Work-Life Balance
May. 26th, 2011 09:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altarielHe will be late again for dinner.
Work-Life Balance
Minas Tirith, in the Fourth Age
He will be late again for dinner. It cannot be helped. Tomorrow morning the council meets, and he has not touched those papers yet. Across the room his daughter prowls. Recently she has been watching every scratch of his pen, every forkful of food.
“Out with it,” he says, at last.
“You never do anything for yourself! You should… you should find yourself a hobby!”
She is beautiful, on the cusp of womanhood. Fierce as her mother on his account. His life’s work: leaving her the world he never had.
“I already have a hobby, blackbird. I call it Gondor.”
Work-Life Balance
Minas Tirith, in the Fourth Age
He will be late again for dinner. It cannot be helped. Tomorrow morning the council meets, and he has not touched those papers yet. Across the room his daughter prowls. Recently she has been watching every scratch of his pen, every forkful of food.
“Out with it,” he says, at last.
“You never do anything for yourself! You should… you should find yourself a hobby!”
She is beautiful, on the cusp of womanhood. Fierce as her mother on his account. His life’s work: leaving her the world he never had.
“I already have a hobby, blackbird. I call it Gondor.”
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no subject
Date: 2011-05-27 02:06 pm (UTC)Denethor always retains the ashes.
And Eowyn watches her menfolk indulgently, before heading off to do what she considers to be a proper sport, like rockclimbing or bungee jumping or white water rafting.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-27 02:29 pm (UTC)Hee, yes. Dogged defence in the last ditch.
Denethor always retains the ashes.
Oi! Beverage warning!
And Eowyn watches her menfolk indulgently, before heading off to do what she considers to be a proper sport, like rockclimbing or bungee jumping or white water rafting.
Or Australian Rules football ;-)
no subject
Date: 2011-05-27 02:38 pm (UTC)Sorry, sorry, had to be said!
Or Australian Rules football ;-)
Or Orc Patrol
no subject
Date: 2011-05-27 04:32 pm (UTC)Which makes me want to quote Wendy Cope's The Cricketing Versions:
'There isn't much cricket in the Cromwell play' (overheard at a dinner party)
There isn't much cricket in Hamlet either,
There isn't much cricket in Lear.
I don't think there's any in Paradise Lost*
- I haven't a copy right here.
* Apparently there is. 'Chaos umpire sits,/And by decision more embroils the fray.' Paradise Lost, Book II, lines 907-8.
Now I'm just imagining them all in cricket whites [fwump]
no subject
Date: 2011-05-27 06:22 pm (UTC)Now I'm just imagining them all in cricket whites [fwump]
*happy noises*
no subject
Date: 2011-05-27 06:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-27 08:52 pm (UTC)This is, of course, true, but ignores the utter brilliance of things like Chapter 18 of Murder must Advertise ("Unexpected Conclusion of a Cricket Match") which is absolutely one of my favourite episodes in a novel ever:
"The pitch was by this time not only fast, but bumpy. Mr Simmonds' third delivery rose wickedly from a patch of bare earth and smote Mr Bredon [ie, Wimsey undercover] violently upon the elbow.
Nothing makes a man see red like a sharp rap over the funny-bone, and it was at this moment that Mr. Death Bredon suddenly and regrettably forgot himself... The next ball was another of Simmonds' murderous short-pitched bumpers, and Lord Peter Wimsey, opening up wrathful shoulders, strode out of his crease like the spirit of vengeance and whacked it to the wide."
The cadences of that last sentence alone make me want to cry. And then to cap it all, his cover is nearly blown by the elderly founder of the rival team's firm, who remembers seeing him make 112 for Oxford in 1911 and recognises him by his "exceedingly characteristic" late cut. :-)
And then there's William Scammell's poem "Cricket", from Five Easy Pieces, which gloriously describes Beefy thus:
Even Botham, heroic thumper,
commander of the heavenly clout
(whom God has in his wisdom made
both cannoneer and cannonade,
a one-man charge of the Heavy Brigade)
wears a helmet on his snout
to keep the grisly beamer out.
(I have never been able to watch footage of Botham, particularly in his later career, since without thinking "a one-man charge of the Heavy Brigade" and bursting into giggles.)
Oops, have entirely hijacked original subject of thread now. And broken my resolution about packing instead of footling on LJ. Going away to remedy this forthwith.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-30 01:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-07 07:17 am (UTC)I've never read Cricket Term - we don't have it at work for some reason and I don't think the county library has it either, though I must check that...
no subject
Date: 2011-06-07 07:26 am (UTC)