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)](**&^%$£”+={:@?#}[!!!!!!!!!!
And I was in such a good mood when I got up this morning.* I was going to get my iPhone set up today! Tra la! Traloo tralay! Happy happy happy!
GAAAAAH.
The first thing that went wrong was that I was sitting at the cottage reading back issues of The Ringing World surrounded by one cool pristine virgin iPhone4 and various pieces of sulky middle-aged malfunctioning technology while Gabriel was down at the mews wondering where I was.** Once he was installed at the cottage*** however the havoc fairies exploded out of the walls and got to work.
I don’t think I can bear to go through it all again point by point, even supposing I could remember the order of events, which I probably can’t, having burst quite a number of blood vessels over the course of the day†. The short form is:
At present I have no working mobile phone. You may remember that my sudden, slippery descent into the 21st century began with needing a RELIABLE mobile phone which would be turned on 24/7 and never leave my side††, because I’ve been feeling seriously freaky about Peter since he was so ill in the spring, and his mobile is now loaded to speed dial both the cottage and my mobile.††† Furthermore he came off his bicycle yesterday and has been limping around today complaining about his knee, and I’m having what-if visions of it suddenly giving out on him while he’s coming downstairs and . . . and I’m really looking forward to his saying to me disgustedly tomorrow, having read the blog: I’m fine. I have never been close to falling downstairs. I’m fine. ‡
The SIM card from the RaspBerry‡‡, with my old phone number, transferred beautifully under Gabriel’s masterful handling. There’s just one little problem: no signal. No. Signal. Yes, okay, this is an iPhone4, the one noted for signal problems—but there’s no signal when it’s lying on the desk, either, with no hot sweaty human in any kind of contact—except the steely-gaze kind of contact. The steely-work-you-freller-gaze kind. Now, New Arcadia is the Bermuda Triangle of southern England, but that’s why Orange: Orange works around here. Usually. And I’ve never failed to get a signal on the RaspBerry. It may take some waving and swearing, but eventually the little bars appear, like small goblin teeth, and I’m on. Oh, and have I mentioned that the iPhone4 case hasn’t arrived? The case which, according to both Apple and the sellers of iPhone4 cases, will solve the signal problem. Five working days, the case-selling web site said. That would be today. Nope. No case. I went out and fossicked around behind the water butt, where things get left‡‡‡, to make sure there wasn’t a small iPhone case sized package hiding among the half-used bags of compost, but no. Still no.
Gabriel talked to Orange while I got on with the new holes in the walls and the screaming. Gabriel eventually went away, stooped and careworn, with promises to return tomorrow with fresh artillery and Raphael in a vibrant new set of shining armour.
Meanwhile . . . no phone. No phone. And, obviously, no internet. No lovely fascinating iPhone cruising—the poor RaspBerry is hopeless about the web—no binging and biffing from hither to yon on my shiny black cutting-edge tech. No.§
The one thing that has worked is . . . setting up my account with the iPhone store. The thing may not work but it can still be a time-waster§§ and money-sink.
I got to level six of Fingerzilla in about an hour. I’m not sure how many levels there are, but I was feeling a trifle motivated by the shrieks of the dying. You do want to get to level six, however, because that’s when you get to start crushing San Francisco’s Victorian houses§§§ which offers a nice change from factories and glass skyscrapers. I spent a good deal of the afternoon honing my technique# while various iPhone aps downloaded incredibly slowly: the Chambers English Dictionary took thirty-five minutes, for pity’s sake. And slowed my computer down to early-Amstrad speed.
Somebody, please, tell me this wasn’t a horrible, gruesomely expensive mistake. . . .
* * *
* It was even raining! Yaaaay! I don’t have to do any watering! More time to play with my iPhone! Hellhounds, of course, not having any deep interest in the iPhone, failed to share my enthusiasm for the weather.
**However he contrived to give Peter’s spam filter a boot up the backside, so time was not wasted. Yet. At this point.
*** Having run an extremely thorough gauntlet of hellhounds. Gabriel’s problem is that he likes them and encouraging them only makes them clone at a terrifying rate. Twenty-four hammering tails! Thirty-six cold wet rootling noses! One thousand six hundred and forty-eight gambolling limbs!^ A mere archangel hasn’t a chance against them!
^ Reminds me a little of something that happens toward the end of a book called SPINDLE’S END
† Making new holes in the walls of a three-hundred-year-old cottage with your head is surprisingly difficult. Not to mention painful, but in a situation like this, you desire pain.
