Well lets start the morning with elderly cats. As you all know Mollie seems to be settling down well, but I wish she was not so picky over her food. I laughed this morning when my daughter sent me this link about another elderly cat called Ginger in need of a home - Tasker maybe? Ginger has obviously all the traits that Mollie has, a tendency to domination and her needs fulfilled or they get cross and you will receive a reprimanding paw for disobeying.
Things that have struck me in my listening. Orwell describing politicians as like 'being a necklace of corpses strung round our necks'. Very apt, obviously the old white male (and apologies to any man who is reading this) is still an enemy to fight. Though in this case the present government have idiotic younger men and women. Liz Truss is so, fill in whatever word you think suitable, ambitious is mine, that like Margaret Thatcher does she even belong to the female race ;) Orwell's essay on writing is matchless.
Talking of which, Journalizing, (you have won American dictionary, I shall use the dreaded zzzzzzz instead of the English ssss) but only to signify a different type of journal. To journalize is to write privately each day, often embellishing your notebook with photos, collages or anything. Similar to a blog but a blog becomes public and so is approached differently.
I have been contemplating setting up my small rigid loom, have looked at a couple of videos just to check, but need some cotton yarn. Problems arrive via the warp, my table is four feet, so short. Should I take the warp to the bookcase it will be much longer, but do I need that length? Also, this is silly but I get sick from going back and forward. I think it is middle ear problem but annoying.
What annoyed me in the video of 'The Anguished Road to Tormorden' was the young man's flippancy (and so many have it) about the Unitarian Church. His silly remarks about 'the church for the units of ???' cheap words are easy, long ones not so. Flippancy is the sign of insecurity.
Obviously I have a certain amount of insecurity.
Also, quite pleased about this, what was nagging my brain about Pevsner. It was just that in his descriptions of our churches, he details almost 98% on the Norman and later era. So it is all stone and none of the beautiful wooden carvings that adorn the churches. From the carved stories that feature at the end of pews, to the traceried chancel screen.
For instance when scrolling through some photos I came across the wooden font in Normanby church. Well if you lifted it up and looked at the underside there was a little mouse carved by the 'Mouseman' more recent history of course but there to tell us who the maker was. I found another carved mouse on a wooden seat in the village of Newton on Rawcliffe.
Orwell is having something of a renaissance of late - and as you note not just the better known "1984". I think that in his time at the BBC he may well have had a foretaste of the way that things were moving, his wartime information unit was a forerunner to current "nudge" outfits.
ReplyDeleteI think Will I shall have to read up on him thoroughly. It is true that he has always been seen as someone who forecasted the future. I think that 'fascism' however you interpret it, is probably the road we are taking nowadays.
ReplyDeleteNo! no! no! no! no! I need one that will look after me.
ReplyDeleteShame, it looks as if Ginger can not only look after himself but will train any adopter to his way of life;)
DeleteI have all but given up talking about politicians now, and it was only ever you and maybe a couple of others who refused to defend their parties as their incompetence, stupidity and avarice became harder and harder to deny. Their defenders have become very quiet now. 10 years or more ago we were calling them that and each day brings new examples of it - at great expense and greater dishonour. The latest is the stupid 500 bunk barge now closed for a deep clean. You really could not make it up.
ReplyDeletePerhaps that is why Will is saying Orwell is becoming more popular again. It is a looking back to see if there were any more instances than this terrible time of governance we are going through. All Orwell says is relevant, we have gone back to be governed by one class, lets call them Eton mob, solely intent on banking any money from the state's revenue for themselves. Trouble is you have to bring the middle voters in as well, and at the moment they are not doing too well. When the only way Sunak can address the climate problem is to allow more licensing freedoms for oil and gas, you know you are sunk in mire.
DeleteI agree with Tom. No amount of satire compensates for real events now.
ReplyDeleteSpitting Image was reintroduced and failed because it wasn’t as dreadful as the real thing.
Please do read - and reread - George Orwell.
His Road to Wigan Pier is unmatched even though he’s a bit dismissive of my Sheffield.
You are right of course, but what we must do, apart from voting, is nag until we get better service from them.
DeleteFrankly politicians (and they don't do anything to deserve a capital letter) these days are either here today and gone tomorrow, or just plain boring and lack lustre. I would be hard pressed to name a dozen.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is were they ever any good Pat? there were some truthful and noble ones but all the media seem to do is follow the notorious ones and spit out rubbish. Though somewhere I have a speech by Hillary Benn.
DeleteThe only politician that I can recall having respect for was Enoch Powell (this was before his Rivers of Blood speech). He was the speaker at my school Founders Day one year, and kept nearly 600 boys and their parents spellbound for more than an hour on a hot Saturday morning.
DeleteI'm glad you provided a quick reference to distance yourself from that speech! But, and of course it has to do with rhetoric or the power of speech, obviously Powell had it.
DeleteLost reading Debby's post that includes Lucky Man by ELP. I wondered whether you know where Keith Emerson was born.
ReplyDeleteChuckle that was a trick question Tasker. He was born in Todmorden of all places. Do you want me to do a little biography on him. I may also add that we have had two Nobel prize winners out of Tod as well.
DeleteI think the family left Todmorden and moved down south not long after he was born. His birthplace was one of those useless facts that stuck in my head 50 years ago.
DeleteYes that what it says in his 'history'. He obviously had a more interesting life outside Tod.
DeleteThe young man knows that the churches are revered, and he may well feel none of that reverance himself (and that's okay) but being flippant is dismissing everyone else's feelings on the matter but his own. Just a self centeredness that is rude. If he was willing to look beyond his own perspective, he would be amazed at the view.
ReplyDeleteThe young are selfish and street smart for their own audiences, but they grow up eventually Debby. It is interesting to look at this phenomena of people making their own videos for cash on You Tube.
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