYT7c8AVOIs-PFBIlLBMfD5BIZp4sofwcRm2bKD5XrhBB6BhIehFGShqr7lKSblMsJah-AF6gS6Q1vwwfS-TEVOmGyb0vLDPcD159sMrmBKJk_LMqkYXFAUDU0_bGYEdU0c0RoKVASbaD/s1600/anews.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 220px; height: 120px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguYT7c8AVOIs-PFBIlLBMfD5BIZp4sofwcRm2bKD5XrhBB6BhIehFGShqr7lKSblMsJah-AF6gS6Q1vwwfS-TEVOmGyb0vLDPcD159sMrmBKJk_LMqkYXFAUDU0_bGYEdU0c0RoKVASbaD/s400/anews.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5627997846950017570" border="0" /></a>So the News of the World is no more. I can't say I ever saw a copy of it, except maybe when I was about 14 and preoccupied with behind-the-bike-shed ethics and practices. Sleaze was more gentlemanly (and no doubt more ladylike) in those days: the NOTW's genteel in-house euphemism for sex was 'intimacy'.<br /><br />E.g.<span style="font-style: italic;">: 'Witness Miss F. , a hotel employee, having knocked at the bedroom door while carrying the breakfast tray, understood the sounds from inside to be an invitation to enter. As she did so she observed intimacy was taking place.'</span><br /><br />I regret more the passing of the Daily and Sunday Sport, not for the unending diet of sleaze but for the occasional inspired, indeed poetic, zaniness of its headlines.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">E.g.: <span style="font-weight: bold;">'Statue Of Elvis Found On Mars'</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">'Bus Found Buried At South Pole'</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">'Rose West Ate My Guinea Pig'</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">'WW2 Bomber Found On Moon'</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">'Mum Gives Birth To 8lb Haddock'</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">'Man Fights Shark With Wife's False Teeth' </span>.<br /></div><br />I nearly bought a copy once, one afternoon when I was wandering rather disconsolately round Lee on the Solent with my daughter Patroclus, killing time before the night ferry from nearby Portsmouth to Le Havre. The Daily - or it might have been Sunday - Sport headline in a newsagent's window was 'Hide And Seek Champ Found Dead In Cupboard'.<br /><br />Mightily intrigued by the implications of this, I was all for going in and buying a copy, but Patroclus restrained me most insistently, claiming that she would rather have her teeth pulled than be seen in close proximity to her father carrying a copy of the Sunday Sport. Or words to that effect. So I gave in.<br /></div>Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14227767014123557100noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243468909554327821.post-32780266099321043612011-07-07T19:25:00.009+02:002011-07-09T10:40:10.754+02:00Going, going, gong<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSTnYamGrxdzbVFkCxRrLlYhUNcLWumCYuXPBVUCqDOXweT2ZU6ilO9iUMvZ6CuQY8gajTfgs-I4LerDr5ZwidL93ikRkEvUlXcyfB3wza__PvCZOuWHPXCm0f8urS013HGCtUi7hn2NBm/s1600/agong.jpeg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 308px; height: 164px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSTnYamGrxdzbVFkCxRrLlYhUNcLWumCYuXPBVUCqDOXweT2ZU6ilO9iUMvZ6CuQY8gajTfgs-I4LerDr5ZwidL93ikRkEvUlXcyfB3wza__PvCZOuWHPXCm0f8urS013HGCtUi7hn2NBm/s400/agong.jpeg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5626663200904085122" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">During my very first teaching appointment, uncertificated in a prep school, in the days when a pint of bitter cost one and fourpence and a packet of Senior Service half-a-crown, a Mr James Blades came to the school to give a lecture about percussion instruments. He was a very likeable man, spirited and enthusiastic, with a wide range of instruments, among which he moved with absolute confidence and mastery. Xylophone, timpani, snare drum, tubular bells, gong, traps (i.e. drumkit), shakers, rattles, bells and whistles, the complete 'kitchen'. The most dramatic moment came when he demonstrated his gong, a heavy Chinese instrument measuring about 40cm across. He claimed its original purpose wasn't to summon diners to table or to provide an orchestral boom, but to torture captives: they were tied to a post, the gongman blocked his ears with wax and built up a gradual crescendo with his beaters until the torturee could bear it no longer and cracked, spilling the beans.