The Duke Goes Home
Feb. 2nd, 2014 12:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisy'I've been thinking,' said my mother. 'White.'
'White what?'
'Walls', she said. 'Instead of pink.'
'So instead of painting the house pink with white trim, you want white with pink trim?'
'No,' she said, looking disgusted. 'That would be AWFUL. Grey trim.'
So we bought a couple more sample pots. We still had white, so we found a suitable grey (called Simone Weil), and I bought a pale yellow, Golden Butter, which is the colour I wanted in the first place, and now the back door has even more stripes around it. My yellow was vetoed as soon as it touched the wall, but the grey met with approval. I think it's too dark, so as soon as she went home I mixed a little of the grey paint with some of the white, and added another stripe. Perhaps I could just paint the house in patches.
January books read
* The Impetuous Duchess - Barbara Cartland (1975)
* Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol (1842) (trans. DJ Hogarth, 1842)
* Read This Before Our Next Meeting: The Modern Meeting Standard for Successful Organisations - Al Pittampalli (2013)
The Impetuous Duchess has been mentioned previously.
Dead Souls was interesting. I skipped the scholarly introduction and so missed discovering that the book is unfinished until I reached its abrupt ending. But prior to the unexpected conclusion, I was enjoying it. The story is that the landowners of Russia had to pay tax on the number of serfs they owned, as recorded on their census. If the serf died, the landowner had to keep paying tax on them until they could be removed at the following census. So Dead Souls is about a man who travels to a provincial town to meet local landowners. He offers to buy their 'dead souls', so they are no longer the owners and don't have to pay tax. What benefit he gets out of this is only slowly revealed. So the dead souls are a paper transaction, but also the people he meets are dead souls, and, by extension, maybe even all Russians are. Do you see? It's a metaphor. Part 1, which is a discrete story by itself, is actually quite funny, as he meets all the different landowners before (spoiler!) being run out town. Part 2, which is the unfinished part, has him doing a slightly different scam in a different town, with what would appear to be even worse results.
My work's annual staff residential is coming up, for which we have to read one of a list of business books to talk about. As last year, I picked the shortest. This was certainly singing my song, saying that we have too many meetings and offering suggestions for doing them better. Unfortunately, even though the book was short, it could have been even shorter, as the first half sets out seven ways to improve modern meetings before the second half sets them out again in more detail. Just read the seven points on the book's website, and you're good to go.
And finally:
100 question meme, part IV
76. Do you sleep with your closet doors open or closed?
Closed. If you're not going to close them, there's no point having them, is there? You might as well just remove the doors and use them as a table top.
77. Would you rather be attacked by a big bear or a swarm of bees?
Is 'neither' an option? I've been in a swarm of bees, although they weren't attacking me. They just flew across the paddock like a great black cloud and parted around me. So I'll say I'd rather be attacked by a bear because of the novelty. I've been there, done that with the bees.
Also, there aren't an awful lot of bears roaming free in Australia. Not any, really. So I think I'm safe.
78. Do you flirt a lot?
No.
79. What do you dip a chicken nugget in?
I can't remember last time I ate a chicken nugget. I don't think I would have dipped it in anything. But say I were to go out and purchase a chicken breast and cut it into bite-sized pieces and cover them with some sort of crumb coating, I suppose I could sprinkle the cooked articles with the spicy salt I use for potato wedges and dip them in sour cream?
80. What is your favorite food?
I have had a life-long love affair with salt and vinegar chips. And yellow nectarines. And my mother's recipe for chicken wings that we call Nice Chicken, although 'nice' doesn't really do it justice. It should be Delicious Chicken.
81. Can you change the oil on a car?
Does that mean empty the oil out and replace it? Erm, no. I might be able to do it under instruction? But then, if things have deteriorated to the point where a car needs its oil changed and the only person who knows how is somehow incapacitated and I'm the only person available to take orders... well, that's not a good situation. That ship is going to sink.
Mr McKeever does that sort of thing for me, and then he tells me off for not putting air in the tyres often enough. Last time I took Freddie in for a service, I washed him specially and Mr McKeever congratulated me on how shiny he was. I think Mr McKeever knows the level of motor vehicle knowledge he's dealing with here.
82. Have you ever gotten a speeding ticket?
No. I am generally a slow driver. (Sometimes Freddie goes too fast, particularly down hills, but that's because he's red. Nothing to do with me.)
Also, the elderly nun who taught me in primary school is rolling in her grave at that 'gotten'. That was a word that gave her the vapours.
83. Have you ever run out of gas?
Freddie takes petrol, not gas, and no. I am generally a hopeless car owner (see previous two questions), but I'm good at petrol. I am also good at checking and topping up the oil, if not actually changing it.
