The winter fuel allowance (£125) will shortly enter my bank account. I am lucky enough not to need this money and would prefer it ended up with someone who can make better use of it. Mrs BB and I support the sort of charities you might expect of Guardian readers – Amnesty International, Médécins sans Frontières, Book Aid as well as Cancer Research UK, St Michael’s Hospice, Hereford Air Ambulance (those last three clearly profiting from our physical decline).
If you have a pet charity other than those above, preferably something unglamorous that isn’t richly endowed (eg, The Rest Home for Retired Industrial Journalists – I jest! I jest!) sell it to me in 25 words and it will get a mention here and a slice of the pie. The more international the better.
Sunday, 5 December 2010
Saturday, 4 December 2010
The human equivalent of a farrier
ICY ENDURANCE EXPERIMENT (qv) This is now at an end. Mrs BB said she would refuse to speak to me if I continued.
SNIP, SCRAPE Chatting with dentists and doctors presents problems. But with chiropodists you’re paying, the prognosis is rarely fatal, and, hey, they’re down there and you’re up here. They’ve got to talk. And there’s that comical vocabulary: bunions, verruccas, corns - even seed corns.
My previous chiropodist did house calls but, slightly self-conscious, I entered the new one’s surgery (?) via the Beautonics façade. She used snips chunky enough to sever a power cable and didn’t care where the bits went. Chez Bonden that’s forbidden, Mrs BB insists each nail sliver must be accounted for. Putting down her snips the podiatrist (the words are interchangeable) picked up a scalpel; dimly I recalled the earlier foot-shaper using a modified potato peeler. I was told my memory was at fault.
Snips and scalpels are autoclaved after each session. Verruccas can be blasted cryogenically. I was told to anoint my feet with Vitamin E oil from Holland & Barrett. We talked about newspapers and I was asked to guess which she read. I got it wrong: not the Telegraph but the Saturday edition of The Times. I warned her about lining Murdoch’s pockets. Next time my questions will be more penetrating.
THE NEW NOVEL The central character, a woman, has a facial port-wine stain, naevus flammeus. Plot ideally emerges from factual detail. Perhaps while I lolled on the couch of chiropody a sub-plot-line occurred. Her boy-friend, a French aero-mechanic, is drawn to her by the disfigurement.
SNIP, SCRAPE Chatting with dentists and doctors presents problems. But with chiropodists you’re paying, the prognosis is rarely fatal, and, hey, they’re down there and you’re up here. They’ve got to talk. And there’s that comical vocabulary: bunions, verruccas, corns - even seed corns.
My previous chiropodist did house calls but, slightly self-conscious, I entered the new one’s surgery (?) via the Beautonics façade. She used snips chunky enough to sever a power cable and didn’t care where the bits went. Chez Bonden that’s forbidden, Mrs BB insists each nail sliver must be accounted for. Putting down her snips the podiatrist (the words are interchangeable) picked up a scalpel; dimly I recalled the earlier foot-shaper using a modified potato peeler. I was told my memory was at fault.
Snips and scalpels are autoclaved after each session. Verruccas can be blasted cryogenically. I was told to anoint my feet with Vitamin E oil from Holland & Barrett. We talked about newspapers and I was asked to guess which she read. I got it wrong: not the Telegraph but the Saturday edition of The Times. I warned her about lining Murdoch’s pockets. Next time my questions will be more penetrating.
THE NEW NOVEL The central character, a woman, has a facial port-wine stain, naevus flammeus. Plot ideally emerges from factual detail. Perhaps while I lolled on the couch of chiropody a sub-plot-line occurred. Her boy-friend, a French aero-mechanic, is drawn to her by the disfigurement.
Thursday, 2 December 2010
Whiling away the winter
Google-researching new novel. Progress so far:
TITLE (provisional) The Love Problem. TIME Now, especially re. Afghan war. HERO US-born woman with facial port-wine stain (PWS), commercial pilot in a small way, has left US (“No country for a woman with marred looks”) to live and work in SW France, near Biarritz. FIRST NAME She’s sexually straight but I need something slightly gender-ambiguous, hence (From Top Thousand US Women’s Names): Kristen, Karen, Robyn, Erin, Dana, Cass, Jodi, Jana, Reba. UPBRINGING Arizona, good flying state. Born/raised Flagstaff, town with decayed centre. Failed to make jet pilot with USAF; wonders about PWS. WILL MEET Divorced Brit, once making a living helping other Brits buy French homes, now on his beam ends. FIRST SCENE Driving US male pilot (who first suggested France to her) to airport as he flies back to work in US and leaves her alone.
