Dusting the Greats: Ex Libris
Dusting the Greats is a blog-in-blog about literature. Unpacking crates of books – the books that made my generation what we are – I try to remember why they were important. Today: Ex Libris.
It is Saturday evening and we will be going out. The Better Man is in the bathroom, humming along with his razor. I have poured a glass of wine, and lit the wee lamp in our library. I walk along the shelves, touching the backs of books. The light is so low I can hardly read their titles, but I know, from the feel of their covers, these the very closest of friends.
Books on ancient literature and ancient Greeks are leather bound and wide. Books about the moral mores of small town 1930’s are cloth-bound, slim, and shine grey in the little light. There are the glossy tradebacks of the moderns: Booker and Whitbread winners. And the frayed, deteriorating backs of my beloveds: the Sayers and the Hardys, the Elliots and the Mann. Tom Jones, Vanity Fair and the Psmithses I could pick out blindfold.
The Better Man is in the shower now, and my glass half full. I ponder lazily which title to put on the nightstand for when we get back. Before sleep, as I light the candle by my bedside, do I want So Rich, So Lovely and So Dead (Masur, early 1950’s) or perhaps some Montherlant? When suddenly, my luxurious musings are interupted. For right between where Gone to Earth by Mary Webb and Chatterton Square by E.H. Young should be, my finger catches on something, the flesh cutting slightly on a sharp cover.
I pull back with the bleeding didgit to my mouth. What is this? A sharpe edge where everything ought to be vevely silken dust? I lick the last of my blood and pull the offending volume from the shelf. The title stares back at me, challenging. Eat the Rich. By P.J. O’Rourke
Eat the Rich? I wonder. When have I ever? What fresh hell is this? And this is when I remember. Slowly, over the last week, The Better Man has been bringing his collection of books over. And what has wounded me so, what has cut me to the quick, is in fact the merging of our libraries.
Among my books about Hammershoij, my Russians and my Butler (and among, truth be told, my Sidney Sheldon, my Nora Roberts, and my Ruth Rendell) his books have muscled in. Next to my The Way of All Flesh, stands his WAR in Human Civilization. Next to my Henry James, is his How To Talk To A Liberal (If You Must). Dai Sijies piercingly poetical memories from the Cultural revolution in China, is completely overshadowed by The Great Terror. And that is not my feeling either, that is a title.
I lick my finger again, even though the blood has dried up. I stand for a moment, fighting the sting in my thumb and in my heart. I hear the Better Man humming, innocently still, as he towells his chest. And I realise that there is only One Voice that can help me through this painful transition. One Voice, that can calm me, One Voice to cheer me, One Voice to help me through the night. Anne Fadiman. As spoken in Ex Libris.
Author: Anne Fadiman
Title: Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader
Language: English, found for me by a woman in Chennai – fat as a mountain, perfect Oxbride accent, in her little hovel of a book-shop of some back street, more of which I will tell you some other time.
First Read: In India, in the back of our hired white taxi which took us to some mountain temple. And then again on the plane back from India. And then on the bus from the airport. This was 2001.
Number of times read: From what I can gather by the heavy massing of marginalia, in many moods and with many a smudgy ink pen and chocolate biscuit at hand.Influenced: Fadiman’s book is a self-help manual, a love-yourself-tract for those of us affected with severe literatis. It, and in particular the chapters My Odd Shelf, The Literary Glutton, Seccndhand Prose, Words on a Flyleaf, You are Thee, The Joy of Sesqupedalians, Scorn Not the Sonnet and True Womanhood have helped me imensely.
Opinion today: Ex Libris is a good book in that it doubles as Bible, that first of all self-help books. At any juncture in life, take it of the shelf and see What Anne Would Do. Tonights lecture comes, of course, from the early chapter: Marrying Libraries. Opening it haphazardly, I come on the quote:
”After five years of mariage and a child, George and I finally resolved that we were ready for the more profound intimacy of library consolidation”.
Which tells me, less than two years in and having to managed to kill all of our potted plants, the Better Man and I are just not ready. America Alone, not to mention Constant Battles, will have to reside in a separate shelf from Summer at Tiffany’s and Billy Bathgate, at least for a little while longer.
Shelf or Attic: Shelf, or even purse. You never know when the following quotes might come in handy:
”I never slept with the boy. But I fell in love with Virgil, and I’ve slept with the book many times.”
or
”What is romantic about a guy wanting to go somewhere and getting there”
Filed under: Dusting the Greats | 1 Comment
Tags: anne fadiman, books about books
Dusting the Greats is a blog-in-blog about literature. Unpacking crates of books – the books that made my generation what we are – I try to remember why they were important. Today: Busman’s Honeymoon.
