Link to article about Tolkein

I am a Lord of the Rings fan.  I didn't read it until I was about twelve or thirteen, and I read The Hobbit, after that.  I also love Wind in the Willows.  I can't really be bothered to explain why, so here is a link to a lengthy article (which actually I haven't quite finished reading!) in the London Review of Books by someone who, I think, feels similarly.  Germaine Greer apparently described LOTR as her 'nightmare'.  I don't think I'd get along very well with her.

People go on about the elves.  The elves are not the point.  If you don't understand that, then you won't like the book.  #thatisall 

 ‘I am in fact a hobbit,’ Tolkien wrote once,

in all but size. I like gardens, trees and unmechanised farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food (unrefrigerated), but detest French cooking; I like, and even dare to wear in these dull days, ornamental waistcoats. I am fond of mushrooms (out of a field); have a very simple sense of humour (which even my appreciative critics find tiresome); I go to bed late and get up late (when possible). I do not travel much.'

He sounds like my kind of person.

I liked the Lord of the Rings films by the way, hugely, but I do not like the Hobbit ones, at all.

Ambitions of Age #1. The Road... is Everlong...

I was half-watching a programme on BBC4 about the A303 when the presenter mentioned a quote from Hilaire Belloc's 1923 book, The Road.  It appealed to me tremendously and I looked it up immediately.  Ah, the miracle of the internet.  Within a couple of clicks I had ordered the book from Amazon (yes,  I know...)

"There are primal things which move us. Fire has the character of a free companion that has travelled with us from the first exile; only to see a fire, whether he need it or no, comforts every man. Again, to hear two voices outside at night after a silence, even in crowded cities, transforms the mind. A Roof also, large and mothering, satisfies us here in the north much more than modern necessity can explain; so we built in the beginning: the only way to carry off our rains and to bear the weight of our winter snows. A Tower far off arrests a man’s eye always: it is more than a break in the sky-line; it is an enemy’s watch or the rallying of a defence to whose aid we are summoned. Nor are these emotions a memory or a reversion only as one crude theory might pretend; we craved these things - the camp, the refuge, the sentinels in the dark, the hearth - before we made them; they are part of our human manner, and when this civilisation has perished they will reappear.
"Of these primal things the least obvious but the most important is The Road. It does not strike the sense as do those others I have mentioned; we are slow to feel its influence. We take it so much for granted that its original meaning escapes us. Men, indeed, whose pleasure it is perpetually to explore even their own country on foot, and to whom its every phase of climate is delightful, receive, somewhat tardily, the spirit of The Road. They feel a meaning in it; it grows to suggest the towns upon it, it explains its own vagaries, and it gives a unity to all that has arisen along its way. But for the mass The Road is silent; it is the humblest and the most subtle, but, as I have said, the greatest and most original of the spells which we inherit from the earliest of our race. It was the most imperative and the first of our necessities. It is older than building and than wells; before we were quite men we knew it, for the animals still have it to-day; they seek their food and their drinking-places, and, as I believe, their assemblies, by known tracks which they have made."

One of my long-held ambitions is to follow one of the ancient pilgrims' roads.  There's something about travelling slowly, and walking.  It's good for the soul.  Perhaps travelling in a fast car or high speed train is also good for the soul.  But it's different. Obviously.  A bit like the difference between looking in a real library, or in a real bookshop, perhaps even travelling to a different town or city to find a certain book or bookshop, as I used to do when young; and finding and ordering a book within thirty seconds of hearing about it....

Graham Chapman interviewed on Grampian TV 1987

Graham Chapman comes across as really charming (I'm not being sarcastic). He's my favourite Python, along with Michael Palin.  No idea what happened to the interviewer. Style very much 'high 80s', I'm afraid.  Shudder.

Interview with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir

Fascinating stuff.  Subtitles are pretty bad though.

Roots of Blues -- Blind Boy Fuller „Pistol Slapper Blues"

Mulligan and O'hare 1

Question of the day - the answer.

Oh - I forgot.  The answer to the previous question, viz. 'why is fruit round?' is, quite frankly - although why I'd want to be anything other than frank about fruit, and why I feel I even have to introduce an element of doubt, is a moot point - 'I don't know.'

