Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless
Philip Larkin
Monday, December 12, 2005
rooms with a view 7
Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless
Philip Larkin
theatre plus politics = discomfort
The world premiere in London of Peace Mom, a new play by Dario Fo, the 79-year-old Nobel laureate, based on the writings of Cindy Sheehan brought this reponse from the Guardian.
And the Dolby sound?
Terrible
Filing into the chilly school hall, with its rows of austere polypropylene chairs and a pair of flaccid white balloons hanging glumly from a rafter, one was reminded of Linda in Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love: "The worst of being a Communist is that the parties you may go to are awfully funny and touching, but not very gay, and they're always in such gloomy places."
And the Dolby sound?
Terrible
the return of the stakeholder...
From new Conservative Leader, David Cameron, in Leeds today.
New Labour buzzword circa 1995.
From now on, Conservative-held and target seats will be expected to involve non-party members in their choice of candidates. I don't want to be too prescriptive about how constituencies do this. So we will be offering them a choice.
Option one is for constituencies to set up a panel of local community stakeholders, for example members of local voluntary groups, GPs, school governors and head teachers, local business leaders, and local police officers.
These community panels will interview the candidates from the priority list chosen by the local association, and will report to the association on the relative strengths of each candidate.
New Labour buzzword circa 1995.
history lessons 1
The Democratic Party and the endeavor of writing American history have a problem in common.
From Slate.
In a recent article, "Reconsidering Bush's Ancestors," published in the New York Times Magazine, [Sean] Wilentz makes explicit the implicit politics of his historical interpretation. Reading history backward, he defines today's Republicans as the direct descendants of the now long-forgotten Whig Party of the 1830s and 1840s. The alternative to the Democrats in the years before the Civil War and the creation of the Republican Party, the Whigs—like today's GOP—clashed sharply with the Democrats on both the size of government and the shape of American foreign policy. For Wilentz, "the blend of businessmen's aversion to government regulation, down-home cultural populism and Christian moralism that sustains today's" Bush Republicans is but a continuation of the political formulas first laid out by the Whigs.
metamorph 1
Church creative director Mike Robertson describes the goals as "radical" and "audacious," a set of initiatives that will use storefront satellite spaces, artistic events and small groups to foster relationships with the unchurched and establish Riverbend as an integral part of Austin.
"I want to get out in the community because of the hope we have to offer," says Carlton Dillard, associate pastor of creative arts. "In the culture we live in, I firmly believe a lot of folks won't come into the four walls of the church."
From Austin
Riverbend leaders are planning a 40-day vision kickoff in January with billboards, bumper stickers and T-shirts promoting the efforts and the new church logo.
after the jump, rebrands 3
A competition has been launched in Australia to find a new way of describing kangaroo meat.
Organisers want to find a name less offensive to diners sensitive about eating a national symbol.
Really.
today's view
I've come to the conclusion that what's inside a person
doesn't count because nobody can see it
Dogbert
rebrands 2
Liberace is not only a Las Vegas legend: his humour and rightful title as the original king of bling place him squarely in 21st-century pop culture. Replace macho men with Liberace to pitch beer and a marketer has struck a demographic goldmine.
Icons to sell things?
No.
Einstein was one of the first "celebrities" to use his fame for social good. Marketers have a rich cultural and social legacy to draw upon.
well maybe a little trend
Retro invites us to curb—nay, nail firmly to the ground—every sophisticated, urban, cosmopolitan impulse we have. Retro food delights with its anachronistic humour. It reminds us of Aunt Mabel, polyester, poodle skirts, and fake blue Christmas trees. It works because it strokes the bones of humour. And Lord knows, where is the humour in food anymore?
Consider the homely Jell-O salad. Now there is a creation bent on amusement. The thing moves. It jiggles. It attempts to ensconce earthy vegetables in sugary gelatinous suspension. There is nothing serious about a Jell-O salad. To serve one, in this day and age, is to keep one’s tongue planted firmly in one’s cheek.
Live from Vancouver.
As it were.
a trend?
Not really
From Herald Today
When it comes to collecting retro holiday decorations, one buzz word could be the one whispered into the ear of a confused young man in "The Graduate" - plastics.
From Herald Today
remakes (news)
During the holiday season, moviegoers can catch remakes of films like "Fun with Dick and Jane," "King Kong" and "Pride and Prejudice." Now, fans of the small screen can watch a remake too, of a television commercial widely considered one of the funniest ever made.
Ok.
Bayer and its agency, BBDO Worldwide, have re-created a 1972 spot for Alka-Seltzer known as "I Can't Believe I Ate the Whole Thing," for the plaintive cry from a gourmand husband that opens the commercial. The phrase, and a variant, "The whole thing," went on to enter the baby-boomer vernacular.
Yup.
A campaign in early 2006 will include packages of Alka-Seltzer with a "retro" design
From the New York Times
Integrity too
Stars and Stripes is a daily newspaper published for the U.S. military, DoD civilians, contractors, and their families. Unique among the many military publications, Stars and Stripes operates as a First Amendment newspaper, free of control and censorship. We have published continuously in Europe since 1942, where readers currently number around 80,000. We serve about 60,000 readers in the Pacific, where we have published a daily paper since 1945.*
Stars and Stripes maintains news bureaus in Europe, Pacific and the Middle East to provide first-hand reporting on events in those theaters. In addition to news and sports, our daily paper contains all the elements of the hometown paper our service members left behind, from "Dear Abby" to coupons, comics and crossword puzzles. In all, we publish five editions: Mideast, Europe, Japan, Korea and Okinawa.
From Stars and Stripes Saturday:
Iraq's National Integrity Day suggests new era after years of corruption
By Anita Powell, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Saturday, December 10, 2005
BAGHDAD — After decades of being forced to celebrate a deeply corrupt regime, national officials have declared a new national observance: National Integrity Day.
As the name suggests, the holiday, set for Dec. 9, celebrates integrity but also the achievements of the Iraq Commission on Public Integrity, an independent government organization that seeks out and investigates government corruption.
National officials ushered in the new holiday Thursday with a lively celebration at the Baghdad Convention Center, a place once off-limits to all but Saddam Hussein’s closest cronies.
make a political film...
...and in Hungary.
And trouble starts:
Jack Engelhard, the author of the best-selling novel and film, Indecent Proposal, on the Tel-Aviv-based website, ynetnews.com.
