MALADIES

Following on from the Narcisstic Personality post, the "flatmate" and I sat last night perusing similar websites on the Internet, laughingly deciding which personality disorder we each had. Which reminded me of the following. Taken from Three Men in a Boat (which I couldn't get along with on the grounds that it was waaay too twee and silly) you have to admit that the opening pages are kind of funny:

THERE were four of us - George, and William Samuel Harris, and myself, and Montmorency. We were sitting in my room, smoking, and talking about how bad we were - bad from a medical point of view I mean, of course.

We were all feeling seedy, and we were getting quite nervous about it. Harris said he felt such extraordinary fits of giddiness come over him at times, that he hardly knew what he was doing; and then George said that he had fits of giddiness too, and hardly knew what he was doing. With me, it was my liver that was out of order. I knew it was my liver that was out of order, because I had just been reading a patent liver-pill circular, in which were detailed the various symptoms by which a man could tell when his liver was out of order. I had them all.

It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most virulent form. The diagnosis seems in every case to correspond exactly with all the sensations that I have ever felt.

I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch - hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into - some fearful, devastating scourge, I know - and, before I had glanced half down the list of "premonitory symptoms," it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.

I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever - read the symptoms - discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it - wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus's Dance - found, as I expected, that I had that too, - began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically - read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright's disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid's knee.

I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to be a sort of slight. Why hadn't I got housemaid's knee? Why this invidious reservation? After a while, however, less grasping feelings prevailed. I reflected that I had every other known malady in the pharmacology, and I grew less selfish, and determined to do without housemaid's knee. Gout, in its most malignant stage, it would appear, had seized me without my being aware of it; and zymosis I had evidently been suffering with from boyhood. There were no more diseases after zymosis, so I concluded there was nothing else the matter with me.

I sat and pondered. I thought what an interesting case I must be from a medical point of view, what an acquisition I should be to a class! Students would have no need to "walk the hospitals," if they had me. I was a hospital in myself. All they need do would be to walk round me, and, after that, take their diploma.

I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthy man. I crawled out a decrepit wreck.

I went to my medical man. He is an old chum of mine, and feels my pulse, and looks at my tongue, and talks about the weather, all for nothing, when I fancy I'm ill; so I thought I would do him a good turn by going to him now. "What a doctor wants," I said, "is practice. He shall have me. He will get more practice out of me than out of seventeen hundred of your ordinary, commonplace patients, with only one or two diseases each." So I went straight up and saw him, and he said: "Well, what's the matter with you?"

I said: "I will not take up your time, dear boy, with telling you what is the matter with me. Life is brief, and you might pass away before I had finished. But I will tell you what is not the matter with me. I have not got housemaid's knee. Why I have not got housemaid's knee, I cannot tell you; but the fact remains that I have not got it. Everything else, however, I have got."
And I told him how I came to discover it all.

Then he opened me and looked down me, and clutched hold of my wrist, and then he hit me over the chest when I wasn't expecting it - a cowardly thing to do, I call it - and immediately afterwards butted me with the side of his head. After that, he sat down and wrote out a prescription, and folded it up and gave it me, and I put it in my pocket and went out.
I did not open it. I took it to the nearest chemist's, and handed it in. The man read it, and then handed it back. He said he didn't keep it. I said: "You are a chemist?" He said: "I am a chemist. If I was a co-operative stores and family hotel combined, I might be able to oblige you. Being only a chemist hampers me." I read the prescription. It ran:

"1 lb. beefsteak, with
1 pint bitter beer every 6 hours.
1 ten-mile walk every morning.
1 bed at 11 sharp every night.
And don't stuff up your head with things you don't understand."

I followed the directions, with the happy result - speaking for myself - that my life was preserved, and is still ongoing.

ALICE

Stumbled upon the phrase "Jam today, not jam tomorrow" and have just looked it up. I thought it was to do with the (quite nasty, really), stereotype of the "working" classes' reluctance to defer gratification - I was having a conversation about this at the time, prompted by a fly-on-the-wall TV show. Anyway, here (in context, of sorts) is the where the phrase originates:

When Alice and the White Queen meet, the Queen asks Alice to be her maid and offers her a salary and “jam every other day”, which Alice rejects. The Queen tries to persuade her:

“It’s very good jam,” said the Queen.
“Well, I don’t want any today, at any rate.”
"You couldn’t have it if you did want it,” the Queen said. “The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday - but never jam today.”
“It must come sometimes to ‘jam today’“, Alice objected.
“No, it can’t,” said the Queen. “It’s jam every other day: today isn’t any other day, you know.”

Also, there is a 'class' connection! From "The Phrase Finder", Jam tomorrow:

Meaning: A promise which is never likely to be kept.

