THE BRITISH THREAD II

I don't think Vasco da Gama or Marco Polo travelled into exotic parts for quite the same reason Queenie is doing.

I hope not anyway.

Orhan Parmuk I have read, although I left my only book with a friend in Connecticut who was thinking of going there.
Jan Morris no, but I will if you think I should. What has she written about Turkey?

I remember Clary saying she had a great time in Istanbul with one of her sons, a couple of years ago. I may pick her brains.

Clary I think is in Dubai at the moment, helping look after her granddaughter.

People saying that they have had a great time is a very common thing Mac. It flatters them to maintain that they were so wise to have made a correct choice.

But I suppose the spirit of the explorers lives on in the breasts of the drastically bored and I should think one needs to be in such a state to even contemplate going to a place like that when fair England is spread out before one.

Speaking of fair England, fair point, and if the lure of the pub is not too great this evening there is a good-looking documentary about cricket which will be on the telly in about ten minutes.

No, I should be firmer in my rebuttal of this nonsense. People only went to Blackpool at Preston Wakes because that was all they could afford. As soon as Freddie Laker came along, off they went to Benidorm and Torremolinos and now it's Egypt and the West Indies.

It is mankind's instinct and fate to rush lemming-like to the horizon and beyond.
Young women like to pull foreigners. Young men abroad fancy their chances more; even if she turns out to come from Salford. Merchant adventurers look overseas for advantage. Westward and eastward ho! is the cry.
For there is none of you so mean and base, that hath not noble lustre in your eyes. I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, straining upon the start. The game's afoot: follow your spirit, and upon this charge cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!

It's a load of crap Mac got up by agents in the travel business who advertise on telly and in the newspapers which are the tune the piper calls. Everything is great about it except the being there.

Kilroy turned it all into a cliche. Adventure my arse. Boredom is what it is. Get an allotment or some pigeons.

No Cook's Tours for you then. I suppose you are happy to be in your minuscule and miserable-arsed category, else you wouldn't make such a song and dance about it.

Did you see the cricket programme, or what? Shamefully, the MCC did not select Dolly.

That went in my quote book.

Oh good lord, don't encourage him.

Look Mac!! I was educated by priests, the junior Civil Service and the military. I learned that "miniscule" was too grand a concept to how I felt. And still do.

Are you Maxicule that you take it upon yourself to give a meaning, at my erxpense and tending to bring me into disrepute with the members of this site, to an entity of the magnitude of miniscule.

I fear that too much exposure to advertising and the "what can I do for you sir? " mentality has entered your cranium contents upon something of a delusion of the sort that Mr Cameron is moving towards with his milking machine. Licking his posh chops.

And I am so unmiserable that I can make people miserable by what I laugh at.

I didn't see the cricket programme because I have been studying Le Rouge et Le Noir so that I might be better able to advise Queenie on how to deal with men.

And I am allowed to go into bat for the prevention of foreign currency leakage which we workers have to sweat and slave to stop up.

We can't get over Eliza Carthy singing I Used to be Colour Blind. You should hear Fred Astaire sing it. Juxtapose the sublime with its opposite.

That's how to dress Queenie.

What was the outcome?

IRVING BERLIN

I Used to Be Color Blind
Strange
How a dreary world can suddenly change
To a world as bright as the evening star
Queer
What a difference when your vision is clear
And you see things as they really are

I used to be color-blind
But I met you and now I find
There's green in the grass
There's gold in the moon
There's blue in the skies

That semi-circle that was always hanging about
Is not a storm cloud, it's a rainbow
And you brought the colors out

Believe me it's really true
Till I met you I never knew
A setting sun could paint such beautiful skies

I never knew there were such lovely colors
And the big surprise
Is the red in your cheeks
The gold in your hair
The blue in your eyes

I've read it before Queenie. I only read writers who have "been to town" as Henry James phrased it. He had avoided the experience.

Stendhal is very highly qualified in that respect.

The advice "comes through" amid a deal of background noise. The idea is that only those who can read it deserve to get it. It's about general orientation.

Never mind, it's bound to be repeated, and it's an opener (hey, see what I did there?) for a series of three or four programmes.

The TV guy in The Guardian wrote quite entertainingly about it today:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/jun/01/the-weekends-television-tv-review

I didn't understand any of that x

That was the intention PQ, that's the point.

Very good Mac.

Hey- this Troughgate is hilarious. We used to laugh at Arthut Scargill and that woman who got all the shotguns banned but this is in another dimension.

A "military putsch" was mentioned last night on Sky News.

We can hardly expect HMQ to open parliaments consisting of thieves and pickpockets of victims under an anaesthestic. And read out their programmes to stop smoking in pubs in return for being given opportunities to look good in media which can't make any money out of tobacco advertising but can out of those items to which tobacco expenditure has been diverted to.

But if the Chief of the General Staff goes into No. 10 and bangs his stick on the desk all the laughs would dry up.

Darling's fucked. When you can't fill in the form the silly twat requires the rest of us to fill in you have lost the ******* plot goodstyle.

A couple of days ago I would have thought this highly unlikely or impossible, but today even Gordon Brown is looking down the gun barrel.

I actually think Brown and Darling are honest and competent, but Brown has dithered too long and ceded the advantage to Campbell...and that cheeky blighter, whose MPs are guilty of more egregious till-dipping than the Labourites, has more personally to answer for than Alastair Darling.

Capmpell has played the politics better. Even The Guardian has turned against Labour now. No comeback seems possible. What a shower of w****rs our MPs have turned out to be.

(and I'm thinking...what did Darling overclaim on his cleaning bill, £350? American, and other European, politicians must be looking on in amazement)