From The Guardian
And trouble starts:
"Jews pioneered Hollywood. If, as our enemies say, we own Hollywood, well, here's the plot twist - we have lost Hollywood, and we have lost Spielberg. Spielberg is no friend of Israel. Spielberg is no friend of truth. His Munich may just as well have been scripted by George Galloway."
Jack Engelhard, the author of the best-selling novel and film, Indecent Proposal, on the Tel-Aviv-based website, ynetnews.com.
From The Guardian
harry flashman and margaret thatcher? no?
But there is a connection between Flashman and Thatcher, and it may surprise you to learn that the connection is me. Here, I think, is how it came about.
In the summer of 1982, when Margaret Thatcher had been in power three years, I wrote a review of the then latest Flashman novel, Flashman and the Redskins, for the weekly journal New Society - now, alas no more.
In it, I pointed out that one of the explanations for the appeal of the Flashman books was that they subverted 19th-century pretensions in our own day as successfully as Lytton Strachey had subverted them in his time with Eminent Victorians, published in 1918.
Ah hun.
And?
In depicting the 19th Century in this way, I suggested the Flashman saga "took the lid off Victorian values", and it was under that very headline that the review was eventually run.
A few weeks afterwards, I received a letter from Matthew Parris, who told me that Margaret Thatcher had greatly enjoyed reading my essay. Six months later, in January 1983, she began talking publicly and admiringly about Victorian values, and about what she meant by them, and she continued to do so until the general election that was held in May of that year, which, of course, she triumphantly won.
And they say there are no political novelists any more.
palimpsest or grand tour? 1
London was a frequent starting point for Grand Tourists, and Paris a compulsory destination; many traveled to the Netherlands, some to Switzerland and Germany, and a very few adventurers to Spain, Greece, or Turkey. The essential place to visit, however, was Italy.
From the Metropolitan Museum
The Grand Tourist was typically a young man with a thorough grounding in Greek and Latin literature as well as some leisure time, some means, and some interest in art.
London: Art collector Charles Saatchi's new London gallery will open with Tessa Farmer's "Swarm" -- an exhibit of miniature skeletons and dead insects.
The fake tiny human skeletons sitting on the back of a dead dragonfly will hang from the ceiling of Saatchi's new gallery at the Duke of York headquarters building.
Farmer, 27, uses tree roots to make the skeletons of her "evil fairies," which have wings along with three fingers and four toes each.
Paris: is buzzing
It was 25 years ago that Mr. Paucton got the idea of keeping bees on the roof of the Opera, where he worked in props, after talking to a member of the in-house fire brigade who was raising fish in the basement (don't ask ...).
Rome: Tomb Raider not a computer game.
"This is one of the most brutalized digs in Italy. The tomb raiders are here almost every day," he said, looking across the arid site in the Puglia region in Italy‘s heel.
rooms with a view 6
Then I see a fair-haired, dark-eyed lady
In old-fashioned costume, at a tall window
Whom perhaps I have already seen somewhere
In another life. .. and whom I remember!
Gerard de Nerval
Fantasy
life after politics 1
Former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder landed a job Friday as board chairman for a Russian-German gas pipeline that he championed while in office, a post that deepens his already close relationship with the Russian government and President Vladimir Putin.
From the Washington Post
A Gazprom official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the job was not a quid pro quo. "This position is not related to any kind of favor on our part," the official said, saying that Schroeder was such an important figure that he was never going to have trouble finding a job.
rebrands 1
Indian Airlines
from Chennai Online
"The name has been changed to `Indian'. Signifying continuity with change, the new look communicates a bold, striking, progressive and distinctive image for the airline,"
from Chennai Online
Putting the wheel of Sun temple at Konark on the body of aircraft, symbolising timeless motion, Indian Airlines today changed its half-a-century old name and identity
remakes, surely 7
Made in 1945, this love story, half myth, half documentary is technically "propaganda" as it was made under the aegis of Winston Churchill's wartime Ministry of Information. (He usually hated Powell and Presburger's war films, particularly A Canterbury Tale). It was supposed to make us rejoice in Britishness. Instead we rejoice in the power of great film making.
A point of trivia: the key sequence of I Know Where I'm Going takes place close to the Corryvreckan, a lethal whirlpool. This can be seen from the top of the island of Jura, where of course
dvds: the future of politics
"Films are far better at bringing people together than elections, which people approach like medicine," Werbach said on the phone from his San Francisco office. "Instead of being preachy and didactic, however, they must, first of all, be entertaining."
from the Charlotte Observer
DVDs, it appears, are:
"regarded as a way of sidestepping a risk-averse Hollywood establishment and getting the message out."
death to spies, I guess
Palo Alto-based SRI International Inc. has won a $8.6 million contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to help develop the next-generation language translation software that can quickly and accurately translate and sort print, radio and television programs coming from the Middle East and China into useful data for the various American intelligence agencies.
From the Silicon Valley San Jose Business Journal
I wonder what the software will make of the programs written by the Lincoln Group?
or Lost in the Translations
santa in Arabic means wart, arse in Turkish means violin bow, and purr in Scottish Gaelic means to headbutt.
From the Sydney Morning Herald's review and author profile of The Meaning of Tingo.
The Meaning of Tingo, which is shaping up to be this year's essential stocking filler. It's brilliant in its simplicity, being nothing more than a collection of odd and interesting words from around the world, such as gorrero (Spanish, Central America) meaning a person who always allows others to pay, or pu'ukaula (Hawaiian) meaning to set up one's wife as a stake in gambling, or koro (Japanese) the hysterical belief that one's penis is shrinking into one's body.
remakes, surely (Lost in Translation)
Beijing - An extract from a speech by US President George W Bush is being used by authorities in the Chinese capital Beijing to test the English of leading officials in the run-up to the 2008 Olympics, state media said on Sunday.
From News 24
"This exam tests not only the language level but also everyone's international perspective," said Zhang Tiedao, deputy director of the city's research department into science and education.
after the world cup draw, the useful phrases
The British embassy in Germany has launched a new website for the 2006 World Cup that includes translations of football phrases such as "he was sick as a parrot" for English fans travelling to the tournament next summer.
From Reuters.
Some of the translated phrases include "Ihm war kotzuebel" (He was sick as a parrot), "Er kotzte wie ein Reiher" (He puked his guts up) and "Wembley-tor" (Wembley goal), which refers to the controversial 1966 World Cup final extra time goal by Geoff Hurst when England beat West Germany.
What about other newspapers?
At the San Francisco Chronicle, there are problems
As more consumers get their news from electronic sources and advertising follows them, analysts warn that newspapers elsewhere — already losing an average of more than 2% of their subscribers yearly — might join the Chronicle in a steepening fall.
the Latists 4
4.
