Wednesday 19 March 2008

Dickens and such-like

1. I had a pleasant and unusually active weekend, with chat! This was very good; I have missed chatting, since so many of the conversations I have here are about Issues.

2. I also finished Bleak House, which I hadn't read before. About a decade back I decided that since I didn't enjoy Dickens' I would make no effort to read them until middle age but a few weeks back I read a cheap copy of David Copperfield and loved it. (This is just one of many indications that I have reached middle age.) I find it uncomfortable to recognise various types in Bleak House, as well as the long-running entangling dispute of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. Dickens can't write women like Hardy though. Lucetta in The Mayor of Casterbridge, who decides that actually now she prefers Farfrae to gruff old Henchard, is much more like a real person than any of Dickens' saints or caricatures.

3. Also, hurray for BBC Radio! Radio 4 has intellectual comedy in the form of The Museum of Curiosity, and Radio 6 has Adam and Joe. This week's Song Wars features Adam's father, Baaad Dad, which is quite good, and also they played this song here, which I am linking to on YouTube because Universal has disabled embedding on it. Smooth singing but the lyrics are wierd and a bit disturbing.

4. Here is Figaro doing a Christine Keeler. He was standing there on his hind legs waiting to swipe at interesting things through the hole in the back of the chair.

1 comment:

  1. Figaro looks adorable here! But very intent on swiping at things.....he looks like he wishes he could go outside and catch mice.

    S x

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