To Erp

My daughter and her 'boyfriend' - they seem to quite like each other but both are past the silly 'falling in love' stage I think. (I hope.) If they decide to marry it will be an economic decision although she is dead keen to have children, which is, nowadays, not an positive economic decision. It is a 'wait and see' situation. He is at present, oddly enough, (Sat 17 Mar) in Texas for a work conference.

Clarissa, the daughter in Australia has been very quiet lately. I know what is going on. She has been hoping for a daughter for the last three births and has gone to ground pending a scan to establish the gender of the foetus. Peculiar, isn't it? I come from a family of three daughters, had only daughters myself, and they in turn have had only sons. David, her husband, comes from a family of four daughters and two sons, so daughters were in the ascendancy there also.

Yes, send me the URL for the book discussion. I very much love books and that extends to other book lovers. There does seem to be a dichotomy between what men and women will read with absorption. Anthony Trollope and Arnold Bennett - and William Thackeray and probably many others - wrote wonderful books from the female perspective. I don't include Flaubert and Tolstoy in this category, because although they wrote about women it was from a male perspective. I don't see any male authors doing even that now and I don't know any males who read such books with an enjoyment similar to that of women. The same goes for female authors like Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters. The hair stands up on my head when I hear such books referred to as 'chick lit'.

In celebration of St Patrick's Day, I am reading a couple of books by Flan O'Brien. Not only are the rich different, the Irish are also.

A couple of earthquakes here this week but not where I live. No damage as is usually the case for New Zealand (nickname 'The Shaky Isles'). We are earthquake aware. When in the most romantic of situations if a Kiwi is asked 'Did the earth move for you?' they will immediately look to see if the centre light is still swinging. No breathy sighs of 'yes'. More likely a leap to stand under a doorway and away from windows. (Doorways are reinforced.) It doesn't matter how much one fears flying, an earthquake can make the most craven anti-flying coward want to take to the air.

A little bit of interest. After the Napier earthquake in the 1930s (can't remember the exact date) the city was largely rebuilt and thanks to some wise city managers, it was re-built in Art Deco style. It is now a pretty city with many historic, artistic buildings. Gisborne, the city in which I was born, is a terrible place for earthquakes. It has a hellish island called White Island offshore which grumbles and spurts volcanically all the time but which is known as a safety valve for the East Coast. A drive along the Desert Road in the middle of the North Island takes you past two active volcanoes. Coming in to Taupo, for miles fissures in the ground have steam coming out of them and Rotorua has hot pools, some of them boiling so you can cook in them, and mud pools burping great hot bubbles. The place stinks of sulphur.

I am still watching everything I eat and yesterday moved the buttons OUT on a favourite jacket of mine. I haven't worn it for months, you know, thinking well, when I lose weight it will fit me again. I have given up on that idea. If I want to wear that jacket, I HAD to make it bigger. How bloody depressing. The thing I need is exercise and I haven't got the energy. You were right Erp, blast it!

Otherwise, a week during which not much happened. The weather is changeable as we slide into winter - and we won't slide out again until the end of the year. Bless my electric blanket, my sheepskin boots and legwarmers, my featherdown duvet, my cossack hat, etc.etc.etc.

From Jude

Letter to Erp - again

Dear Erp:

The weather has deteriorated here and is now like winter. We had hardly any summer. It has rained heavily the past three days and the termperature is cool but I don't mind. I am a cold weather person.

I have had a problem lately with fatigue which is why I haven't been doing much - I have been either sleeping or resting the better part of twelve hours out of every twenty four. It annoys me. I hate growing old. I went to the doctor and complained but the man has so many genuinely sick people I didn't get much sympathy. It is my heart you see, working too hard now. Childhood illnesses (including rheumatic fever) are creeping back up on me. 'Live with it', he said, 'rest all you want. There is nothing else to be done.' The fatigue is not there all the time, but one day in the future it will be. Just now it is several days on, several days off.

I am wearing out Erp. I just hope I don't outlast my brain.

Did I tell you that my daughter in Australia is expecting another baby? There will be 14 months between Asher and number five. I hope her leg holds up.

About the reading group - I wouldn't mind discussion about a good book, but I really can't be bothered with the male preoccupation with immortality. Ninety nine per cent of them aren't worth it - even if it does exist in the after life. As for living for 200 or more years, I couldn't think of anything worse, unless one could stop ageing. Surely then would begin the battle with boredom. And just think - mothers would be here as well. They are here far too long as it is!

I still haven't got around to putting my photo on the blog - the mere thought of even attempting it the past few days has been enough to send me somewhere warm and soft for a nap.

Have you heard the furore about the film '300'? I got the two books, one is a comic book and one is called 300 the Art of the Film sent to me a couple of months ago to review. I tossed off the review and said they were suitable for 12 - 18 year old males (of the more bloodthirsty type) now I read everywhere how sensitive feelings are being hurt. Is there anything nowadays that doesn't offend somebody? Then it is a three day wonder and something else takes its place. Everybody everywhere is being offended about something all the time it seems.

I have the dentist on Friday.

Some snippets you may enjoy:

Reverend William Spooner. Warden of New College, Oxford University, 1903 - 1924.
His habitual transposition of sounds - metaphasis - made him famous in his own lifetime and gave the world the word - spoonerism.

He was an albino.

Among the more famous utterances attributed to him:

'Which of us has not felt in his heart, a half warmed fish?'

To a delinquent undergraduate:
'You have hissed my mystery lectures. You have tasted a whole worm. You will leave Oxford on the next town drain.'

PALINDROMES:
The Greeks often put on fountains:
Nispon animimata mi monan opsin - wash the sin as well as the face.