A kind of long weekend

The longest weekend one can get without taking a day off: ending a night-shift week on Friday morning, and only returning to work for a back-shift week on Monday afternoon. Meaning one can make the Saturday a real rest day, sandwiched between two days off.

I deserved it too. The preceding day-shift week was even harder than these usually are, what with some overtime every day except the last one. In fact on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday it wasn't even worth it switching on the laptop; on Tommy's birthday I only remembered about it late in the day; and towards the end I apparently pulled my right calf (still a bit stiff even now).

While during the last, night-shift week I was training a workmate; this entailed sharing the place and often the tools, notwithstanding which we were supposed to do almost twice as much as I do on my own. Moreover on two of the nights some barbarian played there loud music for a few hours, making it almost unbearable. A rather exhausting fortnight.

But as I've mentioned, today I'm having a rest day, the rain drums on my windowsill and I'm at peace with the world ...

Tactile deprivation

In Paul Greer's novel Less the main character sadly ponders that while two gays can't walk hand in hand on a street in Morocco, two straights can't do it in Chicago. I suspect that he's right: that in general, the easier it is somewhere for two gays to openly show their love, the harder it is for two straights to show their friendship and not be perceived as latently gay. Homophobia, instead of vanishing, simply taking on a different form.

And between gays and straights ... Even my best friends, who are in every other way perfectly relaxed about my sexuality, would be wary of touching me as freely as they would another straight. For my part, the more attractive I find somebody, the more studiously I avoid touching him. And the less you can touch people you love, the more unpleasant are touches of those you don't, so you avoid that as well.

Consequently, reading about all those people who are so distressed at suddenly being unable, because of the lockdown, to hug their nearest and dearest, it's actually hard to be compassionate and not just grin and think "for fuck's sake, you only have to endure for a few weeks or months something I've been suffering from almost all my life, and in all probability will go on suffering from until I die".

Paul Greer: Less

Name a day, name an hour, in which Arthur Less was not afraid. Of ordering a cocktail, taking a taxi, teaching a class, writing a book. Afraid of these and almost everything else in the world.

(p 44) 

One of the primary problems of most of my life. Too fearful not only to be achieving things, too fearful even to have leisure and fun.

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And yet he is somehow deflated. To travel to the other side of the world - only to be offered a brand he could so easily buy at home.

(about Less, p 201) 

One of my disappointments after arriving in Glasgow was the number of Poles. Not for some ethnic reason, but because I'd grown up near enough to Poland's border to watch its TV - if I wanted to hear more Polish, I hadn't had to move a thousand miles.

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He is remembering (falsely) something Robert once told him: Boredom is the only real tragedy for a writer; everything else is material. Robert never said anything of the sort. Boredom is essential for writers; it is the only time they get to write.

(about Less, p 203) 

I'm just a blogger, but this applies to me as well: either there's nothing much to blog about, or there's so much happening I don't have the time to blog about it while it's still fresh in my mind.

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Your way of going through the world, unaware of danger.  Clumsy and naive. Of course I envied you. Because I could never be that; I'd stopped being that when I was a kid.

(Carlos Pelu to Arthur Less, p 224)

What I said above, and it really was like that from my early childhood. Either my parents warned me too much against various dangers; or I took their warnings too literally and/or seriously; or indeed, both.

Sneezing into one's elbow

In mid-January I read an article which mentioned sneezing into one's elbow. I couldn't understand why anybody would do that - into a handkerchief, if you don't have one or can't pull it out quickly enough into the palm of your hand, if you're don't want to soil your hand then into your forearm ... but why do the gymnastics of pulling to your nose that part of your arm which takes the most effort to get there?

Then coronavirus came and I began noticing people being actually advised to do this. So I accept people probably really do it, and think it quite a normal thing to do. But it still seems strange to me.

H. G. Wells: Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul

They neither visited nor received visitors. They were always very suspicious about their neighbours and other people generally; they feared the "low" and they hated and despised the "stuck-up", and so they "kept themselves to themselves"..

(about Arthur Kipps's uncle and aunt) 

These two are bringing Kipps up instead of his parents, so it's no surprise that, despite his inclinations, these attitudes of theirs adversely affect his social skills. As the identical attitudes of my parents adversely affected mine.

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Here there was a homeliness, a familiarity. He had noted as he passed that old Mr. Cliffordown's gate had been mended with a fresh piece of string. In Folkestone he didn't take notice and he didn't care if they built three hundred houses.

