barracuda wrote:Stephen Morgan wrote:DH, as in your picture of the book of.
Dude, that's a picture of Lord Byron from the frontispiece of his complete works. You should have figured that out by the six letters above the portrait roundel, B-Y-R-O-N-S. Unless I've missed something, and he used to moonlight as DH Lawrence.
I may conceivably have been mistaken.
Presumably your books are wet, soppy, effete, not filled with honourable tales of derring-do.
They are somewhat limpid, as you may have ascertained by the water damage and foxing on the attachments I've posted here. But there are, mixed among the fopperies, a few moments of manly gusto - sort of as if my collection were the Scarlet Pimpernel of small personal libraries.
What is it exactly which makes you condemn my more intrepid tastes as dry?
But I'm sure you don't want to hear about my problems.
On the contrary, the travails of life in your part of the world of the mind make for fascinating readings at times. It's some of your opinions which I've found disagreeable. That can't be helped, I suppose.
You could always start agreeing with me, that might help.
Wouldn't be much fun, though. I believe in heuristics and dialectic and so forth: the emergence from ideological conflict of a position more finely tempered.
Meanwhile I'm glad my troubles amoose you.
I've got a family. One of my earliest memories is of being in the bath while my grandad tried to use a screwdriver to unscrew the lock. And I've got a relatively rich uncle, used to be in regular employment and everything, who won't act as a guarantor on a rental agreement because he's too worried about his credit. That sort of thing, you know. The usual. Still, there's one agreeable member of my family which is myself. MYself virtually brought me up single handed, you know, as my mother was mostly an alcoholic after she got out of that mental hospital, or perhaps ward.
You are a stalwart. Sorry to hear about the relatives. Mine aren't much better in some ways, though the immediate group is at least a cheerful bunch, always ready to mockingly come to each other's aid, as it ought be.
Well, I know people, you know. I know someone who works at the Conservative Club, so I'm only three degrees of seperation from the PM.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be, especially of books. Money I don't care too much about, if I don't get it back it don't worry me, but I wouldn't be lending people books.
Ah, but if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. Or whatever. Never really understood why you'd give away all your outergarments to then stand by and shiver righteously in the rain. Anyway.
You speak, my dear fellow, to a man with a legendary abhorrence for heat, a man who takes cold showers in the middle of winter with the window open in an unheated house, a man who finds hot weather deeply unpleasant, a man who cycles in the winter to the point of not being able to feel his hands for purposes of enjoyment, a man whose reaction to his last bout of sickness was to recouperate by wandering around the frozen streets and rubbing snow on those parts of his body not covered by his t-shirt and trousers, a man, in short, unfazed by the viccisitudes of rain and cold. I once read of a gang of Indian mystics huddled around some Himalayan lake where they would stand on the frozen surface in winter and cover themselves in wet towels, trying to dry them with their mystically sourced heat, and I just thought "what a load of pussies". Test of endurance? That's fun is that. Stick your yoga up your arse. The only time I remember feeling properly cold was when I ran out of money and went three days without eating. Had to wear my second choice shoes because I'd vomited stomach acid into the first choice ones. OF course I'd fasted longer for religious purposes, but that's different. Fasting and starving are different things.
Anyway, standing around shivering in the rain holds no terrors for me, so I'll be doing as jesus says. Bunch of thieving bastards round here anyway. Stole the pump off my bike.
Wonder Book Of The World's Progress, vol. IV - Inventions
I used to have a Wonder Book of Wales. Fairy stories and that.
The New Spirit, Havelock Ellis
Used to have a book about a bloke called Havelok the Dane. Supposedly founded Grimsby or summat.
Klingsors letzter Sommer, Hermann Hesse
Oh, read foreign, so we?
Greek Science, Benjamin Farrington
Used to have that. Well, a slightly battered paperback of Volume Two, anyway.
Differential and Integral Calculus, George Osbourne
Not the chancellor of the exchequer George Osbourne, I hope.