On January 20th, just five minutes before midnight, King George V died at Sandringham House and his widow, whose sense of duty had never at any time been jeopardized by sentiment, instantly turned from the deathbed to kiss the hand of the young man at her side. He was embarrassed but she was right. The following morning Britain and the Empire contemplated the features of King Edward VIII. They were the most familiar features--blue eyes, retrousse nose, wistful mouth--in the whole world, and the Press was unanimous in declaring that the kingship became them. The new king was forty years old but an unparalleled expenditure of celluloid had arrested the years in his case, and his subjects, hallucinated by a photogenic fairy-tale which had begun in 1911 at Caernarvon Castle, watched tenderly as a slight blond youth ascended, with what appeared to be becoming reluctance, the remote eminence from which death alone could release him. Or so it was believed.
The new King flew from Norfolk to his Accession Council in St James's Palace in an aeroplane, so creating the first of a series of precedents which were to land him in a dilemma usually reserved for the characters of Dornford Yates. That afternoon, in the Banqueting Hall of St James's, a hundred Privy Councillors swore allegiance to the High and Mighty Prince Albert Edward Christian George Andrew Patrick David, their only lawful Liege Lord. But all the new King saw was a large group of elderly men wearing on their faces the expression of the last reign and hiding in their hearts some astounding suspicions.
Ronald Blythe, The Age of Illusion
Saturday 16 February 2013
Friday 15 February 2013
Curl Up & Diet
Some ladies smoke too much and some ladies drink too much and some ladies pray too much,
But all ladies think that they weigh too much.
They may be as slender as a sylph or a dryad,
But just let them get on the scales and they embark on a doleful jeremiad:
No matter how low the figure the needle happens to touch,
They always claim it is at least five pounds to much;
To the world she may appear slinky and feline,
But she inspects herself in the mirror and cries, Oh, I look like a sea lion.
Yes, she tells you she is growing into the shape of a sea cow or manatee,
And if you say No, my dear, she says you are just lying to make her feel better, and if you say Yes, my dear, you injure her vanity.
Once upon a time there was a girl more beautiful and witty and charming than tongue can tell,
And she is now a dangerous raving maniac in a padded cell,
And the first indication her friends and relatives had that she was mentally overwrought
Was one day when she said, I weigh a hundred and twenty-seven, which is exactly what I ought.
Oh, often I am haunted
By the thought that somebody might someday discover a diet that would let ladies reduce just as much as they wanted,
Because I wonder if there is a woman in the world strong-minded enough to shed ten pounds or twenty,
And say There now, that’s plenty;
And I fear me one ten-pound loss would only arouse the craving for another,
So it wouldn’t do any good for ladies to get their ambition and look like somebody’s fourteen-year-old brother,
Because, having accomplished this with ease,
They would next want to look like somebody’s fourteen-year-old brother in the final stages of some obscure disease,
And the more success you have the more you want to get of it,
So then their goal would be to look like somebody’s fourteen-year-old brother’s ghost, or rather not the ghost itself, which is fairly solid, but a silhouette of it,
So I think it is very nice for ladies to be lithe and lissome.
But not so much so that you cut yourself if you happen to embrace or kissome.
Ogden Nash
But all ladies think that they weigh too much.
They may be as slender as a sylph or a dryad,
But just let them get on the scales and they embark on a doleful jeremiad:
No matter how low the figure the needle happens to touch,
They always claim it is at least five pounds to much;
To the world she may appear slinky and feline,
But she inspects herself in the mirror and cries, Oh, I look like a sea lion.
Yes, she tells you she is growing into the shape of a sea cow or manatee,
And if you say No, my dear, she says you are just lying to make her feel better, and if you say Yes, my dear, you injure her vanity.
Once upon a time there was a girl more beautiful and witty and charming than tongue can tell,
And she is now a dangerous raving maniac in a padded cell,
And the first indication her friends and relatives had that she was mentally overwrought
Was one day when she said, I weigh a hundred and twenty-seven, which is exactly what I ought.
Oh, often I am haunted
By the thought that somebody might someday discover a diet that would let ladies reduce just as much as they wanted,
Because I wonder if there is a woman in the world strong-minded enough to shed ten pounds or twenty,
And say There now, that’s plenty;
And I fear me one ten-pound loss would only arouse the craving for another,
So it wouldn’t do any good for ladies to get their ambition and look like somebody’s fourteen-year-old brother,
Because, having accomplished this with ease,
They would next want to look like somebody’s fourteen-year-old brother in the final stages of some obscure disease,
And the more success you have the more you want to get of it,
So then their goal would be to look like somebody’s fourteen-year-old brother’s ghost, or rather not the ghost itself, which is fairly solid, but a silhouette of it,
So I think it is very nice for ladies to be lithe and lissome.
But not so much so that you cut yourself if you happen to embrace or kissome.