Fun fact (or not, depending on your definition of 'fun'): When I was little, on the farm with the water tanks where we did not leave the water running while we brushed our teeth, we also had our own petrol bowsers. Regular petrol (leaded, as it all was back in the day) and diesel. Every farm did, but it tended to surprise visitors from town.
84. What is your usual bed time?
Midnight-ish.
85. What was the last book you read?
The book about meetings, as mentioned above.
86. Do you read the newspaper?
The Standard, which is the City by the Sea's local paper, Mondays to Saturdays, and The Age (Melbourne-based) on Thursdays (for the Green Guide (their TV guide)), Saturdays and Sundays. I also subscribe to Crikey, an email newspaper, which comes out weekdays.
87. Do you have any magazine subscriptions?
My mother gave me a subscription to Mollie Makes for my last birthday. It is a magazine that has a particular fondness for making cute things out of felt. It's so sweet I can feel my teeth rotting as I read it.
88. (There is no 88, so I will make up my own.)
How many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a man?
Seventy-three.
89. Do you watch soap operas?
Are we counting something like Downton Abbey as a soap? I watch that. Not any of the daytime soaps.
I was a sickly child, in contrast to the ridiculously healthy adult I grew up to be, and I have fond memories of being home from school and watching soaps with my grandmother. None of the anaemic Australian soaps for her: no Neighbours, no Home and Away. And certainly none of the depressing English soaps like Eastenders. No, it was Days of our Lives and The Young and the Restless all the way. Always a good conversation topic in later years when I had stopped watching. 'How's Stefano di Mera these days?' I would ask, and my grandmother would say, 'Oh, he's dead again.' Of course he was. He was always dead again.
90. Do you dance in the car?
Is that even possible?
91. What radio station did you last listen to?
On the radio, probably one of the ABC stations. I don't listen to the radio very much. I prefer just music. I usually have Pandora running at work.
92. Who is in the picture frame closest to you?
Not who, but what: a cross-stitch initial A in the style of an illuminated manuscript. The nearest framed photo is of my grandparents in the next room, taken by a newspaper photographer doing street shots on a trip to Melbourne sometime in the late 40s. My grandfather was recovering from malaria, so he is very thin, and he is wearing a three-piece suit and a trilby. My grandmother is wearing a floral frock and a sharp hat with a fascinator. We call it the Bonnie and Clyde photo.
93. What was the last note you scribbled on a piece of paper?
The name and date of birth of a doctor based at our other office. (He rang wanting approval to
spend his relocation allowance, but my colleague in his local office is on leave, so he was put through to me. I gave approval, then made sure I got his name right so I could tell my colleague what I'd done. He also gave me his date of birth just to be thorough.)
94. What is your favorite candle scent?
Not really my thing, I'm afraid.
95. What is your favorite board game?
As I said to someone recently, it's hard to develop an appreciation of board games as an only child with a board-game hating mother. I'll say Trivial Pursuit, because I usually win. My mother may dislike board games, but she loves a quiz, so I have been trained in the dark arts of general knowledge from an early age. I am a trivia ninja.
97. When was the last time you attended church?
Christmas Eve, 2012. Well, it was Midnight Mass, so technically it was Christmas Day. My mother loves Midnight Mass (she rarely goes to bed before 1am, so Midnight Mass is timed perfectly for her), and she was lamenting that none of the local Catholic churches do it any more. Their last Christmas Eve service is at 9pm, which is WIMPY. She had strong thoughts on that matter. So her friend, Val, invited her to the Anglican service, which meant I had to go because she didn't want to go to a strange church by herself. Also, it was Christmas. As it turns out, the new-ish vicar is High Anglican (much to the disgust of some of his regular congregation, according to Val), so my mother and I found it very much what we are used to. 'I can't believe it's not butter,' said my mother on the way home, and we laughed and laughed.
98. Who was your favorite teacher in high school?
None of them? I made no impression on secondary school, and it made none on me. The elderly nun I mentioned earlier, Sister Adalbert, was probably the most influential teacher I had, but she was a primary school teacher. She was the only teacher in a one-room primary school, teaching between 15 to 30 children from prep to Grade 6. She taught me for seven years. She taught old-fashioned stuff that I later realised other primary schools didn't cover: phonics, grammar, chanting (times tables and catechism), orthography. Once a week she combined physical education with maintenance by pushing all the tables to the edge of the room and cleaning the tiled floor with an ancient floor polishing machine, while all us children tied rags to our feet and danced after her. She wasn't a favourite teacher, but she was certainly responsible for my lovely handwriting and knowledge of subject and predicate.
99. What is the longest you have ever camped out in a tent?
A couple of days on a Brownie camping trip a very long time ago. Camping is not my bag at all.
100. Who was the last person to do something extra special for you?
I came home from work one day last week to find all my ironing had been done, thanks to my mother having some time to kill between appointments in town. That's the best present ever, to be honest.
