1. The annoying little mannerisms of stupid people in my office
2. Old age is lonely and things ain't what they used to be
3. Prologue followed by Grandad's story from the war
4. I know how to talk like a chav, innit
5. The time I visited somebody who was dying
6. The unhappy couple go for a holiday
8. Everything is filthy round here and I am doolally
(to be continued)
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
Sunday, January 15, 2012
And on the eighth day
Refreshed after a day off on Sunday, God went back to work. On the eighth day he created poliomyelitis, smallpox, bubonic plague, influenza, acne, halitosis and Total Amelia syndrome. He worked in a frenzy, the ideas poured out for hours.
On the ninth day he created volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, mudslides and droughts. Again, he was inspired and elaborated his new inventions for hours.
On the tenth day he populated the firmament with a sprinkling of asteroids, meteors and comets, millions of them on random paths, and that gave him the biggest laugh of all. He felt that if he laughed while creating them, others would too when they saw them.
On the tenth day he thought, I'm becoming a bit too predictable, let's dig a bit deeper and he invented schizophrenia, paranoia, clinical depression and narcolepsy. It will add weight to the whole scene - sombre, off-beat, violet coloured interludes.
On the eleventh day, he thought, "Follow that!" And he thought, "It's still a little too obvious. The trick is to go from bad to worse, to be cruel to your characters." Let me think about it.
On the twelfth day, he spied on the people and saw with dismay how they looked at each other with love. That was not in the plan. For a while he was stumped.
Then he woke up in the middle of the night of the thirteenth day and he wrote it down on a post-it note. "Death."
On the ninth day he created volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, mudslides and droughts. Again, he was inspired and elaborated his new inventions for hours.
On the tenth day he populated the firmament with a sprinkling of asteroids, meteors and comets, millions of them on random paths, and that gave him the biggest laugh of all. He felt that if he laughed while creating them, others would too when they saw them.
On the tenth day he thought, I'm becoming a bit too predictable, let's dig a bit deeper and he invented schizophrenia, paranoia, clinical depression and narcolepsy. It will add weight to the whole scene - sombre, off-beat, violet coloured interludes.
On the eleventh day, he thought, "Follow that!" And he thought, "It's still a little too obvious. The trick is to go from bad to worse, to be cruel to your characters." Let me think about it.
On the twelfth day, he spied on the people and saw with dismay how they looked at each other with love. That was not in the plan. For a while he was stumped.
Then he woke up in the middle of the night of the thirteenth day and he wrote it down on a post-it note. "Death."
Self-Portrait - Sylvia Beach
RTÉ Player: TV50
Watching this. Archive interview from 1962 with Sylvia Beach, publisher of Ulysses, who talks about her life and Joyce, Hemingway and lots of interesting times and people.
"Joyce was sitting at table and Ezra Pound was teasing him..." You get the idea of the calibre of her friends!
Good to know he pronounced "book" properly! I mean in the Dublin way.
Fascinating about Hemingway arriving in her shop with wounds still not healed from the war. "Would you like to see my wounds?" "Very much." So he showed her. ... She organised a boxing match ... Hemingway broke his thumb in the course of it. His opponent was subsequently killed fighting for the resistance. ... Now she's talking about Austin Clarke. ...
Onto Beckett now. Scott Fitzgerald. Thornton Wilder. ... What an interview. Louis Aragon.
Joyce would recite Walt Whitman to her, an enthusiasm he shared with her when Whitman was not liked at the time.
She watched the Germans arriving ... "The tears were streaming down our cheeks." A German soldier demanded her copy of Finnegans Wake from the window of her shop. She refused. He came back later and threatened to confiscate all her stock when he found that FW was no longer in the window. She moved everything out and hid the stuff in an empty apartment. Very brave! They came back and found the shop gone, name removed, shelves removed. shuttered.
She got a writer called Gordon Craig out of detention by appealing to the Gestapo. Later they arrested her and took her away, complained about her having a Jewish assistant in the shop and so forth. They were rounding up all Americans in the city and detained 400 of them at the city zoo. There were armed guards up above us and we were below in what we called The Monkey House...(not verbatim).
...moved to another prison for 6 months. ... on and on, fantastic interview. Retreat of the Germans - "shooting at us".
They machine gunned the people in the town while retreating. "We had to lie on our stomachs" ... later stretchers taking wounded away. "We were liberated by Ernest Hemingway .... I heard this big voice shouting Sylvia, Sylvia!"
...and he wouldn't stay for tea. He said, "Oh no, I have to liberate the cellar of the Ritz!"
Watching this. Archive interview from 1962 with Sylvia Beach, publisher of Ulysses, who talks about her life and Joyce, Hemingway and lots of interesting times and people.
"Joyce was sitting at table and Ezra Pound was teasing him..." You get the idea of the calibre of her friends!
Good to know he pronounced "book" properly! I mean in the Dublin way.
Fascinating about Hemingway arriving in her shop with wounds still not healed from the war. "Would you like to see my wounds?" "Very much." So he showed her. ... She organised a boxing match ... Hemingway broke his thumb in the course of it. His opponent was subsequently killed fighting for the resistance. ... Now she's talking about Austin Clarke. ...
Onto Beckett now. Scott Fitzgerald. Thornton Wilder. ... What an interview. Louis Aragon.
Joyce would recite Walt Whitman to her, an enthusiasm he shared with her when Whitman was not liked at the time.
She watched the Germans arriving ... "The tears were streaming down our cheeks." A German soldier demanded her copy of Finnegans Wake from the window of her shop. She refused. He came back later and threatened to confiscate all her stock when he found that FW was no longer in the window. She moved everything out and hid the stuff in an empty apartment. Very brave! They came back and found the shop gone, name removed, shelves removed. shuttered.
She got a writer called Gordon Craig out of detention by appealing to the Gestapo. Later they arrested her and took her away, complained about her having a Jewish assistant in the shop and so forth. They were rounding up all Americans in the city and detained 400 of them at the city zoo. There were armed guards up above us and we were below in what we called The Monkey House...(not verbatim).
...moved to another prison for 6 months. ... on and on, fantastic interview. Retreat of the Germans - "shooting at us".
They machine gunned the people in the town while retreating. "We had to lie on our stomachs" ... later stretchers taking wounded away. "We were liberated by Ernest Hemingway .... I heard this big voice shouting Sylvia, Sylvia!"
...and he wouldn't stay for tea. He said, "Oh no, I have to liberate the cellar of the Ritz!"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)