Better Late Than Never

Ten years ago we bought pancakes off a street vendor in Albertville- in Savoie- and they were very good- and we told ourselves (as one does when one is on holiday and wanting to hug the foreignness close and never let it go) that we could be making them at home- so we got Dot and Eric to give us a pancake maker for Christmas and it has been sitting in a drawer ever since.

Yesterday, being Shrove Tuesday, we got it out- and it works.

There's a sweetness to keeping faith with one's younger self.

Ten years ago I'd have loaded the pancakes with sugar. Now I add salt (they need something or they'd be awfully bland). Plus lemon juice, of course.

Getting Cross

I found myself lecturing the scammer (who said he was calling from BT) on the subject of his moral deficiencies- and realised as I was doing it that mounting the high horse is just another way of being cross- and that is entirely not who I want to be- so I signed off quickly- and then was cross with myself for being so tiresome- and then told myself that being cross with anyone or anything (including oneself) is utterly unproductive so I've stopped...

Stir-fry

Wednesday- so it's stir-fry for lunch. It's always stir-fry on Wednesday. Funny how quickly Wednesday seems to come round. Is it really a whole week since the last stir-fry? Well, obviously, yes. Not that I'm complaining. I love stir-fry.

Not any Wednesday, of course. Ash Wednesday. But I only know because we made a thing of cooking pancakes yesterday. I stopped paying much attention to the Christian year a long time ago. Ash Wednesday I particularly dislike. As if we needed to have a special day for beating ourselves up and feeling guilty when for most of us that's the default mode.

Self-hatred. I think it was/is positively wicked of the Church to encourage it so.

I've just finished watching the first season of Fleabag- and found it very relateable. Does all comedy deal with people who are desperately unhappy? I think it must do. I'm running through the classic sit-coms in my head and they all measure up. Truly happy people have no dignity to lose or pride to hurt or ambition to be thwarted- and are therefore not funny, but just fun to be around- which looks like much the same thing on paper but is actually quite different. If your trousers fall down at the vicarage tea-party it's only funny if you care- and if you don't care it's not funny but joyous.

Arguing With Myself About Comedy

Actually there is another kind of comedy- one in which the comedian is a trickster figure- a harlequin, a Mr Punch- an amoral anarchist- god or devil- who cuts a swathe through all the decencies- up-ending policemen, deflating stuffed shirts, showing up the absurdity of everything we take for granted. It's a tradition that is less strong in Britain, I think, than it is elsewhere- though Chaplin, who had a lot of Harlequin in him- was British. Both types of comedy are subversive. The difference lies in who you choose to put centre-stage; is it the subverter or the subvertee? Classic British sit-com loves its strugglers, its unsuccessful social climbers- think Captain Mainwaring or Hyacinthe Bouquet- the person who ends up with the pie in their face- and identifies with them in their mortification. You could, I suppose, call it masochistic. Fleabag is terribly masochistic. But few actual comedies are simply one thing or the other. The greatest comic creations are both sad and bad, pathetic and anarchic. Fleabag- the character (who- like Chaplin's Tramp has no personal name) is certainly both. Chaplin was both. Falstaff was both...