(No one can call me a bad looser. I'm not going to bring up Los Desaparecidos. Oh no, not me!)
I'm talking about the Fat Fool Transfer. At 4am this morning
-my favourite urban hour - I was wondering why the word Pope, in English, had a different vowel sound to words like papal and padre.
Thinking about words, their origins and relationships can be quite addictive once you start. Its fun but I must be careful not to get hooked. I'll leave it to you to sort out the Papal problem for me.
I have my best ideas at 4am, but generally forget what they were by 8am. It's now 8.30.
I could be quite an Einstein, if only I had the Maths. And I would have had bacon and eggs for breakfast, if I had any eggs. Or bacon.
I had my usual toast, marmalade and good black coffee.
Last night I experimented with pizza. As you all know, Thursday Night is Pizza Night. I bought a deep pan cheese pizza, scraped the cheese off, sliced it through, spread tomato paste, oregano, mozzarella and chilli sauce, before replacing the top. Then the original cheese was supplemented by a huge variety of delicious toppings, including three varieties of chopped chilli, to make a kind of pizza sandwich. It turned out to be a rousing success and has been added to the repertoire.
Oh, I forgot to mention the drizzle of anchovy oil.
Whilst on the subject of chillis. Anak laki-laki yang pertama, or Number One Son, as they say in China, gave me a chilli growing kit for Christmas. He is not all bad, despite the fact he plays accordion. Yesterday, I planted the seeds of five varieties of chilli, and with the two plants that have survived the winter I hope to be chilli self-sufficient later this year.
At 8am my thoughts turned to the emotion of 'cringing'. This had been brought on by a conversation about poetry that makes one cringe. It struck me that cringing is a curious emotion in the context of poetry, and the like.
There is the cringing that comes with fear, but that is understandable and not so interesting.
The cringing that comes with social embarrassment is much more subtle.
And it starts very early on. I have observed it in quite small children.
-You will often find me in the park on a Sunday afternoon with my binoculars...-
Damn it! I didn't mean to write that. That insufferable Smart fellow is bound to pounce on what was just harmless foolery.
Anyway.
I find cringing interesting for a lot of reasons that would take to long to explain thoroughly here. But briefly, cringing seems like an almost physical manifestation of otherwise hidden prejudices and values. Values of class, caste and status. It is not as strong as revulsion but has something of the same flavour, and is tinged with pity.
I would not do that: one of us would not behave like that.
I am very interested in trying to untangle this a little.
So please let me know what makes you cringe.
Last month I had a record number of visitors but only one new commenter.
So if you do read this I repeat, please let me know what makes you cringe.
I am genuinely interested in trying to understand more about the basis of those emotions that are a kind of unconscious social glue, and any systematic structures that might underlie them.
- I have to do something to pass the long hours of a lonely old age -
I have a small bet with myself - a bottle of Appleton's rum - that nearly all the replies will be, 'Blogs like this!'
Don't let me down.
PS. I said there had been a record number of visits to these pages. Well, I suspect that most of those visitors were robots.
Never mind, everyone is welcome here, and someday soon I intend to make an entry just for the bots.