Bouquet with flying lovers
OK, time to have a go again. Spent most of today indoors. Corinne was out and about, and took Leo and Sally to see Leo's best mate William. I went out for coffee just before six. All the cafés in or near Rörsjöstaden were closing, so I went to Barista. Nice place, they only do Fair Trade coffee and staff is friendly. AND I found a LAN that wasn't password locked.
Translating a book at the moment, one by Barbara Sher. Great stuff, about games for kids and grown-ups. The best one so far is Finding the Grumpy Bug. When Leo throws a tantrum, I'll go looking for an angry bug and eventually find one, e.g. behind his left ear. We'll dispose of it together in some cruel manner and then I'll produce an equally invisible happy bug from my pocket and put it where the grumpy bug was hiding. It works!
I was watching John Cleese's eulogy for Graham Chapman on YouTube earlier and it set me off thinking of the British sense of decorum, and the unwritten rules for breaking it. I mean, what Cleese does actually goes down perfectly in that context, doesn't it? The speech is famous for being provocative, and that it is, naturally. But no one who hears it can doubt for a moment the affection Cleese feels for Chapman. And as for being offended, well, it's not directed against any other person or group of people. It's simply an excellent eulogy.
It goes to show, I suppose, that you can break almost any social code so long as you make it clear that you're aware of what you're doing.
It made me remember what surely must have been one of the most moving funerals I've attended myself, that of Keith Rubidge, whom I'm very happy to have known. He and his wife Jan were some of the most wonderful people we got to know when we lived in London, from 1998 to 2000. One moment at Keith's memorial service which made me smile through my tears was when the church was suddenly filled with Kate & Anna McGarrigle's "Swimming Song" – an upbeat tune about summer which had been the Rubidge family's holiday theme song. Not the kind of song I'd been expecting as I walked into the church that day, but now it always springs to mind when I think of Jan & Keith, and it still makes me smile.
Translating a book at the moment, one by Barbara Sher. Great stuff, about games for kids and grown-ups. The best one so far is Finding the Grumpy Bug. When Leo throws a tantrum, I'll go looking for an angry bug and eventually find one, e.g. behind his left ear. We'll dispose of it together in some cruel manner and then I'll produce an equally invisible happy bug from my pocket and put it where the grumpy bug was hiding. It works!
I was watching John Cleese's eulogy for Graham Chapman on YouTube earlier and it set me off thinking of the British sense of decorum, and the unwritten rules for breaking it. I mean, what Cleese does actually goes down perfectly in that context, doesn't it? The speech is famous for being provocative, and that it is, naturally. But no one who hears it can doubt for a moment the affection Cleese feels for Chapman. And as for being offended, well, it's not directed against any other person or group of people. It's simply an excellent eulogy.
It goes to show, I suppose, that you can break almost any social code so long as you make it clear that you're aware of what you're doing.
It made me remember what surely must have been one of the most moving funerals I've attended myself, that of Keith Rubidge, whom I'm very happy to have known. He and his wife Jan were some of the most wonderful people we got to know when we lived in London, from 1998 to 2000. One moment at Keith's memorial service which made me smile through my tears was when the church was suddenly filled with Kate & Anna McGarrigle's "Swimming Song" – an upbeat tune about summer which had been the Rubidge family's holiday theme song. Not the kind of song I'd been expecting as I walked into the church that day, but now it always springs to mind when I think of Jan & Keith, and it still makes me smile.
posted by Mats at 3:05 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home