'White what?'
'Walls', she said. 'Instead of pink.'
'So instead of painting the house pink with white trim, you want white with pink trim?'
'No,' she said, looking disgusted. 'That would be AWFUL. Grey trim.'
So we bought a couple more sample pots. We still had white, so we found a suitable grey (called Simone Weil), and I bought a pale yellow, Golden Butter, which is the colour I wanted in the first place, and now the back door has even more stripes around it. My yellow was vetoed as soon as it touched the wall, but the grey met with approval. I think it's too dark, so as soon as she went home I mixed a little of the grey paint with some of the white, and added another stripe. Perhaps I could just paint the house in patches.
January books read
* The Impetuous Duchess - Barbara Cartland (1975)
* Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol (1842) (trans. DJ Hogarth, 1842)
* Read This Before Our Next Meeting: The Modern Meeting Standard for Successful Organisations - Al Pittampalli (2013)
The Impetuous Duchess has been mentioned previously.
Dead Souls was interesting. I skipped the scholarly introduction and so missed discovering that the book is unfinished until I reached its abrupt ending. But prior to the unexpected conclusion, I was enjoying it. The story is that the landowners of Russia had to pay tax on the number of serfs they owned, as recorded on their census. If the serf died, the landowner had to keep paying tax on them until they could be removed at the following census. So Dead Souls is about a man who travels to a provincial town to meet local landowners. He offers to buy their 'dead souls', so they are no longer the owners and don't have to pay tax. What benefit he gets out of this is only slowly revealed. So the dead souls are a paper transaction, but also the people he meets are dead souls, and, by extension, maybe even all Russians are. Do you see? It's a metaphor. Part 1, which is a discrete story by itself, is actually quite funny, as he meets all the different landowners before (spoiler!) being run out town. Part 2, which is the unfinished part, has him doing a slightly different scam in a different town, with what would appear to be even worse results.
My work's annual staff residential is coming up, for which we have to read one of a list of business books to talk about. As last year, I picked the shortest. This was certainly singing my song, saying that we have too many meetings and offering suggestions for doing them better. Unfortunately, even though the book was short, it could have been even shorter, as the first half sets out seven ways to improve modern meetings before the second half sets them out again in more detail. Just read the seven points on the book's website, and you're good to go.
And finally:
100 question meme, part IV
76. Do you sleep with your closet doors open or closed?
Closed. If you're not going to close them, there's no point having them, is there? You might as well just remove the doors and use them as a table top.
77. Would you rather be attacked by a big bear or a swarm of bees?
Is 'neither' an option? I've been in a swarm of bees, although they weren't attacking me. They just flew across the paddock like a great black cloud and parted around me. So I'll say I'd rather be attacked by a bear because of the novelty. I've been there, done that with the bees.
Also, there aren't an awful lot of bears roaming free in Australia. Not any, really. So I think I'm safe.
78. Do you flirt a lot?
No.
79. What do you dip a chicken nugget in?
I can't remember last time I ate a chicken nugget. I don't think I would have dipped it in anything. But say I were to go out and purchase a chicken breast and cut it into bite-sized pieces and cover them with some sort of crumb coating, I suppose I could sprinkle the cooked articles with the spicy salt I use for potato wedges and dip them in sour cream?
80. What is your favorite food?
I have had a life-long love affair with salt and vinegar chips. And yellow nectarines. And my mother's recipe for chicken wings that we call Nice Chicken, although 'nice' doesn't really do it justice. It should be Delicious Chicken.
81. Can you change the oil on a car?
Does that mean empty the oil out and replace it? Erm, no. I might be able to do it under instruction? But then, if things have deteriorated to the point where a car needs its oil changed and the only person who knows how is somehow incapacitated and I'm the only person available to take orders... well, that's not a good situation. That ship is going to sink.
Mr McKeever does that sort of thing for me, and then he tells me off for not putting air in the tyres often enough. Last time I took Freddie in for a service, I washed him specially and Mr McKeever congratulated me on how shiny he was. I think Mr McKeever knows the level of motor vehicle knowledge he's dealing with here.
82. Have you ever gotten a speeding ticket?
No. I am generally a slow driver. (Sometimes Freddie goes too fast, particularly down hills, but that's because he's red. Nothing to do with me.)
Also, the elderly nun who taught me in primary school is rolling in her grave at that 'gotten'. That was a word that gave her the vapours.
83. Have you ever run out of gas?
Freddie takes petrol, not gas, and no. I am generally a hopeless car owner (see previous two questions), but I'm good at petrol. I am also good at checking and topping up the oil, if not actually changing it.