September 12th Lunchtime
Flintoff Doubtful for Australian Tour
SMS from Pa: r u rn L-dn m-thon ths yr 2?
Thumbs were too tired to respond. Shut down computer and tried tack two. See, if the Reading Room of the British Library wasn’t quite Club Shag on a Friday night, there still were – wait for it – three love-potential cafes around here: first floor, second floor and in the courtyard. All of them brimming with forlorn single-seater Acko-Tot.
But which to choose?
In the end I went upstairs: there’s a terrace outside for the post-wholemeal-nosh smokes. In the queue for the till I bumped into a legging’d-up honey in all-black carrying a copy of the New York Review of Books.
“I didn’t know they still read in America,” I said, hoping fashionable anti-Americanism would play well here.
She had to be American, of course. She looked at my tray with its thin ham sandwich (low fat, natch) and the crumble and custard.
“Bread usually signifies sexual frustration,” she said in a Warhol monotone. “Meat suggests anger, and custard that you are in need of comfort.”
“Really?” This was sounding good.
“So I suggest you go and rub yourself against someone closer to your own age. I do believe Agatha Christie is dead though. Germaine Greer comes in once a week. Thursdays I think.”
“That will be eight pounds and eighty two pence,” said a Kleb-faced cashier in a low Balkan drawl.
For a sandwich and crumble?
I got out my shiny vampire credit card – it never knows if it is alive or dead – and fingered a PIN number.
It’s definitely downstairs for tea.
Then I paid with cash.
From behind me I heard Warhol girl grouching. “I so hate cheap men, don’t you?”
Ms. Cash-Register Milosevic didn’t seem to disagree.
Do you know how expensive Pizza Express is? Not so bad, right? Place to catch a bite on those non business-lunch days. One American Hot, carafe of rot-wein and a spresso mouthwash to finish and it’s twenty quid max.
62% of all Pizza Express home deliveries are repeat orders, according to its website.
But when your beloved children Glenn and Jem go off to study Media (or forgodsakes Landscape Gardening) at the University of Brighton you don’t expect them to dine on Pizza Diavolo and five Peronis every bloody night in their first week.
The Vampire had been bled for £287 in precisely seven days. Don’t they have a student canteen down there? Fresher’s Weeks? Sponsored parties to meet people? Christian Union handouts? MacDonalds vouchers?
That card was for emergencies, not extra chillis on the bleedin’ side.
I guess I have the worst divorce lawyer in Britain.
I put the vampire bill away and went back to Chapter One: Art School and Early Beginnings.
No joy there still.
At the next desk a gray haired man – don’t they know about colournation.com, it has 1080 shades for sale on its website for god’s sake (including ammonia-free colour for those allergic to ammonia): we did their online mailshots last year – is reading from Dislexia in a Non Dislexian World.
Well, I assume he is reading. He’s writing a lot of notes down.
I’m angry now. Anyway, wasn’t that a Police song?
I just can’t start on this book. I need stimulation. I threw a few starry-eyed surprise glances around at varied studious Acko-tot but as usual nothing was doing.
I went for a walk to buy some smokes.
“Hi Pa,” I shouted at the front door. There was no reply.
Downstairs in the kitchen there were signs of life: two empty bottles of Prosecco, an artichoke heart given the works, hot lemony butter drippings all over the table. Upstairs somewhere I could hear Astrid Gilberto singing about something light and flighty and flying down to Rio. Then there was laughter. Multiple laughter.
From the bedroom.
Pa’s bedroom.
I went off to see Magda and bought my third half-pack of Marlbies for the day.
“Still dreaming of the eighties?” she asked.
“Something like that,” I said. Behind her on the till is an unopened copy of the Daily Mail. Above its masthead is a cut-out picture of Elspeth. Exclusive extracts from I Married a Mini Monster continued.
It’s just because she’s a children’s author. People think she’s the Virgin Mary. Unlike Bloody Mary who’s taking one for the team right now with Pa.
I gave them another hour by slipping into the Comely Vice Admiral’s Daughter for a pride of gins. As usual the Iron Curtain was well represented, so I stuck to the West Berlin side of the bar and read the Standard pretending to be Harry Palmer.
Elsepth is on Newsnight.
Oh please.
The Tommy-Lee and Pammy for the Saga Nation have made it back downstairs it seems when I get back. I can smell cooking.
I just hope they’re not watching their own home videos.
Brace myself for Bloody Mary.
Only it’s not Bloody Mary.
It’s what the Hu*h Gr**T? Karen.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Henry.”
Who the hell is Karen?
“The Prodigal,” Pa said. “I told you all about him.”
Karen is in the 40-60 slot, another Blonde Da Vinci Code as far as I can work out. She gave me a crisp JFK immigration official stare.
“Did you come back earlier?” Pa said.
“Just got in. What’ve you been up to today?”
“Charity work,” Karen said, smiling. “Michael’s been helping me with my earthquakes.”
Pa sat down rather too smugly. “Karen works for an NGO.”
“Right.”
“I’m beat,” I said half a squirming love-dove hour later. “See you guys in the morning.”
“Nice meeting you, Henry,” Karen said.
At least she doesn’t look like a Daily Mail reader.
“It’s a quarter to nine,” Pa said.
“Writing’s tiring,” I replied. There had been enough collateral damage for one day.
“You’ll miss Newsnight,” Karen said, and Pa did his best not to smile.
9% of viewers 18-30 watch the BBC online.
l'esprit nouveau
This comes from the 1917 essay, The New Spirit and the Poets
(L'Esprit Nouveau et les Poëtes)
Its author was the French, Italian, Polish poet, Guillaume Apollinaire
He too, was never quite sure of his identity.
So where are the poets?
And where is the liberty?
(L'Esprit Nouveau et les Poëtes)
It would be strange, during an epoch when the absolutely most popular artform, cinema, is a picture-book, if the poets did not try to create images for the thoughtful and more sophisticated souls, who will not be content with the filmmakers' clumsy imagination. The movies will get more sophisticated, and one can foresee the day when the phonograph and the cinema will be the only recording techniques in use, and poets may revel in a liberty hitherto unknown.
Its author was the French, Italian, Polish poet, Guillaume Apollinaire
He too, was never quite sure of his identity.
So where are the poets?