This morning, some poor, poor woman commented on an old post of mine. Way old, old as the hills, old as in from way back when I had a random incident, a brief spell of engagement, to a father. And while there was nothing hideously wrong with the father itself, there was the small matter of it being the father of someone. Kids say the darndest things.
Anyhow, the poor, poor woman who commented on my post brought to mind that old ex, and several other old exes, and the long and short of it was that I spent my morning’s walk to work thinking about how very, very lucky I am to have the Better Man in my life. Which was a timely reminder, given how I was feeling over the week-end.
I won’t give you the details. Suffice to say we (I) had had a discussion (told him) previously in the week, about how it would be nice to just hang out and have a really nice Sunday this week-end, instead of spending it at the hardware store/interstate/paintshop/supermarket. How maybe it was time we (he) spent some time building US instead of WALLS (feeding me breakfast in bed and rubbing my toes). How Communication (a present, maybe) is the Key and how it is Important not to stop Seeing the Other Person (mollycoddle to the others insecurities) in the relationship. How Love (his cash) would Lift Us Up Where We Belonged (buy me a bottle of champagne), et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
I won’t give you the details. Suffice to say when he finally deigned to roll on home this Saturday it was already Sunday, and by the time he woke, Sunday was almost over. When confronted with this APPALLING lack of roses and diamonds, he looked surprised – even hurt. “We just spent all day together in bed” he said. To him, it seems, consciousness is not a vital component in a relationship.
Since I had spent the better part of his coma working up a really good, really steaming mad, this comment did not land with grace. After I told him what was what (in a ladylike, calm and pedagogical manner, je te jure) I took myself off to the couch, in a huff. And this is where I hooked up with my true love. Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey. Lord Peter and I then spent a very satisfying afternoon eating chocolates and hiding our love of each other’s dry witticism behind a veneer of cool aloofness and rational conversation. He is never anything but the perfect gentleman.
As I started to mention, it took me till this morning to remember that the Better Man does have one or two qualities that Lord Peter lacks.
A) he is not born in 1890 (this could also be a minus, depending on my mood and
B) he doesn’t force me into the presence of Helen, the Dutchess.
Author: Dorothy Sayers
Title: Busman’s Honeymoon
Language: English until it broke beyond redemption, now Swedish on its last leg – if someone comes across a vintage copy in either language I will pay for it in gold
First Read: 13 I think, but it might have been 13.5, when I was done with all the others in the series.
Number of times read: On a yearly basis
Influenced:
1) My choice in university masters: did history in order to be allowed too study the Wimsey books – in between the lines – as a historical document of the opinions and morals of inter-war Britain. But my professor said he preferred if I did something on the rise of the unions as they applied to 1890’s women bakers in the South of Sweden, so I dropped out.
2) My idea of the ideal man: he won’t kiss you in front of the servants, and prods chimneysweeps in the behind if necessary.
3) My idea of the ideal woman: can answer back in French and will drink sherry at the minister’s.
4) My idea of the ideal honeymoon: foie gras, broken oil burners, traipsing through the country looking for chimneypieces and sleeping on worn linen sheets.
5) My idea of the ideal relationship: intellectual flexibility, moral rigor, perfectly mannered compassion, and a Bunter who makes sure the bathwater’s hot.
Opinion today: Well last night it did the trick. I still think it is an excellent example of the life I would like to live and what a detective story really could be, if only all those writing detective stories also doubled as copywriters and translators of Dante’s Divina Commedia, as Sayers did. Shelf or Attic: No doubt the shelf. Let’s see if the Better Man lets the dust settle on it.
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Tags: books, Peter Wimsey, Dorothy Sayers
Slave to Love
Brief recap:
My beloved cell-phone (pink, shaped like a lipstick, able to make calls and text, but little else) goes belly up. At same time, we move into new apartment, where the Better Man sets up the internet connection in a way that my laptop just won’t accept. When I call my carrier, they suggest I kill both birds with one stone, and sell me an IPhone. According to salesman Sleazy McDodgy over at Telenor, an IPhone will replace both the phone and the computer. And, if push comes to shove, The Better Man.