<br /><br />Or it might be used to execute criminals: when a certain volume and reverberation had been reached, the condemned's eardrums burst and his head exploded, spilling the brains. Or something like that. 8- and 9- year-old boys, basically ratbag monsters, lapped this news up and wrote home about it the following Sunday, no doubt saying that when they grew up they wanted to be percussionists and/or Chinese executioners.<br /><br />Years later, all degreed and certificated up, when a pint of bitter cost £2.40 and I'd stopped smoking, I was attending a summer school in Cardiff when the same man turned up again, by now Professor of Percussion at the Royal Academy of Music in London and universally known as Jimmy. He gave exactly the same lecture as I remembered from 20 years before, but tuned up and filled out musically and, in deference to our adult sensibilities, with the Chinese torture bit left out.<br /><br />Curiously, everyone must have heard Jimmy Blades playing at some time or other. In 1942 he recorded the Morse code V for Victory, dit-dit-dit-dah (the same rhythm as the opening of Beethoven's 5th) on a favourite African drum for the BBC to preface coded messages to the French resistance. It was heard again in the film <span style="font-style: italic;">The Longest Day</span>. More familiarly perhaps, he was the striker of the mighty gong that introduced J. Arthur Rank films. Not the one you saw on screen: that gong was a fake, made of papier maché. Jimmy Blades stood at one side with his much smaller Chinese gong and beater when the title footage was filmed, while the bare-torsoed gongman mimed his strokes.<br /><br />He died in 1999. In a roundabout way (I was never a direct student of his) he taught me a great deal about percussion.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">(I'd like to continue this, but there's the gong calling me to supper.)</span><br /></div>Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14227767014123557100noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243468909554327821.post-41237510724826985482011-05-30T11:43:00.005+02:002011-05-30T12:30:08.399+02:00Top lines from Chaucer No. 103<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEime7bqm21r7LVjIiMzQUe-COCi4cYk0gFFHStVlfleG2_LPK4hivMKW7NqurwITZM26g25HUqd_n4EZkmnmomiMQ817TRPxGJNsNRSIExTwnen2YdWuHLmPxNbqKl1lnTY-BEy0vGVVELe/s1600/amos.jpeg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEime7bqm21r7LVjIiMzQUe-COCi4cYk0gFFHStVlfleG2_LPK4hivMKW7NqurwITZM26g25HUqd_n4EZkmnmomiMQ817TRPxGJNsNRSIExTwnen2YdWuHLmPxNbqKl1lnTY-BEy0vGVVELe/s400/amos.jpeg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5612451794704873666" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span style="font-size:12pt;"><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">Actually they're edited from The Washington Post's annual round-ups of topical neologisms. But Chaucer would have enjoyed them.</span><br /><br />1.<b><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Coffee</span></b>, n. The person upon whom one coughs.<br /><br />2.<b><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Flabbergasted</span></b>, adj. Appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.<br /><br />3.<b><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Abdicate</span></b>, v. To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.<br /><br />4<b><span style="font-weight: bold;">. Esplanade</span></b>, v. To attempt an explanation while drunk.<br /><br />5.<b><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Willy-nilly</span></b>, adj. Impotent.<br /><br />6.<b><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Negligent</span></b>, adj. Absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.<br /><br />7.<b><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Lymph</span></b>, v.. To walk with a lisp.<br /><br />8.<b><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Gargoyle</span></b>, n. Olive-flavoured mouthwash.<br /><br />9.<b><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Flatulence</span></b>, n. Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.<br /><br />10.<b><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Balderdash</span></b>, n. A rapidly receding hairline.<br /><br />11.<b><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Testicle</span></b>, n. A humorous question in an exam.<br /><br />12.<b><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Oyster</span></b>, n. A person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.<br /><br />13.