That’s hot. Will you marry me?
I will.
Hurrah! I will make a nice little wifey. I can knit and cook and sew and I earn a decent living. Can we have a little house with a white picket fence? How about a dog?
Oh boy, I’m really excited.
Plus, inebriated.
I never would have guessed!
Hey, Rog. Angelina isn’t really all that great. I mean, yeah, sure, she’s a great kisser and all, but there’s more to life than sex and she can be so clingy.
I’m a fellow pseudonymous resident of this village, Hong Kong. What do you think are the chances that we know each other?
(I hate cricket and all sport, if that helps.)
Nope, Starvers, can’t scare me like that. She’s gone on record as saying she likes English men (even married one - but that was when she was young and less mature), and she does a spanking good English accent.
Did I say spanking? And did you say clingy? Oh my God, I’m going all weak. TIme for another lie down.
Touché! I’m still as paranoid as ever.
Hemmers keeps an excellent journal of life in Hong Kong, which combines uncannilly accurate satire (largely aimed at the Government and big business) with a cast of comic characters, such as a fallen Mormon and a buxom civil servant.
Well worth bookmarking.
Henry David Thoreau was an American. His essay Civil Disobedience influenced Gandhi and the non-violent civil rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s. But it was his book Walden that is so peaceful and somehow made me think of you. I have absolutely no idea why. It was about his experiences living in the woods as simply as he could in the mid-19th Century. I’ve been to the place where he lived. It was like a pilgrimage for me.
No, I’m not a psychologist, although I have enough hours in school I think to be “official.” Most of my insight comes from being old and in counselling for so many years and in living with intention. But your own insight and intelligence run circles around mine. If you’ve read what I’ve said elsewhere about depression, there is not much more that I can offer in that direction except I know a little bit.
You are a man that someone would want to build a novel around. I am not that person. I don’t want to mess with your mind even though I am a little intuitive.
I am very married and very far from Hong Kong, and nothing intrigues like a Hitchcock mystery. You are a mystery no matter how many layers you allow to be peeled away.
Do you write? God, I hope so. Even if you don’t publish yet.
If you do write, do you ever allow paintings to influence your style of writing? Consider Cezanne.
Dear, Zoe–please. You sell yourself short. I’ve been enjoying very much watching your two minds at play here. But trust me, as bright, educated, wordly (and, granted, mysterious) as the delightful Mr. Thornhill may be, you are no slouch yourself.
And Rog, don’t you just love it when Angelina looks up at you with those huge, beautiful eyes, and with those wonderful moist lips parted just so, and sighs in sweet surrender?
Mmmm…Angelina.
(Better just stay down, buddy. I can keep this up all night.)
I haven’t read a book for rather long, and will start again with this one.
I know you have had to cope with tragedy. I was shaken and moved.
Thank you. I’ve dabbled with a couple of things, and had a few academic articles published.
He was an impressionist, wasn’t he? I like Van Gogh’s work, though I’m virtually clueless about art. The greatest influences on me as a “writer” are C.S. Lewis, George Orwell and Clive James (the Australian critic and television personality). AS Lewis wrote, “Any fool can write learned language. The vernacular is the real test. If you can’t turn your faith into it, then either you don’t understand it or you don’t believe it.”
But not to worry, Roger. I could go on all night, but I really wouldn’t. I will leave you now to your more substantive conversation with Zoe, a woman for whom I have great respect and affection.
But it’s been fun hearing from you again. It’s been a while.
:: SA raises a glass of his finest port ::
Cheers, my friend.
North or South Island, Kowloon or the New Territories?
Or Lantau, say it isn’t so.
Used to be, back at the time of Tiananmen. Now it’s the New Territories, the “capital” of the NT, in fact. Office in Kowloon.
You’re a modern man then! SoHo is my connection.
Congratulations on Clive James, I hadn’t imagined he’d be widely read. You know he has a HK connection. I shan’t spoil it. Try his reliable essays.
What are your thoughts and experiences of his writing?
Are you in the restaurant business (aside to readers - SoHo is the nicest and hippest “western-style” restaurant area in HK)?
The only HK connection I can think of for Clive James is his “one-man show”, which he brought out here about a year ago. Rather disappointing, actually, but one isn’t allowed to be good in every branch of the media!
Thanks for the recommendation. I haven’t read it, but am a lover of essays, especially Orwell and CS Lewis. I read his Unreliable Memoirs some years ago, and the bit about his granddad and his pipe had me guffawing.
I never managed to finish one of his novels - forget which one - but have read and re-read his books of television criticism from the 70s and early 80s. At the time of publication, I didn’t read any of them, since I didn’t read *The Observer * in those days. Probably didn’t read much at all, actually.
Whether I remember watching the programmes he “reviews” or not, he has the gift of bringing them alive and of combining wit and studied, articulate, reasoned, serious reflection. His implacable hostility to Nazism (e.g. Albert Speer) and all forms of evil is striking. Reflecting on Speer, he wrote the following: ‘Those of us who live by our brains should remember…that intellect confers no automatic moral superiority’.
If you wish to listen to a recording of Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius, I suggest the 1976(?) recording with Sir Adrian Boult. The tenor, who sings the lead role, is Nicolai Gedda, who is sublime and has a voice absolutely suited for the role. And never pre-judge a work of Elgar by listening to those wiseacres who say that all his music is “very English”. Lewis had a nice riposte for those who looked down their nose at Verdi, criticising him for “the cheapness of his thematic material”. “What they really mean is that he could write tunes and they couldn’t.”
No restauranter. I’ve family there and plan to move permanently by year’s end.
roger, if you haven’t read a book in a long time, maybe Walden is not the right one. I don’t know what made me think of it in connection with you. It isn’t deep, just quieting.
Thanks, Zoe. I just checked it on the web and it seems it has a loose, and, to some people, baffling structure. But I actually enjoy books like this, for example, Tristram Shandy, and, so long as it’s not in the James Joyce class, I think I’ll give it a go. Also, Paul Johnson gives it a good rap in his history of America. (I knew I’d heard of it from somewhere.)
Actually, off on holiday tomorrow, and it will make a nice change from Stephen King, Thomas Harris, John Grisham et al. If I can find anyone that stocks it!