Trousers. Are three pairs enough? How often should they be washed? Once a year or biennially? The conviction grows I need another pair. Such a fag finding sand-coloured chinos of the right texture. Decision at the weekend.
Booze for my birthday party. While I'm awake wine, beer, cider and Sprite are consumed. When I'm abed youth turns Scotch and Drambuie into Rusty Nails. Until about 4 am. Must tread carefully until midday.
The novel. I'm a 21st-century writer yet the MS lacks a bonking scene. In an earlier novel I got round this with sex that was comical. Is the time ripe for a political allegory?
TV. I can hardly wait for the last two instalments of Chernobyl. Masterly. Gripping. Authentic.
Shoes. They are light brown; when it rains the toe-ends go whitish, hinting at poverty. The tin of polish (A huge step backwards into a deprived past) has only been used twice. Ye Gods, the paste could be drying out. But where's the brush?
Books with clout. Bertrand Russell's An Outline of Philosophy isn't enough to maintain my sagging reputation as an intellectual. After all, it's only an outline. Time to face up to the Thomas Pynchon acquired cheaply from Tesco's secondhand books table. Courage!
Appearance. My hair suggests I'm aping Charlton Heston as Moses in The Ten Commandments. Could let it grow but I enjoy chatting to Shara, my stylist. A light trim then?
Cake. This morning VR asked me: What sort? I dithered, finally said: Fruit. Fine, but it must be seed cake next time. The thinking man’s cake.
I find three pairs of trews sufficient to my needs these days, RR. I tend to live in multi-pocketed cargo pants or "action trousers" as they are called - no, I am not an Action Man. Plus a conventional pair for semi formal wear and another for extra formal use. Action pants go through the washing machine, the others get dry cleaned as necessary.
ReplyDeleteBooze of the alcoholic variety is out these days, it does not agree with my medication.
TV seems dire (I don't stream) so I tend to rely on DVD box sets.
Shoes, like trousers, 3 pairs. I live in leather trainers and have two conventional pairs one black, one brown. Like you, I find the "Cherry Blossom" in fragmented lumps (when I can find it.)
I don't do "books with clout" anymore. It's mostly historical novels now - nothing after the Tudor period although I still like "Landscape" and Robert MacFarlane is a favourite.
Appearance? I shave my own, mostly bald, head down to a "level 2" about once in 6 weeks. There's not enough to trouble a stylist.
A savoury man. I dislike cake.
Number 3: "staying in" or "coming out" springs to mind since you suggest a political allegory.
ReplyDelete(I hope I retain freedom of expression here thus missing the censors axe.)
Avus: You say your action pants "go through the washing machine" as if this was an event that happened on Mars. Suggesting it is not your concern. Amazingly you distinguish between semi-formal and formal parts of your life; such a structured approach! But be careful, your appearances in society may evoke the same sort of response as that accorded (secretly) towards Mr Collins
ReplyDeleteOur Chernobyl came as a boxed set, a thank-you from one of our daughters following the French holiday. If you ever see Chernobyl I promise you will live to regret that knee-jerk "seems dire" towards TV. Yet you are able to draw on Midsomer Murders as a comparison to one of my blog posts while apparently ignoring the non-fictional stuff (geology, history, science, astronomy, etc) on BBC4
"nothing after the Tudor period" means your mind is closed to the twenty-volume Aubrey-Maturin sequence covering Napoleonic times and written by Patrick O'Brian. I could say I've read it three times, I could add that it has many unexpected adherents (Lucy for one). But I won't.
Eating cake doesn't preclude eating savouries. I'm a great frittata man but you may regard that as foreign muckments. What then do you eat in those tea-rooms you seem to favour? You do realise that quiche is, by now, terribly passé?
Sir Hugh: That's rather witty. I had to read it twice before I caught its drift, but regard that as a compliment. Perhaps there's a future for a blog which mixes trig points (obvious symbols of priapism) with straight-forward out-and-out pornography.
ReplyDelete"Formal" is anything requiring a clean collar (ties only once a year for my regimental reunion) such as an invitation to a meal. Yes, I am actually invited occasionally, usually by offspring. However I would never comment on my hostess'"Excellent Boiled Potatoes"
ReplyDeleteI have had good reports of Chernobyl. Mentioning "dire" TV I refer to the trash offered by Freeview to fill the schedules. I grant you that BBC 4 is a candle in the darkness.
Quiche may be "terribly passé", but I enjoy it and don't do fashion in food. Sometimes I will have a tuna-melt panini on a cold weather cycling break, otherwise it's brown toast with marmalade or a toasted teacake with black currant jam. I enjoy frittata but prefer it with a crust around it, aka "quiche".
Forget about the brush. At one of his earlier career stages, my father in law was under-manager at the Negresco in Nice for a year in the 1950s (before managing the Shelbourne in Dublin for a couple more years) and apart from his excellent table setting and wine selection skills, taught me to always use an old vest for both, the application os shoe polish and the actual polishing of the shoes.
ReplyDeleteAvus: I'm trying to imagine the reaction of octagenarian ex-RAF junior technicians as I shuffled in through the door to attend one of their (much diminished) annual reunions. Wearing khaki shorts, flip-flops and nothing much else. "Tis what I wore in RAF Seletar (Singapore) where I - somewhat inexpertly - repaired VHF transmitters/receivers," I'd explain vainly before they kicked me out as a disgrace to the service. The odd thing being that much of my post-NS life as a journalist paid involuntary tribute to the eight-month course on electronics (27 separate exams) which the RAF forced me though.
ReplyDelete"don't do fashion in food" you say in another of those incautious sweeping statements. Yet you apparently would recognise a panini. And I wouldn't. No doubt you regularly feasted on them when you ate in the marble-walled halls of consumption with the Brown Jobs. No reconstituted scrambled egg (water leaching from a mess of yellow powder) for you.
Yet here I am, trawling through the past when the aim of this most recent post was to consider the future. The past must be a magnet, the future also a magnet but of different polarity.
Sabine: Alas your somewhat abrupt command is as naught against the weight of history. Brits (and I am one despite my growing sense of shame about my nationality) will always associate brushes with shoes. I believe, but can't be sure, I was even issued with one for this purpose when I embarked on my two years national service in the RAF. As to vests I haven't worn one since I was about five; I suffered from what was labelled a weak chest (diagnosis was something of a black art back then) and my vest was combined with a flanelette bodice to shore up protection. The eventual, correct solution arrived fifty-five years later when I moved out of a densely populated urban area and into the comparative countryside here in Herefordshire.
If your fruit cake is actually what I think of as fruit cake, it is only made in the States at Christmas time. More's the pity, it is so good.
ReplyDeleteColette: Fruit cake differs from Christmas cake in that the latter goes to excess. Fruit cake contains merely a handful of currants, raisins and/or sultanas. The latter has three times the amount of dried fruit, loads of candied peel, nuts (especially almonds), at least 150 ml of brandy and - if you were lucky - a silver threepenny bit on which to break your teeth. Adding currency lost favour when the silver bit (somewhat less in size than a dime) gave way to a multi-faceted coin in which the silver content was much reduced, with the remainder consisting of nickel-brass.
ReplyDeleteChristmas cake is often made months before Christmas. Its contents appear to prevent it from going mouldy. According to traditional categorisation, Christmas cake qualifies as "heavy".