And where is the liberty?
spin on a costly propaganda slip up
The practical problem with such schemes—as any historian of the Cold War might have told the Bush administration’s eager beavers—is their inevitable exposure. That’s what happened decades ago, when C.I.A.-financed journalists and publications were exposed at home and abroad. Certainly that was the predictable conclusion of this misadventure, too, which relied rather heavily on the tradecraft of inexperienced and arrogant young Republican boobs at an outfit called the Lincoln Group
Full story
And this is from the Lincoln group website. No really it is:
A Case Study in Flexibility
Lincoln Group designed and produced tens of thousands of water bottles with custom messages for the Marine Corps during a dangerous conflict. The water bottles and their messages were produced locally and distributed throughout two major metropolitan areas in support of Coalition forces. These messages, written on the labels of the water bottles, promoted friendly discourse and encouraged religious pilgrims to call a phone number imprinted on the bottle in the event they noticed insurgent or criminal activity in their area.
Sunday, December 11, 2005
room with a view 5
And if this old world starts a
Getting you down
There’s room enough for two
Up on the roof...
linquistic integrity...
Indeed, "rendition" has some way to go before its definition becomes as elastic as that of "freedom" now is.
Always reliable
today's view
Dec 12, 2005
Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains,
at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers,
at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of
the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering
Saint Augustine
Is this why there is a slump?
"Art invariably grows out of a period when, in general, the artist admires his own nation and wants to win its approval. . . . The greatest grow out of these periods as the tall heads of the crop."
Scott Fitzgerald on Art and Patriotism
rooms with a view 4
But look at us now, quit driving,
some things hurt more much more than cars and girls.
Just look at us now, start counting,
what adds up the way it did when we were young?
Look at us now, quit driving,
some things hurt much more than cars and girls
We're after the same rainbow's end -
waiting 'round the bend,
my huckleberry friend
web search, word of the year
Integrity
...this year, the true meaning of integrity seemed to be of extraordinary concern. About 200,000 people sought its definition online.
the Latists 3
3.
September 11th. Morning
England 290 for nine. (Flintoff 93 n.o)
I do like the tube – we worked quite extensively with London Underground for a while in the early pre Ken-Tsar nineties on one of those extensions to nowhere that took forever to build – but ever since that bombing I’ve been more taken with buses, truth be told. And from Bottenham to Euston is only about an hour and twenty minutes. It’s like traveling from London to Paris on BA, minus the taxis and the duty-free frisking.
In fact all I had to do this morning was climb over the back fence, shew away a fox cub, steal down the Terry’s side alley, double back to the high street and stand waiting with my hoodie on until the number 69 arrived.
And I must say for once Pa was spot on.
Not only is the British Library free, once you’ve paid a steep tenner to get a pass, but the tottie is quite spectacular. I mean it’s like being in the library of some Swiss finishing school except that old people – and me – can justifiably sit around staring into space and fiddling with their laptops and breathing heavily.
And opposite me?
Oh, only wife four: abso-lutelement.
I began to type. Chapter One: Art School and Early Beginnings.
On the Pod Hard-Fi were singing Living for the Weekend.
Great band.
The other great thing about this library even if it isn’t the most creatively inspiring of places is the books. It may well be that all the tottie in here already has a boyfriend – or a girlfriend from the looks I’ve been getting this morning – but there is this great added bonus. Stuff to read.
I’m inspired.
I began to type again. (The first document got binned somehow when I forgot to plug into the mains). Chapter One: Art School and Early Beginnings.
In the Bookseller it says that 63% of book buyers would consider a biography only if the author is on television.
Pa had cooked lentil risotto with parmesan and carrot juice when I got back via the Terry’s alley. And rain had blighted any hopes for a result in the last Test Match. Can’t decide which is the worse news.
“The good news,” Pa said, “is that Charlton are playing Wigan on Sky 2.”
I’ve always hated football. It is another of our discussion points.
See dad is pure grammar school, scholarships – almost an Oxford blue at centre half in the 1950/51 season, and all that. Me, I’m minor public school, second fifteen, art school, sniffin’ about…agency runner…got lucky with marketing computers…does that make sense?
It will do in time.
Ok, this the way he tells it, the old-school way: his education was free. It was broad and thorough and set him up for a balanced life caring and sharing and voting Labour come what may. Even when Labour is actually Tory, minus the foxes and flaggelants (though Blunkett is doing sterling work, don’t you think?). My education was patchy, narrow-minded, expensive and turned me into what pa still insists when he’s one-or-two-under is the Über Thatcher Kinder.
I mean I didn’t even vote for her the first time.
“Great,” I said – for I want as few stressful moments at home as are absolutely necessary.
“I thought you hated football.”
“Grown to love it, since Sky.”
“Hmm.”
“How’s Mary?” I said.
“I don’t know,” Pa growled. “She’s not my girlfriend.”
“I didn’t say she was.”
Since Ma died I’ve become aware that Pa has a lot of lady friends. I mean not one or two but several. I can’t say I get on with them so well.
It must be me: Even Snow-Queen Elspeth who obviously was hot against all age-gap relationships, especially mine, excepted Pa from all criticism.
“How was the writing?” Pa said, flipping to a programme about another mysterious disappearance in Australia. Frankly if Australia disappeared completely I wouldn’t be so unhappy. The footie was still twenty minutes away.
“Oh, pretty good. Starting with my youth.”
“What you can remember of it.”
“Yah, what I can remember of it.”
“So can I read it?”
“Not yet, pa. Not yet.”
“There was a woman outside here all day.”
“And?”
“And?”
“And you didn’t talk to her, did you?”
“Only for five minutes.”
Dreamt I was in Cuba. I’m sitting at a bar in Havana drinking cuba-libres a mucho and across the way there’s some saucy Shakira just looking for trouble. Trouble is I’m reading Ronald Reagen’s autobiography for some reason and the next thing I know a bunch of stubbly Ché Guveras are interrogating me, whipping me with copies of the Daily Mail.
“Who was it?” They kept asking. “Charlton or Wigan?”
Woke in a sweat at day-break and for unfathomable reasons went for a run on Bottenham Heath. Pulled a muscle on the boarders of Wandworth high street. Limped to newsagents to buy the new GQ, Details and Dazed and Confused.
Never got beyond the already low pile of Daily Mails.
What a total Gr***ting Bitch.
Again.
And what is Pa doing saying she was a wonderful wife and mother?
“What’s wrong?” I heard some female voice. Turning I saw Bloody Mary.
“What?” I said.
“You’re crying,” she said.
“Groin strain,” I said. “Practicing for the London Marathon.”