After a long and tedious wait, The Appliance arrives. This is where my troubles really begin. I will not tell you about the humiliations I had to go through just to get the damned thing started. Ian McEwan describes the fublings of a first encounter much better in On Chesil Beach. Suffice to say I the last time I had to endure that amount of inept prodding, I was fourteen and in love. And the “sync” was about as successful…
Anyhoodle: when I think I have finally caressed the thing into a biddable mood, I discover that it is not I that have bought an apparatus. It is the apparatus that owns me. Up until then, I had been foot-loose and fancy free. No mere piece of technology told me what to do. My computer was at my beck and call, my phone I could command. The DVD did MY bidding, and in the kitchen, I was master of everything electrical. Now, a dark precense rules my days. I am a fully fledged slave to modern times: it’s bItch, if you will.
Because the initial “I” of the “IPhone” is a devils mark: it signals a blatant disregard for others, a Freudian selfishness, a complete devotion to its own low appetites. If you called it the “MeMEMOREOfMEPhone” you wouldn’t be far wrong.
The Appliance beeps, and I shiver. The Appliance vibrates, and I vibrate with it. I am a shaky, nervous wreck: The Appliance keeps me up at night and on the tips of my toes, constantly updating, sending, and receiving. If ever I try to turn a deaf ear to its imperious demands, The Appliance punishes me tenfold. Its little red lights blink, and I know I have been a bad, bad girl: in my inbox, and message box, and stock-exchange info application, fury waits for me. If I try to watch TV, or go out for a drink, or take a shower, it lashes its whip impatiently. Bleep.
Then, yesterday, praise be, there was relief. After a week weighing the merits of suicide over a life spent kneeling in supplication to The Appliance, help arrived from the most unexpected of saviours. The evil overlords over at Apple launched the IPad. And it served to remind me of two very important things.
- Yes, the IPhone might eat my life and will to live a little bit at a time TODAY. But tomorrow it will be obsolete, a joke. People have a longer lifespan than gimmicks these days, and this touch-screen devil will soon be old, a joke, and in need of new batteries. Thank GOD it isn’t built like an old-time SAAB or sewing-machine, or I’d never have my hands free again.
- If The Appliance is the spawn of the same edjits who named their newest toy the IPad, then surely, it cannot be very intelligent design. That numbskull name is a feather in the hat for linguists everywhere, who suffer now under the thumbs of technocrats. We will rise, and claim our rightful positions as leaders of the free world, as soon as they manage to launch the (I)ncontinence, the d(I)aper and the sh(I)te.What I use pads for, you don’t want me to twitter.
PS: I snuck into work to post this from my office computer, seeing as I doubt The Appliance would allow it.
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Tags: Apple, IPad, Iphone
Return to Cold Mountain
Feeling gloomy and pale this winter? Looking to put the colour back in your cheeks? Let me recommend the best treatment for a fresh face: painting your hallway. If you choose a pink shade and are reasonably clumsy, I promise this will solve any issues you might have with the tint of your visage, hair or, indeed, glasses.
In related news: the remodelling of the apartment is coming along nicely. In between the dinners we throw in order for our nears and dears to fill in the blanks of our kitchen supplies and/or liquor cabinet (so far have received a few excellent pieces of glassware, a set of 18th century oil paintings, and a bottle of really nice Calvados) we hammer away in relative harmony.
Last night we cooked cod and wilted greens for my father and hung some art. Today we are building a wall. Next week I think we might start entertaining the thought of considering the possibility of tentatively starting to open one, or possibly two, crates of books. Outside the window, snow falls.
But despite all this committed love and tender team-work, I must say living together opens for a wee bit more conflict than previous. While we are united in all questions cooking (we both like it) laundry (The Better Man takes care of it) flowers (he lets me have my way) and cleaning (both of us refuse, we are getting a charwoman) we ABSOLUTELY CANNOT see eye to eye in the issue of heat. The Better Man likes the rooms at a balmy 19 degrees Celsius. I am a Calvinist at heart, and am convinced any temperature above 16 is bad for morale.
To me, heating – like watching TV in daylight, mayonnaise, taking the tube for less than two stops, or mixing gold and silver accessories – is a sign of more than bad form. It is a sign of mental and emotional laxness, the mere tip of an iceberg (no pun intended) of questionable foibles and general delinquency. Let me tell you: nothing is a safer guard against the follies of our modern times, than a good few layers of cashmere.*
And so we start our days with him turning the radiators up, and end them with me turning the radiators down. In between, there is a balance of terror – a cold war if you will – where we each fiddle with the dials in secret. As a consequence, the heat of the place differs from moment to moment, and an eternal putting on and taking off of bulky sweaters and woolly socks ensus.