<b><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Frisbeetarianism</span></b>, n. The belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.<br /><br />14.<b><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Cashtration</span></b>, n. The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.<br /><br />15.<b><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Reintarnation</span></b>, n. Coming back to life as a hillbilly.<br /><br />16.<b><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Giraffiti</span></b>, n. (Ital) Vandalism spray-painted very, very high<br /><br />17.<b><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Sarchasm,</span></b> n. The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.<br /><br />18.<b><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Inoculatte</span></b>, v. (Ital.) To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.<br /><br />19.<b><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Osteopornosis</span></b>, n. A degenerate disease<br /><br />20.<b><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Karmageddon</span></b>, n. It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.<br /><br />21.<b><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Decafalon</span></b>, n. The gruelling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.<br /><br />22.<b><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Glibido</span></b>, n. All talk and no action.<br /><br />23.<b><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Dopeler Effect</span></b>, n. phrase The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.<br /><br />24. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Beelzebug</span>,<span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span>n. Satan in the form of a mosquito which gets into your bedroom at 3am and which cannot be cast out.<br /></span></span><span style=";font-size:180%;color:navy;" ><span style=";font-size:18pt;color:navy;" ><br /><br /></span></span>Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14227767014123557100noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243468909554327821.post-34491844041630027042011-05-28T11:11:00.010+02:002011-05-28T13:54:47.425+02:00Les Jeudistes Scottish Choir Tour No. 5 (final)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdD8rz4Csgm8auC7L6cyYee99sUGsD3tI309zmtCN8ma87hBAUuEo51RuVb8y9oc5rbNe3VPvURadBhinqyEBmyJQjKXQJuWr3wjlmBREiHtMWW7wBqtXQNB5cLvt28tmvtwyQxCQ-qrh-/s1600/aclock.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdD8rz4Csgm8auC7L6cyYee99sUGsD3tI309zmtCN8ma87hBAUuEo51RuVb8y9oc5rbNe3VPvURadBhinqyEBmyJQjKXQJuWr3wjlmBREiHtMWW7wBqtXQNB5cLvt28tmvtwyQxCQ-qrh-/s400/aclock.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5611694746166578178" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: center;">Desperate times<br /></div><br />We spent the final night of the tour in the Holiday Inn, Ayr, a mile or two down the road from Prestwick Airport, a dismal place whose motto 'Pure dead brilliant' illustrates a characteristic Scottish thrift in its simultaneous combination of hyperbole and litotes.<br /><br />The return flight, to Girona in northern Spain - the nearest airport to our base in France offering convenient flights to Scotland - meant checking in at 5.30am. We arranged to meet in the hotel foyer at 5.15, ready to embark in the minibus for the airport. The hotel reception staff said they didn't do wake-up calls, so we left it to the troops to manage their own mobile alarms. We suggested setting them for 4.30am.<br /><br />Easier said than done. We should all have done it then and there, before saying goodnight, rather than leave it to each individual:<br /><br />*Few if any had changed the time on their mobiles on arriving in Scotland some days earlier.<br /><br />*Some were uncertain whether UK time was an hour ahead of, or behind, French time.<br /><br />*And did the UK put clocks forward an hour at the end of March? Or did they put them back?<br /><br />*Some had failed to advance their mobiles to take account of Continental summer-time.<br /><br />*Did this mean that UK time was <span style="font-weight: bold;">two</span> hours ahead of, or behind, France?<br /><br />*Some were uncertain if Spain and France had the same time.<br /><br />The upshot was that alarms rang at 2.30, 3.30, 4.30, 5.30 and - the following morning, to M.'s annoyance, his mobile having been switched off for the flight - 6.30.