Origin: From Lewis Carroll's Though the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, in which Alice is offered 'Jam tomorrow and jam yesterday - but never jam today'. Socialist circles often used to ridicule the capitalist system as offering the same empty promise.

NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY

I found this information online. It describes someone I know with frightening accuracy. Points 1,3,4,5 & 6 really hit the nail on the head. Approx 70% of people fitting this description are men and I wonder, do we all know someone like this?
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Narcissistic Personality - Diagnostic Criteria:

A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

1. has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
2. is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
3. requires excessive admiration
4. has a sense of entitlement, ie, unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations
5. is interpersonally exploitative, ie, takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
6. lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others
7. is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her
8. shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes
9. believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)

A profile of a pompous, superficial, lying bully with inch-thick skin and unshakable belief in himself. Someone who has always been and who always will be, unto himself, the number 1 priority. It's reassuring for me to know that this kind of (abnormal, surely?) psychology has been defined and discussed. That it is a known - categorised - quantity.

OPEN WATER

I saw this film yesterday. Lest we forget, it's - yep - "based on a true story", and this affects the way we view/read the film. Of course, 'based on' does not mean 'faithful in every way to the "true" story'. Based on means exactly that - it's a basis, a starting point only. But this point about art imitating life is interesting and relevant to the film. The 'true story' tag instils certain assumptions in us before the film even starts.

Maybe those that have seen it will know what I'm getting at. I don't want to be any more direct here for fear of ruining it for anyone who hasn't seen the film but intends to. I recommend it highly.

"Now would I give a thousand furlongs of the sea for an acre of barren ground."

THOUGHTS

"I get a lot of thoughts in the morning
I write 'em all down
If it wasn't for that
I'd forget them in a while..." (BW)

I get a lot of thoughts when I'm riding my bike all over town. I have a new bike. What could be better than a brand new bike?! Not many things. Riding along, enjoying the fusion of muscle and mechanics (it's so pure, somehow, cycling - no engine, no oil, no noise - just your body and muscles turning the pedals and wheels)... But, I digress. When I'm cycling, my mind tends to wander, especially when I know the route. I like to think that my thoughts don't wander too far from the need to stay alert and focused on the road, but perhaps I'm kidding myself here. The other day - and I've no idea how I got on to this - I started to consider sunflowers. Perhaps I'd seen one en route. I thought about how sunflowers are to flowers as herons are to birds.

You never see many in one place (at least not in England). Only one or two.
They are freakishly outsized relative to other birds/flowers.
Neither are as uncommon as you might suppose. Not really.
They both become a bit sinister if you look at them for too long.

Funny, really, how you can connect more or less most things in terms of similarities if you consider it for a while.

'AS DEAD AS AN ALBATROSS?'..... Read it and weep.

The albatross – legendary protector of seafarers – is heading for extinction. Swordfish and tuna-fishing fleets are eliminating more than 100,000 birds each year. In a couple of decades most species will be wiped out unless urgent action is taken. Findings are based on a new generation of tracking units which monitor the behaviour of these giant birds. 'Our research has discovered that albatrosses are killed at a horrific rate,' said the British Antarctic Survey. 'The trouble stems from long-line fishing in which boats tow huge, heavily baited lines. The albatrosses try to eat the bait and are dragged down and drowned.'

The discovery that these birds are under threat comes as researchers – using tiny transmitters, which broadcast to satellites – are discovering how remarkable they are. Instruments have shown that albatrosses are capable of astonishing feats of endurance and navigation. They can fly round the world several times without stopping on land. During their lives, they fly the equivalent of 50 return trips to the moon: more than 10 million miles.

There are two dozen species of albatross, ranging from the wandering albatross, with its 12ft wingspan, to the relatively modest Mollymawk. Albatrosses mate for life and breed once every one or two years. Scientists now know that while rearing youngsters, parents undergo journeys of thousands of miles to find food. 'At first, we thought it was only the large albatross species that could do that,' said Croxall. 'However, we have now found that even the smaller species can fly for enormous distances.'

However, these vast distances increase the albatrosses' chance of encountering a fishing fleet from Taiwan and Japan. Many get tangled in mile-long lines laced with bait. Most fleet owners deny anything but the occasional death. However, recent data makes clear that more than 100,000 albatrosses a year may die in lines.

'The problem is that albatrosses breed relatively infrequently and only by the time they are 12 to 15 years old,' said Croxall. 'They used to live to around the age of 50, so that was not a great problem. But now they are being killed off before they can reach even half that age.' As a result, the birds do not have chance to repopulate.

Measures include weighting lines so they sink quickly and do not entice birds, setting lines at night, and setting off bird-scaring lines. 'All these measures are relatively simple to implement and cost only a few dollars,' Croxall said. 'However, unless there is some motivation, nothing will be done. We must convince fleet managers that it is worth their while.'