Question of the Day - why is fruit round?

It isn't all round.  I know that,  of course I do - I'm not thick.  *Neither have I been living in a cupboard in John o' Groats since World War Two.  *Nor have I been living since birth in a hut in darkest Antarctica.  *Or on the Moon.  I wasn't raised by wolves in the wilds of Siberia.  *Or anywhere else where they don't have fruit.  I know about bananas and pears, and probably other non-round fruit that I can't quite think of at the moment,  and I am putting it out there before anyone starts.

However, the fact remains that most fruit is round.  Apples, oranges, grapefruit,  Sharon fruit, kiwi fruit (yes, oval I know, but basically that IS round), grapes (again, an elongated form of round, but still round-ish),  lemons (same), tomatoes (controversial), pomegranates, blueberries, strawberries (sort of round) - I could go on, but won't.

*I do realise - because I'm not thick, right? - that I've made mistakes slash errors with my nors ors and neithers.  But right now I have a life to live, a cup of tea to make, a biscuit to dunk, the toilet to go to, nails to file, nose hairs to pluck - and I cannot be arsed looking up the correct grammatical 'usages' or 'use', even, and so for the moment at least they must stay as they are.  Imperfect - like non-round fruit.

Tomorrow's question - linked.  Why are raspberries hollow?

Toilet Paper Soaked in Arsenic Klaxon

'OKAY OKAY OKAY WHAT'S GOING OOOOOON???'

'Nothing's going on.  It's all going OFF.'

'How d'you mean?'

'I don't know.'

'You must know.  And if you don't know,  I must find out.  I won't sleep unless I do.'

'You're such a control freak.'

'I know.'

'You know it all, don't you.'

'That didn't sound like a question.'

'It wasn't.'

'Ah.  It was a Statement of Fact.  And rightly so.'

'I HATE when you say 'ah'.  Sounds like you're sitting there with your arms folded, in your leather wing-backed chair...'

'Going aaaahhhhh.'

'Going aaaaaahhhhhh.  Counting your metaphorical chickens.'

'I don't need to count them.  They hatched last week.'

'I seriously doubt that.  Anyway.'

'Anyway.'

'Anyway.'

'Anyway what?'

'I hate it when you say ah.'

'Just as well you're not a doctor then.'

'One day I will kill you.  You should know that.'

'Why?  That is not at all the kind of thing I want to know.  Besides, you haven't the stomach for it.'

'Stomachs don't come into it.'

'That's what you think.  You're too stupid, anyway.  You've just proved it by informing me in advance of your murderous plan.'

'No I haven't.  I haven't said how I'm going to do it. Or when.  For all you know I've been planning this for months.'

'I bet you haven't.'

'Yes I have.  I've been soaking your toilet paper in a clear, odourless arsenic solution, then carefully drying it out and replacing it on the roll so's you wouldn't notice.  Each time you've gone to the lav or blown your nose, you've been absorbing arsenic via the mucous membranes of whichever orifice has been wiped.  And I've been rubbing my hands with glee - which is not a type of soap by the way.  Your body, according to my rigorous calculations, must now have reached total arsenic saturation point, or T.A.S.P..  So there.  And before you ask - I can see your mouth opening and I know just what's going to come out - I have a separate roll, so I remain quite unaffected.  You however will die a truly horrid death at some point within the next twenty six hours and fifty two minutes.'

'I won't.'

'Yes, you will.  You smug git.  There's no point arguing the toss.  It's too late.'

'No it's not.'

'It is.'

'It's not.  I swapped the rolls.'

'Oh...........'

'Oh indeed.  Or as I prefer to say, ah.  You now have twenty six hours and forty eight minutes to plan your funeral and make a few last phone-calls.'

'Jeeeeez...........'

'Quite.  Cigarette?'

'Might as well.  Nothing to lose now, have I?  Holy lavatory paper.  I didn't see that one coming.'

'Course you didn't.'

'You're not pulling my leg, by any chance? Or indeed, 'yanking my chain'?'

'No.'

Gram Parsons - Return Of The Grievous Angel

Haven't posted any Gram Parsons for AGES.  My day doesn't go well unless I listen to this.