<br /><br />A further consequence was that M. and E., two of the lads, as they liked to call themselves having discovered that this is a popular term for 'man' in Scotland, had virtually to be dragged out of bed at 5.30 by one of the lassies, as they liked to call themselves having discovered that this is popular term for 'woman' in Scotland.<br /><br />(Actually I should excuse E. from all this horological uncertainty. He leads a charmed life disdaining any kind of technology. He has no mobile, iPad, iPhone, anything like that at all. The most up-to-date artefacts he has about him are a comb and a two-coloured crayon. Sometimes I'm quite envious...)<br /><br />But they all made it. Head lassie B. has put up a photo gallery of the whole trip<a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=Barbara.Gruener34&target=ALBUM&id=5611420221208360241&authkey=Gv1sRgCIqMlcGikei9xgE&feat=email"> here</a>. Do have a look, tho' you would hardly gather from it that this was a Seriously Grand International Choir Outing and that we actually gave a few concerts here and there.<br /><br />As for J. and me, we weren't flying back but returning a few days later by car. Of course I too in my imbecility miscalculated the alarm, which rang at 3.30. I wasn't too disgruntled. I went back to sleep for a bit. We both got up to drive the troops down to the airport, I went back to bed on return and got up for breakfast 3 hours later, by this time feeling really quite gruntled.<br /></div>Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14227767014123557100noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243468909554327821.post-28053187405422643662011-05-22T19:36:00.004+02:002011-05-22T21:34:38.426+02:00Les Jeudistes Scottish Choir Tour No. 4<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggCcrmKaf0xS3uecj2jUa7vM5SCX77bh14mrxJqyGiqrh18vTdw6sjAwQFXev0urECj7idHeyUH0AEMxPy_0HCC5NzBLKNO6kBY60xG-VDAdyjz5z-1NPcJWIFXwUEC82F7SMLsqw2B5AV/s1600/acamel.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggCcrmKaf0xS3uecj2jUa7vM5SCX77bh14mrxJqyGiqrh18vTdw6sjAwQFXev0urECj7idHeyUH0AEMxPy_0HCC5NzBLKNO6kBY60xG-VDAdyjz5z-1NPcJWIFXwUEC82F7SMLsqw2B5AV/s400/acamel.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5609596031949852034" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">I know I sometimes write the first thing that comes into my head, and anyone reading these effusions is clearly graced with the greatest forbearance (or has no idea how best to spend his/her time), but today's post is something special.<br /><br />No, it's no illusion, no trick photography. It's the Sultan of Oman's Mounted Pipe Band. Look, you can quite clearly see the camels, with bagpipers mounted. How you do this I've no idea. And just think, the other day I could have found out, but the opportunity passed, and unless any of the myriad camel-mounted pipers that come here every day can enlighten me, it will have passed for ever.<br /><br />We took Les Jeudistes to Cawdor Castle. It's the one in which Macbeth murdered King Duncan, according to Shakespeare. (In fact Macbeth, who reigned in Scotland - as it often does - at about the time of William the Conqueror wasn't a bad king at all. His queen was called Gruoch, or maybe she was merely clearing her throat when asked what her name was.) It's a fascinating place to visit, and I've known this castle for many years. I once borrowed - by permission of Earl Cawdor, a Campbell - the castle dinner gong for a performance in which I was playing percussion of <span style="font-style: italic;">Carmina Burana </span>in nearby Inverness.<br /></div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-QCEuRCanD284GlRxSvf4rsNatW6af3gPN6qMufnMZK1BL1jOeYeNmALX9JLdJ6IqGj0ruphJT-euryVjNp5v-GOknt6VM0W_Qw6cadH-TPA1FZjfL8R0bKoEyDUPtKgnFl36PbiRWhCe/s1600/acawdor2.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-QCEuRCanD284GlRxSvf4rsNatW6af3gPN6qMufnMZK1BL1jOeYeNmALX9JLdJ6IqGj0ruphJT-euryVjNp5v-GOknt6VM0W_Qw6cadH-TPA1FZjfL8R0bKoEyDUPtKgnFl36PbiRWhCe/s400/acawdor2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5609596036198169442" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">I arranged for a piper to meet Les Jeudistes, thinking we might as well go the whole hog. Mutedly resplendent in mainly blue tartan, he met us at the turnstile, led us in procession to a well-known march called <span style="font-style: italic;">The Old Rustic Bridge by the Mill</span> to the castle drawbridge, where we were all photographed with him. When he stopped playing I asked him what his pipe-history was: usually pipers have served with some military unit or other. He wore a silver badge with a stag's head on it, the badge of Clan Mackenzie which eventually became, together with the motto 'Caberfeidh', the emblem of the Seaforth Highlanders, now merged into The Highlanders.