†† Except in the bath, or when I forget
††† Of course the one time I can remember receiving an important call on it, to wit, Cathy, to say she’d arrived and was en route to Hampshire, I hit the wrong button in a panic and hung up instead of answering. And I was even expecting the call. Very slightly in my defense, tangling with machinery was made somewhat complex at that moment, as I was several miles from civilisation, surrounded by sheep, and in the company of two hellhounds who were expressing their dissatisfaction with my attitude toward things that would run away if chased.
‡ Peter doesn’t really do emphatic the way I do emphatic.
‡‡ Somebody tell me why, when the RaspBerry lost the SIM card, it kept the contacts list but banished all the telephone numbers. I am not joking. I wanted to ring Gabriel about some damn thing or other after he’d left for the day^ and automatically reached for the RaspBerry. There Gabriel’s name was and . . . that’s all. Phone number is gone. Warily picked up iPhone and clicked on Gabriel. Yep. Phone number. Next thing that happens is that I discover all the email addresses have disappeared from my old paper Filofax. Don’t ever try to tell me that technology isn’t self-aware and isn’t out to get us. The Borg are so out there.
^ He can run away. Just like a sheep.
‡‡‡ By delivery persons who bother to read the instructions. I’m always glad to see another box left on my front stoop bearing in large letters the directive: leave beside house behind gate and water butt.
§ And does it have a fabulous, breathtakingly sharp and vivid screen, as you scroll through the icons of stuff you can’t use because you can’t get on the web? I don’t know. I haven’t noticed.
§§ There are some really astonishingly icky aps available out there.
§§§ My favourite newspaper headline—you get the headlines at the end of each game—is: Mayor Feared Eaten
# I’m still having trouble nailing those pesky helicopters.
Limitations
I apologise for ‘stay home or buy a second seat’ at the end of Opera and Handbells the other night. It was unnecessarily inflammatory—and tactless.
But that’s as far as my apology goes. The underlying protest remains the same: It is not okay that the woman sitting next to me ruined my evening because she couldn’t help being too large for her seat and therefore was also sitting on mine.
One of my mods wrote me a heads up that ‘stay home or buy a second seat’ was going to get me some flak. I said that if there were at least three complaints on the forum, I’d respond with another blog entry. There have now been three.
The third protest includes this line: ‘The argument that people who can’t fit into one seat should buy a second would effectively keep me from travelling, attending any function where seats were limited, or otherwise doing anything that might impinge on others because it would cost me twice as much, and I don’t have that kind of money.’ Can’t travel? Don’t have that kind of money? Really? Tell me about it. I have ME. [Blogmom explains: ME stands for myalgic encephalomyelitis, the British term used in preference to the American usage Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS)]
I haven’t been back to the States since the SUNSHINE tour—because of the ME. I haven’t been on a book tour since SUNSHINE—which is a bad thing for my career, you know, the thing that earns me the money to live. I’ve missed seeing Hannah’s kids grow up because I can’t travel. All my old friends are three and four thousand miles away, and I can’t travel. Problems with hellhound minders (and worry about my 82 year old husband) are contributing factors to my staying at home. But the bottom line is: I have ME. I can’t even drive more than about half an hour because the stress of that split-second attention you must have behind the wheel does me in. I haven’t been to see Luke because it would involve two long days on a train, and I can’t do that either. If I could afford first-class, maybe I could do it. I don’t know. I don’t know because I don’t have the money. I don’t go to social events because I’m a cranky, cross-grained cow—but also because social events are way too expensive in terms of energy. My digestive troubles at this point are so extreme as to be (almost) funny; but as a result we almost never go out for a meal any more because it’s just so much frelling effort—unnecessary effort being the thing someone with ME most wants to avoid. And then there are all the other allergies, intolerances and sensitivities that tend to be a part of the ME package.
I don’t ring quarter peals (forty-five minutes without a break on the end of a bell rope) any more because I can’t. I’ve given up riding because of the ME—my favourite animals my entire life have been horses, and I had to quit riding when, for the very first time I had a lovely horse at a price I could afford, a lovely place to ride her, and a lovely instructor.* This sucks very big time.
That third forum commenter also says: ‘But I do think that someone here ought to have some Green and Black’s and calm down’.
