Dog days? Dog's life? Sleeping dog (last December).
Remember on my old blog I used to ramble on for ages about all sorts..? Lately I've tried to be more succinct and to-the-point but this week I'm more in a rambling mood it seems. Maybe that's because it is nearly-end-of-term here... plus it's small-one-visiting-high-school week (they do a kind of taster week the term before they start - good idea I think)... plus it's also lots-of-rehearsals-for-musical-show week (for same small one) so really it's just a week of moving her around, waiting for her, making sure she eats in between activities... and there's no time for proper concentration on anything for me...
So what can I tell you? What is worth passing on? Well... I'd say this radio programme/interview with Doreen Lawrence (broadcast last week on BBC) is well worth a listen. Most British readers will know her name - her son Stephen was murdered in London in 1993 by white racist thugs. On the programme Doreen Lawrence chooses some of her favourite records and one is the song Beverley Knight wrote for her son called "Fallen Soldier". I've always been a bit of a BK fan (read an old interview with her, by someone else, here) - she's an amazing singer and the track in question is over here.
Also I've been watching (in amongst the football matches... there's a tournament on in Europe you know...) a show about class and taste on C4 presented by artist Grayson Perry (episode 1 on "working class" taste is here, episode 2 on "middle class" taste is here and the last episode is on this week). You could pick the show to pieces of course (class is so complicated these days for a start... plus it's all in England so far...) but at the same time it is (a) pretty interesting, (b) trying its best to be honest and open about matters of difference and (c) freaking hilarious in places. I'm a person who doesn't lose much sleep about the way I look, what I wear or what I have lying about the house (mostly it's the dog - see above) but I am aware that not everyone feels that way (I have ex-art school friends... lots of them... luckily some of them even give me their cast-offs and thoughtful/tasteful presents to keep me on track...). And then there's the class issue... while we were away last year Canadians, in particular, seemed surprised by how much British folk still refer to class (even jokily) as it is something they don't see as an issue (although we still see it in their society, of course, just under other names...). Well, maybe this show would help them see our divisions... though I doubt it... it would probably just confuse them more! As my Dad was a doctor my Mum always told me (with relish!) that I would always be middle class, whatever I did or didn't do. Except these days more or less everyone calls themselves some kind of middle class so it means almost nothing (and yet almost everything at the same time!). Can't wait for this week's upper class show...
Also catch if you can - this radio programme about Maurice Sendak who died recently (on the player for a couple more days). There's a lot of lovely detail about how the Wild Things ended up as they did...
Also catch if you can - this radio programme about Maurice Sendak who died recently (on the player for a couple more days). There's a lot of lovely detail about how the Wild Things ended up as they did...
What else..? Oh yes, we went to the cinema yesterday... and we learned that border terriers (example above) are taking over the silver screen (if not the world). Mark and a friend saw "Prometheus" (I'm not linking to that - it hardly needs my help!) and what did they see at some point on the screen..? Yes, a border terrier. Meanwhile the daughter and I saw the new Brit-flick "Fast Girls" (lured largely by "Being Human" star Lenora Crichlow... who is good in this nearly Olympian tale of relay racing... even if several scenes are a little stolen by Lashana Lynch as one of the other runners... full cast see here). But what else did we see... several times... on screen... if not a border terrier! In "Fast Girls" it belongs to the main character's trainer/coach and is called Linford (can't find a photo of it online - sorry, dog fans). I know some of you readers share your homes and lives with border terriers too so I thought you might like to know of their current omnipresence. I'm not sure what this says about taste (or indeed class) but I have been jokily calling our example the "Ford Escort" of dogs recently (though that's really out-of-date no doubt... I am so disinterested in car fashion I cannot begin to tell you!). Probably by now she's the Nissan Qashqai of dogs or something. Oh, I really have no idea.
Bet you're glad I've stopped rambling now, aren't you?