AIMS: (1) Aspects of disfigurement, (2) … homesickness, (3) … US-France relations against Afghan war background - does French working-class favour what US is doing to Taliban.
MEANWHILE Break off to pick out Lady is a Tramp but can’t figure last eight notes of first eight bars. Email Julia who sends link to Sinatra plus note sequence:
That's -Why- the -La-dy - is - a tramp
D - D - Bflat-D-Bflat- D -Bflat
TITLE (provisional) The Love Problem. TIME Now, especially re. Afghan war. HERO US-born woman with facial port-wine stain (PWS), commercial pilot in a small way, has left US (“No country for a woman with marred looks”) to live and work in SW France, near Biarritz. FIRST NAME She’s sexually straight but I need something slightly gender-ambiguous, hence (From Top Thousand US Women’s Names): Kristen, Karen, Robyn, Erin, Dana, Cass, Jodi, Jana, Reba. UPBRINGING Arizona, good flying state. Born/raised Flagstaff, town with decayed centre. Failed to make jet pilot with USAF; wonders about PWS. WILL MEET Divorced Brit, once making a living helping other Brits buy French homes, now on his beam ends. FIRST SCENE Driving US male pilot (who first suggested France to her) to airport as he flies back to work in US and leaves her alone.
AIMS: (1) Aspects of disfigurement, (2) … homesickness, (3) … US-France relations against Afghan war background - does French working-class favour what US is doing to Taliban.
MEANWHILE Break off to pick out Lady is a Tramp but can’t figure last eight notes of first eight bars. Email Julia who sends link to Sinatra plus note sequence:
That's -Why- the -La-dy - is - a tramp
D - D - Bflat-D-Bflat- D -Bflat
Doesn’t fit. But that’s because I’m in C-major and Old Blue-eyes is in Bflat. Start practising Bflat scale – hey, it’s nearly all black notes. Time to brave the snow; off to Birmingham for LVB pnop cto 4 and Mahler 4.
Sunday, 28 November 2010
Lying on a beach - no raw material
Chez Bonden has twelve CH radiators. To save moola three are turned off, including the one in my study. I resist hypothermia by putting on my fleece, blowing on my fingers and thinking about stuff I have read.
Orwell dying of TB and writing 1984 in an abandoned house on Jura. A Jack London short story about a man outdoors in Alaska in winter, trying to light a fire with a limited number of matches – and failing. Peter Fleming (Ian’s brother) en route from Peking to Kashmir, a 3500-mile overland journey which began in February 1935 and formed the basis of News from Tartary. Gulley Jimson in freezing London, ignoring the cold and thinking only about painting in The Horse’s Mouth.
I tend to ignore explorers like Scott and Shackleton since enduring the cold was part of their reason for going where they did. I do reflect on climbers who embark on severe Alpine climbs in winter since I’ve never understood how they keep their fingers operative (Some don’t, of course, and DIY amputations are necessary.)
PAUSE FOR REFLECTION None of the above enjoyed the benison of having Mrs BB appear at the study door with a cup of Bovril. As now.
But Puccini has the final word. La Boheme opens with students shivering in a Parisian attic in winter. They have no fuel and one offers the manuscript of his novel so that they will be cheered, briefly, by the flames. An ironic passage in the libretto.
No one visits Works Well for its DIY photos; they merely help save words. However Younger Daughter asked me to capture her with Zach; b&w (courtesy Photoshop) turned out somewhat better than colour.
Orwell dying of TB and writing 1984 in an abandoned house on Jura. A Jack London short story about a man outdoors in Alaska in winter, trying to light a fire with a limited number of matches – and failing. Peter Fleming (Ian’s brother) en route from Peking to Kashmir, a 3500-mile overland journey which began in February 1935 and formed the basis of News from Tartary. Gulley Jimson in freezing London, ignoring the cold and thinking only about painting in The Horse’s Mouth.
I tend to ignore explorers like Scott and Shackleton since enduring the cold was part of their reason for going where they did. I do reflect on climbers who embark on severe Alpine climbs in winter since I’ve never understood how they keep their fingers operative (Some don’t, of course, and DIY amputations are necessary.)
PAUSE FOR REFLECTION None of the above enjoyed the benison of having Mrs BB appear at the study door with a cup of Bovril. As now.