Where shall this war of thermo-states end? No one knows. But we each have our strengths and weaknesses.
- The constant changes in temperature, and the eternal rubbing with wool, is causing some serious collateral damage viz my hair: now a big old frizzy mess of static electricity. The Better Man, on the other hand, has the advantage of being bald.
- as an insomniac, I have no problem with getting up for night-time temperature adjustments – while the Better Man lays (shivering) asleep. At my mercy, if you will.
- The Better Man can – through tactical deployment of Ben & Jerry’s – lower my body temperature to a point where I am near waving a white flag, while I can offer the diplomacy of close-body contact as a means of heating things up sans boiler
- But in the end: the Better-Man can refuse such warming techniques on the grounds of my toes, and fingers, and general body being to f-ing freezing to touch. This refusal to parlay I suspect will be what, in the end, has me surrendering to turning the heat up. And enjoying the ensuing caving of morals…
* In fact I am pretty sure that the five riders of the apocalypse, when they arrive, will have taken the tube from the central station, and will immediately strip down to their shirtsleeves indoors, watching Hannah Montana mid-morning, while feasting on mayonnaise sandwiches, jingling their gold rings and silver bracelets threateningly.
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Tags: apartment, heating, winter
MEZE
Last night was the office Christmas party, at a Lebanese restaurant. I came away with my fingers saturated with olive oil and red wine, they way you do when there is finger-food on the menu and you cannot –for the love of God – stop picking at it even though you were really, really full an hour ago.
Also, by the time I fell into the back of a cab and waved for “it” to take me in the general direction of “home”, I had a nice and fresh supply of gossip tucked away somewhere in the soggy recesses of my gray matter. The sort of gossip that makes your mouth water, I tell you. Only problem? I SWORE not to blog about it.
Of course, it is perfectly impossible for me to keep my (still) grubby fingers completely away from these unmentionables. Hence – blind items. And in the interest of the blind staying well and truly blind – I will serve them to you Meze-style. Just a taste of this. And just a taste of that.
- beep beeps a bottle of beep in his top left beep. All I say is, why not keep it handy?
- well I would beep a beep too, if my beep had a beep like his… But would he?
- beep – who is the ex-beep of beep, only no one is supposed to beep – is cozying up to beep. Beep’s a nervous wreck about it. I tell her she should just beep his beep out.
And in related news:
- beep and beep: congratulations on your new baby beep!
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Tags: blind items, meze, office christmas parties
Lingua Franca
If you’ve ever wondered why I write in Swenglish instead of my native Swedish, the explanation is simple: I spent my teens abroad, at an international school where English was the primary language. English of some sort, at least.
My friends and I – American, Japanese, Papa New Guinean, Pakistani and French – hacked our way through the emotional turmoil of adolescence in a jolly mix of accents – emphasis and vocabulary transient things, subject to who was in the room. Good times: everything was always an innuendo is SOMEONE’s language.
Sure there were other kids, the other kind of Americans, who were good at sports and kept their midwestern twangs. But for those of us who wore Bob Marley shirts and wrote Nirvana Nirvana Nirvana Nirvana on our textbooks, broken English was a sort of merit badge, along with the pretence of smoking pot in the girls bathroom.
The teachers all had their differing approaches to putting out the wildfires that were consuming our grammar(s) – some tried to quell them in red ink, others fed The Great Poets to the flames and watched them toast. Others gave up: a certain Ms eventually tired of our spoilt disregard of basic idiomatics and moved to a reservation to teach the Navaho about Chaucer.
Either way: between the New York woman who taught me the difference between a three and a tree, the ponytailed Canadian who gave me the poems of Auden, and my great love Mr Crawley (Irish) of the Green Cords, I acquired a basics grasp of the what’s and the what’s nots of English. For a while there, I even thought of it as the language (literally) of my dreams. Translation turned from swedish-english to english-swedish and then there was no translating at all. Except for use on parents, and them, I never spoke to much anyway.
Actually, it took a fit of rage for me to rediscover my native tounge.
We were on a trip to the coast of Normandy, where the winds where whirling and the sea smashing. I sat in the sand eating palmier sweet biscuits and writing poems at great length and speed about the uselessness of war, the brevity of youth, and the colour of gulls (profound insights brought on by the masses of white crosses on the allied graves. I think I may have likened them to the wings of the gulls).
