Constant reader Gyppo Byard has asked me to list six random things about myself. I regret to say that he did not ask me exclusively, but rather mentioned me in a list of his fellow cyberdrones. I will nonetheless give a response:
1. The most random thing in my life is No Good Boyo. Partner, chauffeur, unwitting food-taster and guerrilla gardener, he seems to leach logic and consequence out of everyday events.
2. I am a follower of the dialectic, but cannot match it in relentlessness. Sometimes I like to relax at our family's ruined laboratory in the Carpathians with a pile of Will Self novels on a nice warm pyre.
3. Boyo is my married name. My maiden name is one of the most widely-defaced on the cartouches of 18th Dynasty tombs
4. My father says I was conceived ("if that's the word") one heady night in celebration of the Soviet correction of the "Prague Spring" rightist deviation in both Czecho and Slovakia - a full year before that fraternal intervention occurred.
5. A border guard dog was named after me on the Uzh section of the frontier.
The circumstances that led up to this honour were the subject of my primary school essay "How Many Objective Banderites I Found Hiding in Bushes in the Closed Border Zone During My Summer Holidays With Comrade Uncle Colonel Jajcabiy", which won the Menzhinsky Prize for the under-sevens.
6. During work-experience with the People's Militia information dispersal department, I suggested expelling Esperantists from the state youth movement.
The reason I gave was that our tolerance of Esperanto was making the Socialist Bloc look like a haven for the mentally underequipped rather than a Vanguard of Progress. In fact I was rather taken with Volapük at the time - the original Schleyer version, not the infantile De Jong revision. I admired its purity.
If the organs had taken my advice, the Warsaw Pact might still be intact.
The rules suggest that I should to pass on these "meme" to six others. I shall do nothing of the kind. Instead I ask that my readers should try to think of six non-random elements to their daily lives. And meditate thereon.
11 comments:
So you're not a huge fan of Will Self or Espronto, Mrs B?
Sx
Ah, very good: randomness, but with the exemplary logical rigour we have come to expect! Talking of constructed languages and purity, though, I would argue for Makaton or even Blissymbols.
Thank you, Mrs Boyo.
If I hadn't met you personally, I would suspect some of these to be made up.
Knowing Mrs Boyo, I can assure the reading public that she speaks sooth throughout.
Who is Will Self? Is he the man responsible for the inventions on Vision On?
Mrs Boyo, Mrs Boyo, I am astounded. You are as a deipnosophist on the Feast of St Maclou! You have at your dyed fingertips all the wisdom of Zeus the Cypriot, the Twelve Secrets of Shebi-el-Hababullah, and the ancient lore of the Mophosites. No wonder the drooling hominoids, the half-men who surround you wag their empty heads.
Mrs Pouncer, you are right in all reasonable respects.
Scarlet, I have heard both Self and Esperanto. Neither engaged me.
The rest of you are acknowledged.
Thanks for the acknowledgment, Mrs B. I was concerned that a few posts ago my being-married-into-the-peasantry reality had caused me to take your comments too seriously for a moment. Please come back at me as robustly as you wish; or if it is more appropriate I will only comment in future when I have regained my sense of irony. You respectfully, etc.
Peasants are made for marriage, Gadjo. Taking them as concubines is somewhat oriental. I admire your progressive attitude.
No, Mrs B, I'm definitely married to 'em. Nothing progressive has happened here since man's first attempt at jet powered flight in 1910.
Coanda was caught unaware by the power of the engine and found himself briefly airborne.
Reminds me of the case of Capt Scot "Scotty" Scott of the 57th Bengal Engineers. He fed durian to a brace of Andamanese for a week, then harnessed them to a bed frame to which he had attached himself. His batman Longue then ignited the razor-toothed islanders and stood well back.
Scott was found in a number of trees along Bandarchod Avenue. See "The Wounds of Capt Scot 'Scotty' Scott: Vol CXIX Non-self-inflicted; human combustion; insular; restraints; arboreal dispersion."
You gotta put these reminiscences into book form, Boyo! (I'm serious. The country has finally given up all its yearnings for lost empire is surely ready for this now).
(Incidentally, I always think it's rather impressive that Coanda was caught unaware by the power of the engine rather than by a gust of wind or a low-flying pigeon, etc.)
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