Sun 20th February 2011

Another rainy cold Sunday; in with my girls, playing on the Wii, watching Ski Sunday, a few tins of cheap cider. Low-key but close and loving.

I might have been neglecting the Hungarians. I got in tonight and Csilla said that there is some soup, "the soup of my mother". They'd already eaten but she wandered in and almost outright asked that we all go out together. I felt bad. I've abandoned them lately what with Frances, the PhD, my girls. They're foreigners, they know no-one here except me. I should take more care of them. A little while ago me and Bela had a good hour-long chat over breakfast in which she said that she finds English people cold. I'm abandoning them in the same way that I sometimes felt when I lived in Madeira, where only success was publicised in social life, because most immigrants didn't have the social networks to cope with any sort of need.

Me and Frances went out last night to see some jazz in a pub. She was wearing this beautiful Chinese-y reddish top which lowered to the tiniest glimpse of a red bra. There was a bit of a mismatch between what the audience--hopefully squeezing the last few hours out of the weekend--wanted the band to play on a Sunday night, and the ponderously ruminative music the latter were more keen on performing. With as much grace as they could muster they finally played something we could dance to. Frances and I did so on a bit of carpet in the corner. I like it that she likes dancing - and not in that embarrassing spidery 60s-influenced arm-curling "style" that some leftwing middleaged women do.

3 comments

Comment from: Jonathan [Visitor]

‘..that embarrassing spidery 60s-influenced arm-curling “style” that some leftwing middleaged women do’. I can picture the exact ’style’ you’re talking about, which is a tribute to your descriptive powers, obviously. Someone somewhere should write a thesis on dancing styles of the middle-aged and what they reveal about political allegiances/ likely stance in regard to the Single Transferable Vote. In fact it’s a shme you’re so terribly busy all of a sudden as you could probably knock us up 6000 words on the subject on a rainy Lancaster afternoon and save the rest of us the bother.

Fri 25th February 2011 @ 23:14

Comment from: Sarsparilla [Visitor]

You are so in love, Looby!

Sun 27th February 2011 @ 21:16

Comment from: [Member]

J - I couldn’t go out with a woman who embarrassed me on the dancefloor. There’s a woman we both know who makes a complete spectacle of herself in that way and then she wonders why this ever-increasing empty circle opens out around her.

S - Well, I don’t know, but whatever it is, I’m enjoying it. We’ve got a lot in common - French films, both like dancing, we’ve got overlapping musical tastes, she’s into food and drink and the fact that she’s well-dressed and good-looking (well, more than “good” looking) certainly helps. And she lives two minutes’ walk away!

Mon 28th February 2011 @ 12:51

Form is loading...

Comment feed for this post

looby, n.; pl. loobies. A lout; an awkward, stupid, clownish person

M / 60 / Bristol, "the most beautiful, interesting and distinguished city in England" -- John Betjeman [1961, source eludes me].

"Looby is a left-wing intellectual who is obsessed with a) women's clothes and b) tits." -- Joy of Bex.

WLTM literate woman, 40-65. Must have nice tits, a PhD, and an mdma factory in the shed, although the first on its own will do in the short term.

There are plenty of bastards who drink moderately. Of course, I don't consider them to be people. They are not our comrades.
Sergei Korovin, quoted in Pavel Krusanov, The Blue Book of the Alcoholic

I am here to change my life. I am here to force myself to change my life.
Chinese man I met during Freshers Week at Lancaster University, 2008

The more democratised art becomes, the more we recognise in it our own mediocrity.
James Meek

Tell me, why is it that even when we are enjoying music, for instance, or a beautiful evening, or a conversation in agreeable company, it all seems no more than a hint of some infinite felicity existing apart somewhere, rather than actual happiness – such, I mean, as we ourselves can really possess?
Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

I hate the iPod; I hate the idea that music is such a personal thing that you can just stick some earplugs in your ears and have an experience with music. Music is a social phenomenon.
Jeremy Wagner

La vie poetique has its pleasures, and readings--ideally a long way from home--are one of them. I can pretend to be George Szirtes.
George Szirtes

Using words well is a social virtue. Use 'fortuitous' once more to mean 'fortunate' and you move an English word another step towards the dustbin. If your mistake took hold, no-one who valued clarity would be able to use the word again.
John Whale

One good thing about being a Marxist is that you don't have to pretend to like work.
Terry Eagleton, What Is A Novel?, Lancaster University, 1 Feb 2010

The working man is a fucking loser.
Mick, The Golden Lion, Lancaster, 21 Mar 2011

Contact | Help | b2evolution skin by Asevo | Advanced CMS

Ski Sunday

3 comments

looby, n.; pl. loobies. A lout; an awkward, stupid, clownish person

Rummage in my drawers

The Comfort of Strangers

"Just sit still and listen" - woman to teenage girl at Elliott Carter weekend, London 2006

XML Feeds