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Monthly Archives: October 2008

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Making it up with Shelley

For the fainthearted . . .

The English tutor was away and it might have been reasonable to have expected that the class would be dismissed upon being marked present.  The departmental head was not happy with such an arrangement, and handed out passages of poetry on which we were to comment.  It seemed unjust; poetry was bad enough without being presented with previously unseen material.  I received a copy of Shelley’s Ozymandias:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them,

…

Meeting situations

For the fainthearted . . .

What is the etiquette when someone with a severe degenerative disorder and a broken left arm wants to blow their nose?  Does one just fetch the tissue box, or should one take tissues out and hand them to the person?  In this age when to touch someone is taboo, would it be acceptable to steady their right arm?

What is the response to the person who comes into the room and insists that they have been dressed in the wrong clothes all day and needs to put on their pyjamas?  …

Church of Ireland Bloggers

For the fainthearted . . .

An elderly Roman Catholic parish priest once expressed the opinion that it would not be proper for me to pray with members of his parish; I remember feeling hurt at the time, (though perhaps I should have felt flattered at being perceived as so spiritually influential as to be a danger to the mortal souls of his flock).  In retrospect, it was of anthropological interest that someone still believed that they could instruct people how to behave; that there were still clergy who believed that they could assume the attitude …

A moment of disappointment

For the fainthearted . . .

There’s a line in a Garrison Keillor story that manages to be ordinary and profound in the way that Keillor does so well.  A character’s mother shifts subtly in her comments to her daughter who has not fulfilled the mother’s dreams.  “You could do something with your life”, the mother would say; then one morning the change comes, “You could have done something with your life”.  The shift in tense is telling; the days of opportunity are past, all that is left is regret.

Washing the chalice, after the midweek …

Losing our colour

For the fainthearted . . .

There must have been a point when shopping passed from being a necessary duty to being a leisure activity.

My grandmother in Somerset did her weekly shopping from the farm telephone: making a list through the week, she would phone the Co-op in the local village with her list of requirements and the Co-op van would deliver her groceries to her door (online shopping would have been no novelty to her).

Trips to towns with high streets and department stores were rare.  Maybe women would have lingered at drapers, looking …

Defying Private Frazer

For the fainthearted . . .

Private Frazer from the British television series Dad’s Army had a standard response to any and every untoward event: rolling his eyes in a sinister way he would declare to everyone around in a broad Hebridean Scots accent, “We’re doomed, I tell ye”.

Were John Laurie, the actor who played Frazer, still alive, his insights would be a valuable contribution to political and economic commentary.  Rather than RTE paying reporters and analysts to repeat constant glum assertions, they might save money by simply having Laurie go the whole hog, “We’re …

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