But Puccini has the final word. La Boheme opens with students shivering in a Parisian attic in winter. They have no fuel and one offers the manuscript of his novel so that they will be cheered, briefly, by the flames. An ironic passage in the libretto.
No one visits Works Well for its DIY photos; they merely help save words. However Younger Daughter asked me to capture her with Zach; b&w (courtesy Photoshop) turned out somewhat better than colour.
Thursday, 25 November 2010
Ahhh, ain't that cute?
Marja-Leena has disgorged and photographed her pencil/ballpoint container and seems unimpressed by its contents, although to my eye the stuff looks expensive and “artistic” (another way of saying expensive). The contents of mine are predictable, mundane and cheap but the container itself has a history. It’s a Maxwell House coffee tin decorated with magazine cut-outs by my elder daughter, aged 5 – 7, while we in America (1966 – 1972). What is more remarkable is that resides on my windowsill here in Hereford. Prior to returning to the UK we had a garage sale and then threw away thirteen bags of viable household possessions and clothes. But this tin was retained. Neither of us is what you’d call sentimental.
A cold-weather pot-pourri
PROFESSIONALISM Members of Mrs BB’s painting group are concerned about her eye op. One is visiting us this morning “elevenish” and as I left to pick up the paper Mrs BB had started making little cakes. Such casualness
CLICHÉ STUFF The forecasts were gloomy last night: hard frost. It was mild and sunny when I set off for the paper, cold and windy when I returned. The walk lasts six minutes.
BABBLE Deafness. The problem is distinguishing what people are saying against a noisy background. The supermarket check-out for instance.
VALUE Currently the best quality bargains in French wine (ie, in the £8 - £12 bracket) are Coteaux du Languedoc AC. Of those look for villages with their own AC, especially Montpeyroux. Also Faugères and Picpoul de Pinet.
HORRIBLE The first motorbike I owned was a 125 cc BSA Bantam (see pic). Wretched. Note lack of rear suspension and pillion seat - but then it further lacked the power to tote two people.
DQ I’m 48 pages from finishing the 760-page Don Quixote. Would I recommend it? Yes, and for the same reasons I would recommend that every male youth in the UK does military National Service. Now I’ve done mine.
BROS K Plutarch suggested I read The Brothers Karamazov so I’ve bought a second-hand copy via ABE Books. It’s 985 pages. In the past I’ve made three attempts, the most recent failing at page 150.
LONG WAIT I am replacing my car with another of the same make and model. The waiting list was initially three months. Now it’s twenty-two weeks. Various reasons for the delay are offered: rarity of DSG automatic gearboxes and (the much more likely) rarity of RHD.
CLICHÉ STUFF The forecasts were gloomy last night: hard frost. It was mild and sunny when I set off for the paper, cold and windy when I returned. The walk lasts six minutes.
BABBLE Deafness. The problem is distinguishing what people are saying against a noisy background. The supermarket check-out for instance.
VALUE Currently the best quality bargains in French wine (ie, in the £8 - £12 bracket) are Coteaux du Languedoc AC. Of those look for villages with their own AC, especially Montpeyroux. Also Faugères and Picpoul de Pinet.
HORRIBLE The first motorbike I owned was a 125 cc BSA Bantam (see pic). Wretched. Note lack of rear suspension and pillion seat - but then it further lacked the power to tote two people.
DQ I’m 48 pages from finishing the 760-page Don Quixote. Would I recommend it? Yes, and for the same reasons I would recommend that every male youth in the UK does military National Service. Now I’ve done mine.
BROS K Plutarch suggested I read The Brothers Karamazov so I’ve bought a second-hand copy via ABE Books. It’s 985 pages. In the past I’ve made three attempts, the most recent failing at page 150.
LONG WAIT I am replacing my car with another of the same make and model. The waiting list was initially three months. Now it’s twenty-two weeks. Various reasons for the delay are offered: rarity of DSG automatic gearboxes and (the much more likely) rarity of RHD.
Monday, 22 November 2010
Let's get rid of the clowns
This is almost a coffee-table book and I hate those. But three columns of song lyrics per page justify the layout and it is meant to be read, not displayed.
Sondheim is a perfectionist which may be why he’s only had one real hit – Send In The Clowns. He applies perfectionism to others and attacks most of the greats including my favourite, Lorenz Hart (“jaunty and careless”), Noel Coward (“the master of blather”) and Ira Gershwin (“rhyming poison”). But none ends up more wounded than Stephen Sondheim himself; notably for the early songs in his most famous show, West Side Story.