‘Buy a second seat’ may be a hot button for fat people. ‘Calm down’ is a hot button for this ME sufferer. I imagine that ‘if you would only calm down’ sounds a lot like ‘if you would only eat less’. If it were only that easy. Do I believe I’m implicated in the fact that I have ME? Yes. I’m a wired, intense, overrreactive, anxious person. Not every wired, intense, overreactive anxious person has ME, but I would guess it’s a risk factor, like high blood pressure is a risk factor for heart trouble. I don’t know what the risk factors for fatness are—aside from an inconvenient metabolism rate—but I doubt that very many of them are under anyone’s conscious control, any more than ‘calming down’ is under mine.**
Life’s a bugger. Given. But the stuff you didn’t have (much) choice about, you have to deal with, as best you can. I have to deal with the ME. I miss a lot of stuff I would like to do. I do manage to do a lot, but in the first place it’s carefully chosen not to press too hard on my weak places. In the second place, as I’ve often said, as ME goes I have a mild case. And in the third place . . . for the purposes of this blog, I lie by omission a lot. You have no frelling idea. You’re seeing the swan, not the frantically paddling little legs under the surface of the water.***
Yes, I am thin—and yes I am proud of being thin because I do have to work at it—but I’m thin because it’s something I can do.† There are many things I can’t do—like calm down—and I am not pointing any fingers. You don’t necessarily get the choices you want. You can only make choices about the stuff that you’ve been given.
I’m not pointing any fingers until someone behaves in a way I consider irresponsible. I object to SUVs bulldozing down the middle of the road. I object to aggressive off lead dogs. And I object to being sat on at the opera.
Did I react extra fiercely to my opera evening being wrecked because of the other restrictions of my life? Possibly. But the fact remains that I believe my neighbour behaved selfishly and irresponsibly. The way she behaved is not okay and it is not okay that she ruined my (expensive, much-looked-forward-to) evening.
And this discussion is now closed. I’ve asked a mod to close the forum thread to Opera and Handbells, and there will be no thread to this post.
* * *
* Not too long ago there was a big kerfuffle in the British Horse Society about fat riders—that no one over x weight should be allowed to ride a horse. Interestingly it seemed to target women, or maybe it was only women who were willing to speak up about it, or maybe it was only the women’s letters to the BHS journal that caught my eye. My reaction was, What? As a blanket veto this did seem to me sheer anti-fat prejudice. If you have a horse up to your weight, then why not? And yes, the essential, crucial thing is the suitable horse, but I’ve seen absolutely gigantic men out on the hunting field, with absolutely gigantic horses, cannon bones so big I can’t get my hands around them, as I had cause to discover once or twice when I was putting tendon boots on them. I don’t feel the horse is the real issue. And if you can handle your own weight safely around and on your weight-carrying horse, then why ever not? There’s also the well-known fact that sheer avoirdupois is a somewhat mutable thing from the horse’s point of view: there are good heavyweight riders and bad lightweight riders. I’m also aware that gravity is increasingly not your friend as you get bigger, and falling off is never a good time, but I would have said that is your choice: to ride and take that risk.
** And yes, I pray/meditate/attempt to plug into the higher power, whatever it is. Somehow I don’t stay calm very well when I reinterface with the real world.
*** Very, very, very small tasteless joke: at least fat is clearly real. Nobody tells you it’s all in your head and you just need to stop malingering.
† And, it seems to me, as a thin person who has to work at it, this society is so set up to make you fat if it possibly can—and then to make you feel bad if you are fat. As a thin-end-of-normal person I think I’m in a good position to say that fetishizing the anorexic-eleven-year-old look is weird and unhealthy—as is the automatic condemnation of the fat for being fat. Now can we just be practical for a minute? There are a lot of fat people. Wouldn’t it be more sensible to cope with that? Like more extra-wide whatevers? I’d much rather my tax dollars/quid were spent on bigger bus—and theatre—seats than on bombs.
But that’s a long complicated rant for another evening.
Subarticulate
Zo, grahf umgub FRABDABNABBLE arnyagixxit. Glag. Juvverund racondil brirt. WANGLETHORP. Deprath.
It’s been a long day. Raglsolsby. Dopperilplunk. Etc. Fridays are always extra-long because I’m trying to stuff two extra-curriculars into one day, which is both insane and forbidden. I do it every week. I am insane and forbidden. I like the concept of being forbidden: I embody forbiddenness. Hmmm. I could probably write a story about embodying forbiddenness*. . . .
Where was I? Oh yes. Friday.