53% of Brits do not exercise enough, says The Times.
rooms with a view 3
The source of the Danube
NOT, like his great Compeers, indignantly
Doth DANUBE spring to life! The wandering Stream
(Who loves the Cross, yet to the Crescent's gleam
Unfolds a willing breast) with infant glee
Slips from his prison walls: and Fancy, free
To follow in his track of silver light,
Mounts on rapt wing, and with a moment's flight
Hath reached the encincture of that gloomy sea
Whose waves the Orphean lyre forbade to meet
In conflict; whose rough winds forgot their jars
To waft the heroic progeny of Greece;
When the first Ship sailed for the Golden Fleece -
ARGO - exalted for that daring feat
To fix in heaven her shape distinct with stars
William Wordsworth
the new "new" journalism
From today's New York Times
Getting it right, post Judith?
Or from analogue days?
Getting it close in 1949 here?
In state of the art studios, producers prepare the daily mix of music and news for the group's radio stations or spots for friendly television outlets. Writers putting out newspapers and magazines in Baghdad and Kabul converse via teleconferences. Mobile trailers with high-tech gear are parked outside, ready for the next crisis.
Getting it right, post Judith?
The center is not part of a news organization, but a military operation, and those writers and producers are soldiers. The 1,200-strong psychological operations unit based at Fort Bragg turns out what its officers call "truthful messages" to support the United States government's objectives, though its commander acknowledges that those stories are one-sided and their American sponsorship is hidden.
Or from analogue days?
The voice from the telescreen paused. A trumpet call, clear and beautiful, floated into the stagnant air. The voice continued raspingly:
'Attention! Your attention, please! A newsflash has this moment arrived from the Malabar front. Our forces in South India have won a glorious victory. I am authorized to say that the action we are now reporting may well bring the war within measurable distance of its end. Here is the newsflash -'
Bad news coming, thought Winston. And sure enough, following on a gory description of the annihilation of a Eurasian army, with stupendous figures of killed and prisoners, came the announcement that, as from next week, the chocolate ration would be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty.
Getting it close in 1949 here?
rooms with a view 2
in those sad and bright moments, when you or someone else
stand by the window, where the distant horizons, green,
look into your unconcealable soul – looking back at ourselves we see
geese and meadows, horses, wagons by the cottage and the wind mill
Vytautas Bložė
Two Greetings
When I was crossing the border into Canada,
they asked if I had any firearms with me.
I said, "Well, what do you need?"
Steven Wright
christmas reads
For those longer trips
The Poet Game Salar Abdoh
Opium Salar Abdoh
Le Grand Meaulnes Henri Alain-Fournier
The Third Woman Mark Burnell
36 Yalta Boulevard Olen Steinhauer
The Man Without
Qualities Robert Musil
The City of
Falling Angels John Berendt
plausibility
Always useful
Good to know there's a theory behind all this.
Plausible deniability is the term given to the creation of loose and informal chains of command in government, which allow controversial instructions given by high-ranking officials to be denied if they become public.
lingua nomad
hmmm
...some agencies, such as the CIA, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the Department of State, are increasingly using automated translation software. The FBI Languages Services Section, for example, has built the Law Enforcement & Intelligence Agency Linguistic Access System (LEILA). This is now operated by the National Virtual Translation Center. LEILA provides a web interface to a comprehensive database of language specialists, including detailed information about language skills and experience. Furthermore, LEILA is accessed by a number of law enforcement, intelligence, homeland security and defense agencies. Such agencies include the DEA, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (DHS) and the CIA.
...some agencies, such as the CIA, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the Department of State, are increasingly using automated translation software. The FBI Languages Services Section, for example, has built the Law Enforcement & Intelligence Agency Linguistic Access System (LEILA). This is now operated by the National Virtual Translation Center. LEILA provides a web interface to a comprehensive database of language specialists, including detailed information about language skills and experience. Furthermore, LEILA is accessed by a number of law enforcement, intelligence, homeland security and defense agencies. Such agencies include the DEA, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (DHS) and the CIA.
the Latists 2
2.
September 10th. Late Sunday lunchtime
England 157 for three.
Bottenham is in London’s hammy basin – it’s not quite Clapham, not exactly Balham, and certainly not Streatham (and nowhere near Ham itself: that’s the bloody countryside in my book). It has a forest of Edwardian terraced houses that have filled slowly but surely with a cast of the usual smug sarf suspects. They all work in the law and the media and IT; often all three at once, it seems to me. Sneak through any window and you’ll see swathes of Billy storage solutions from Ikea and framed Damian Hirst prints from Tate Modern; well read job-sections from the super-soaraway newly compact Guardian peek out from the top of the midget front garden wheelie-bins where they nestle with walls of weight-watcher frozens and vineyards of empty Shiraz bottles.
Pa has had his place for almost half a century, he and ma bought it when he took up his first practice in Mitchum. 47 Parkinson Villas: four floors of south London quiet. For almost all that time the place was a messy survey of our teenager years, then Ma died and Pa started reading too many copies of Wallpaper magazine thanks to the wife of someone he goes wine tasting with in Italy.
There are many new plans now, and the model railway mags are long gone.
And I was thinking of selling them on e-Bay. It’s not like I’m cash-abundant these days.
Felicity and I grew up here, when things were a little different. Of course we both got away as soon as we could: me north to the tender pastures of Highbury fields; Flicks even further to Cairo and all that…
These days Bottenham high street is full – but not so full – with all-night Tesco metros and franchised coffee houses and designer bathroom stores, though the average person actually walking around (this is the edge of People Carrier Country, after all) is as likely to be talking about family back in Gdansk as they are the rain that prevented more than a session being completed yesterday at Old Trafford.
I’ve made friends with young Magda, from Lodz, who works in the Threshers offie by the job centre. She has a boyfriend in the construction business over in Ealing and likes going dancing in Soho at the weekend. I tell her about my old offices on Wardour street and she smiles, as though the eighties is a long time ago.
£2.87 for ten Marlbie Lights. Holy mother…
As – newly discovered this morning after church (kitchen table readings from AA Gill and Michael Winner in Pa’s Sunday Times, not the old King James favourites about hell and redemption) – the horsey Mary can’t abide smokers I’ve taken the opportunity of the break between the duck in cider with celeriac dumplings and the pomegranate moose with lemon sorbet to cadge a half pack from Magda. If I walk home slowly enough I might get two down before battle re-commences. And if we’re really lucky the sun will come out in Manchester and we can booze away the afternoon in silent contemplation watching Freddie and Inzamam on Sky.
