Viral Variety and Dating dangerously.

Jack Vettriano: 'The Smooth Operator' is now foremost on my birthday calendar.

And a quote for the month on my 2011 calendar:

“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than a year of conversation.’

According to Susie Reneau, creator of the calendar, this quotation is from Plato.

(Don’t ever fool yourself we have evolved much as a race. Whatever is worth knowing we knew in the days when the story of Gilgamesh was written, then when the pyramids were built - and we probably knew long before either of those recorded works of humankind. We just keep forgetting.)

Well, if that sounds a bit preachy and new agey and generally not fit for a sunny day when we should be outside, blame it on a low fever simmering in this person.

Finally I spent an hour in the sunshine grabbing some Vit. D. A virus, possibly that which caused an asthmatic friend to take an overnighter in the local hospital, wormed its way into me Thursday and caused me to spend most of yesterday in bed re-reading Dorothy Sayers’ ‘Gaudy Night.’ She really is a joy to read , antiquated n so many ways but the vocabulary is rich beyond the wildest drams of today’s writers who evidently aim for the lowest common denominator. The imagery is colourful and witty, the characters I find three-dimensional and engaging, each recognisable in any context, the quotations and literary references suggest an erudition that totally enthral this intelectualle-manquée (manquée for the worst possible reason - not intelligent enough to BE an intellectual but just intelligent enough to know what she is missing! Like beng an ‘almost good enough’ artist or musician, it’s very saddening.)

Apart from all that it’s a nice change to read a crime novel that doesn’t begin with the very worst sort of sadistic killing the writer can imagine, proceed to detailed autopsies then more horrendous crimes. For 500 pages Sayers spins her crime-hunting protagonist along with anonymous letters and nasty emotionally and psychologically destructive acts, but she doesn’t feel she has to produce a single body.

Until my day of rest I had been rereading my Mankell collection which is by no means complete but I still marvel at how this fictional man Wallander has come to mean so much to me. I think I know him far better than many real-life friends. I know him from his own reveries and nightmares; his fears, self-hatred, anger, mistrust; his search for reasons and the need for coherence, order and justice that drive him to be a policeman. I also know him from his daughter’s perspective as a protective, judgemental, absentee father, rather frightening, never there when she needs him, yet still a source of strength.

Aside from all that, what has been going on? Almost totally disinterested I missed the wedding by sitting behind the counter earning shekels for us. (This town really splashed out. They put a Union Jack on the clock tower!)

G’son was chosen to play in a 7-a-side rugby against a prestigious rubgy-playing school in the Borders. 7-a-side is obviously a much faster sort of match on a full sized pitch and everyone has to run a lot faster. He was nervous about being up to it but scored two tries, thereby winning a medal. Pride all round!

I dragged my ass off the bed last evening to go to a Steiner School fund-raiser ‘Variety Night’ put on in the Town Hall by a friend who was once a professional actor. He probably could have done the whole show himself but was MC and sang four Music Hall songs well known enough to sing along to, at least by all the Brits in the audience. A community poet read his own Belloc-style verses about a boy called Nigel who tested everyone to the limit including the Steiner School (whose claim it is to be able to take and balance any child.) Threatened with losing its reputation the school was relieved to find Nigel was an alien. (As far as is known Steiner said nothing about balancing aliens from other galaxies, although he might have, he said a lot about a lot... ). A colourful extrovert community woman did a palm-reading turn; a very excellent pianist played something exciting and loud on the old upright in the hall; the MC’s 7 year old daughter gave a rendering of ‘My name is Joe’ which was funny and not merely precocious; a couple put on a comic rendering of ‘Baby it’s Cold Outside’ and so on. The Ex and I left at half time, he because he doesn’t often go out in the evenings, me because they only had apple juice and I had my virus to think of.

It was fun though and reminded me how much talent there is in this area and how ready the community folk are to take risks, be impromptu, put something like this on at short notice and risk of making fools of themselves.

Next week is the annual concert by the renowned local choir. Nothing impromptu about that, but we have tickets and will go, viruses permitting.

What else? Well, there’s a worrying customer who comes in mainly to confide in me about her love-life ever since the occasion a year ago when she broke down and wept because the boyfriend didn’t want her any more. She isn’t so very young (50-ish) but looks timelessly young and has a touching, now frightening, naiveté about her. She has hit the dating sites and keeps meeting Poles and Croatians, some of whom are local. She let one drive her off into the woods on a first date. Oh heck! He could have been an axe murderer. Now she tells me, with sweet hopes that I won’t judge her, that she has been Skyping with a Pole who doesn’t have his own camera fixed so she can't see him but he can see her. She offered to take her clothes off for him and naturally the offer was accepted. Oh double heck! I agreed, through gritted teeth that it must have ben an exciting and freeing experience, but had to ask as gently as possible - how does she know he isn’t a) entertaining his friends and b) recording it so she will end up on You tube? She says she has a good instinct for such things and knows he is really very respectful.
Aaaaaaaagh!