Oh, halcyon days of muck and smoke.
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I often write down lines I like in books, as I did with this below. More a passage than a line, it is one of my favourites, from Sebastion Faulks's Engleby, words from the unreliable narrator in 1973, aimed at the year 2003 readers, which was when the novel was first published — and yes, the big block of text is how it is present in the novel itself.
1973 is the year I married my wife, aged just seventeen. We are still together — and no, she was not pregnant. Working-class teenagers used to marry young back then. They had jobs and money, were not infantilised by their parents, society at large.
Soz for the rant. Here is the text:
"Don’t patronise me if you read this thirty years on, will you? Don’t think of me as old fashioned, wearing silly clothes or some nonsense like that. Don’t talk crap about ‘the seventies’, will you, as we now do about /the forties’. I breathe air like you. I feel food in my bowel and a lingering taste of tea in my mouth. I’m alive, as you are. I’m as modern as you are, in my way — I couldn’t be more modern. My reality is complete as yours; the atoms making me and this world in their random movement are as terrible and strange and beautiful as those that make your world. Yours are in fact my atoms, reused. And you too, on your front edge of breaking time, Ms 2003, will be the object of condescending curiosity to the future — to Ms 2033 —. So don’t patronise me. (unless of course you have completely overturned and improved my world, bringing peace and plenty, and a cure for cancer and schizophrenia, and a unified scientific explanation of the universe comprehensible to all, and a satisfactory answer to the philosophical and religious questions of our time. In which case you would be permitted to patronise primitive little 1973. Well have you done those things? Got a cure for the common cold yet? Have you? Thought not. How’s your 2003 word then? A few wars? Some genocide? Some terrorism? Drugs? Abuse of children? High crime rate? Materialistic obsessions? More cars? Blah-blah pop music? Vulgar newspapers? Porn? Still wearing jeans? Though so. Yet you’ve had an extra thirty years to sort it out).
Mmm. Grammarly did not like some of that, and I might have rephrased a couple of things a little differently — but, hey! It's a character speaking, not smarty-pants Mr Faulks himself.
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I saw this quoted on another site two days ago and remembered I had jotted the same piece down in my reading notebook when I read its source work (years ago now).
From Nabokov's Speak Memory:
The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour). I know, however, of a young chronophobiac who experienced something like panic when looking for the first time at homemade movies that had been taken a few weeks before his birth. He saw a world that was practically unchanged-the same house, the same people- and then realized that he did not exist there at all and that nobody mourned his absence. He caught a glimpse of his mother waving from an upstairs window, and that unfamiliar gesture disturbed him, as if it were some mysterious farewell. But what particularly frightened him was the sight of a brand-new baby carriage standing there on the porch, with the smug, encroaching air of a coffin; even that was empty, as if, in the reverse course of events, his very bones had disintegrated.
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Quote by IMPURETHOUGHTSHello. I once had an account here when I came to know of the this site thought the main site.
Hi there. Nice to see you here too.
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Wow! Isn't t this nice — and coming just as I go away for the week? Not sure if we have wi-fi in the place we're staying, We leave Friday afternoon. Only a week in Wales, but an apartment overlooking the sea.
Accommodation is scarce as hen's teeth in the UK at the moment, prices have tripled on some properties since we booked ours. We have not been away from home since the summer of 2019, so I/m really looking forward to the change of scene.
WIll do some walking, visit historical sites, and hopefully do some paddleboarding.
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Quote by AnnaMayZingQuote by LucaByDay
This is an old one, but I love it:
If a man says something in a forest and there's no woman there to hear him, is he still wrong?
I haven't heard this. made me spit coffee!
It reminded me of a kitchen plaque I saw recently. My other-half wouldn't let me buy it;
"I would agree with you.
But then we'd both be wrong!"
Hehe, loved the twist you put on that one. Notching the Zen up a level.
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This is an old one, but I love it:
If a man says something in a forest and there's no woman there to hear him, is he still wrong?
If a man says something in a forest and there's no woman there to hear him, is he still wrong?
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This long-forgotten gem (for me, anyway) appeared in my Youtube feed last night. I was stunned by how emotional I became while watching it.
Music from twenty years ago, when my two kids were in their mid-late teens and their friends would be over, the house full of youth and laughter.
And though those kids are grown now, have little ones of their own and share their lives with us, this song and video (perhaps because of how beautifully they complement each other) elicit an almost Proustian sense of irretrievably lost time.
But of course, this is just maudlin self-indulgence. In Einstien's "Block Universe" there is no such thing as lost time.
Music from twenty years ago, when my two kids were in their mid-late teens and their friends would be over, the house full of youth and laughter.
And though those kids are grown now, have little ones of their own and share their lives with us, this song and video (perhaps because of how beautifully they complement each other) elicit an almost Proustian sense of irretrievably lost time.
But of course, this is just maudlin self-indulgence. In Einstien's "Block Universe" there is no such thing as lost time.