Ogden Nash
Thursday 14 February 2013
Orsino
If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe'er,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe'er,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Tuesday 5 February 2013
The Sweetshop Round the Corner
The child dreaming along a crowded street
Lost hold of his mother, who had turned to greet
Some neighbour, and mistakenly matched his tread
With a strange woman's. "Buy me sweets," he said,
Waving his hand, which he found warmly pressed;
So dragged her on, boisterous and self-possessed;
"The sweetshop's round the corner!" Both went in,
And not for a long while did the child begin
To feel a dread that something had gone wrong:
Were mother's legs so lean, or her shoes so long,
Or her skirt so patched, or her hair tousled and grey?
Why did she twitter in such a ghostly way?
"O Mother, are you dead?"
What else could a child say?
Robert Graves
Lost hold of his mother, who had turned to greet
Some neighbour, and mistakenly matched his tread
With a strange woman's. "Buy me sweets," he said,
Waving his hand, which he found warmly pressed;
So dragged her on, boisterous and self-possessed;
"The sweetshop's round the corner!" Both went in,
And not for a long while did the child begin
To feel a dread that something had gone wrong:
Were mother's legs so lean, or her shoes so long,
Or her skirt so patched, or her hair tousled and grey?
Why did she twitter in such a ghostly way?
"O Mother, are you dead?"
What else could a child say?
Robert Graves
Sunday 3 February 2013
Footnote (1945)
An odd detail was the Russian soldier's delight in throwing a piano out of a window. In the last months of World War II when a city like Danzig, Poznan or Breslau had been liberated, the Red Army commander granted his men two days to drink, rape and destroy. Their ultimate joy was to locate a piano in some looted building and then tug, push, grunt, sweat it up the stairs, crash it into the apartment at the top landing, and then, after smashing the window frames with gun butts, to shove it out of the window and let it drop to the sidewalk below.
Imagine if you can the fall of a piano from a four-story building, the explosion when it hit, the unbelieveable sound of shattering wood and torn wires in a hundred different tones. If you met someone whose soul had been ravished by the same experience, you would know that he knew, and together you might set out to recapture the moment, like the perfect high, the perfect orgasm, the perfect rock concert, that those who had not shared could never grasp in a thousand years. One absolute moment of creation and destruction, both as one, that the Eastern mind could comprehend and the Western, fettered to sterile rationalism until the student uprising of the 1960s, could not.
Charles Merrill, The Journey
Imagine if you can the fall of a piano from a four-story building, the explosion when it hit, the unbelieveable sound of shattering wood and torn wires in a hundred different tones. If you met someone whose soul had been ravished by the same experience, you would know that he knew, and together you might set out to recapture the moment, like the perfect high, the perfect orgasm, the perfect rock concert, that those who had not shared could never grasp in a thousand years. One absolute moment of creation and destruction, both as one, that the Eastern mind could comprehend and the Western, fettered to sterile rationalism until the student uprising of the 1960s, could not.
Charles Merrill, The Journey
Saturday 2 February 2013
(Nearly) January
Nine minutes to twelve on New Year’s Eve and I’m leaning against the radiator in my bedroom with my head out of the window. For dramatic effect, I’m taking in exaggeratedly bracing gulps of East Lothian air. I’m watching the stars, mentally preparing myself for a new year and a new start. I’m going to be strong, and I’m going to be better. I am totally focused on turning over a new leaf. It is my last chance to redeem myself.
I am thirteen.
Aside from the stars, clear in a navy-blue sky, all I can see is the snow. Good, clean, crisp and criss-crossed from perpetual sledging. In 1979, snow was still liable to fall right through the winter. And thank God it did. For three dark months of the year it was just about all we had. There was no cinema. The boys had relentlessly turned up for every film and thrown bottles at the screen until it was too tattered to see anything projected onto it. There was no dancing. The youth disco that Chick Rankin had set up to combat glue sniffing was closed, due to excessive fighting between second-generation mods and rockers, and generally more glue sniffing.
You could get a drink at the Miners Arms, provided you had big tits and wore blusher. But for those drinkers without adequate breasts and make-up skills, the only other option was to drink cider and pop aspirin under the Roman Bridge. However, the vicious Scottish frosts could put paid to that behaviour by as early as mid-October.
Sledging was quite welcome for me because it took sex off the agenda. As a child, all sexual activity took place outside. So the arrival of snow meant that, happily, sex could be replaced by winter sports. Snowball fights and hazardous icy gauntlets on the well-polished teachers’ walkway that led from the school car park - all that was just fine by me. It gave me a break from the usual. For come summer or winter, I hated the whole sex thing. For me it was nothing to do with lust, desire, physical drive or romance. Or experimentation (unless I was experimenting with misery). It was all about pressure and fitting in - part bargaining, part fear of losing whoever was interested in me at the time, part living in pointless hope that it might lead to a boy holding my hand, or wanting to take me to the school Christmas disco, where we’d romantically kiss beneath the mistletoe held over our heads.
