We are past the solstice and, I thought, past the season of hanging washing out
to dry but no! Someone at tennis yesterday told me that we’re headed for
ninety again this week.
Between finishing teaching and going to the Happy Hour department meeting I had
an “Antiques Roadshow” experience. Not far from where I work there’s a shop
that repairs, services and appraises old watches. I took in my great
grandfather's pocket watch and one of my father's wristwatches to see what
they’d say. I expected, “Needs a good cleaning and…cost you $200.” Or more.
Instead I got a well-reasoned and fair response, “They both move when you wind
them. If you wanted to use them all the time I’d recommend a service…2 to 300
dollars..but if they’re just going to sit in a drawer, replace the face on the
wrist watch and call it good.” So I was out fifty dollars. Then comes the
Antique Roadshow moment. “What should I insure them for?” Which is code for,
“Are they worth anything?” And the response was classic Antiques Roadshow,
“Gold plate…not collectible…sentimental value only. But that box is fabulous.”
The rest of the conversation was about the box that the pocket watch came in.
Funny what people consider interesting or valuable.
Were you to be looking for a James Bond type film that isn’t exactly that, I
recommend “Sahara.” Excellent rubbish. I worried about mentioning this to the
chickens because they have Views both on Bond and on deserts.
Appenzeller, “Oooh, James Bond. Right up my street, he is.”
Pecorino, “Plenty of time for Mr. Bond.”
Mimo, “Shaken and stirred!”
Pecorino, “Wobble our cobbles, eh girls?”
This is the kind of female conversation I have trouble joining, but I did my
best, for the sake of Literature.
“You have views on deserts too?”
Mimo, “No, no.”
Appenzeller, “No, no, no.”
Pecorino, “No, no, no, no, no.”
They all marched around to underline the effect.
Me, “I take it you’re against deserts?”
Mimo, “What was your first clue?”
Me, “But why?”
Mimo, “Sand gets in your bits.”
“In your bits?”
Mimo, “Well all over really. Don’t like sand.”
Pecorino, “No, no, no, no no.”
“So I shouldn’t take you to the beach.”
Appenzeller, “What’s that?”
“You know about deserts but have no knowledge of beaches?”
Mimo, “Well, Normandy and so on.”
Appenzeller, “Historically we’re fine.”
Mimo, “But we’ve no immediate experience thereof.”
“Doesn’t seem to stop you from having opinions about the desert. Forgive me if
I’m wrong but I think you’ve spent your entire lives…all but one of you…in our
back yard.”
Mimo, “The exception proves the rule.”
“Mimo reached some kind of dessert before she returned?”
Mimo, “Forty days and forty nights.”
“Four, more like. I forget exactly how long you were gone.”
Mimo, “In the desert, time has no meaning.”
“I don’t think this story has much meaning either. The nearest desert is miles
away.”
Mimo, “Not in my mind.”
Hamish is maturing, which is to say that although he still runs around like a
headless chicken when the leash jangles inside the house, in the ball chucking
zone he now no longer gives the ball a hundred percent of his attention. We’re
down by about ten percent, attention-wise. After some retrieving the thought,
if that’s the word I want, seems to occur that a little bit of sniffing or
peeing or just investigating might be somehow preferable to the
chuck-and-run-the-ball-back trope. Or meme.
I haven’t mentioned how talkative Sonsie is chiefly because he rarely says
anything interesting, but he’s a very chatty cat. Jeeves is nearly silent,
appearing in view and disappearing very like his literary namesake. He spends
long hours outside and then curls up indoors. Once in a while he’ll clear his
throat and say, “I’d like to go out now.” But that’s it. By contrast when you
let Sonsie out in the morning, he’s back in ten minutes and always as he comes
through the door with the same words, “I’m back.” There’s usually also
description of the weather. The first few hundred times I said, “Oh good,” but
now it’s hard to know how to suggest a direction for further, fresher
conversation. It’s like that exchange you have with colleagues, “How’s it
going?”
“Fine.”
You just don’t expect variety. I mean, if someone in those circumstances said,
as the French did when I was in university, “It turbines,” you’d be shocked.
“Ca va?’
“Ca roule?”
“Ca turbine?”
“Non, ca ne turbine pas.”
I do think Sonsie’s world does occasionally turbine, but mostly after dark,
when there’s prey to catch. He clearly enjoys killing, and then bringing us a
mouse or a mole.
The next hereabouts will arrive, if at all, from London. The trip to the
funeral has us landing at mid-day next Sunday. That, for those of you who have
weird American ways of understanding the word “next,” means the very next
Sunday on our calendar. For those of you who haven’t a clue what I’m talking
about…some Americans understand “next Sunday” to be the one following the one
that’s coming up. Really! “Will you get on this bus?”
“No, I think I’ll get the next.”
“You mean the one after the next one to arrive?”
“Yes, of course. What else would I mean.”
“So if I said, ‘Next year in Jerusalem,’ you’d turn up in two years?”
“Possibly."
David Ritchie,
Portland,
Oregon------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