I picked up a piece of wood washed smooth by the waves and put it in my bag. I licked the sugar and the sand from my fingers. And then, just as I was puzzling over the spelling of weather and whether I was hit in the back by a hackey-sack. It was a gang of the other kind of Americans, and they were gulping Dr. Pepper.
I cannot for the life of remeber why I got so upset. It might have been the interuption of the Creative Process. It might have been hormones. It may have been some slur or feminism, or Mao.It might have been hormones. But I did throw a hissy-fit of epic proportions.
I told Ben what I thought of him and Sarah what I though of her, and of their lack of appreciation of Auden, the wind and the gulls. I veered briefly into the moral torpor of Jade, and made some rather hefty accusations as far as the ethics of John were concerned. I no doubt sneered at their brand of back-packs and certainly did at the way Erin never REALLY smoked, only pretended to.
And for several minutes I had no realisation that I had left English far behind and was now cursing them soundly – in Swedish. It was only when I’d shouted myself into calming down that I heard myself. Then the pure relief of knowing that no one had understood a single word made me shout a little bit more.
My friends treated me gingerly as we got back on the bus. I was allowed Clays headphones and he played me Dust in the Wind with Kansas. Mitsuko gave me some cinnamon flavoured gum. My “boyfriend” at the time, Kurt, let me pretend to fall asleep with my head on his shoulder. We rode that way for a long time. I think the movie Backdraft was playing on the BusVCR.
And that is the story of how I developed two languages: English for happy days and polite conversations. Swedish for truth-telling and conflicts. Now, given that – aren’t you happy with my choice for this blog?
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Tags: bi-lingual, International School of Brussels, Normandy
Get Stuffed
This season, more than any other, seems to tug at the umbilical cord. The jingling bells hang from it, the reindeer are tethered by it, the boughs of holly and the mistletoe seem tied by family ties. All around us we see representations of Family Values brought out and dusted off – in honor of the poster boy of planned parenthood.
“I mean really, where are you going to keep him? A manger?”
Yes, in celebration of year zero faulty contraception, people seem to want to honor their own families, however oddly come by. Those (names not disclosed) who ruthlessly screen their mother’s calls at other times, brave 600 miles of bad roads to enjoy a little home cooking. Those (name not disclosed) who’d normally rather die than be seen with their fathers in THAT jacket, mist up at the thought of the olde stocking. Those (name disclosed if you wish, inquire within) whom everyone thought were splitting up decide on a shotgun wedding.
And I personally, like to celebrate the possibility of virgin birth by taking that umbilical cord and stuffing it with mince. The Traditional Family Sausage Stuffing Day was yesterday.
Normally, this is an event that involves countless cousins, the loss of fingertips, kids bawling so loud it drowns out the carolers on repeat, and a lot of swearing at the antiquated Stuffer – a machine brought out once a year and always presenting a mechanical challenge. It usually takes anywhere from 4-8 hours, and everyone goes away wearing a lot of raw minced pigs meat in their hair. A true celebration of family, traditions, and unity.
Turns out family, traditions, and unity are an impediment and without them you can stuff 16 meters of sausage in 3 hours, all limbs intact. Due to ill-healths, previous engagements, and -frankly – a lack of fingers left to loose, yesterday left only Mommy and me to do the stuffing. Rationalizing away all chatter, cookie breaks, disputes over seasoning, reminiscing over years gone by, trips to the ER and consultative phone-calls to 91 year old and increasingly hard-of-hearing grandmother, we worked efficiently and in the style of those outdated people, assembly line mechanics. Even The Stuffer responded smoothly to our slightest touch (with a hammer, but that is neither here nor there and a marked improvement).
At the end of it we sat down all civilized, had a glass of wine, lit a candle, listened to some hymns, and chatted…
And both agreed that christmas just isn’t the same, when conducted in a calm and rational manner. Like I can sort of imagine Mary, at her next lying in, all nostalgic. Lack of epidural just isn’t lack of epidural, if you haven’t got a few tufts of hay itching at your backside…
Can’t wait for next year, and I promise to bring extra band-aids!
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Tags: family traditions, stuffing sausage
Dead Poet’s Variety
When I was fourteen (allright then, 23 and three quarters) I wanted to be a poet. Then I sort of realised that I did not want to kill myself so very much anymore so there was no real point, I could write fun stuff instead. Like press-releases.