<br /><br />Yes, he'd served with the Seaforths, he said, but after leaving and before taking full retirement he'd been appointed piping instructor to the Sultan of Oman. Here he had to learn not only to ride camels but to play the pipes while riding. I was tempted to think he was pulling my leg, but he was a very serious-minded gentleman, not at all like his interlocutor, so I imagine it must be true.<br /></div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_a_c82QVjAihA51ZAWJ6_9_2sRDMMhThJVoauXKh2oDXouoyDq0Sb2zmSIDKnhvU2spGoI0olqBRxzK0hbp5ZEfKGLZqRU2ohwmsDiuJcdJJQD8bkvqgMiKyFZv6n5zx8bNs_N0HXuhyx/s1600/acawdor3.jpeg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 194px; height: 259px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_a_c82QVjAihA51ZAWJ6_9_2sRDMMhThJVoauXKh2oDXouoyDq0Sb2zmSIDKnhvU2spGoI0olqBRxzK0hbp5ZEfKGLZqRU2ohwmsDiuJcdJJQD8bkvqgMiKyFZv6n5zx8bNs_N0HXuhyx/s400/acawdor3.jpeg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5609596042366440786" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Les Jeudistes thanked him and moved into the inner bailey, just beyond the drawbridge. Although open to the skies, the acoustic was excellent. Despite our rule never to sing out of doors, we thought we might have a go just this once. We formed up and sang a couple of our Occitan folksongs. Heads appeared at doors and windows, mulberry-uniformed staff forsook the cafeteria to listen. Enthusiastic applause. Not having perfect pitch, I borrowed J.'s tuning fork to find the right pitch. I suppose I could have borrowed the gong again if I'd thought of it.<br /><br />There's another stag's head on the heraldic shield above the gate. This time the motto is that of the Campbells of Cawdor: <span style="font-style: italic;">Be Mindful</span>.<br /><br />I don't think we'll forget.<br /></div>Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14227767014123557100noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243468909554327821.post-65022422986760936892011-05-18T10:02:00.004+02:002019-02-21T21:05:40.009+01:00Les Jeudistes Scottish Choir Tour No. 2<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmJdKSh7szBcB9ajJspRwVk8oIgT5EquRAe0mkA4_xWYsQUUycc14lV4wFIKrQIkqf7rSselDA-38VqEYJqTVOXgSSdm30k9Wshy1U5j_GTXgtiyAwijaOLNTMP2iikRaA_xAWJyxl7Xlo/s1600/whinnieknowe.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5607964207726594994" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmJdKSh7szBcB9ajJspRwVk8oIgT5EquRAe0mkA4_xWYsQUUycc14lV4wFIKrQIkqf7rSselDA-38VqEYJqTVOXgSSdm30k9Wshy1U5j_GTXgtiyAwijaOLNTMP2iikRaA_xAWJyxl7Xlo/s400/whinnieknowe.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 200px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 280px;" /></a><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
At the door of Whinnieknowe, the retirement home where my mother is a few months into her second century, Eloi the <span style="font-style: italic;">basso profundo</span>, perplexed by all the un-French Ws and Hs and Ks, asks me how you pronounce it. He might well be extra aware of the pitfalls of pronunciation: only that morning at breakfast Paul, our B & B proprietor, addressed him as 'Elloy' instead of 'Elwah'. General laughter. I pronounce it for him, telling him it means a small hill (knowe) covered with whins (gorse or broom).</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
We install ourselves in the south drawing room. We're all in uniform, red tops, black bottoms. Christine the accompanist settles herself at the Clavinova. She doesn't like electronic pianos. There's no control. This one is particularly brassy, even honky-tonkish in the higher registers. Christine does her best to draw a flowing<span style="font-style: italic;"> cantabile</span> out of it. It needs all her very considerable skill.<br />
<br />
We've come to sing to the residents, who have been placed round the outside of the room. They're all more or less sane. My mother isn't among them. Maybe she's chosen not to come. She can be quite capricious. She's also almost totally deaf, so there isn't much point in her coming anyway.<br />
<br />