The morning got off to a bad start when a delivery man managed to take out one of my pots of pansies, and I was as yet insufficiently mobile and caffeinated to remonstrate with him in a manner suitable to his transgression.** This did not put me into the ideal frame of mind for spending too much time at my desk pre-hurtle dealing with 1,000,000 overdue stupid frelling business-type things all of which I’d had reminder letters/emails of varying degrees of politeness about yesterday. GO AWAY, WORLD. YOU’RE REALLY BORING.
And I tweeted about this: when hellhounds and I finally got out, we were climbing over a stile following a public footpath that crossed a field, which path the farmer had kindly cleared*** through the standing crop, a standing crop which is now about waist high, and I saw someone ahead of me ambling down the slope . . . and a strange violent wavelike motion on either side of him in the crop. Which were his two giganfrellingtic Labradors and a medium-sized spaniel, knocking hell out of the poor bloody farmer’s harvest. What the frelling gistelflurtz is the matter with people?† What is going through what passes for this moron’s mind? ‘Oh, my dogs don’t count? Oh, it’s only this once? Oh, but they enjoy it so much?’ What? How about, ‘oh I don’t give a sh_t and it’s not like they’re going to catch me, and even if they did it would cost them more than it’s worth to take me to court, so you can’t make me give a sh_t, ha ha ha ha ha.’ Jenny told me a while ago that local farmers were starting to put locks on gates—farmers who generally speaking have been kindly disposed to walkers and riders and don’t mind if we stray off posted footpaths as long as we use common sense about where we go and what we do—because a really fun thing to do is take your SUV into a field with a tall crop in it, and play motocross. People are amazing. Not in a good way.
Pause to take a deep breath.††
I did in fact get a piano miniature tweaked into Oisin-look-atable condition—I got one and a half in demonstrable shape, although half a miniature is pretty much three notes and a squiggly line. Never mind. They’re a good three notes, which is to say they collide with a crash and a scream, which is how I like ’em.††† But Oisin and I have fallen into the reprehensible habit‡ of sitting around and having a nice cup of tea and agreeing with each other about all the ways the world needs to change.‡‡ This has become sufficiently established that the mere fact that I had some music to show him this time only meant that we tacked it on to the end of the cup of tea . . . which means the rest of the afternoon grew suddenly rather short, and I did want to write one or two more lines of That Dranglefabbing Novel before hound-hurtle and bell practise. Which is where the subarticulation begins. I do write words and notes on the same day sometimes, but I rarely write what-passes-in-my-case for significant numbers of both on the same day. Today was one of those rare days. Blerg.
And I still had bell practise. And there were actually five other inside ringers plus a treble and a tenor available, so we rang Grandsire Triples if you want to call it ringing. Well, if you want to call it Grandsire Triples. GAAAAAAH. The best part was when I said, whoever is standing next to me has to keep an eye on me—since we did not have anyone left over to be a standing-with minder—and everybody shot over to the other side of the ringing circle. Hee hee. But I had Felix on my right and Edward on my left, and they shimmied me through like bouncers escorting a troublemaker off the premises, and urginchbletty twag and blingo tam. Arp. Zigdab ock. Etc. . . .
* * *
*Arguably Nathaniel Hawthorne already has: Rappaccini’s Daughter. Great story. I’ve recommended it before. Never mind it’s by the Scarlet Letter/House of Seven Gables guy.^
^ I like Scarlet Letter and Seven Gables+. What was I just saying about insanity? But the scene where the extremely fey Pearl’s dad goes mental in public is worth being bludgeoned by a few metaphors about Guilt and Purity.
+ Except the ending, where Hawthorne wants you in absolutely no doubt that Phoebe is going to Devote Her Life to Making Her Husband’s Life Comfy So He Can Get on with Important Male Stuff.
**. Death by sword-thrust.
*** Theoretically they’re required by law to keep public footpaths passable, but not all of them do. You want to be particularly nice to the ones who make the effort.
† There is good insanity and bad insanity. This is bad insanity.
