Work-Life Balance

[altariel]

He 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.”

Comments

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Ha! Didn't know that one, brilliant!

Now I'm just imagining them all in cricket whites [fwump]

*happy noises*

[azalaisdep.livejournal.com]

The poem goes on to imagine the various conflicts of the works in question being fought out on the cricket pitch instead - Laertes: Howzat! etc :-)

[azalaisdep.livejournal.com]

She comments later in the poem, "You could make a long list of the plays and the books/In which there's no cricket at all."

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.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Hee! I noticed your posts getting longer as the deadline for packing got shorter! What a wonderful paragraph! Do you remember the cricket matches from Antonia Forest's The Cricket Term? Particularly the one with the cries of: "Nemesis! Hubris!"

[azalaisdep.livejournal.com]

[whistles nonchalantly - the packing did get done, somehow!]

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...

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Not one of the ones reprinted by Girls Gone By, alas, and even the paperbacks are going for silly money now (£30+).