But all the fingering was in vain. By the age of twelve, I was officially a slag, a cow, and a whore. I couldn’t fucking win. This was my lot and it was all my fault. I gave it all up to them too early, because that’s what they wanted - and in my naïve logic I thought if I did what they wanted they would like me for it. But instead they hated me. They preferred the girls that gave them nothing: the silent, beautiful, boring girls, who wouldn’t let them touch them for another four years. They waited patiently and respectfully, doing all the mistletoe, hand-holding, Valentine stuff with them until they finally gave way. Meanwhile, they passed their time with me.
And while I longed for the things the boys would never give me, I had other longings too - a desire, and the painful, hopeless pursuit of it, that dominated my life. This was the only thing on my mind tonight. No longer would I be obsessed with girls.
Rhona Cameron - 1979
I am thirteen.
Aside from the stars, clear in a navy-blue sky, all I can see is the snow. Good, clean, crisp and criss-crossed from perpetual sledging. In 1979, snow was still liable to fall right through the winter. And thank God it did. For three dark months of the year it was just about all we had. There was no cinema. The boys had relentlessly turned up for every film and thrown bottles at the screen until it was too tattered to see anything projected onto it. There was no dancing. The youth disco that Chick Rankin had set up to combat glue sniffing was closed, due to excessive fighting between second-generation mods and rockers, and generally more glue sniffing.
You could get a drink at the Miners Arms, provided you had big tits and wore blusher. But for those drinkers without adequate breasts and make-up skills, the only other option was to drink cider and pop aspirin under the Roman Bridge. However, the vicious Scottish frosts could put paid to that behaviour by as early as mid-October.
Sledging was quite welcome for me because it took sex off the agenda. As a child, all sexual activity took place outside. So the arrival of snow meant that, happily, sex could be replaced by winter sports. Snowball fights and hazardous icy gauntlets on the well-polished teachers’ walkway that led from the school car park - all that was just fine by me. It gave me a break from the usual. For come summer or winter, I hated the whole sex thing. For me it was nothing to do with lust, desire, physical drive or romance. Or experimentation (unless I was experimenting with misery). It was all about pressure and fitting in - part bargaining, part fear of losing whoever was interested in me at the time, part living in pointless hope that it might lead to a boy holding my hand, or wanting to take me to the school Christmas disco, where we’d romantically kiss beneath the mistletoe held over our heads.
But all the fingering was in vain. By the age of twelve, I was officially a slag, a cow, and a whore. I couldn’t fucking win. This was my lot and it was all my fault. I gave it all up to them too early, because that’s what they wanted - and in my naïve logic I thought if I did what they wanted they would like me for it. But instead they hated me. They preferred the girls that gave them nothing: the silent, beautiful, boring girls, who wouldn’t let them touch them for another four years. They waited patiently and respectfully, doing all the mistletoe, hand-holding, Valentine stuff with them until they finally gave way. Meanwhile, they passed their time with me.
And while I longed for the things the boys would never give me, I had other longings too - a desire, and the painful, hopeless pursuit of it, that dominated my life. This was the only thing on my mind tonight. No longer would I be obsessed with girls.
Rhona Cameron - 1979
Friday 1 February 2013
Chapter XXXVII
What am I going to say? Where do I start? When shall we three meet
again? Don't you remember? Do you believe in reincarnation? Who are you?
Is this the object, end and law and purpose of our being here? Chi lo sa? Is
that you, Grandpa? Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone? Where am I? What
time is it? Ah, why wilt thou affright a feeble soul? Why are you
telling me this? Why not? What's that awful smell? The flea market?
Sewage farms? Or, simply put, the garbage can? Can't you believe me just
once, mother, while you're still around? What's this all about? What do
you think? What's up? Quid novi? Why warum? Do you know just how late it is? What's it look like to you? What happened to my slippers?
What'll we have? What boots the enquiry? Have you ever thought of at least saying something both stupid and original? Why rub it in? Can't you say anything? What is death? What is the word death? What is the word word? What is the word homo? What do I know? But is it art? Or smut? Ah, did you once see Shelley plain? What are you waiting for? Does the accused have anything more to say in his defence? Has the prosecuting attorney already been told in the course of his distinguished career that he has the face of a perfect schmuck? Of what? What's that? Hello? How can you take him seriously? Can you beat that? What orchid? Don't you ever read the newspapers? It's true, isn't it? How is it, shadows, that I knew thee not? But how does it work? What was it made them thus exempt from care? Didn't I explain that already? What did they say? Do I have to draw you a picture? Anything else, madam? Would you care to have it wrapped? Do you think at your age it is right? Where are the songs of spring, ay, where are they? Of two such lessons, why forget the nobler and the manlier one? Can we give him the works, boss? Has he no friend, no loving mother near? What happened to you? Why are you doing your best to destroy yourself? Why don't you take a bath? Why make things simple when you can make them complicated?