Not many of us write song lyrics but most of us want to write better. This books tells you how. Sin No. 1 Verbosity (“For me the hardest sin to avoid… unless a character is hyperarticulate for a reason, cleverly rhymed logorrheic patter draws attention to the lyricist, not the character”). Sin No. 3 Redundant adjectival padding (“using a series of synonyms to fill out a line because there’s not enough to say. Eg, Expensive and choice and rare.”) Examples of these and other sins are taken from his own songs.
He agonises over exactness, as we all should. And his arrows hit home. Alan Jay Lerner’s lyrics in My Fair Lady have “an appearance of high gloss” but how about Henry Higgins’ “I’d be equally as willing/For a dentist to be drilling/Than to ever let a woman in my life”. This, says Sondheim, is “a syntactical train wreck, especially noticeable coming from a professor of English so meticulous about the language that the plots depends on it”. Get someone to buy it you for Christmas (it costs £30), laugh and learn.
Sondheim is a perfectionist which may be why he’s only had one real hit – Send In The Clowns. He applies perfectionism to others and attacks most of the greats including my favourite, Lorenz Hart (“jaunty and careless”), Noel Coward (“the master of blather”) and Ira Gershwin (“rhyming poison”). But none ends up more wounded than Stephen Sondheim himself; notably for the early songs in his most famous show, West Side Story.
Not many of us write song lyrics but most of us want to write better. This books tells you how. Sin No. 1 Verbosity (“For me the hardest sin to avoid… unless a character is hyperarticulate for a reason, cleverly rhymed logorrheic patter draws attention to the lyricist, not the character”). Sin No. 3 Redundant adjectival padding (“using a series of synonyms to fill out a line because there’s not enough to say. Eg, Expensive and choice and rare.”) Examples of these and other sins are taken from his own songs.
He agonises over exactness, as we all should. And his arrows hit home. Alan Jay Lerner’s lyrics in My Fair Lady have “an appearance of high gloss” but how about Henry Higgins’ “I’d be equally as willing/For a dentist to be drilling/Than to ever let a woman in my life”. This, says Sondheim, is “a syntactical train wreck, especially noticeable coming from a professor of English so meticulous about the language that the plots depends on it”. Get someone to buy it you for Christmas (it costs £30), laugh and learn.
Thursday, 18 November 2010
The ideal guest
Verse (second, if not third, division poetry) should never be explained but this sonnet deserves a word or two. A week ago I met Plutarch at The Blogger’s Retreat and subsequently posted my travel itinerary. But a fortnight before that I was invited to a more populous BR event to meet Lucy and her sister, Plutarch and his brother. Unfortunately this was on a Friday when both Mrs BB and I seek to develop our intellect in other ways. However I envisaged a high-charged, ribald lunch on The Aldwych at which I would be represented by what you read below.
Alas Lucy and her sister were forestalled from attending. Because I come from the West Riding and cannot abide waste I am forced to post these lines without legitimate reason.
Sonnet – Retreat from The Retreat
It suits me well, the role of absentee.
One mention, then perhaps a genteel cough;
Soon lost in bouncing waves of repartee
And swallowed by a curried bellylaugh.
Vacant and mute, I’m so much better than
My prying, hurtful, low reality.
A void instead of foghorn Yorkshireman
My views a trailer of eternity.
For I was born to tap and stare and wait,
For you to stop and let me in edgewise.
Think of the bonus that my empty plate
Has wrought. Think of a use for unused sighs.
I am the un-sat chair, untrammelled chat,
The unshared chutney, Erwin's twin-state cat
Alas Lucy and her sister were forestalled from attending. Because I come from the West Riding and cannot abide waste I am forced to post these lines without legitimate reason.
Sonnet – Retreat from The Retreat
It suits me well, the role of absentee.
One mention, then perhaps a genteel cough;
Soon lost in bouncing waves of repartee
And swallowed by a curried bellylaugh.
Vacant and mute, I’m so much better than
My prying, hurtful, low reality.
A void instead of foghorn Yorkshireman
My views a trailer of eternity.
For I was born to tap and stare and wait,
For you to stop and let me in edgewise.
Think of the bonus that my empty plate
Has wrought. Think of a use for unused sighs.
I am the un-sat chair, untrammelled chat,
The unshared chutney, Erwin's twin-state cat
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