†† As we were heading back to Wolfgang again, at the end of a rapidly replotted hurtle, since I don’t want to mess with off lead Labradors even when they’re not engaged in destroying other people’s property, there was a strange whooping noise which I was only hearing imperfectly because I had my Walkperson’s headphones on, but the strange whooping noise was persistent enough to be intriguing. Turned out to be a young man leaning nonchalantly on the bumper of his large beat-up Land Rovery object, calling his cows. Down at the bottom of the hill—the other side of the hill where the Labradors had been cutting crop circles—a large herd of rather irritated-looking cattle were trotting purposefully, having just been prodded through a gate at the far end. The Land Rovery object^ was parked at an insouciant angle outside another gate that the young whooping man had opened. The cows, evidently, were going to come trooping up the hill, angle past the not-a-Land-Rover, and pour beautifully through the third gate just beyond. No cow was going to take it into her head, for example, to duck around the not-a-LR and hightail out for the bright lights of Ditherington, only a different short bit of slope away. Now there often are cows in the field beyond the third gate, so manifestly they are got in (and out of) it somehow. But I’m just as glad hellhounds and I were not on the spot to find out how well it worked. Including the whooping. As we were passing through, the cows were still trotting hard along the bottom fence, looking like they wanted a manager to complain to.
^ I mean it wasn’t a Land Rover, but was of that ilk
††† This insanity theme is going to start making me nervous here in another example or two
‡ Energy levels have not been high since I got Peter back from hospital. Also I have a novel that needs writing which is driving me crazy.^
^ Damn. There’s that theme again.
‡‡ Let’s start with good music programmes in primary schools, and some state funded support for lessons on actual instruments in middle school. And elective music theory in upper school. Composition even. HA HA HA HA HA HA. I’m raving. Yes, but composing does astonishing things for your engagement with music. You may still not have a clue, but you’re now in it up to the neck, and yes, those mermaids are singing, each to each, and to you.
Better photos
Plants are better at sitting still.
I take GAZILLIONS of photos because I’m going to hang them on the blog and then I forget or get distracted or can’t decide which six hundred and forty-two over the other six hundred and forty-two, or fiddle around with cropping till I no longer know what I was trying to do*, or I have a rant I must rant that night, or . . .
So let’s have some spring garden photos. 
Front of cottage. Remember I said that I’d asked Atlas to build a brick planter so when the SUVs come barging out of my over-the-road neighbour’s driveway it hurts them more than it hurts me for a change? I got tired of replacing large, expensive pots. I got especially tired of replacing large, expensive pots when not once did anyone ever knock on my door and say gee, I’m really sorry, but I just crushed the living daylights out of your large expensive flowerpot, because I am an incompetent twit and shouldn’t be allowed behind the wheel of a tricycle let alone something the size and firepower of an SUV, or words to that effect. There aren’t any streaks of paint on it yet.
It contains two roses, three clumps of sweet peas, and about fifty-three snapdragons. It should be pretty good in another month or so.
Close up of those pink tulips: Angelique. Mmmmm.
This is now round the right-hand side of the house.
As you see. This is about a fortnight later than the previous photo, and the apricot tulips have given way to more PINK. I think these are Douglas Bader. I’ve forgotten the name of the purple ones on the right.**
And those are Apple Blossom geraniums peering through the kitchen window from the inside. You can just about make out a few more peering out the sitting-room window in the first photo.
Pink. . . .
One track mind? Moi?
You will have noticed this in the photo of the side of the house. It’s because I don’t have enough little pots of things in my life. There’s a similar piece of foolishness to the left side of the door, which you can see in the front-of-cottage picture. I’ll give you a tour of the stair some other evening.
It’s very frustrating, because there’s this whole wall, but I can’t put anything too bulky on it or no one will get past it to go up said stairs, which are naturally also a botanical obstacle course. You will also have noticed a Small Hanging Basket above and to the right of this shelf. If you were paying attention you may have noticed the extremely chic and fashionable Hanging Basket Liner. Yes. It’s a plastic shopping bag. The frelling birds rip the proper liners to tiny dangling non-retentive fragments, so when you try and water the basket it cascades off around the edges. If these petunias are up to their advertising, you won’t be able to see the chic and fashionable liner in a few weeks.
And I said something about roses last night, didn’t I? Agnes. Just beginning to roar into flower.
* * *
* Cut out extraneous feet, elbows and other wildlife. Also the dustbins.^ I wish I knew how to remove overhead wiring. No, no, I’d be dangerous if I knew how to Photomangle. I’d also never get anything else done.
^ Free PEGASUS bookmark to anyone who finds the dustbin I couldn’t cut out.
** They might be Bleu Amiable.
Bluebell Wood
To my considerable bemusement I’ve had two or three requests for bluebell photos.* Maybe the photos look better if you’re not surrounded by the real thing. Although it’s a funny thing about bluebells: even though they’re almost overwhelmingly magical in person, even I feel the Must. Go. There. of bluebell photos. Even these not-very-satisfactory photos, because bluebell photos are never satisfactory, do have that effect—well, on me anyway, and at least two or three of my blog readers, I guess. You know that that world is enchanted—the world with flowering bluebells in it—and in the photos it’s the whole world. When you’re walking through a bluebell wood you’re sadly aware that you’re going to have to come back out again into the world of internal combustion engines and aggressive off lead dogs and hung parliaments**. A photo of a bluebell wood is a little window to Middle earth.