Out of the Trees (1975), by Graham Chapman & Douglas Adams

Haven't seen this before, or at least can't remember it.  

Bill Hicks BBC Interview

I've always been a fan of this chap.  And this interview clip is one of my favourites.  I've read some unnecessarily snarky things about him recently, following the 20th anniversary of his death. 'Today, he would be in some dreadful sitcom' and so forth.  'Three hours of material'.  So what?  He died at 32.  Arses.  He never fails to make me Laugh Out Loud, he was clearly a Good Bloke, and I hate to imagine what it was like playing those dives he mentions.

The Genie, the lamp, and the triple cheeseburger scenario

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What helps?  If I was were fortunate enough to have the lamp in my sweaty clutches (doubtless after an Indiana Jones-style chase down a mine-shaft), and if I was were busily polishing it to a hi-shine with the frayed sleeve of my favourite stripey jumper, and if the Genie-feller were was asking me to ask him a - no, make that two or maybe three - question(s), what then?  I'd ask for Money, if I'm honest.  And plenty of it.  I've not got any, at the moment, obviously - well, not enough of it to feel like it makes a lot of difference.  And to be frank, not to mention earnest, it gets kind of pressing at times.  Immortality also,  in a state of prolonged youth, beauty and robust physical and mental health.  That makes four, or if he's being picky, five.   Oh Dear.  Perhaps if I squish squash them all together into one sentence slash question, he mightn't notice.


As if.........

Those Genie-fellers are nothing, if not tricksy.

Would anyone ask for anything other than the above, if they was were offered three wishes, by the way?  World peace, maybe?  It would depend entirely on the circumstances, I think.  Unless you were extremely altruistic and strong-minded. Which, let's face it, most of us aren't.   We can't all be Nelson Mandelas, or Lindsey Hilsums.  Or even Effie McGumphys from number 57s, who's been saving up every single one of her milk bottle tops in a series of bulging Lidls carriers crammed in behind the Hoover in the cupboard under the stairs for so long that she's forgotten why*.  And she doesn't even like milk.  In fact,  she's lactose-intolerant.
Take the triple cheeseburger example.  Imagine this scenario.  You're starving, having dragged yourself out of one of those deep underground caves after being trapped, foodless, for about a fortnight.  You stumble upon a lamp, and you give it a quick rub, not really expecting anything, but hey! what's the worst that can happen? You end up with an old lamp that is shinier than it was.  Or so you naively believe. Is there a teeny, weeny little corner of your mind that doesn't believe that?  Surely. Let's hope that Nobody is THAT stupid.   Anyway, of course the Genie appears, curly-toed slippers and all, and of course he asks you what might be your heart's desire, at that very moment.  There is a snack van two hundred yards away to which you could easily manage to crawl to, only it's hidden behind a rock and you can't see it.  Only the tantalising smell of cheeseburgers wafts towards you on an otherwise undetectable zephyr of wind  .  The Genie knows about the snack bar.  In fact, he and his life-partner Jeanie have been running it for five years, and turning a nice profit.  He decides to make things complicated.  He folds his muscly arms, Genie-style, and booms, 'You have two choices.  You can have three wishes, or, you can have World Peace for all eternity.  Which will it be, o fortunate one?'
'I'll have a triple cheeseburger please, with chips, and a large cherry coke.  Then I'll have everlasting beauty and lots of money after.  I'll feel so much better after that, that I'll be able to manage the World Peace bit all by myself without your help.  Or at least I'll have tried, or meant well, or whatever.  Don't forget the ketchup. Thank you!'

Only the Genie insists that the 'triple' bit of the cheeseburger IS the three wishes, and you don't get your coke or your chips, never mind the ketchup and a half-hearted, bilious, indigestion-ridden attempt at World Peace.

What an utter, out and out b'stard.  No wonder he turns a profit.

Ummmmmmmmm............................................

*it's for a special wheelchair for a local child who was badly injured in a car accident.  The child is now fully recovered and no longer requires the chair.  Probably best not to tell Effie, in case she dies of shock.  What with her being elderly and that.

Gil Scott-Heron - 'Where Did The Night Go'

Mendelssohn: Fingal's Cave Overture (The Hebrides)