Once Works Well was pure technology. Now it seeks merely to divert.
Pansy subjects - Verse! Opera! Domestic trivia! - are now commonplace.
The 300-word limit for posts is retained. The ego is enlarged

Sunday 23 January 2011

BB en route to Trier

The above photograph is a better illuminated shot of my Rhine barge cap and is at the gentle request of Rouchswalwe. I hope the braid and the decorated tape below the braid are now clearer. I have taken to wearing the cap as I write the novel and am experiencing a wave of smooth intellectualism typical of Germany’s most admirable former chancellor who wore his Rhine barge cap with enormous panache.

Note: The item supporting the cap is not my head.

NEW NOVEL First chapter completed: 5586 words, January 23 2011. Thanks to the excellent support I have received (see comments to previous post) about English French and French English I can’t wait to get on with Chapter 2

9 comments:

marja-leena said...

Lovely detailing on that hat! And I imagine much of the contents beneath to be well studied and memorized by the head that holds the hat! A writer's prized possession.

Lucy said...

It looks chocolate brown there, but I imagine it's black. Very swish anyway.

Unknown said...

Wearing the hat as you write the novel is good idea. Perhaps it will introduce a benign German note into the already multi-lingual dialogue. It will almost certainly give you confidence as your steer the plot beside the banks of your experience.

Rouchswalwe said...

Vielen Dank, BB! I cannot help but wonder if the braid-on-the-cap tradition carried over the Germanic tradition of the wife to cut off a braid (ein Zopf) of her hair to present to her husband before he set off on a journey. The German verb zupfen, meaning to pull, could have meant that she was pulling him back home at the end of his journey. Writing a novel can be seen as embarking on a journey, so the braids on your cap (from Mrs. BB) are quite important. Braids are woven, as a the writer weaves the story. The tape is simple, yet beautiful. And the leaves around the brim touch on ... promise, growth, creation.

Julia said...

Nice hat, and well photographed - it's quite hard to photograph black anything so that the detail is viewable (dogs, coats, etc).

One small rebuttal - I would be able to pick your face from a lineup any day!

Roderick Robinson said...

M-L: You should tease me as I tease you. A truly sharp eye would have noticed that the dictionary is published by Penguin, not exactly top rank up there with Webster, Oxford and Collins. Why, you might have asked, was I making do with second-best given my aspirations to becoming an over-pretentious, Proust-spoutiing, failure-damning, neurosis-ridden intellectual? Well, there is a reason but you'll have to wait until I post it.

Lucy: It was, I think, Robert Benchley who said there are certain propositions in life one is immediately disinclined to pursue. In his case it was fur-bearing trout. In my case it's a chocolate cap. The bedside lamp which I use to illuminate my computer keyboard (going blind as well as deaf) must be equipped with one of those bulbs which adds a peach-like seductive cast to a boudoir. No, I don't know why I bought it.

Plutarch: I am just back from Waitrose (50 mile round trip) where I wore my cap and out-stared anyone who glanced at me. Among the things we bought were a haggis and a Teisin Lap.

RW (zS): Look, this is important. Pour all your beer down the drain, condemn yourself to a diet of stale Mother's Pride and dismiss all your mates. It's time you entered a world that's ready to welcome you with open arms: fiction writing. I am touched by your baroque inventions and would love to know we were both slaving away in tandem.

Roderick Robinson said...

Julia: Quite right; my earlier photo of the cap turned it into a black blob, lacking in detail. As to the other matter, you aren't allowing for the passage of time. Away from Prague, I'm withering.

Rouchswalwe said...

Oh my, last month a good friend told me to start writing short stories. I told her she was full of beans. BB!

Rouchswalwe said...
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