Fun fact (or not, depending on your definition of 'fun'): When I was little, on the farm with the water tanks where we did not leave the water running while we brushed our teeth, we also had our own petrol bowsers. Regular petrol (leaded, as it all was back in the day) and diesel. Every farm did, but it tended to surprise visitors from town.
84. What is your usual bed time?
Midnight-ish.
85. What was the last book you read?
The book about meetings, as mentioned above.
86. Do you read the newspaper?
The Standard, which is the City by the Sea's local paper, Mondays to Saturdays, and The Age (Melbourne-based) on Thursdays (for the Green Guide (their TV guide)), Saturdays and Sundays. I also subscribe to Crikey, an email newspaper, which comes out weekdays.
87. Do you have any magazine subscriptions?
My mother gave me a subscription to Mollie Makes for my last birthday. It is a magazine that has a particular fondness for making cute things out of felt. It's so sweet I can feel my teeth rotting as I read it.
88. (There is no 88, so I will make up my own.)
How many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a man?
Seventy-three.
89. Do you watch soap operas?
Are we counting something like Downton Abbey as a soap? I watch that. Not any of the daytime soaps.
I was a sickly child, in contrast to the ridiculously healthy adult I grew up to be, and I have fond memories of being home from school and watching soaps with my grandmother. None of the anaemic Australian soaps for her: no Neighbours, no Home and Away. And certainly none of the depressing English soaps like Eastenders. No, it was Days of our Lives and The Young and the Restless all the way. Always a good conversation topic in later years when I had stopped watching. 'How's Stefano di Mera these days?' I would ask, and my grandmother would say, 'Oh, he's dead again.' Of course he was. He was always dead again.
90. Do you dance in the car?
Is that even possible?
91. What radio station did you last listen to?
On the radio, probably one of the ABC stations. I don't listen to the radio very much. I prefer just music. I usually have Pandora running at work.
92. Who is in the picture frame closest to you?
Not who, but what: a cross-stitch initial A in the style of an illuminated manuscript. The nearest framed photo is of my grandparents in the next room, taken by a newspaper photographer doing street shots on a trip to Melbourne sometime in the late 40s. My grandfather was recovering from malaria, so he is very thin, and he is wearing a three-piece suit and a trilby. My grandmother is wearing a floral frock and a sharp hat with a fascinator. We call it the Bonnie and Clyde photo.
93. What was the last note you scribbled on a piece of paper?
The name and date of birth of a doctor based at our other office. (He rang wanting approval to
spend his relocation allowance, but my colleague in his local office is on leave, so he was put through to me. I gave approval, then made sure I got his name right so I could tell my colleague what I'd done. He also gave me his date of birth just to be thorough.)
94. What is your favorite candle scent?
Not really my thing, I'm afraid.
95. What is your favorite board game?
As I said to someone recently, it's hard to develop an appreciation of board games as an only child with a board-game hating mother. I'll say Trivial Pursuit, because I usually win. My mother may dislike board games, but she loves a quiz, so I have been trained in the dark arts of general knowledge from an early age. I am a trivia ninja.
97. When was the last time you attended church?
Christmas Eve, 2012. Well, it was Midnight Mass, so technically it was Christmas Day. My mother loves Midnight Mass (she rarely goes to bed before 1am, so Midnight Mass is timed perfectly for her), and she was lamenting that none of the local Catholic churches do it any more. Their last Christmas Eve service is at 9pm, which is WIMPY. She had strong thoughts on that matter. So her friend, Val, invited her to the Anglican service, which meant I had to go because she didn't want to go to a strange church by herself. Also, it was Christmas. As it turns out, the new-ish vicar is High Anglican (much to the disgust of some of his regular congregation, according to Val), so my mother and I found it very much what we are used to. 'I can't believe it's not butter,' said my mother on the way home, and we laughed and laughed.
98. Who was your favorite teacher in high school?
None of them? I made no impression on secondary school, and it made none on me. The elderly nun I mentioned earlier, Sister Adalbert, was probably the most influential teacher I had, but she was a primary school teacher. She was the only teacher in a one-room primary school, teaching between 15 to 30 children from prep to Grade 6. She taught me for seven years. She taught old-fashioned stuff that I later realised other primary schools didn't cover: phonics, grammar, chanting (times tables and catechism), orthography. Once a week she combined physical education with maintenance by pushing all the tables to the edge of the room and cleaning the tiled floor with an ancient floor polishing machine, while all us children tied rags to our feet and danced after her. She wasn't a favourite teacher, but she was certainly responsible for my lovely handwriting and knowledge of subject and predicate.
99. What is the longest you have ever camped out in a tent?
A couple of days on a Brownie camping trip a very long time ago. Camping is not my bag at all.
100. Who was the last person to do something extra special for you?
I came home from work one day last week to find all my ironing had been done, thanks to my mother having some time to kill between appointments in town. That's the best present ever, to be honest.