Sunday, September 14, 2014

I found a parking ticket on my blameless car yesterday. This morning I composed a dignified letter of protest, not untinged with irony, and then looked closely at the ticket and discovered that it had been issued to somebody else altogether. So I had to start the letter again from scratch. Do you think the offender was stupid enough to suppose that moving the ticket to another car would let him off paying? I wrote the second letter and sent it off with the ticket, and it all eats into valuable blogging time.

I have nearly finished the third round (of four) of the mooskit stripe on the return half of the border of Rams & Yowes. Three stripes to go. I remember a line of Meg's somewhere, when they knit EZ's famous ribwarmer with a skirt, transforming it into a long jacket: Long Day's Journey into Garter Stitch. I am very negligent about keeping my Ravelry up to date, but I mean to post this as an FO once it achieves that status, with a warning to everyone not to think, when the centre part is finished, that they're anywhere near the end.

Non-knit

It looks as if we will be able to get to Strathardle soon. My husband has been agitating for a visit, although by now sufficiently aware of his frailty to sympathise with my reluctance to be there without support. Greek Helen is coming over for Mungo's first exeat at the end of the month, and Mungo – who I am sure would prefer the bright lights of Edinburgh, since he is at school in rural Perthshire already – has heroically agreed to spend it in Kirkmichael. Archie will join us.

Archie himself phoned yesterday, protesting mildly. Strathardle is boring. But since he has the bright lights available constantly on his doorstep, we don't have to feel too sorry for him. He sounded cheerful. Contrary to what I wrote yesterday, he said he doesn't care what happens to Scotland but will vote No for my sake.

We had a knock on the door from a No-campaigner yesterday. That doesn't often happen here, in any election. My Birmingham friend was surprised to see how little visual evidence there is of what is happening -- posters in windows, that sort of thing; I assured her that we are seething all right.

There'll Aways Be An England...

From Ian Paisley's obituary in the Telegraph yesterday:

“In the Eighties he flirted with the prospect of Protestant 'People's Militias' and once conveyed journalists to a hillside in Co Antrim at night to witness 500 men in military formation brandishing firearms licenses.”


I find that enormously funny. Maybe only American readers will agree. Maybe it isn't funny at all.

5 comments:

  1. Your little tale about Ian Paisley is funny, but isn't funny at the same time. I found him terrifying when he was in full rant - he ws so vehement. But then we learn that his wife always called him "Honeybunch". He certainly was a presence in the world! What he never was, was English - by birthplace or ancestry.

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  2. The Telegraph may have been funny yesterday but today's headlines are absolutely deplorable. There are Independents' and Unionists' pop-up stalls on every alternate street corner down here but I think on the whole, people are keeping their colours low on the mast, perhaps for fear of recrimination which is a great shame. Expect more knocks on your door in the coming days as the activists take to the streets to target the 'undecideds'.

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  3. I always found that Ian Paisley story horrifying...but whenever I had any dealings with him (I am a Hansard reporter) he was courtesy personified, and I know all my colleagues felt the same. I think he had a public political persona that was very different to the private man.

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  4. I remember visiting my great aunt in Dublin in the early 80's and her telling me that if she could, she would "take a yard brush and sweep him into the ocean" -that heavily accented and vehement phrase always comes to mind when I hear Ian Paisley's name. And the black comedy element of the brandishing of licensing is funny.

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  5. The phrase "dignified letter of protest, not untinged with irony" produced my first good smile this morning and punchline of ticket belonging to someone else the second. Thanks !!

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