We set off into <span style="font-style: italic;">Le Cantique de Jean Racine</span>, a serenely beautiful sacred motet by Gabriel Fauré. We sing it in French, but the theology is so abstruse that no one would be much the wiser whatever language we sang it in. About three quarters of the way through the doors open and a flurry of attendants eases my mother's wheelchair through. She makes nods and becks and wreathèd smiles to all the company, who respond appropriately. Through the music, now coming to a close, I hear someone asking 'Foo's thon wifie?' This is local dialect for 'Who's that lady?' (My mother stays in her room most of the time.) <span style="font-style: italic;">Le Cantique</span> comes to an end. They've sung it beautifully, despite this interruption. Polite applause.<br />
<br />
Taking into account that my mother's entry has spoilt the other residents' enjoyment of this piece, and that my mother herself hasn't had a chance to hear it, and that maybe a particularly persuasive carer has got her to put her hearing aid in for once, I say to the company 'Would you like to hear it again?'<br />
<br />
'No,' someone says from the other side of the room.</div>
Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14227767014123557100noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243468909554327821.post-83882852142817064542011-05-17T11:20:00.003+02:002011-05-17T15:30:19.031+02:00Les Jeudistes Scottish Choir Tour No. 1<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNsZlos21YoCpMXMVDotF2lE9HMK727AIo_wvkm4lS9UdU3RrNNiTB5wOfQzEsjiaXva7PktB21r-g315xK1lB2NzE69WcnfdL0WseJ9T6HLqANVbT4BpWCaRctpsxuLlnHvIZNf1JVjf7/s1600/DSCF1985.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNsZlos21YoCpMXMVDotF2lE9HMK727AIo_wvkm4lS9UdU3RrNNiTB5wOfQzEsjiaXva7PktB21r-g315xK1lB2NzE69WcnfdL0WseJ9T6HLqANVbT4BpWCaRctpsxuLlnHvIZNf1JVjf7/s400/DSCF1985.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5607612997419361042" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />Best joke of the tour :<br /><br />J-C, when offered a slice of pressed tongue:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">No, thanks. I don't much care for tongue. Somehow I don't relish the thought of eating something that's come out of some creature's mouth.<br /><br />I'll have an egg instead.</span>Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14227767014123557100noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243468909554327821.post-542931856320344902011-04-24T11:35:00.005+02:002011-04-24T15:16:50.048+02:00Spring Greens<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwGPYycSOJsyJ5Te4GyqVPRo2Lc5u3_3AfhLt5n958rfqDoSBlQ9QzvRRzUOc9DQGd4ljNGMxmCiGywSEvq16eS6u5smJ71nogDBo5Ng5Ll5SbbKoDp1c-QiaYyz2zFXlN4itee3jdWuhc/s1600/acabbage.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 281px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwGPYycSOJsyJ5Te4GyqVPRo2Lc5u3_3AfhLt5n958rfqDoSBlQ9QzvRRzUOc9DQGd4ljNGMxmCiGywSEvq16eS6u5smJ71nogDBo5Ng5Ll5SbbKoDp1c-QiaYyz2zFXlN4itee3jdWuhc/s400/acabbage.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5599081974698856146" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:180%;"><br />Is your name Green?</span><br /><br />by '<span style="font-size:78%;">Nomenclator</span>'<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">1. 10 years ago one Sally Barnes, who worked for a Yorkshire branch of Tesco's, spent £2000 on cosmetic surgery to make her look less like Su Pollard, an actress who enjoyed her hour or two of fame in a TV sitcom called Hi-de-Hi. This Su Pollard once entered a talent contest and came second to a performing dog. The contest, an early edition of Opportunity Knocks, was hosted by a certain Hughie <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">GREEN</span>.<br /><br />2. Stanley <span style="color: rgb(102, 51, 51);">GREEN</span>, however, who died in 1994, was a London sandwich-board man, whose message, sometimes in pamphlet form, was that carnal lust is brought on by eating beans, meat, cheeseburgers and particularly by sitting down. This was the message he brought daily to the Oxford Street crowds and cinema queues, some members of which occasionally attacked him. He cycled daily from Northolt to his work, standing in the saddle.<br /><br />3. Mary<span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"> GREEN</span>, maybe a 17th Century ancestress of the above <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">GREENS</span>, claimed to have a licence from the Archbishop of Canterbury allowing her to practise alternative medicine. She had cures for:<br /><br />a) Windy Vapours<br /> b) Glimmering of the Gizzard<br /> c) Falling of the Fundament<br /> d) The Scotch Disease<br /> e) The Wombling Trot.