Bluebells also smell, however, and it’s somehow a wild smell, much wilder than, say, wild hedgerow roses, and it stays wild even when you have bluebells trying to take over your garden, which is what bluebells do in a garden, they’re the flowering bulb version of blackbirds. But the fragrance is some recompense for the inevitable reentry of/to engines, nasty dogs and parliaments.
* * *
* Remember: askrobin@robinmckinleysblog.com It’ll go up permanently on the opening page soon, but until then I’ll keep reminding you.^
^ And while I’m hanging around at askrobin, let’s answer another question.
Was it your intent for the Queen from ‘Spindle’s End’ to seem like she came from Ossin’s country in ‘Deerskin’ in what seems to be direct lineage to Deerskin’s friend Lilac (if she isn’t Deerskin’s friend Lilac) or possibly even Deerskin herself.
Yes. No. Yes, Rosie’s mum in Spindle’s End is from Ossin’s country, but no she’s not directly related to Lissar or Lilac.
In your defense of Pollyanna, [ http://robinmckinleysblog.com/2010/05/03/in-defense-of-pollyanna/ ] you mentioned, that you strongly disliked a book, that it did not work for you. What are your personal criteria for dismissing a book as trash? Bad prose? Weak female characters? Can a book be written with one or the other and still be considered a success or at least worth reading?
First I want to differentiate between good trash and bad trash. Good trash is fun enjoyable stuff that doesn’t shake you out of your comfort zone, or maybe only a little, in a tingly, giddy sort of way. Am I being insulting? I hope not. I love good trash. Georgette Heyer wrote the epitome of superb trash. She’s not the only one, but she’s safely dead so I don’t have to worry about insulting her.
Bad trash . . . bad trash is junk food for the mind and the heart. You may think it tastes good on the way down—and if you’re on a steady diet of it you won’t notice the icky chemical aftertaste—but it’ll fur up your arteries and make you stupid.
In this particular case it was another of these frelling supernatural romances. I was reading it because it’s one of the ones that come up when people are discussing the post-TWILIGHT boom of YA supernatural romance. It features another wet, useless heroine, another hundreds-of-years-old supernatural boyfriend+ who Loves Only Her for No Discernable Reason, an almost total lack of plot, a short list of tics and mannerisms instead of a writing style and endless bulldiddly about whether to Go All the Way or not.
Bad prose is unfortunate, and generally speaking, there being so many books out there and I am such a slow reader, I won’t bother with a book that isn’t written with story-specific grace and aplomb—Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury and Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time are both written with great story-specific grace and aplomb, for example, even if it’s not what Jane Austen or Jorge Luis Borges would use. And if I threw out every book with weak female characters I’d have to throw out pretty well all of, for example, Charles Dickens and Raymond Chandler, both of whom I cherish. But both of them had other virtues—style to burn, for example, especially in Chandler’s case, and an imagination so vivid it pretty well boils off the page at you in Dickens’.
They were also humans, which is to say men, of their times.++ I’m really not going to put up with wet, useless heroines in books written today, and the post-TWILIGHT+++ frenzy for boyfriends who totally take care of you so you can go on being wet and useless MAKES ME CRAAAAAZY. And so does the coy crap about sex. Arrrgh.
P.S.: I was wondering something else: Where does the name ‚Pollyanna come from? It’s definitely a character in a book I should have read but which book and by whom?
Ahem. Google and Wikipedia are your friends. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollyanna
+ I adore Buffy, and with every other gloppy fanatic one of my favourite eps is the one where Angel shows up at the prom, but she is the Slayer, which a lot of the rippers-off who have come after seem to forget.
++ And Dickens had quite a scintillating line in tortured anti-heroines. He just couldn’t do good women without plunging hip-deep into sentimental tosh.
+++ And yes, TWILIGHT is pretty much the only current book I’ve been willing to say I don’t like—and I mean seriously don’t like—and that Bella and Edward’s relationship is psychotic. TWILIGHT is trying to chain feminism in the cellar again, with a gag in her mouth and a bag over her head. No. I won’t go.
** Gah. Get on with it, guys, we do need a government.
