Eight things
Jeffrey at Silence and Voice tagged me a few days ago. You’re supposed to list eight random facts about yourself and then tag eight more people. Let’s see…
1) I was born in Manhattan. 2) I just went for a 2 1/2 hour walk. 3) I’m wearing jeans and a blue, green and white striped T shirt. 4) I don’t like talking about myself. 5) I have a low boredom threshold. 6) My face looks sullen or even furious when it’s merely neutral. 7) I hate wearing hats. I do it, when it’s sunny or raining, but I hate it and pull the hat off in the shade or under a roof or overhang. 8) I like elephants.
So, eight people…Chris Dillow. Shuggy. Rosie Bell. Cam. Jean Kazez. Potentilla. John. Maryam.
I like elephants too. I can’t imagine anyone not liking elephants.
What am I, crazy? I complied. Perhaps it was because I also like elephants.
“Manhattan”.
Oh, ‘Man’ – the ‘hat’ can sure protect you from the sun and give you a ‘tan’.
I’ve always assumed that you are the one with bunches and glasses on the front of the Dictionary of Fashionable Nonsense. Is that right, or is that just a picture of an ‘edgey person’?
Yeah, I too kind of surmised that the bookish/reflective female caricature figure on the front of Fashionable Nonsense Dictionary book – advertised in the B&W News section – was a smidgen like that of OB. There is no little finger of hers cocked up as she holds the teacup in hand. This instantaneously gives an air of one being down to earth.
Oh, god, no, that’s not me. Fokking hell. I look nothing like that! The guy isn’t Jeremy, either. People often do think the people on the cover are supposed to be the authors, but they aren’t, they’re supposed to be a pair of pretentious pseuds, therefore not us!
We should post pictures in here.
Yeah, pictures!
I’m not ignoring the tag; it’s just that it’s been sunny here for a couple of days so the identification of Crocosmia has intervened.
Finally.
And you made a work of art out of it.
Yeah, pictures! Jeremy was going to post one or two, but I don’t know if he still plans to.
Maybe I should threaten to tag him for the 8 things unless he does, or would that be counterproductive?
“(1) I was born in North Yorkshire, at the edge of the moors,” What a very atypical place it is [I think] for one to be born. The Yorkshire moors is also synonymous with so many literary and famous [for evil reasons] people. The evil and the talented are namely as follows – the Moors Murderers’ Ian Brady and Myra Hindley! Both of whom often picnicked on Saddleworth Moor. This fact was also not lost on the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe. The Krays, Jack the Ripper, Roy Whiting, Ian Huntley, and the Yorkshire Ripper… child-killers – all buried their victim’s bodies on the Yorkshire moors. Classic Authors and Poets, The Brönte Sisters – Anne, Charlotte and Emily were all inspired by the landscape. Jayne Eyre, Agnes Grey, Andrew Marvell Bram Stoker – the author of the Victorian classis Dracula was also inspired greatly by Whitby, although Bram Stoker himself was not from Yorkshire. Fiction author Alf Wight {James Herriot). Playwrights Alan Ayckbourn and Alan Bennett also had Yorkshire connections.
“Where hast tha’ been since I saw thee, I saw thee? On Ilky moor baht hat” is a typical quirky fun scout song about west Yorkshire.
What a dolly mixture of folk there are with Yorkshire [Moors] connections.
Your tag is a very poignant one, Potentilla. Thank you for sharing it via B&W. It is positively uplifting.
Heh. Tags aren’t much of a threat; one can always ignore them. I wouldn’t have tagged people if I thought the tags were binding.
(I hope they’re not binding…I’ve found tags of me that were weeks old, far too old to revive – I hope I haven’t committed a terrible crime…)
“(2) I like books about cold places, like the novels of Halldor Laxness”.
Halldór Kiljan Laxness was born Halldór Gudjónsson in Reykjavík. When he was three, his parents moved to Laxnes, a farm in nearby Mosfellssveit parish,
I looked up the author last time he was mentioned on B&W {that was in relation to OB’s Buffalo holiday book suggestion] I discovered that in 1923 Laxness apparently turned to Catholicism and got the name Kiljan after Irish St Kilian – who hailed from Mullagh, Co Cavan? {The latter also had Bavarian associations} Laxness spent some time at Saint-Maurice de Clervaux, a monastery in Luxemburg, studied in London at a Jesuit-run school, and continued his spiritual search at Lourdes and Rome. Laxness became less and less interested in metaphysical questions, and finally he abandoned the Catholic faith” His novels, by your account sound very interesting, different and chillingly intriguing.
Jean K:
I will definitely add one of his simpler books, if there is one to my book list. thanks for passing on your erstwhile knowledge on B&W and yet again in tag. Hirsi Ali’s Infidel is presently on the top list. Laxness ascertained that James Joyce should have been considered ‘a surrealist novelist‘. He was also heavily influenced by Sinclair who was his favourite American Author. I googled Sinclair, and it turns out that he had like many other writers a very inopportune, regrettable upbringing. All, {mostly due] to his father’s alcoholism. So many Irish writers have gone down that dreary drink road. And in all probability as well, have also had relatives [before them] who went down the same long and winding drink road.