<br /><br />Mrs <span style="color: rgb(51, 0, 0);">GREEN</span> also produced publicity flyers in rhyme, one of which from 1685 read:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Cramp, the Stitch,</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Squirt, the Itch,</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Gout, the Stone, the Pox,</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Mulligrubs,</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Bonny Scrubs,</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">And all Pandora's Box.</span><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;">*<br /></div><br />Please underline as appropriate:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I feel this is an honourable surname and I am privileged to be called </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 204, 204); font-style: italic;">GREEN</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I am going to change my name by deed poll to </span><span style="color: rgb(51, 0, 51); font-style: italic;">GREEN</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">My name is/is not</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 204, 204); font-style: italic;"> <span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 0);">GREEN</span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"> and I do/do not wish to be associated with this twaddle and refuse to read any of it.<br /><br /></span>Good morning<span style="font-style: italic;">.<br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic;">*</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></div><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span>Next week: '<span style="font-size:78%;">Nomenclator</span>' asks: Is your name<span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);"> Welshcreep</span>?<span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div>Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14227767014123557100noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6243468909554327821.post-4128953350604340312011-04-20T12:10:00.002+02:002011-04-20T12:16:16.737+02:00Elephant's nest in a rhubarb tree<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjA3htKNlOQZbcQfo4CgdI-mUOODYMZmlnwVoOOkOjvcZvx9MQ3ksHeGXsvd0strYWw1B-g2Oe7Ez2ooXy2QdudNYsNyZEah-B9yYwLacqmmu2uT2JU4XBIo0IBAlKw5MJF8hMjEEtkPzx/s1600/apoliceman.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 389px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjA3htKNlOQZbcQfo4CgdI-mUOODYMZmlnwVoOOkOjvcZvx9MQ3ksHeGXsvd0strYWw1B-g2Oe7Ez2ooXy2QdudNYsNyZEah-B9yYwLacqmmu2uT2JU4XBIo0IBAlKw5MJF8hMjEEtkPzx/s400/apoliceman.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5597606615356789234" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">I don't know what might have triggered it, but during a wakeful moment in the night I found myself thinking about childish ripostes that passed for wit when I was a 9-year-old:<br /><br />Q: 'What are you doing?'<br />A: 'MYOB' (Mind your own business)<br />or<br />A: 'Ask no questions, hear no lies.'<br /><br />Q: 'What are you looking at?'<br />A: 'Elephant's nest in a rhubarb tree'<br /><br />Q: 'What's for dinner?'<br />A: 'YMCA' (Yesterday's Muck Cooked Again)<br />or<br />A: 'Yum yum, pig's bum.'<br /><br />Q: 'What's the time?'<br />A: [Whatever the time happened to be] 'Half past nine, hang your knickers on the line. When the policeman comes along, take them down and put them on.'<br /><br />[The implications here are deep. Is the assumption that you only have one pair of knickers? Why the policeman? Questions of scansion aside, why couldn't it be the greengrocer, muffin-man, hall porter, lance-corporal, etc.? Why should the policeman cause this reaction, maybe before the garment has dried? Does the policeman's advent somehow speed the drying process? Or are there considerations of public decency to be taken into account?]<br /><br />Then there was the immortal<br /><br />Q: 'Wotcher, cock.' (Still current occasionally)<br />A: 'Wotcher.'<br />Q: 'How's your mother off for dripping?'<br /><br />There was something obscenely suggestive about this, something I could never quite pin down. I went back to sleep before arriving at any conclusion.<br /></div>Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14227767014123557100noreply@blogger.com0