Anti-social

Middle daughter is round, working on her audition speech. We adjudge the evening cold enough to put a fire in, and I set her to snapping some canes that someone gave me for kindling. The fire spits and glows and it's hard to stop fiddling with it, until trying to scene-shift an escaped piece of coal starts burning the backs of our fingers.

In the LRB of 22nd November 2012, Adam Mars-Jones quotes from David Halperin's book How To Be Gay, which he is reviewing.

[T]he social function of romantic love is to be anti-social, to represent a private, spontaneous, anarchic rebellion against the order of society. Love is the one socially conventional emotion that is conventionally defined as being opposed to social conventions. Falling in love is thus the most conformist method of being an individual. Conversely, falling in love is the most original and spontaneous way to conform, perhaps the only way of conforming to social demands that will never make you look like a conformist.

I still believe everything I said to Trina; but to launch into an unnecessary and superfluous exposition of my uninteresting sociological views, as a riposte to her over-reacting (in my opinion) to me forgetting a phone call, was a foolish and unfeeling escalation of our tiff. Back in front of the now-calmer fire, I mentally compose what I want to say before picking up the phone.

I apologise for not ringing her when I said I would. There is no way I can dress it up: Ned found a twenty pound note on the floor outside the corner shop, bought it home joyfully, and we all set off down the pub.

"You know it's not easy for me at the moment. I'm poorly and my Mum's driving me up the wall. I just wanted to talk to you. You always go on about being spontaneous, and then when you ring me in the afternoon to say you'll ring me in the evening, and you don't... It was a bad day for you to forget."

It was thoughtless of me, I tell her, not even thinking to stop for a minute to tell her we were going out on our gifted riches. We develop our rapprochement over several more minutes. I didn't withdraw anything I'd said, but was very grateful of her generosity in accepting my honest apologies.

We're both going sober in November, me, simply for financial reasons, her more for her health, so we'll celebrate our reconciliation tomorrow with tomato juice and a dash of Worcestershire sauce, and pretend it's a Bloody Mary.

There was a wobbly moment with the Moldovans last night. I heard an irritating sound coming out of their room. It was bore-ing, and had all the subtle depth of character of a sine wave. I bent my head round my door to see what was going on. Yes, it was Celine Dion.