But now four years of writing press-releases have taken their toll, have made me sort of want to kill myself again. So tonight, for your enjoyment (I mean, for your nail-biting, tea-drinking, black-clothed, Cave-listening pleasure): a few poems. Inspired by the great miracle that is life.
Ode to Death
In stores have I walked, the aisles pacing
From cooler to cooler drifted, searching
But never have I found a more perfect death
Than that which has blanched these greens of summer
and turned fresh buds in their husks to dust
Oh, produce section at Ica on Ringvägen
Your deadly grip does turn the stoutest growth
To frail and bitter, weak and wilted endings
In your hollow hand lies all life, panting
—————————————————————
Constructionwork on platform: De-constructed
No train.
Dog barking.
Baa arking. Ba ba bab arking.
Train de de de DE BA
Lay De De
Train delayed.
Barking.
Barking.
Delayed! Delayed! Delayed!
Barking.
—————————————————-
Still Wet / Stranger on a Train
Your wet wool, mirrored in my wet gaze
Your elbow in my gut, a knife, is turning
I can still recall you armpits over my nose
And the way your breath, from deep within
Would envelop me.
But you don’t see me, anymore
You are lost to me, behind your large paper,
And your umbrella
Which used to be folded against my leg
Has sprung it’s cords and sprayed me
Now with cold beads of your discontent.
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Tags: poetry
Getting My Hands Dirty
When Luca Brasi slept with them fish, what kind of trunks was he wearing? If my recent experience of synchronized maffia swimming is anything to go by, they were double. But let me start at the beginning.
Due to the fact that
A) I am borderline midget at a workstation set for the borderline giant
B) I sleep on the floor with the arm of the Better Man for a pillow
C) It is so frigging dark here, jogging outdoors is the equivalent of blasting Rape me at top volume
I have experienced some back-aches lately. Alas, last night, I decided to take myself to the public baths for a swimming session. The first thing I noticed on arrival was a sign notifying the public that only three lanes were open, since the men’s swimming team were using the rest of the pool for practice.
This I did not mind. In fact, trying not to salivate over the idea of sharing a bath with a school of Michael Phelpses – Michael Phelpai? – I quickly showered, changed, and got into the pool, ready to gawk.
Imagine my disappointment, then, when it turns out professional swimmers keep their bodies, while training, for the most part hidden under water. No matter how hard I tried ogling, all I could catch was the occasional flash of rubber-clad scalp, or glimpse of be-goggled eye…
Either way, I soon realised I was in no position to look out for anything except for my own personal safety. The three lanes left open for the populace was teeming, boiling, crowded with struggling bodies. And what bodies these were. It turns out I had chosen for my swim a time when two very specific demographics were hot in the water. Elderly, stout women. And Russian gangsters – not the slimmest of otters, either*.
Babushkas to the left of me, Mobsters to the right, I was left with very little wiggle-room. After 40 minutes of close contact with little old ladies and hit-men alike, I can assure you that they are both slippery when wet. They are both covered in a fine fur. And they are neither of them keen on elasticity in their elastics. Suits sagged and trunks poofed. Straps floated and strings too. The only diffrence between them in fact, is that mobsters swim as though they were swimming for their lifes, arms flailing, lots of kicking, and grunting. The little old ladies float like leafs downstream, like leafs downstream to that great water beyond, like leafs very, very slowly.
When I finally tired of being kicked in the groin by Oleg and stopped mid-stroke by Edla, I got out, throwing a last regretful look at the enticing heels and elbows of the Phelpses, I made my way home for dinner. Served in front of the TV by a loving Better Man, I was just swallowing my last bite when the news came on. Which story do you think got top billing:
A) SAAB is not doing so well
B) Obama is not doing so well
C) The Swine-flu is doing a bit too well
D) The weather is doing a fine job of driving us to an early grave
E) Matters in Stockholm swimming-pools have reached a critical state. The city is now launching a Major Campaign to change public behaviour in said pools. The problem? Male bathers do not change out of their underwear before getting in the water, merely pulling on swimming-trunks over regular (well used, at end of day) briefs. “The level of bacteria” says expert “contained in a single pair of unwashed shorts is very high.” “Imagine the amount” continues expert “if you pool the dirty laundry of all Stockholm criminals”.
* What makes me so sure they were Russian mobsters, you ask:
1) tattoos a go-go
2) getting out of water to practice punches and kicks
3) wearing furry hats in water
4) speech heavy on consonants
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Tags: hygiene, michael phelps, russian mobsters, swimming
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