two kinds of types
Well, having got all that out of my system, I can also confirm that Ms B has not been entirely brain-dead this week - just a bit beseiged. There have been bagatelles of amusement and delight, of course.
The other night I was at my desk with my back to the increasingly-broken telly and there was a programme on about something to do with Ian Fleming and the progress of James Bond through the end of the Cold War era and beyond. It was vaguely interesting in a just-listening kind of way, and then I heard a beautifully modulated old school voice describe its owner's experience of reading Dr No. "Of course, I had heard from friends that it wasn't Fleming's best," said the speaker, "and perhaps I should have listened because it was a really dreadful book." (I am paraphrasing here, but I hope not too much: I rushed to copy it all down while it was still ringing in my ears.) "Once you started reading, it was full of absolutely terrible sex, and second-rate snobbery - it wasn't even the snobbery of a proper snob. It was the snobbery of the expense-account man."
And the celebrated travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor is learning to type. The news emerged as he was given an honour by the Greek government for his writings about Greece (see Flat Out Norwich's post on the subject here).
It seems that, at 92, he has been forced to concede that his handwriting has got a bit shaky (his habit of submitting tortuous longhand manuscripts has been credited by the less charitable with possibly partly accounting for the slowness of his books to appear even after they reach the publishers) so he has purchased a 1951 Olivetti on which he is determined to finish his current book - the final volume of a trilogy he has been working on for over thirty years.
"I'm going to finish that book," he said, an a statement which melted the heart of Ms B. "I'm going home and I'm going to work really hard."
5 comments:
Hi Ms Baroque - thanks for the link. Rockin' yo' blog (as the kids don't actually say at all).
Think you have to use the html tag to get short links so your link would be
Two-kinds-of-types
using the opening tag and closing tag model - I suppose I'll find out if this works when I post...
We do have a shared friend I hear! And you also link to Art of Fiction and Tart of Fiction who are friends of mine from Manchester days - and Normblog who is also a friend and father of a v good friend - it is a very small world indeed...
04 March 2007 11:10
FON said...
boo - everytime i type the a tag model it uses it as yer actual html - hardly surprising - amateur that i am - try again - type < a > but with no spaces - then 'href =' no spaces - then your target url in " marks - the what you want the short link to read between < > marks - and then the close a tag < / a > with no spaces again - or go to Dave's Site where it will become much clearer... i am not a born tech it would appear...
I hope he does get it finished before getting the call from the big editor in the sky - I love those first two books in the trilogy.
FON, it also turns out that I share yet another friend with Norm. And I've met his daughter. And I think it's quite kind of me to share my friend with you!
Nice to see you here, anyway. And I may have worked out a copy-&-paste solution to the in-comment linking.
Safe bruv.
Matt, I feel he will. He must.
marvellous - the net spreads wider - I am hindeed 'umbled that you shared you friend with me - although, I am now confused and can't remember who's friend is where, who and why and belongs to whom, or if this actually matters... oh well...
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