If not, I fear Mary is very keen to talk about Elspeth. One more glass of Argentinean white and she’ll lose – like she has so many – her inhibitions. I shuffled the Pod and got Razorlight singing Somewhere Else.
I really really wish I was, Sum Where Else…
Great band.
14% of kids between 13 and 18 have had sex with more than one person at the same time, according to a survey in The Sun.
The covers came out at two-twelve Pa said when I got back, checking on his retirement watch. I thought with the absence of play about a tactical retreat to my room – but at 50 years old this looks a little surly and teenage. A few tips of cognac hit my espresso and I waited.
“So Henry, Michael tells me you are writing?” Mary leant away as I turned, her nose doing one of those Bewitched unpleasantnesses.
Must be fag-breath.
“Yes Mary.”
“Is it a thriller? Like some of those books in your room?” When she asks a question Mary has all the charm of a special advisor to Tony Blair on Question Time. She’s of that indeterminate age between 40 and 60 that to be honest I have never truly – other obviously than when marketing to them – understood.
Call me superficial. I’ve known worse.
“No, no. It’s a business book, about my career in advertising.”
Mary takes a sip of wine. Always in my experience of these kinds of exchange a worrying sign. “I thought that was all over now?”
It is at time like this that I wish we had a butler who could be summoned by hand-bell and serve the port and discretely but definitively change the topic of conversation.
“It’s like acting,” I said. “Right now I’m just resting. Between parts.”
Wrong thing to say.
“I expect parts of the female population of London will be pleased.” Mary said. “Well, the younger ones, anyway. The personal assistants.”
“You shouldn’t believe everything you read, Mary. Particularly in the Daily Mail.”
“I’m sorry?” Mary is now the most perplexed person north of Putney. We’re not going to be friends – this I know.
“How was Kerry? Find any bargains?” Pa said, smoothly enough, just a hint of his famous GPA revealed. (That’s his Doctor’s Abruptness, the kind that kills off – as it were – too many intrusive questions about alternative medicines and legal ramifications).
And so Mary told us the tall tale of Kelvin and the tallboy and the amusing incident of the Italian lamp from Donegal. She has a small antique shop on the Wandsworth High road. And we must visit.
“I say,” she said a year or so later. “That’s a good shot.”
England’s cricket team was somehow back on the pitch and seven down and in the gloom that was not quite bad enough to end play for the day Freddie F was involved in a belligerent rearguard action with a young wicketkeeper from Northants.
“Anyway,” Mary said. “Good luck with your book. I suppose you must be hoping for sales like Elspeth’s?”
If I sell one tenth of what she’s shifting I’ll be happy.
“I knew you’d like Mary,” Pa said sitting back into his rocking chair. And before I have time to confirm or deny he’s found one those high 500 satellite channels where everything is outdoors, and kayaks and over-bright polyester trousers feature heavily.
“It’s about the third attempt on Annapurna 2,” Pa said. “Famous.”
Pa still climbs.
I went back to kitchen and made vague shamanic gestures at the sink. When that failed to achieve the desired effect I poured myself another cognac and stepped out into the garden for my last Marlbie of the day. Down by the hydrangeas a fox was making mincemeat of small bird, genus unknown. I noted its twilight colours: I need all the conversational gambits I can find if I’m going to keep Pa – and Bloody Mary – off my back.
My mobile rang. For a change I answered it.
“This is Katy Harms, from the Daily Mail. We’re just doing a follow up to your ex wife’s serialization. There’s been a marvelous response to it.”
The next morning I read that I was unavailable for comment.
And there was a young woman waiting on our doorstep to help remedy this fact.
September 10th. Late Sunday lunchtime
England 157 for three.
Bottenham is in London’s hammy basin – it’s not quite Clapham, not exactly Balham, and certainly not Streatham (and nowhere near Ham itself: that’s the bloody countryside in my book). It has a forest of Edwardian terraced houses that have filled slowly but surely with a cast of the usual smug sarf suspects. They all work in the law and the media and IT; often all three at once, it seems to me. Sneak through any window and you’ll see swathes of Billy storage solutions from Ikea and framed Damian Hirst prints from Tate Modern; well read job-sections from the super-soaraway newly compact Guardian peek out from the top of the midget front garden wheelie-bins where they nestle with walls of weight-watcher frozens and vineyards of empty Shiraz bottles.
Pa has had his place for almost half a century, he and ma bought it when he took up his first practice in Mitchum. 47 Parkinson Villas: four floors of south London quiet. For almost all that time the place was a messy survey of our teenager years, then Ma died and Pa started reading too many copies of Wallpaper magazine thanks to the wife of someone he goes wine tasting with in Italy.
There are many new plans now, and the model railway mags are long gone.
And I was thinking of selling them on e-Bay. It’s not like I’m cash-abundant these days.
Felicity and I grew up here, when things were a little different. Of course we both got away as soon as we could: me north to the tender pastures of Highbury fields; Flicks even further to Cairo and all that…
These days Bottenham high street is full – but not so full – with all-night Tesco metros and franchised coffee houses and designer bathroom stores, though the average person actually walking around (this is the edge of People Carrier Country, after all) is as likely to be talking about family back in Gdansk as they are the rain that prevented more than a session being completed yesterday at Old Trafford.
I’ve made friends with young Magda, from Lodz, who works in the Threshers offie by the job centre. She has a boyfriend in the construction business over in Ealing and likes going dancing in Soho at the weekend. I tell her about my old offices on Wardour street and she smiles, as though the eighties is a long time ago.
£2.87 for ten Marlbie Lights. Holy mother…
As – newly discovered this morning after church (kitchen table readings from AA Gill and Michael Winner in Pa’s Sunday Times, not the old King James favourites about hell and redemption) – the horsey Mary can’t abide smokers I’ve taken the opportunity of the break between the duck in cider with celeriac dumplings and the pomegranate moose with lemon sorbet to cadge a half pack from Magda. If I walk home slowly enough I might get two down before battle re-commences. And if we’re really lucky the sun will come out in Manchester and we can booze away the afternoon in silent contemplation watching Freddie and Inzamam on Sky.
If not, I fear Mary is very keen to talk about Elspeth. One more glass of Argentinean white and she’ll lose – like she has so many – her inhibitions. I shuffled the Pod and got Razorlight singing Somewhere Else.
I really really wish I was, Sum Where Else…
Great band.
14% of kids between 13 and 18 have had sex with more than one person at the same time, according to a survey in The Sun.