TRIPLE CONJUGATIONS

Thanks to the New Statesman for this. No explanation required - these are my favourites:

I am a consultant
You are freelance
He is out of work

I maintain a nuclear deterrent
You have joined the arms race
He has weapons of mass destruction

My handwriting is characterful
Yours is illegible
She is a doctor

I am a believer
You are a fundamentalist
He is an extremist

I have had to make my own way in life
You have an interesting regional accent
He was brought up in the gutter

I am fascinated by stamp collecting
You have a hobby
She should get a life

I am well informed
You are a pedant
She is a bore

I am high-spirited
You are rowdy
He is a Millwall supporter

I am good with colours
You are gay
He makes Graham Norton look like John Wayne

I love Vivaldi
You are surprisingly patient
She is waiting pointlessly for an operator to answer

And a few of my own...

I look 'natural'
You're ageing gracefully
She's past her sell-by date.

I'm thoughtful
You're sensitive
She's paranoid

I have a dark sense of humour
You're twisted
She's sick

any more anyone?

COLLAGEN

Watched a bit of Channel 5's 'Cosmetic Surgery - Live!' series the other night and was baffled to hear that collagen - the stuff that wealthy folk inject into their skin to plump it up when it starts to thin and sag (different to Botox), anyway, that some of this collagen (if it doesn't come from the recipient him/herself) is harnessed / harvested from circumcised babies' foreskins!!!

How is it extracted? Surely there's not enough skin to collect very much?

I started to wonder whether it was an April Fool's-type prank but apparently not.

TED HUGHES

Easy to knock him and even to make fun of his work, a la 'Pike' - 'Pike. Three inches. Perfect', (you get the idea) but he's amazing, really. I haven't read the Birthday Letters yet. Perhaps I will now. Here's something that seemed to me deeply impressive -


Full Moon and Little Frieda

A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket -

And you listening.
A spider's web, tense for the dew's touch.
A pail lifted, still and brimming - mirror
To tempt a first star to a tremor.

Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with their warm wreaths of breath -
A dark river of blood, many boulders,
Balancing unspilled milk.

'Moon!' you cry suddenly, 'Moon! Moon!'

The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work

That points at him amazed.

ANNIE HALL

It's so well-acted - although in Woody Allen's case you can tell he's not having to go too far with the Alvy character - very funny and the script is great. Here's the finale, which takes the form of a voiceover, spoken by Woody/Alvy:

... After that it got pretty late and we both had to go, but it was great seeing Annie again, right? I realised what a terrific person she was - and how much fun it was just knowing her and I thought of that old joke, y'know, this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says "Doc, uh, my brother's crazy. He thinks he's a chicken". And the doctor says, "Well, why don't you turn him in?". And the guy says, "I would, but I need the eggs". Well, I guess that's pretty much how I feel about relationships. You know, they're totally irrational and crazy and absurd and... I guess we keep going through it because most of us need the eggs.

CRYING

A coupla thoughts: First, my houseplants behave like babies. They communicate a range of maladies with one symptom. That is, their leaves turn yellow and fall off. What are they trying to tell me, I wonder? Are they in a draft? Is there too much direct light? Not enough light? Too much water? Not enough water? What is it?! Impossible to say. The leaves keep on turning yellow and falling off. That's all there is to go on.

Secondly, my 'landlord' (nominally, notionally - I don't think there's a word invented yet for what we are) has gone on holiday. He's nervous about me being here and has reminded me that the flat was Very Expensive!... and should anything happen to it... and he'll never be able to afford such a place again... etc. All this made me feel terrible and reminded me of how I'll never join the ranks of his property-owning class. Bless him. When I attempted to set his mind at rest, he downplayed his anxiety. It's fairly clear though that he thinks I'm going to invite hordes of people around in his absence.

Anyway, while the landlord's away, the lodger *will* play.... This takes the form of reading books in the evenings instead of watching TV with him. Also, this morning I've been playing music he doesn't like, a fraction louder than normal. So, all in all, it's a tame kind of mutiny. One of the CDs I played today was Giant Steps, by John Coltrane. I opened up the sleeve notes as I knew that the astonishing Naima was written either for John's daughter or wife, but couldn't remember exactly who. Here's what the line notes say:

'The tender Naima - an Arabic name - is also the name of John's wife. "The tune is built", Coltrane notes, "on suspended chords over an Eb pedal tone on the outside. On the inside - the channel - the chords are suspended over a Bb pedal tone". Here again is demonstrated Coltrane's more than ordinary melodic imagination as a composer and the deeply emotional strength of all his work, writing and playing. There is a "cry" - not at all necessarily a despairing one - in the work of the best of the jazz players. It represents a man's being in thorough contact with his feelings, and being able to let them out, and that "cry" Coltrane certainly has.'

