What are some typical British items... read on I need help

ah oui mon brave. comment? Francis can you shed light please.

Buttons are nice

Now, when in front of the empty sheet, trying to find the perfect phrase, that's an ordeal...

Ok, Steve, I'm always willing to bring "mehr licht"...

I know what you mean, sometimes buttons get in dark places :wink:

Now, when one is set before that unforgiving blank space of white paper, scratching one's ear and rocking gently whilst gazing with sightless eyes at the ceiling on which little imps are dancing and the right words are just out of reach and you have made a vow to Art to have them at all costs it is best to snort a time or two, stalk out and go to the pub.

Isn't that better Francis than just- "trying to find the perfect phrase"?

With flannel like that you could soon have a book done. I could easy have done a page or two on the "trying to find the perfect phrase" idea. I didn't even mention throwing the empty wine glass at the parent's wedding portrait.

You conjure the pain and frustration for your readers so that they know you've been there bigtime.

PS. To be fair and balanced it must be stated frankly and forthrightly that Gustave, when he went to Paris looking for a word or wild fact out of Ovid, also looked for, and found, the odd numbered brothels. He would save the even numbered ones for the next time he was stuck for a word.

You can see how it would take 5 years easy.

Pub.

If you keep on encouraging the oink like you have been doing, you'll get more Salambo passages and references than you have decent brews in a day. Then he gets carried away with Miller, Freud, Hemingway, Haggard and Arthur C Clarke amongst others. Its a recipe for disaster.


You have been warned.

Arthur C Clarke????? Are you kidding Mathos.

Two or three pages was enough for me.

I would go Haggard, Miller, Freud, Hemingway, Clarke a bit like eyeing up a gaggle of seaside girls with you getting the one who personifies Clarke best.

Spendius, you have to replace Flaubert in the context of the time and the more puritain society...

If not, how could you explain his beautiful description of Salammbo?:

Salammbô s'avança jusqu'au bord de la terrasse. Ses yeux, un instant, parcoururent l'horizon, puis ils s'abaissèrent sur la ville endormie, et le soupir qu'elle poussa, en lui soulevant les seins, fit onduler d'un bout à l'autre la longue simarre blanche qui pendait autour d'elle, sans agrafe ni ceinture. Ses sandales à pointes recourbées disparaissaient sous un amas d'émeraudes, et ses cheveux à l'abandon emplissaient un réseau en fils de pourpre.

Salammbo walked to the edge of the terrace; her eyes swept the horizon for an instant, and then were lowered upon the sleeping town, while the sigh that she heaved swelled her bosom, and gave an undulating movement to the whole length of the long white simar which hung without clasp or girdle about her. Her curved and painted sandals were hidden beneath a heap of emeralds, and a net of purple thread was filled with her disordered hair.


I would need other incentives than brothels to find my phrases.

Just because,

Je suis un homme de cinquante ans
Qui a déjà tout fumé, tout bu
Qui a tout connu des femmes nues
Un homme qui ne cherche plus....

Never mind Salambo, I prefer Salombo. Allez Nicola! Allez Indo!

Deux pays au bout du monde
Ou Salombo a decouvert
La fleur sacree et ses mysteres
Tous les dieux du Pakistan
(Ouh-ah ouh-ah
Ouh-ah ouh-ah)
Des pantheres qui la regardent
Sont les gardiens de son secret
Elle ne pouvait pas savoir
Qu'il ne fallait pas toucher
Et Salombo au Pakistan
Elle a touche une fleur sacree
Et elle craque au Pakistan
Elle a tout vu, trop entendu
Deux pays au bout du monde
Des milliers de gens en colere
En percant les secrets du temple
Elle y declencha la guerre
(Ouh-ah ouh-ah
Ouh-ah ouh-ah)

That's not bad either, Contrex, but this still makes me dream:

whats she doing? checking for rain before she puts the washing out?

Well, Steve, I knew already you were more pragmatic than I...

He must be a "Reader's Wives" fanatic Francis.

Science eh?

She isn't like what I have in mind though. I rather wish I hadn't seen it.

So, tell me what you have in mind..

you wanna see inside the mind of spendi? are you mad?

I'm used to the madness of the world, Steve.

It doesn't affect me anymore...

yes but even so there are some places you really dont want to go and I suggest inside Spendy's head is one of them..

Hi Spendy how you doing?

So what exactly is Salammbo doing in that picuture, offering incense to the gods?

When you know Flaubert's work, it's easy:


In the middle of the terrace there was a small ivory bed covered with lynx skins, and cushions made with the feathers of the parrot, a fatidical animal consecrated to the gods; and at the four corners rose four long perfuming-pans filled with nard, incense, cinnamomum, and myrrh. The slave lit the perfumes. Salammbo looked at the polar star; she slowly saluted the four points of heaven, and knelt down on the ground in the azure dust which was strewn with golden stars in imitation of the firmament. Then with both elbows against her sides, her fore-arms straight and her hands open, she threw back her head beneath the rays of the moon, and said:

"O Rabetna!--Baalet!--Tanith!" and her voice was lengthened in a plaintive fashion as if calling to some one. "Anaitis! Astarte! Derceto! Astoreth! Mylitta! Athara! Elissa! Tiratha!--By the hidden symbols, by the resounding sistra,--by the furrows of the earth,--by the eternal silence and by the eternal fruitfulness,--mistress of the gloomy sea and of the azure shores, O Queen of the watery world, all hail!"

That's getting closer.

Thou shalt not make graven images.

I almost put up the same passage earlier but I didn't wish to chip away at Steve's domestic facilities.

As I said, Steve is a wonderful, yet pragmatic fellow.

I hope to make him perceive some hidden beauties when he'll come to Paris...