Round-Up

[poliphilo]

 One thing leads to another. Having contacted Les we find ourselves back in touch with other people from that period of our lives. Yesterday I was on the phone to a man I haven't spoken to in 18 years. In that space of time he's gotten divorced, started another long-term relationship, acquired a teenage step-daughter, earned a master's degree, taken up body-building...

The local water comapny are asking us to stop using hose pipes. It's not an outright ban just a "polite request". In related news they say we're due some proper rain this afternoon.

The next PM, barring accidents, will be either a banker dude with a WEF agenda or a populist with as few fixed principles as Boris Johnson. It ain't much of a choice.

David Warner died. I fell in love with his gentle, unworldly Henry VI in the RSCs War of the Roses- a quasi-Shakespearian mash-up that the BBC was smart enough to preserve on film- because I saw myself- or at least the person I aspired to be- in his performance. Later I caught him on stage- as Hamlet- a mooching, sixties Hamlet with shaggy hair and a scarf. I always went "Ah" when he cropped up in things- as he was very prone to do. Last thing of his that snagged my attention was a sadistic aristo in Midsummer Murders. He gave good Evil, but good Sanctity too because there was a spiritual quality to his persona. In comparative old age he got to play Lear and Falstaff- which- after a career consisting of fascinating bitty-bit roles- was only fair.

The door keeper at the Quaker Meeting lent me a copy of the Quaker rule book. He meant well but I rather wish he hadn't because it gives off the miasma of organised religion.  I shall give it him back on Sunday- with thanks- and hope to forget the effect it has had on me. 

I keep meaning to recommend Mrs Hancock's Mermaid- the first novel by Imogen Hermes Gowar- which I finished a week or two back.  Gowar snagged my attention with a review she'd written of Jessie Burton's latest- which was mildly critical of Burton's propensity for endowing her 17th century protagonists with 21st century attitudes and- seeing she'd written an historical novel herself- thought I'd like to see how she'd managed the genre herself. And the answer is- exceedingly well. Her people are Georgian to a fault- and not your usual Jane Austen Georgians- but whores and servants and merchants. The conceptual matrix they move in is modern but they themselves never step out of period. Gowar knows her stuff, writes beautifully and offers up no fewer than two Mermaids- one stuffed and the other disturbingly interdimensional. Google her name and you will eventaually come across a clutch of little videos in which she talks entertainingly about the late 18th century sex-trade.

Comments

[cmcmck]

I hose pipe ban here after the sort of Summer we've had would cause a real horse laugh!

[poliphilo]

Down here we're parched.

[heleninwales]

Was the Quaker "rule book" Advices and Queries? We don't actually have any rules or set beliefs. There is a certain etiquette to meetings, such as listening respectfully even if you think that a person offering their thoughts is bonkers. Also not responding immediately to add a comment of one's own.

[cmcmck]

'Advices and queries' is, as the name suggests, a few bits of advice and a number of questions (we're good at questions).

As Helen says, there are no rules.

If it was 'Quaker Faith & Practice' I'd say that was a bit heavyweight for someone newly through the door, although it is well worth a read if and when you feel like it.

[poliphilo]

It's Quaker Faith and Practice.

[cmcmck]

I'd say leave well alone for now although it does contain some lovely quotations.

[poliphilo]

It was Faith and Practice- a big red paperback almost as thick as the Bible.

[heleninwales]

That's a hefty tome if you have a physical copy. There are sections that actually are rules, but it's business stuff like how to transfer membership from one Meeting to another and those bits are not aimed at the ordinary member and certainly not for attenders like yourself. Mostly though the book is a collection of passages intended to inspire or provoke thought.