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I tried the door to this place this afternoon not expecting it to open — and lo & behold, here I am, back in the sheltering warmth waiting for the staff to take my order.
I'd say nice to be back, but this is my first time in the place. Looks okay. I'll be taking notes as I sip my sloppy-capo-froffo.
I'd say nice to be back, but this is my first time in the place. Looks okay. I'll be taking notes as I sip my sloppy-capo-froffo.
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Shades of the Clayhanger trilogy! Though I'm from Stoke originally, I've never read Arnold Bennett.
Stoke on Trent.
Stoke on Trent.
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I lost the stone in weight I put on in the early months of the pandemic — and a load more besides — though I can't quite fit into the suit I wore for my wedding back in 1973 yet, which I was able to try on again as quite bizarrely I still have it hanging in a wardrobe in plastic in the spare room, even though I've not worn it since the late seventies — and even then, that last time was probably only its third outing. Another inch off the waist should do it.
Mmmm: the purple kipper tie that still hangs with it will have to go through.
Mmmm: the purple kipper tie that still hangs with it will have to go through.
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Quote by AnnaMayZingQuote by LucaByDay
I've been meaning to pop over and have a mooch for months. Finally summoned the resolve and conjured a profile (which I have yet to completer.)
I'm hoping a change of colour will inspire me to write a bit more than I have of late. The well has run dry.
Great to be here. See you guys about.
Hi Luca. Welcome to SS.
I too came from over there (Annamagique) but like it much more here. I rarely go there now!
Much nicer here.
See you around.
Thank you for the lovely welcome, Anna.
I'm sure our paths will cross again from time to time.
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Quote by verbal
Last Night in Soho might be really, really good.
https://www.imdb.com/video/vi1389281305/?ref_=tt_vi_i_1
OooH, This one slipped under my Radar. Cheers for the heads up, Jeff.
Looks to have everything I could ever wish for in a film: Soho; Britain in the early sixties; horror; the malleability of time.
Just gutted I've got to wait until October!
I was on a real Soho kick last month after reading Colin Wilson's Adrift tin Soho, a book I returned to after forty-eight years. I enjoyed it the second time around far more than I did when I was eighteen, encouraged to re-read it because of the 2019 film.
The film version was perhaps a little artier than I would have liked, but if anyone wants to emerse themselves in the atmosphere of a fifties/early sixties Soho in preparation for Last Night in Soho, no harm will come of giving it a go. It is atmospheric, if nothing else.
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“But the point is, now, at this moment, or any moment, we're only a cross-section of our real selves.
What we really are is the whole stretch of ourselves, all our time, and when we come to the end of this life,
all those selves, all our time, will be us--the real you, the real me. And then perhaps we'll
find ourselves in another time, which is only another kind of dream.”
― J.B. Priestley, Time And The Conways
What we really are is the whole stretch of ourselves, all our time, and when we come to the end of this life,
all those selves, all our time, will be us--the real you, the real me. And then perhaps we'll
find ourselves in another time, which is only another kind of dream.”
― J.B. Priestley, Time And The Conways
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Quote by verbalQuote by LucaByDay
I doubt your writing well will ever run truly dry. Just an arid patch. Looking forward to more of your stories.
Cheers, Jeff. Hardly feels like it just now but you're probably right.
Your welcome and confidence in my muse are appreciated.
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Quote by verbalQuote by LucaByDay
I've been meaning to pop over and have a mooch for months. Finally summoned the resolve and conjured a profile (which I have yet to completer.)
I'm hoping a change of colour will inspire me to write a bit more than I have of late. The well has run dry.
Great to be here. See you guys about.
Hey, nice to see you.
I doubt your writing well will ever run truly dry. Just an arid patch. Looking forward to more of your stories.
Cheers, Tam. Looking forward to reading another side of you.
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Quote by VerityQuote by LucaByDayNice to see you. I too have come from the dark side but I still keep my hand in over there.
I've been meaning to pop over and have a mooch for months. Finally summoned the resolve and conjured a profile (which I have yet to completer.)
I'm hoping a change of colour will inspire me to write a bit more than I have of late. The well has run dry.
Great to be here. See you guys about.
Yeah, much lighter over here. I can actually see what I'm doing.
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Quote by SurvivorQuote by LucaByDay
I've been meaning to pop over and have a mooch for months. Finally summoned the resolve and conjured a profile (which I have yet to completer.)
I'm hoping a change of colour will inspire me to write a bit more than I have of late. The well has run dry.
Great to be here. See you guys about.
It's always good to see new faces appearing on the storiesspace scene. Welcome. The coffee is hot in the Inspirations Coffeehouse.
Cheers, Larry. I appreciate the welcome.
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I've been meaning to pop over and have a mooch for months. Finally summoned the resolve and conjured a profile (which I have yet to completer.)
I'm hoping a change of colour will inspire me to write a bit more than I have of late. The well has run dry.
Great to be here. See you guys about.
I'm hoping a change of colour will inspire me to write a bit more than I have of late. The well has run dry.
Great to be here. See you guys about.