adrift_etc

- Ethics and a beneficial side effect of the NHS, which arose in my last post (due to via_ostiense's contribution) and is worth top posting imo: one of the benefits of freely available healthcare, especially accident and emergency care, is that normal everyday social interactions such as true accidents are prevented from immediately becoming acrimonious attempts by injured people in mild shock to assign blame to a legally evidential degree. Freely available healthcare = more social cohesion + fewer street incidents needing police attention (= also bad for the income of ambulance-chasing lawyers). I bet it's rare for the social and economic benefits of accidents being agreed to be accidental to be calculated into the value of a National Health Service and other forms of socialised medicine!

- Quote from my current reading for jesse_the_k: "The place Gorsch rented was a shack, really, and in those days shacks were truly shacks." [It's 2015 fanfic but traditionally published as a novel without filing the serial numbers off because the original went out of copyright in 2011.]

- Reading, books 2017: 68

57. Eleven root poems (Undici poesie radice), by Tiziano Fratus, 2000-2017, poetry. (3/5)

• So, firstly I note that that Dōgen was a Japanese Zen Buddhist philosopher and poet whose work is still extremely influential. Secondly I note that in Japanese aesthetics "rust", sometimes synonymous with "patina", is not only decay through time and interaction with environment but also a visual and tactile connection with the history of an object and the past more generally, so a narrow Western perception of "rust" exclusively as corruption often fails to encompass the full connotations within traditional Japanese culture (which shouldn't detract from the following poem as an object in its own cultural place and time, obv).

Parola di Dōgen, by Tiziano Fratus

Alla fine della giornata,
mi sono seduto al centro del vuoto:
ho lasciato che l’IO
a cui tanto avevo lavorato si arrugginisse.
Vedevo che l’acqua corrompeva,
ma smisi di preoccuparmene.
L’uomo che si era seduto
non si è più rialzato

( English translation. )

52. June Book, 1971, annual, comic, girls own. Characterised by many reprints from previous decades. It's telling about the general quality when the old fashioned moralising of The Golden Ballet Shoes was my favourite story! (3/5)

• 2 Illustrated rhyming calendar.

• 3-10 Lucky's Living Doll comic: a Christmas hijinks story, with witchcraft as a positive influence! :-D

• 11-17 Deadline for Danger short story: posh French girl resists the Nazis. Didn't read due to my requirement for anti-Nazi stories in 2017 involving more about contemporary neo-Nazis and related fascists, although I'm sure these stories were more relevant to earlier generations. ::wryface::

• 18-19 Puzzle Pages.

• 20-23 Spring Summer Autumn Winter feature: seasonal fashion and beauty tips.

• 24-31 I was Cinderella comic: our anti-heroine is unfair to her new stepmother, and then runs away to her old Nanny, while the stepmother tries extra hard because she was abused as a child.

• 32 Bunches illustrated verse: about a little girl who wants to grow her hair.

• 33-37 Bessie Bunter comic: "Your plump chum goes exploring space!"



( Contents and one scan. )

- St Levan's church with coffin rest, stone seats, and old churchway cross, in Penwith, Cornwall.





( 1865 folklore meets 2017 empirical experiment. )

- Reading, books 2017: 67

53. The Little Shop of Happy Ever After, by Jenny Colgan, 2016, novel. This is pure wish fulfilment, chick lit fantasy ← please note that this is an accurate description not a negative judgment, lol. (3.5/5)

• Irony in a book about finding a new life, lol: She'd read lots of books about people finding new lives, which hadn't helped her mood either, had made her feel more and more trapped and stuck where she was, as if everyone except her was managing to get away and do interesting things.

• Our heroine sets off from urban Birmingham to rural Scotland: "armed with the Lark Rise to Candleford trilogy as well as the entire Outlander series [...]". Lol.

• I admit I'm not warming to a protag who picks up a large van she's never driven before, in a rural area she's never driven in before, with no map or prep, and then knowingly and deliberately drives onto a level crossing with the warning lights active, and nearly causes an accident that would have killed at least three people and possibly many more (if the fuel tankers had exploded), AND THEN tries to blame the accident on a wild deer instead of taking responsibility herself.