(about Kipps) 

I was never much observant of my surroundings, tending rather to be lost in my own inner world, which wasn't nearly as bland, as vapid, as insipid. This always changed when I came to Britain, which for some reason feels more like home than the places where I was born, growing up or living for the longest time. But it always changed back again after returning from the Isles.

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He was an outcast, he had no place in the world. He had had his chance in the world and turned his back on it. [...] This was the end of his great fortune! What a chance he had had! If he had really carried out his first intentions and stuck to things, how much better everything might have been!

(about Kipps)

Sadly, having had my only chance to stay in Britain forever, I became complacent and lost it, sentencing myself into a self-imposed exile for the rest of my days. 'Self-imposed', because I can't blame anybody else other than myself for what happened. For 'exile' see above.

Different language studies approach

Not only have I postponed my Dutch studies altogether; I've changed my way of treating my other languages as well. Previously I'd have one day in a week dedicated to Gaelic, one to French and one or two to Swedish. Which over the long term meant I was making hardly any progress in either, in fact quite possibly losing ground in some. One can only code-switch so often.

Now I'm doing (at least four-week-long) periods of doing* just one of them, with the other two on hold until their respective periods come. Time will tell whether my theory that this will enable my brain to recollect what it knew in a time not much longer than previously, but then focus more intensely, and thus learn more and/or faster, proves right.


* Not just really studying - up to a point it's also about mere exposure, like during a 'Gaelic' period sometimes turning on RnanG but never P1, playing Runrig often but Brel hardly ever, and so on.

J. M. Barrie: Peter Pan (Peter and Wendy)

"Children are gay and innocent and heartless."

People often have the tendency to talk about little children as 'innocent', meaning 'not as yet  corrupted by adult vices'. That's a misunderstanding. The average adult is miles less selfish, inconsiderate, even cruel, than a little child. The 'innocence' consists in the child's not having as yet learned not only the vices, but neither the virtues of adulthood.

On the impossibility to edit tweets

As a stickler for spelling I every now and then get annoyed when I post a tweet, then notice I've committed a typo, and have to delete and repost it corrected. Which would be impolite when somebody has already reacted, in which case I can only leave it, gnashing my teeth, as it is.

But the other day it occurred to me that this is actually a good feature of the software. If tweets were editable, how could one be sure that after 'liking' or retweeting something the author doesn't change it altogether?

Theoretically you might, say, like a tweet praising XY as a paragon, and some time later somebody else coming across your account would see your 'like' attached to a tweet callling XY a scumbag (or vice versa).

Theoretically somebody might, say, post a tweet praising NHS workers, get loads of likes, than rewrite it into one praising some obscure politician (or worse), and all the likes would still be proudly glowing there ...

Nederlands II

Last autumn I began learning Dutch. A couple of weeks I had to give it up. Being first of all an English speaker, working where another language is spoken, trying to lose neither my Gaelic nor my French, and learning Swedish is time-consuming enough even without dabbling in yet another tongue.

But I have a soft spot for the Dutch ever since back in the summer of 1990, hitch-hiking in England, those giving me a lift would sometimes ask me whether I was Dutch myself*. So several years from now, once I'm satisfied with the level I'll have (hopefully) achieved in Swedish, I intend to start again.



* The reason for which is as mysterious to me today as it was then. I can see why my tall blond friends would usually be mistaken for Swedes and the swarthy dark-haired one of average height for a Frenchman, but why should a spindly post-adolescent in corduroy trousers and corduroy jacket be repeatedly taken for a Dutchman beats me.

Tim Armstrong: Am Feur Buidhe an t-Samhraidh

Chòrd e rium gun tàinig sinn uile air ais dhan Ghàidhlig. Bha a' Ghàidhlig fhathast na bu dorra dhomh ach bha rudeigin blàth ma deidhinn cuideachd.

(Colman, am fear-aithris)

Tha mi a' tuigsinn na fhaireachdainn sin: dhomhsa 's e Beurla, ged nach eil i agam bho thùs. Tha Gàidhlig agus Fraingis 's dòcha a cheart cho brèagha, ach chan eil mi eòlach orra cho math. 'S mathaid gu bheil mi beagan nas fhileanta sa' chànan mhàthaireil agam, ach tha fhuaim is a choltas grànnda air mo shon-sa dheth. Dar a bhios mi ag iarraidh òran no leabhar tlachdmhor a mhealadh gu cofhurtail, feumaidh mi tionndadh gu Beurla.