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Becky Sharp is my model

  Sun 27th July 2025

Gazing along the beach on our last evening at La Trinité was almost painful. Those annual partings never lose their poignancy, the scene illustrated by a sky that I imagine always saves its most delicate compositions for our departure.

Back in Bristol, and the noise. The ugly grey din of pointlessly urgent cars and their unnecessarily loud horns; drills, hammers, angle grinders and the unplaceable drone of mystery machinery at a volume quiet enough to become more and more irritating as it moves from the periphery to the centre of one's attention; I am very hungry God bless in București serif stationed throughout the city centre while the more ambulant beggars approach you with the jerky walk of the homeless; and the way that the bus company has thrown in the towel over people using mobile phones as broadcasting stations.

I was pleased then, when my eldest rang asking me if I was free to meet her in London on Friday after her visa appointment at an embassy. She had a lot of needless running about in the heat to to get various documents printed off (because embassies don't have printers) -- and then again because the official had told her to get the wrong stuff printed. I waited for her in a pub in a street where a three-bed mews house was sold three years ago for £4.85 million.

In the printers, the man serving asked if she was an artist. "Yes!" she lied. "Oh in what medium?" "Sculpture." "Oh right, what do you work in? "Clay." "Well, for a fellow artist, I'll do it for free." We had a good natter, so much that she changed her train, at some expense, to stay longer. I had some "Thai fish cakes" that were the size of draughts pieces and had the texture of a mattress.


My niece, whom I hardly know, gets married to her girlfriend in a pretty Bedfordshire village.

The train was full of Oasis fans going to Wembley. I asked some lads if they were able to open my bottle of beer, and one of them deftly clipped it off using the edge of a tin of cider. "Hey, look at that," I said, to anyone in general. "He's done that before." I smiled at the 50ish woman in the next seat, who smiled back, causing a jolt to go through me. Fuck, you're good-looking. She wore a beautiful white broderie anglaise blouse. I can't think of many other fabrics that can be as understated as they are sexy on women around that age.

Given my brother's family's somewhat austere diet, I was a bit concerned that we'd be served some sort of yogic tea made from grass and bits of twig; instead we were welcomed with Pimm's, and, as is often the case with events one's not looking forward to, I enjoyed myself. They wrote the vows themselves, and my nephew did a witty speech that had the additional merit of brevity. As I circulated in the room, I was trying to model myself on Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair -- an impossible intensity of shimmer for me, but something worth aiming at in social occasions.

Appropriately enough, I have arrived at chapter 36.

2 comments

Comment from: kono [Visitor]

Ah you old romantic you, gazing at the sky, i know that feeling though i’ve learned to get it anywhere now as i’ve slipped into being a half assed stargazer as i enter my eccentric era, lol!

i like the eldest daughter’s style as well, she sounds a bit like her Da… and a train full of Oasis fans, that could be a nightmare or a right laugh! i do recall a tall muppet drinking Nukey Brown and belting Oasis songs in the year 2000 in a South London flat awaiting the arrival of a damsel named Veronica… so maybe i should shut up ;)

Sat 2nd August 2025 @ 13:23 Reply to this comment
Comment from: looby [Visitor]

Oh…the lovely Veronica! How I wish I’d met her.

Yeah the Oasis fans wqere better behaved than I’d expected – although it was only about 11am and they’d only just started on the pop.

Happy stoned stargazing my friend!

Sun 3rd August 2025 @ 09:36 Reply to this comment


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M / 61 / 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.
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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

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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.
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One good thing about being a Marxist is that you don't have to pretend to like work.
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The working man is a fucking loser.
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