The covers came out at two-twelve Pa said when I got back, checking on his retirement watch. I thought with the absence of play about a tactical retreat to my room – but at 50 years old this looks a little surly and teenage. A few tips of cognac hit my espresso and I waited.
“So Henry, Michael tells me you are writing?” Mary leant away as I turned, her nose doing one of those Bewitched unpleasantnesses.
Must be fag-breath.
“Yes Mary.”
“Is it a thriller? Like some of those books in your room?” When she asks a question Mary has all the charm of a special advisor to Tony Blair on Question Time. She’s of that indeterminate age between 40 and 60 that to be honest I have never truly – other obviously than when marketing to them – understood.
Call me superficial. I’ve known worse.
“No, no. It’s a business book, about my career in advertising.”
Mary takes a sip of wine. Always in my experience of these kinds of exchange a worrying sign. “I thought that was all over now?”
It is at time like this that I wish we had a butler who could be summoned by hand-bell and serve the port and discretely but definitively change the topic of conversation.
“It’s like acting,” I said. “Right now I’m just resting. Between parts.”
Wrong thing to say.
“I expect parts of the female population of London will be pleased.” Mary said. “Well, the younger ones, anyway. The personal assistants.”
“You shouldn’t believe everything you read, Mary. Particularly in the Daily Mail.”
“I’m sorry?” Mary is now the most perplexed person north of Putney. We’re not going to be friends – this I know.
“How was Kerry? Find any bargains?” Pa said, smoothly enough, just a hint of his famous GPA revealed. (That’s his Doctor’s Abruptness, the kind that kills off – as it were – too many intrusive questions about alternative medicines and legal ramifications).
And so Mary told us the tall tale of Kelvin and the tallboy and the amusing incident of the Italian lamp from Donegal. She has a small antique shop on the Wandsworth High road. And we must visit.
“I say,” she said a year or so later. “That’s a good shot.”
England’s cricket team was somehow back on the pitch and seven down and in the gloom that was not quite bad enough to end play for the day Freddie F was involved in a belligerent rearguard action with a young wicketkeeper from Northants.
“Anyway,” Mary said. “Good luck with your book. I suppose you must be hoping for sales like Elspeth’s?”
If I sell one tenth of what she’s shifting I’ll be happy.
“I knew you’d like Mary,” Pa said sitting back into his rocking chair. And before I have time to confirm or deny he’s found one those high 500 satellite channels where everything is outdoors, and kayaks and over-bright polyester trousers feature heavily.
“It’s about the third attempt on Annapurna 2,” Pa said. “Famous.”
Pa still climbs.
I went back to kitchen and made vague shamanic gestures at the sink. When that failed to achieve the desired effect I poured myself another cognac and stepped out into the garden for my last Marlbie of the day. Down by the hydrangeas a fox was making mincemeat of small bird, genus unknown. I noted its twilight colours: I need all the conversational gambits I can find if I’m going to keep Pa – and Bloody Mary – off my back.
My mobile rang. For a change I answered it.
“This is Katy Harms, from the Daily Mail. We’re just doing a follow up to your ex wife’s serialization. There’s been a marvelous response to it.”
The next morning I read that I was unavailable for comment.
And there was a young woman waiting on our doorstep to help remedy this fact.
a christmas playlist
Mexico The King of France
Better Big Strides
Biology Girls Aloud
Arabesque Henry Mancini
Avalon Juliet
Miles Away Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Mary Mary Superthriller
Obsessions Suede
Fake Tales
of San
Francisco Arctic Monkeys
Go ask
Shakespeare Burt Bacharach
Somewhere Else Razorlight
It hurts me so Jay-Jay Johanson
Cucurrucucu Paloma Caetano Veloso
rooms with a view
It's time to end my holiday and bid the country a hasty farewell.
So on this gray and melancholy day, I'll move to a Manhattan hotel.
I'll dispose of my rose-colored chattels and prepare for my share of adventures and battles,
Here on the twenty-seventh floor looking down on the city I hate and adore!
Autumn in New York, why does it seem so inviting?
Autumn in New York, it spells the thrill of first-nighting.
Glittering crowds and shimmering clouds in canyons of steel; they're making me feel I'm home.
It's autumn in New York that brings the promise of new love. Autumn in New
York is often mingled with pain.
Dreamers with empty hands may sigh for exotic lands;
it's autumn in New York;
it's good to live again.
Vernon Duke
Autumn in New York
Soldiers, what finer worth
there upon this earth
than the borderlands can show?
Balassi Balint
Soliders' Song
home once
He is the happiest, be he king or peasant,
who finds peace in his home
Goethe
The illiterate of the future will be the person
ignorant of the use of the camera as well as the pen
Anonymous
rich history
false history gets made all day, any day,
the truth of the new is never on the news
Adrienne Rich
the Latists
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
September 8th Friday Evening.
Pakistan 209 for nine (bad light stopped play)
By Henry Derwent
Lounging in the afterglow of some very fine second day reverse swing, Pa zapped the sound on the close-of-play analysis and said: “So what are you going to do?”
I polished the third glass of wine off and kept quiet as Pa wandered off to the cellar to find another bottle.
You know I do miss Ritchie Benaud: been with him boy and man. They’ve no depth now these earring-heavy new guys, not even the ex-England captains.
“Do you think we’ll be able to bat through Saturday?” I shouted down the hall. I think Pa answered, something about the overcast mid-September weather and the possibility of turn.
Pa uncorked the second Merlot – a bargain from Waitrose online, he tells me – and repeated the question.
“I won’t be here long, just a while.”
Pa sat at the new kitchen table and nodded with his best bedside manner as he said: “Doing what? Exactly?”
“Writing.”
“Ah.” As though this was bad, almost like invading Iraq. Or Wiltshire. “Writing what?”
I let him pour. “Only £3.99,” he said, “Bought a couple of cases. Mary likes it.”
I gave the approving smile and – noting a new name – said: “A memoir.”
“Not about all the…not a response to…?”
“…About my work, pa. It’s going to be like a business book, for students. A tool.”
“Ah, a tool book?”
“Yah.”
“For students…?”
He is not going to make this easy: of course he liked Elspeth, hasn’t forgiven me for that. Everyone loved Elspeth.
“Like David Ogilvy, The Man himself.”
Pa raised his eyebrows and watched a slow-mo replay of a tremendous leg-stump yorker that told for the Pakistani captain this morning. “He’s good, that Jones,” Pa said. It was prudent to agree.