It's a very amazing piece of music.

'OLD PEOPLE'

Saw this in the 8th September edition of the Times. It brought a smile to my face. So honest and funny. What a mistake it is to patronise the elderly. I can't stand it when younger people are disrespectful. It's going to be a lot of typing, but it's worthy of the task. Here is what Joan Wyndham (82), a restauranter, writer and food critic, had to say when asked "What does life tell us about love?" Here goes:

My parents' marriage was a disaster, mainly because - unlike most newlyweds today - they were virgins. My mother told me her wedding night put her off sex for life. [God? How could it have gone *so* wrong?!]

I was their only child and a huge disappointment to my father, an aristocrat who wanted a son and heir for the family mansion in Wiltshire. Soon after I was born he left my mother for the Marchioness of Queensberry. I hardly saw him until my late teens and he began taking me to parties given by his intellectual friends. He would get terribly drunk. Once, in a taxi, he mistook me for another woman and began kissing me and unbuttoning my shirt. Thank goodness it was a short journey home.

My mother adored me rather too much; she practically had a breakdown if I caught a cold. We lived in Fulham with her female companion (not a euphemism for lesbian friend, they were just desperately religious). I was sent to Catholic boarding schools where I proved to be the worst thing: brainy. Mine was a lonely childhood.

I was studying at Chelsea School of Art when I met my first love, Walter. He had a studio near mine and we'd get together every day for lunch and to play chess. When the Blitz started I was determined not to die a virgin so I let him seduce me. Unfortunately he didn't know how to make love. Afterwards I felt I would rather have had a smoke and go to the pictures.

The war stopped us all thinking too much about the future. I joined the WAAF and was posted to Inverness where we lived in a mixed mess with a pool. Sir Hugh Fraser, the brother of my best friend, was in the castle next door. We had the most marvellous affair. I'd have married him had he asked. I had another affair with a Norwegian sea captain, then there were the pilots. You couldn't say no to a pilot - he could have been dead the next day.

In London after the war I embarked on an affair with Lucian Freud, who even then hated being talked about. When it ended I hitchhiked to the Isles of Scilly to escape him, then headed to Oxford. There I met Maurice Rowdon, an intelligent, good-looking scholar. We fell in love, married and had a daughter, Claire. Then he got a teaching job in Baghdad. I rented our flat to a young Russian couple and travelled with him. I had to return a few months later, by which time the girl had gone away but her boyfriend had wanted to stay. One night he poured me a vodka and sang gypsy songs. Before I knew it, I was being bent backwards over the ironing board and kissed passionately. Maurice arrived three months later and saw instantly what was happening. Our marriage had had everything going for it apart from sex. With Sasha there was no such problem, which is why we are still together 52 years later. Good sex is essential for a good marriage. If you are repelled physically by your spouse, it will never work. But another reason Sasha and I have survived for so long is that we both tolerate infidelity. There was a period after my second daughter was born when he was having affairs and I was finding out about them. Rather than walk out, I picked up a handsome boy in a pub and embarked on an affair of my own. We saw each other on and off for five years. After that, my marriage was better.

To me, it has always seemed normal that men will be unfaithful. Having had a father who was incapable of fidelity, I think I almost expected it. I knew Sasha loved me and the occasional jaunt wouldn't stop that, so I took it in my stride.

We still share a bed, but no longer have sex - we can't be bothered. We cuddle, share a joke, read the same books, enjoy the companionship. My trust was never diminished by his dalliances. He has seen me through cancer, strokes and breakdowns. I know that if I am in trouble, he will look after me.

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Way to go! It's the story of a busy, eventful life. Apart from that (having a rich and fulfilling life), it's also a story of "how the other people live". Only an aristocratic woman would have the effrontery and self-confidence to go into a pub in the post-war period! for the purpose of picking up a toyboy.

VERNON GOD LITTLE

It's a work of greatness and a worthy Booker Prize winner. My enjoyment of it and admiration for the author are unbounded.

At the moment, I keep thinking about this... Our 15-year-old anti-hero is languishing in prison. He has plenty of imagination and it tends to be reality that causes him problems. While he's in custody he offers up this line, "My old lady calls, but I can't make my imagination deal with her". Now, don't we all know how that feels??

One of two things apply here:

a) It'd take more imagination than he possesses to empathise with and put himself in the place of his mother during the phonecall - or -

b) We know by this point that mother and son have a close (if dysfunctional) relationship. Vernon knows and understands his mother - it really doesn't require too much imagination. Taking the phonecall would, though, be an instance of reality intruding too far.

Whichever one applies (or both?) doesn't matter. We instinctively know what he's getting at and how he feels. This is a fantastic novel.