• So if you're wondering why I'm still reading: Surinder put her empty coffee cup down on a quivering pile of Regency romances, which promptly collapsed on the floor in a fainting fit.

( And another thing... or four.... )

- A very important moral dilemma, erm, from the chicklit I'm reading, lol. So, the scenario is that a mother with a young child at hand and another in a "buggy" stumbles on steps and accidentally lets go of the buggy which descends the steps and is halted, it's implied fortunately for the occupant but never overtly stated, by crashing into a 20-something woman lower down, who stands up again but has a bleeding cut on her forehead. She's with a male friend. They appear affluent enough to have mobile phones, and either access to a car or taxi money. The mother of the children thanks the injured woman but then goes about her business. The injured woman complains that the parent is behaving unacceptably ungratefully because she didn't try to buy the injured woman an ice cream / coffee / whatever. My burning question is this: do you think the mother failed in her duty to materially reward the accidental saviour of her child? Because I admit that my reaction in that situation would be to assume the injured woman would want to seek medical attention for her facial wound and that slowing her down would range between thoughtlessness and irresponsibility (taking into account the fact she has a friend with her, otherwise I might intrude enough to suggest she should seek medical attention and ask if she needs help with that). Is this one of those situations where logic-driven practicality is a socially unacceptable response because material reward is an assumed normative behaviour? Or is the injured character's reaction and possibly also the author odd? /biased question, obv

- Twenty minutes in Newton Abbot between buses looks like this: an impressive zebra crossing, a gorilla named Francis, a library being literally propped up, and the entrance to a cattle market (bonus pub called the Swan Inn featuring Daffy Duck on their sign).



( Three more small images. )

51. June annual, 1968, comic, girls own. I noticed a "men are a bit useless at doing the things that rly matter like child rearing and home making so that's why women have to do those" theme which isn't so obvious in most of the girls own comics from the 1970s onwards with which I'm more familiar. (3/5)

• 2-3 calendar.

• 4-11 Zanna and the Golden Cubs comic: white female Tarzan in the "deep African jungle" (somewhere): "I Zanna, Queen of the forest, demand to know."

• 12-16 Calling Nurse Jones short story: nurse brings about family reconciliation between a patient and his stuck-up mother. Features a pop group called The Weirdies, lol.

• 17 crossword puzzle.

• 18-24 Lucky's Living Doll comic: long-running story about a girl called Lucky and Tina her sentient doll. In this episode Tina plays at being SuperDoll and is mistaken for a rare bird and then a ghost!

( Contents and four scans. )

- Potential fic prompt: I was recently asked to give feedback for an event I was informed I had attended in 2107. Time travel, immortality, or an active old age?

- Send lawyers, guns, and money... it's the Ledbury Poetry Festival in bullet points:
• I'm still recommending watching the films Paterson, and Neruda, for differing reasons.
• I recommend you read Ana Blandiana's poetry (in translation).
• Watch Inua Ellams perform in An Evening With an Immigrant, which will be on tour as far away as the Edinburgh fringe and Sydney Opera House. \o/
• See Roy McFarlane reading his poetry live. He is a rock who rocks.
• Bonus gossip: due to travelling from Ireland to England unprepared for a heatwave, Rita Ann Higgins had to borrow some clothes and reputedly completed her poetry reading while wearing her B&B landlady's dead mother's shoes! A poem in the making? :-D
• Many of these bullet points can be confirmed or denied at the Ledbury Poetry Festival podcast page although they're not all uploaded yet so you might need to check back in a week or two.
• P.S. Stairs and Whispers, D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back exists and I haven't read it yet but the stairs / stares pun lifts it into my good books. ::puns::

- Reading, books 2017: 62

55. Neither silver nor gold (Ne srebro ne zlato), by Veronika Dintinjana, 2008-2016, poetry in Slovenian. Difficult to find quotable extracts. (3/5)

56. from Chameleon (van Kameleon), by Charlotte Van den Broeck, 2015-2016, poetry in Flemish. (4/5)

• Stierenkop, by Charlotte Van den Broeck

Sinds ik geboren ben, woedt er in de onderbuik van mijn moeder
een enorme stierenkop. Hij raast door haar verlaten lijf

( Two Flemish poems with English translations. )