Lord it's a depressing business plunging back into the allegedly 'real' world of news and meejah. In France, I didn't so much as glance at a newspaper, saw barely any TV, and entirely, more than happily, lost touch with the news. Yesterday, dutifully, with many a sigh and groan, I worked my way through a Sunday paper - it seemed remarkably like the one I'd read the previous Sunday - and, later, turned on the television to await a news bulletin. I caught something even more dispiriting - extra time in the Spain-Italy match (at football). The play was so dull, graceless and cynically negative that even the supporters seemed to have lost the will to live by the time the inevitable penalty shootout finally arrived. Spain's win was, a pundit assured us, 'a victory for football'. Goodo.
Then, at length, the News came. Zimbabwe - election stolen, brutality all round, 'African leaders' beginning to get very slightly worried, but only in case the trouble spills over into their fiefdoms. Oil summit - nothing was delivered, statesman Brown talks of 'global solutions', Arabs rub their hands behind his back. Primark scandal - child labour, of course, complete with warning about 'disturbing images' (why not for Zimbabwe? Why not for Brown?). These images were of smiling children happily earning a bit of money for their families - children who will now be out of work and their families that much poorer, thanks to the tender sensibilities of western liberals.
O dear o dear, how much happier we would all be if we gave up following the news and devoted ourselves to more edifying pursuits.
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A wise sentiment, Nige, but while you're sounding so glum, let me pick you mind about something much more uplifting.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think is the funniest butterfly name? I'm writing something about butterflies and need a good example. I'm tempted to use one of the North American snout butterflies but think there must be one better. In the words of Princess Leia: Nigeness, you're my only hope.
Setaceous Hebrew Character (a moth) always made me laugh. I'll have a think...
ReplyDeleteMmm... Moths might work. I'd have to do a slight rewrite but they might work...
ReplyDeleteI don't think there are any funny butterfly names, Richard - certainly not among the English ones. In naming moths, though, they got desperate - the Dismal Moth, the Suspected Moth, the Powdered Quaker, the Clouded Drab, the Mere Wainscot, the Coxcomb Prominent... Snouts are moths, aren't they?
ReplyDeleteThe Nonconformist moth, the Cudweed Shark, the Old Lady, the Mother Shipton...
ReplyDeleteNige, you've just changed the direction of my book and, therefore, literary history. I'll look into the the 'Powdered Quaker', the 'Coxcomb Prominent' and the 'Nonconformist moth'. It's a welcome development. I think the word 'moth' is actually funnier than 'butterfly'. The word is so brief with a delicious comic lisp.
ReplyDeleteI understood that the snout was a type of butterfly but this is the one and only subject in which I have no expertise. I found it here.
On the day the book finds a publisher, I'm naming you my resident moth expert.
I'm touched and flattered, Richard. Odd about the snout - it's a whole family of moths here in Blighty. Americans, eh...
ReplyDeleteThat exchange was a lot more interesting than Jon Snow on Channel 4 news....
ReplyDeleteAh, boys -- I spent five lovely hours today on a raft, negotiating white (okay, white-ish) river water while mountains scrolled past on either side. Even the 75-year-old grandmother plied her paddle for the family bonding experience.
ReplyDeleteForget reading papers: Get out in nature, Nige! That's what you love; 'tis obvious to all of us who love you.....