“I won’t be that long,” I said.
“Right,” Pa said. “Like one of your marriages then?”
I know it is coming, but what can I do?
“Ha ha,” I said, volunteering to wash up.
Well, I carried the plates over to the dishwasher and loaded them, even if I couldn’t find the soap cubes.
“And where will you write this epic?”
That means the study is out then. What does he do in there? Buys wine, I suppose.
“Oh, a library. The London Library, probably.”
“Are you a member?”
“Probably,” I said.
“Try the British Library,” he said. “It’s almost free.”
When you have run your own direct marketing company – three – for over 20 years and have a box full of Campaign and Marketing Week awards in storage and worked with a client list to die for it’s difficult to down-size. Throw in a few divorces – mostly just the normal uncontested affairs – a pair of spendthrift twins at Sussex University (and one admittedly terrible mistake) and things take a steep turn for the down, rather than the size, no matter how fashionable the concept might be with the new righteously rich.
And so I am living at home, temporarily. A fifty year-old student.
With debts.
“At least there aren’t bailiffs, this time,” Pa said. I tried to make it seem that even in silence Jon Snow was suddenly very interesting on the Channel 4 news. I stared at some footage of another earthquake encouragingly, but the mute stayed resolutely on even when a bovine young reporter in a khaki flak jacket started interviewing the doctors and aid-workers and amputees.
We can wait before I explain the legal stuff.
“Yes, there is that.”
“A book? Well, it’s your life,” he said. “Good luck. I hope you have a good agent.”
My bedroom – unlike Felicity’s – has changed a lot since I lived here. As a teenager I painted it all black and covered the walls with punk pages torn from the NME and a few tasteful stripped-down collages of Lesley-Anne Down and Joanna Lumley and Farrah when she was a hyphenated Major. Thankfully that’s all gone now.
Finally.
When Ma died two years ago Pa had a pair of Poles in to end what he calls the Living in Beirut effect on the third floor. Now my room’s as cozy as a cheap B&B in Swindon. On the shelves of a small new antique bookcase I see all my old Flemings and Chandlers and whatnots alongside Pa’s textbooks. Not only can a house-guest find out all about Moose Malloy and Smersh, they can also learn how to deliver a child, recognize the symptoms of scarlet fever, and read the in-depth sexual confessions of several kinds of British handymen.
I left my old retreat and went back downstairs.
Pa had been thinking about things; may even have checked his new Blackberry. “I have friends coming first week in October, you’ll be gone by then?”
Three weeks. No-way.
“Oh sure,” I said. “I told you this is just a short-term thing. Anyone fun?”
“And the builders are back after that.”
“Builders?”
“Mary thinks we need more light.”
“Who is this Mary?”
I bet she reads the Daily Mail.
“We met running. She’s a furniture restorer.”
And, no doubt, an addict of Elspeth’s bloody book.
“Is it serious?”
Why does that always sound like you are thinking about the will?
“I’m a widower, Henry, not a divorcee. Mary is a good friend of mine. You should think about it: having women as friends.”
“I have a lot of female friends,” I said.
Pa sighed. “You’ve had a lot, I think that’s the verb you seek. Mary thinks you are a misogynist.”
“Then Mary has been reading the Daily Mail too much.”
“Elspeth is a very good writer though. It can’t all be wrong.”
“Have you heard of blood ties, pa?”
“As far as I recall when I was researching our genealogy online the Derwent family has no link with the Corsican or the Sicilian mafia. We tend to be very English about these things.”
“English?”
Moral humbug. David Davis. Norman Tebbitt. Mary Whitehouse.
“Yes, English. We tend to think that husbands who are cheating on their third wives with a 24 year old personal assistant from Llanduff who can’t spell accommodation in a business letter to your best client deserve all they get.”
“So you have been reading it?”
“Mary gave me the highlights.”
“And where is Mary today?”
“Ireland. There’s an auction in Kerry.”
I think there’s going to be trouble with Mary. I can feel it in my I-Pod.
In a poll this morning in the Daily Mail 43% of Britons admitted they prefer beans on toast to foie gras.
“Don’t you think you’re a bit long in the tooth for drainpipe jeans?” Pa said as I put the plates away.
“But they’re McQueen,” I said. “Skinny jeans. Haven’t you seen…?”
No matter what I do, pa is never going to be fashionable.
“Perhaps you should join my gym,” he said. “They do three month discounted trials.”
another around robin
Notes from a Nomad Contributor
TO
CAPTAIN SAMUEL LEWIS,
OF THE PENINSULAR AND ORIENTAL STEAM NAVIGATION COMPANY'S SERVICE
My Dear Lewis,
After a voyage, during which the captain of the ship has displayed uncommon courage, seamanship, affability, or other good qualities, grateful passengers often present him with a token of their esteem, in the shape of teapots, tankards, trays, of precious metal. Among authors, however, bullion is a much rarer commodity than paper, whereof I beg you to accept a little in the shape of this small volume. It contains a few notes of a voyage which your skill and kindness rendered doubly pleasant; and of which I don't think there is any recollection more agreeable than that it was the occasion of making your friendship.
If the noble Company in whose service you command (and whose fleet alone makes them a third-rate maritime power in Europe) should appoint a few admirals in their navy, I hope to hear that your flag is hoisted on board one of the grandest of their steamers. But, I trust, even there you will not forget the "Iberia," and the delightful Mediterranean cruise we had in her in the Autumn of 1844.
Most faithfully yours,
William Thackeray
TO
CAPTAIN SAMUEL LEWIS,
OF THE PENINSULAR AND ORIENTAL STEAM NAVIGATION COMPANY'S SERVICE
My Dear Lewis,
After a voyage, during which the captain of the ship has displayed uncommon courage, seamanship, affability, or other good qualities, grateful passengers often present him with a token of their esteem, in the shape of teapots, tankards, trays, of precious metal. Among authors, however, bullion is a much rarer commodity than paper, whereof I beg you to accept a little in the shape of this small volume. It contains a few notes of a voyage which your skill and kindness rendered doubly pleasant; and of which I don't think there is any recollection more agreeable than that it was the occasion of making your friendship.
If the noble Company in whose service you command (and whose fleet alone makes them a third-rate maritime power in Europe) should appoint a few admirals in their navy, I hope to hear that your flag is hoisted on board one of the grandest of their steamers. But, I trust, even there you will not forget the "Iberia," and the delightful Mediterranean cruise we had in her in the Autumn of 1844.
Most faithfully yours,
William Thackeray
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