What makes an adult? Given you agree I’ve made it, sewing this lot together creates an LdP template. But for you – and particularly you! - there’ll be variations.● Always vote.
● Of LvB’s symphonies like the Pastoral the least.
● No longer end restaurant meals with cheese.
● Respond to jazz nostalgically.
● Regard things as half of a pair.
● See London as a kind of Santa’s grotto.
● Prize comfort above cash.
● Go for more obscure operas (eg, Janacek’s Jenufa).
● Weep appreciatively at unexpected articulacy.
● Eschew public transport (other than trains).
● Acknowledge that some Mozart is musical boilerplate.
● Reflect smugly on time spent in foreign countries.
● Weep appreciatively (but embarrassingly) at what I consider to be great musical performances.
● Spend unthinkingly on keeping computer “up”.
● Avoid sentimentality re. grandchildren.
● Avoid sentimentality.
● Award imaginary medals to those who explain music well.
● Donate more to charity.
● Consider deleting previous admission.
● Rarely buy programmes at music concerts.
● Admire (quietly) those who kill officially on UK’s behalf.
● Drink far less beer.
● Increasingly prefer chamber to orchestral music.
● Write fiction to explore the feminine viewpoint.
● Worry about growing incidence of gorgeous (women) soloists.
● Read less, re-read more.
● Speculate on Sibelius’s ineluctable progress up the charts.
● No longer enjoy identifying political mendacity.
● Bathe less.
● Increasingly doubt worth of lists vs. prose.
Yes, it's a shame about the beer, isn't it, I regret that, but I just can't seem to fit it in...
ReplyDeleteDespite protestations to the contrary and earlier cannon balls admit that sentimentality is hard to escape.
ReplyDelete"In winters' tedious nights sit by the fire
With good old folks, and let them tell thee tales
Of woeful ages long ago betid;
And ere thou bid goodnight, to quit their grief
Tell thou the lamentable tale of me,
And send the hearers weeping to their beds."
Lucy: Fit it in temporally or volumetrically? Or both? One of my reasons for leaving the West Riding was that women who accompanied male booze-ups were expected to be good sports: a gin and it' were frowned on; women were required to drink beer too, albeit in halves. I can see them now, gathered in a small separate group, shivering round an inadequate fire, simply waiting until the men had had enough. The West Riding was never a heroic place to live in.
ReplyDeletePlutarch: I can't pretend that sentimentality has been entirely extirpated. My reaction to certain pieces of music (where beauty of performance links up with historical associations) is so excessive, so physical, that it must qualify as sentimentality.
The verse you quote is quite perfect - twisting at those sources of public display that I, as an Englishman, have managed to suppress for decades and which are now getting the better of me. What surprises me is I don't resent the change.
Ah, times must have been good when women were the brewsters.
ReplyDeleteMostly the problem is I don't like drinking wine and beer on the same evening, and if it's a drinking evening I generally opt for wine. Also drinking beer in any quantity results in almost instant weight gain which I can't afford. But I do like it, and am very fond of many of the local brews especially.
ReplyDeleteWhy do you no longer end restaurant meals with cheese? Do you eat the cheese at some other stage of the proceedings, or do you eschew it altogether?
I love the word eschew, so rarely heard in this part of the United States.
ReplyDeleteVoting tops my list in presidential election years. And I align with all your musical notes, except perhaps Sibelius.
ReplyDeleteJust retrieved a Brillat-Savarin aphorism for you:
ReplyDeleteA desert without cheese is like a pretty woman with only one eye.
RW (zS): Brewmaster - an OK word. Brewmistress - sounds as if something unseemly's going on in the hop tank.
ReplyDeleteLucy: Beer for me is now only a lunchtime drink. As a result it's limited to two pints since I'm almost always driving. Also it's a conscious decision since there's no acceptable pub within spitting distance (but many beautiful ones within a ten-mile radius - one of Hereford's advantages).
I love cheese and usually eat it in the evenings with wine. But once upon a time - when I was not an adult - I thought it was adult to end the meal with cheese. Desserts were only for people with sweet teeth, weaklings, or people of the opposite gender. These days I'm usually too stuffed for cheese (and the bread or crackers that usually accompany it) and I opt for a creme caramel - the unsweetest sweet. None of this is terribly important other than the fact that I've done away with a teenage snobbism; I progress in fact.
RW (zS): I use eschew a lot. Subtly different from avoid.
Julia: Sibelius noted. verb. sap
Lucy: I love cheese (see above) and I'm prepared to show affection towards all one-eyed women. Perhaps even write about them.