Ola and the Sea Wolf
Sep. 10th, 2013 02:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisy'I'll be in town Wednesday, so I'll come round for dinner,' said my mother to me on the phone. 'I'm having a mastectomy in the afternoon.'
'What?'
'No, a mammogram. Hahaha. I hope they don't make the same mistake on the day.'
Quite.
We had an election on Saturday. I'm not thrilled with the result, but, eh, the sun still rises. By coincidence, I had theatre tickets for Saturday night, so I didn't have to watch the results in real time. I think it was good to be out of the house for that. I went to see The 39 Steps. I must have read the book at some stage, as some of it seemed very familiar*, but I know I haven't seen the Hitchcock film. I can't imagine it was anything like this though, seeing as this was a comedy. One actor played the lead all the way through, with three other actors playing all the other roles. One scene had one actor playing a train conductor, a passenger and a policeman having a conversation, all just by changing his hat. Also, dodgy accents, ahoy. Good stuff, and much more entertaining than election night TV when the results go the wrong way.
We have two houses of parliament, being the House of Representatives and the Senate. The House of Reps is where the local members do their thing; the Senate is for state members. The Senate ballot paper, being for the whole state, is enormous. There were ninety-seven candidates listed on a metre-long ballot paper. So that was fun. There are two ways to vote for Senators. There's a line across the paper, with the parties that the candidates belong to listed above the line and each candidate listed below it. So, if you're lazy like me, you can vote 'above the line' by simply putting a 1 in the box for your preferred party, or, if you're up for it, you can vote 'below the line' by numbering each candidate from 1 to 97. My mother, bless her, insists that democracy can only be served by voting below the line. She gives it lot of thought, too. 'If they're anti-anything, I put them last,' she told me. 'I don't mind them being for things, but just being anti is too negative. So I put Stop the Greens at ninety-seven.'
'What if there was a party that was anti something bad?' I asked. 'Would you put the Anti-Racism Party last?'
There was a pause.
'I'll have to re-think that.'
What else? Oh, play the Great Language Game! I scored 600. If I'm honest, it should have only been 500 because I got two questions right purely by luck. And one was a bonus because the dialogue included the word Bratislava when the language options were Urdu and Slovak, so I made an educated guess.
* I haven't read it, I realise, having looked it up on Wikipedia. I saw a TV version starring Rupert Penry-Jones.
'What?'
'No, a mammogram. Hahaha. I hope they don't make the same mistake on the day.'
Quite.
We had an election on Saturday. I'm not thrilled with the result, but, eh, the sun still rises. By coincidence, I had theatre tickets for Saturday night, so I didn't have to watch the results in real time. I think it was good to be out of the house for that. I went to see The 39 Steps. I must have read the book at some stage, as some of it seemed very familiar*, but I know I haven't seen the Hitchcock film. I can't imagine it was anything like this though, seeing as this was a comedy. One actor played the lead all the way through, with three other actors playing all the other roles. One scene had one actor playing a train conductor, a passenger and a policeman having a conversation, all just by changing his hat. Also, dodgy accents, ahoy. Good stuff, and much more entertaining than election night TV when the results go the wrong way.
We have two houses of parliament, being the House of Representatives and the Senate. The House of Reps is where the local members do their thing; the Senate is for state members. The Senate ballot paper, being for the whole state, is enormous. There were ninety-seven candidates listed on a metre-long ballot paper. So that was fun. There are two ways to vote for Senators. There's a line across the paper, with the parties that the candidates belong to listed above the line and each candidate listed below it. So, if you're lazy like me, you can vote 'above the line' by simply putting a 1 in the box for your preferred party, or, if you're up for it, you can vote 'below the line' by numbering each candidate from 1 to 97. My mother, bless her, insists that democracy can only be served by voting below the line. She gives it lot of thought, too. 'If they're anti-anything, I put them last,' she told me. 'I don't mind them being for things, but just being anti is too negative. So I put Stop the Greens at ninety-seven.'
'What if there was a party that was anti something bad?' I asked. 'Would you put the Anti-Racism Party last?'
There was a pause.
'I'll have to re-think that.'
What else? Oh, play the Great Language Game! I scored 600. If I'm honest, it should have only been 500 because I got two questions right purely by luck. And one was a bonus because the dialogue included the word Bratislava when the language options were Urdu and Slovak, so I made an educated guess.
* I haven't read it, I realise, having looked it up on Wikipedia. I saw a TV version starring Rupert Penry-Jones.