IN WHICH I ACCEPT A TAG

No, not one of those labels declaring my style of hat to be valued at 10/6.*

Clipart Mad Hatter

This tag is one of the blog games which seem to gain popularity in the holiday season. Some are not my fare (which celebrity would I most like to be like. Huh?) and I decline. But books I can do!

m.heart (like e.e.cummings, she eschews the upper case!), a talented photographer and thoughtful and thought provoking writer, has challenged me to open the book closest to my hand, turn to page 56 then write the fifth sentence. Ed: got that wrong! I’m to write the following 2 to 5 sentences.

Ah! But this is a problem. You see, I am at my computer, in a room which we laughingly (aw,heck! it’s not even laughable!) call the office and the nearest book is The Oxford English Dictionary and the OED does not go in for sentences. Moving on…a French dictionary, then a Maori dictionary (are you seeing a worrying pattern here, folks?). Next choice, one of my favourite poetry books, “How To Be Well-versed in Poetry” by the late E.O.Parrott, but P 56 did not yield a usable sentence either.

Because I had been writing something about private lives of artists I had, on the other end of the desk, a book about Monet’s house. And what should be on P.56? A glorious colour photograph! God! I lust after that dining room!

There was also Sarah Raven’s “The Cutting Garden” and that, too has more photographs than text.  What to do? What to do?

Well, bend the rules, of course! So I went to the wardrobe in the spare room and, there, in the middle of a snowy wood was a lamp post…oops! just slipped my moorings  for a minute!*

A scatter-cat had been playing in here and had, conveniently as it turns out, dislodged a paperback from its shelf.

“Last Chance to See” by Douglas (yes, he of “Hitchhiker” fame) Adams and Mark Carwardine. Page 56 describes their arrival in Zaire…

“The town turned out to be an enormous distance from the airport, probably at the insistence of the taxi drivers. As we bounded along the apallingly rutted road that followed the margin of the lake and along which a significant proportiion of the population of Zaire seemed to be walking, our driver kept on diving beneath the dashboard of the car for long periods at a time. I watched this with some alarm, which was severely increased when I eventually worked out what he was doing.”

If you haven’t read this, I urge you to seek out a copy. It was published in 1990 so should still be around.

It chronicles Adams’ journey with Carwardine, a zoologist, in search of animals facing extinction. Dull? A mind-numbingly tedious treatise with lots of big Latin names? Go on, read it. Then, if you think it’s dull, come back and blow cyber raspberries at me. I particularly like their ingenuity in makeshift waterproof housing for a hydrophone.

The tricky part is that I am now to “tag” 5 other bloggers who must then do this. Can I just leave this “on the table” as it were and allow you to help yourselves? Play, if you want to, but if not I shant send the Tag Police after you !

And thankyou, m, it was not at all onerous. And “Last Chance” is small enough to read in bed so thankyou twice!

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Andrea, talented artist, supermom and dog handler, has thrown down another gauntlet. She asks us: what crap do we have on our fridge doors? Well, in my case, that’s easy – none! My fridge doors are stainless steel. But on the former fridge (which, not being stainless steel, died of rampant rustification) I had some magnets. The one The Man likes best  reads: Born free, now I’m expensive.

I also have one saying: Sometimes, I wake up grumpy.Other times, I let him sleep.

And:

People who don’t like cats were probably mice in a former life.

How about:

I like to cook with wine. Sometimes, I even put it in the food

There were a couple of others. Maybe I’ll find them…

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The next beach up the coast from here, the one I can see from the front verandah, has a netted swimming enclosure. For years, it’s had holes big enough to give even a big shark a laughing fit. But ta-daaa! it’s been mended, re-set with stronger supports and is open for the public swimming therein. Whoopee! Perhaps I’ll drive up there one day and try it out. Meantime, I’ll continue my pool laps.

I saw a trailer for the much-hyped film “Australia” the other day. What I saw has not made me rush to the cinema and I have heard some damning reviews. And, other than this, there is a miserable programme on offer for the holidays. Time to get back to the library…

* Did you know that hat makers, in Victorian England, often were mad? They used very high levels of mercury in their trade (in treating the skins of beavers, etc)  and their brains were affected.

*Yes, I do have “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.”