le Carré

I'm re-reading Smiley's People, not just because I despair of ever seeing Tinker, Tailor in my philistine city, but because I need to reread le Carré from time to time. Why? That's harder to answer. For the primary pleasure of reading a sentence and being so awed by it that the book has to be allowed to rest for a moment while you look away, gather yourself and return to reading the sentence over again.

What le Carré slows down in his writing, I slow down even more while reading. In a recent interview, he said, when asked how he felt about being 80, "It was always in the contract, I just didn’t know they would deliver so soon."

Now he says he has to find out if he can still write. Just in case he finds he can't, there's always Smiley. 

Moldy Moldy 70

Did you know there was a poem to ole Winston Ono who might have turned 70 today? I didn't. (It's a terrible one, actually).

        [Image from here.]

Instead, in celebration, in his own write:

The Moldy Moldy Man

I'm a moldy moldy man
I'm moldy thru and thru
I'm a moldy moldy man
You would not think it true.
I'm moldy till my eyeballs
I'm moldy till my toe
I will not dance I shyballs
I'm such a humble Joe.
                        -- John Lennon, In His Own Write.

Also check Google today.

turning word into artefact

At first, we thought of a pottery workshop. Then a friend, who's been working with papier mache, suggested we make masks and get the kids to paint them. I wanted them to also mess around with the mache.

So that's what we did. One week before, we tore and soaked lots of newspaper. Every other day we tipped out the iron-coloured water. Ground, sieved, mixed with fevicol, and made masks. We decided on a couple of coats of primer, to give the kids a good canvas on which to work.

Here is both process and product:

Ten (It's not about you, it's about me)

Yes, flood of posts, apologies. 

The kid turned ten yesterday*. 

Ten years since the last ultrasound, where - though no one was allowed to say a word - an unpractised tech and sharp eyes told me it was going to be a boy. Ten years since the most major surgery I've ever had. Ten years since I was scared out of my wits holding a tiny bawling, jaundiced creature with an unsteady head.

And all the events in between. I feel most feline.

__

*No birthday party. That will happen later, once school begins. It's going to be a papier mache party - the kids will mess around with pulped paper, making masks and things and painting them.

Spaniard is a Glutton for Punishment

Not really. Spaniard merely didn't know that the birthday party she dropped her son off at wouldn't get over when they said it would. Spaniard is trusting and naive like that and never learns.

This party was at a gaming mall. That sounds like a den of iniquity, but it isn't, really. There's a food court as you enter and up a couple of floors are a bunch of noisy video games that I didn't stay to listen to.

So when I came to pick the kid up,Ii expected the cake to have been cut and only the matter of a return gift pending.

What I found was a game in progress - did I mention the place was done up in blue and while balloons? And you could hear the music two traffic lights away? - two kids were surrounded by a gang of children (of their own respective genders), who were attempting to smother them in toilet paper. Apparently this is how mummies are made. The event organiser was shrieking encouragement into the mike, the music was...let's just say, when I drank the thimbleful of coke I was offered, my ears popped. The girls won. The event organiser managed to sound both hurt and surprised.

Next up was dancing. With the EO acting as choreographer, chief mime, lip synch artist and lead dancer. The kids hopped around and yelled like a bunch of bloodthirsty extras from The Lord of the Flies.

After dinner and the most nauseating cake in the history of birthday parties, the return gifts made me feel even more ill: a huge bag, with three wrapped gifts and a bunch of assorted candy. At least one gift broke before bedtime; another was a vehicle for more candy; the last had a sticker on it to remind you that this was so-and-so's birthday. Last year these folks took the kids to a bookstore and told them they could spend 300 bucks on their own return gifts. I was appalled but I can't decide which is worse.

I think this party was much more fun.