13 comments:
Well of course you know and I know that Border terriers are the very best dogs in the whole world Rachel. Seems that others are beginning to catch on doesn't it.
Yes, we are taste-makers it would appear! Though of course Titus beat us to it...
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Actually, I like it when you ramble. :)
Besides, it's a girl thing. We start off a Point A and that reminds of something else, which leads to a third thing until we're at Point Z and the men are scratching their heads. :)
I think I know a few male ramblers too... but I know what you mean about a certain type of don't-waste-words guy. One of daughter's favourite shows just now is "The Middle"... and Mike Heck (and possibly our men...) are just that type of guy. We love Mike of course... and the whole family.
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Um, I seriously hope that high school starts younger for you guys than it does here because otherwise I've lost a couple of years! Although I started high school at age 14 so maybe it's not that far off...
I was always confused by class because my dad worked for UPS delivering packages for 30 years, & my mom worked in sock mills, convenience stores & cleaned houses. But we seemed to be better off financially than some of the white collar families I knew. I really think my confusion was that my dad talked like a professor and yet had such a manual type job.
I think it's because we don't have Junior High... not these days anyway.. just one big high school (12-18 or thereabouts). In Scotland kids go to High School at around 12 (in England a year earlier).
And you're right - class is confusing... in every sense!
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I'm hoping I can watch the "class" links! Thanks for posting them and a very enjoyable ramble, I thought.
I love a good ramble. The nicest people I know ramble all the time. I do it myself. I enjoy it xx
R - we watched the last part ("upper class") last night. Good stuff - it's here
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/in-the-best-possible-taste-grayson-perry/4od#3366424
I liked his conclusions at the end too.
Thanks Selma. Only on blogs do I not feel like an odd bod!
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I have a vintage Ford Escort! I wonder if that makes him more valuable?
I heard the Doreen Lawrence as it was broadcast, and found her a quite remarkable woman. I've gone off Desert Island Discs enormously after the succession of presenters, and somehow it seems shorter these days, but it was an almost unmissable edition.
Haven't caught the Grayson Perry, as my current addiction is The Secret History of our Streets. I was very close to tears - sadness and rage - with the Deptford one.
I can never work out what class my family were. Affluent middle, undoubtedly, but still all my brothers were manual workers in a slaughterhouse, which is freqently amongst the lowest of the low occupations. And we swore a lot. All of us.
Yes, I only listen to Desert Island Discs when it's someone I've heard of and am interested in to be honest. Certainly not a regular listener. I found that edition so huge though... all the emotions and happenings and history within it. And every time Kirsty asked her if she was proud of her achievements etc. and she said (about 3 times, I think) "well, yes but I'd give it all to have my son back". Awards to anyone who didn't wail at those words. I know I did.
And class is such a mixed affair... which makes it even more amazing that Perry actually managed to make a fairly cohesive series that did mean something. I loved the bit at the end where he said something like "what I've learned, and the middle class people here won't like this, is that there is no such thing as good and bad taste". It is subjective, about who you are and where you are and when you are. Worth a look.
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My dad always used to say belligerently he was working class, because he worked. Oh dear, dad, no, no, no! You were the mill owner. Yet what class I really came from I'm not quite sure. My mother was educated, my father educated in the university of life. He inherited a small business, and worked hard at it, employing a couple of people, but he was hardly a wealthy entrepreneur.I suppose he was lower middle-class in dress and attitude, but self-employed. Same for all my salt-of-the-earth cousin farmers: you wouldn't call them working class, middle class or upper class (although there are plenty of rich, landowning farmers in Herefordshire and East Anglia, for example, who are definitely middle or even upper class). Oh, what a game we like to play when considering this vexed and peculiarly English question! In truth, though, I couldn't give a f*** about it. Or should I say fig?
I know what you mean. This programme is really more about taste than class but it gets in a lot of detail about class at the same time. The truth is that there are a lot of people in the middle... and some of them have nothing in common with each other (and same for the extremes too).
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