What did I do? What am I doing here? Where do we go from here? Say, may I be for aye thy vassal blest, thy beauty's shield, heart-shap'd and vermeil dyed? Who do I have to fuck to get out of this place? Who was that beautiful woman I saw you with? How can you say that? But who will rid me of this insolent priest? Is the weather always like this? Whom have I the honor? What needs my Shakespeare for his honored bones? And must thy lyre, so long divine, degenerate into hands like mine? What's the weather like in London? Why are you doing that? What's your business? What business is that of yours? Did he who made the Lamb make thee? What is the creature that walks on four legs in the morning, on two legs at noon, and on three legs in the evening? Who put the overalls is Mrs. Murphy's chowder? Why don't you look it up? Where did he go? Jesus Christ, who was that guy? And what manner of man art thou? What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry? Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? What seems to be the problem, officer? What's going on? Do I make myself clear? Do you have anything to declare? Which way to the train station? Taxi, are you free?
What's the matter? How old are you? And what is love? How much is that? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? But where are the snows of yesteryear? What ever happened to Baby Jane? Why don't you get to the point? If you're so smart, why don't you figure it out? Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all? Does truth sound bitter as one at first believes? Shall I part my hair behind? Will the weevil delay? What's the name of this schlemiel? Is that really necessary? Do you absolutely insist on climbing that ladder? Haven't you got a grain of sense in your head? What's the greatest engineering feat ever performed? What's the point of it all? Can it get any better than this? If winter comes, can spring be far behind? What-is the point? What was the color of George Washington's white horse? Death, where is they sting? Do you actually trust doctors? Why does a chicken cross the road? When is a door not a door? And when the sun set, where were they? Who actually wrote that? Do I wake or sleep?
Francois Caradec, "Regular or Decaf?"
What'll we have? What boots the enquiry? Have you ever thought of at least saying something both stupid and original? Why rub it in? Can't you say anything? What is death? What is the word death? What is the word word? What is the word homo? What do I know? But is it art? Or smut? Ah, did you once see Shelley plain? What are you waiting for? Does the accused have anything more to say in his defence? Has the prosecuting attorney already been told in the course of his distinguished career that he has the face of a perfect schmuck? Of what? What's that? Hello? How can you take him seriously? Can you beat that? What orchid? Don't you ever read the newspapers? It's true, isn't it? How is it, shadows, that I knew thee not? But how does it work? What was it made them thus exempt from care? Didn't I explain that already? What did they say? Do I have to draw you a picture? Anything else, madam? Would you care to have it wrapped? Do you think at your age it is right? Where are the songs of spring, ay, where are they? Of two such lessons, why forget the nobler and the manlier one? Can we give him the works, boss? Has he no friend, no loving mother near? What happened to you? Why are you doing your best to destroy yourself? Why don't you take a bath? Why make things simple when you can make them complicated?
What did I do? What am I doing here? Where do we go from here? Say, may I be for aye thy vassal blest, thy beauty's shield, heart-shap'd and vermeil dyed? Who do I have to fuck to get out of this place? Who was that beautiful woman I saw you with? How can you say that? But who will rid me of this insolent priest? Is the weather always like this? Whom have I the honor? What needs my Shakespeare for his honored bones? And must thy lyre, so long divine, degenerate into hands like mine? What's the weather like in London? Why are you doing that? What's your business? What business is that of yours? Did he who made the Lamb make thee? What is the creature that walks on four legs in the morning, on two legs at noon, and on three legs in the evening? Who put the overalls is Mrs. Murphy's chowder? Why don't you look it up? Where did he go? Jesus Christ, who was that guy? And what manner of man art thou? What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry? Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? What seems to be the problem, officer? What's going on? Do I make myself clear? Do you have anything to declare? Which way to the train station? Taxi, are you free?
What's the matter? How old are you? And what is love? How much is that? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? But where are the snows of yesteryear? What ever happened to Baby Jane? Why don't you get to the point? If you're so smart, why don't you figure it out? Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all? Does truth sound bitter as one at first believes? Shall I part my hair behind? Will the weevil delay? What's the name of this schlemiel? Is that really necessary? Do you absolutely insist on climbing that ladder? Haven't you got a grain of sense in your head? What's the greatest engineering feat ever performed? What's the point of it all? Can it get any better than this? If winter comes, can spring be far behind? What-is the point? What was the color of George Washington's white horse? Death, where is they sting? Do you actually trust doctors? Why does a chicken cross the road? When is a door not a door? And when the sun set, where were they? Who actually wrote that? Do I wake or sleep?
Francois Caradec, "Regular or Decaf?"
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