Hello, Bob;

19 Sep 04 10:56, Bob Lawrence wrote to Robert Bull:

 BL> stomach, including a "lovely little Iraqi kid" with his
legs blown off
 BL> being "cared for" in the US and A. How sick is that? Is it just me?
 BL> You blow the poor kid's legs off and make it a Media event? My one
 BL> hope is that they didn;t blow the legs off on purpose.

People iin the UK used to joke about "Thatchcards" in Maggie's reign, 
because of her reputation for ambulance-chasing to get a "photo 
opportunity."  It said something like, "In the event of being
involved in a 
disaster, in no circumstances do I wish to be visited by the Prime 
Minister."

 BL>  Hitler, eat your heart out. But what can you expect of a government
 BL> that would ban fox hunting? Now they'll have to *poison* the buggers
 BL> like we do in Oz (we poison the foxes, not the fox hunters).

Hmmm...  wonder how much poison in would take to wipe out the fox-hunting 
classes...  ;-)

 RB>> Son't those hark back to the hayday of anarchists in Victorian
 RB>> times?

 BL>  Yes! With wild black beards and big hats... something like the
 BL> photograph of Pterry on the back of his books.

But more shifty  :-)  Shades of G.K. Chesterton's THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY.

 BL>  What an interesting idea! I'm not sure I agree that a Utopia is
 BL> necessarily corrupt. The closest I can get to a *real* Utopia is
 BL> a hippy commune that usually ends up boring, bogged down in rules to
 BL> force a fair share of work.

Recently read mainstream novel RUNNING WILD, by Victoria Clayton (nee 
Walker).  She threw out as an aside the idea that lots of things in the 
Sixties were free-loading and bunkum, and most of the communes weren't 
self-supporting because that takes hard work.  The had one or two rich 
twits paying the bills.

 BL>  I was always disappointed by the "far better thing"
speech. Dickens
 BL> could have done better...

I saw an otherwise enjoyable adaptation on TV once, and that bit did fall 
flat.  I don't think of it as a speech, though, but as a mental soliloquy, 
i.e. it's what Carton is saying in his head in order to stiffen his own 
resolve.

 BL>  If you get lost, it's just a bad writer. There are many writers who
 BL> concentrate on being a smartarse first, all prose and nothing else, I
 BL> chuck those books straight out the window. To me, the *first* and
 BL> essential responsibility of an author is to communicate. The good ones

Yes, but, standards and styles change with time.  What was acceptable and 
normal between the few educated people in the 19th century would be too 
long-winded for today.  That doesn't mean their books are bad, but you 
have to tune in.

 RB>> What's a doona?

 BL>  It's what the Swedes call a quilt... a bed cover stuffed with
 BL> feathers or frizzed-polyester.

Ah, usually called a duvet here.  The word has been tranferred to cold- 
weather jackets, but appears to be only a UK usage.

 RB>> bring her back again yesterday, a 300 mile round trip, a -lot-
 RB>> of driving by my standards.

 BL>  I've driven that far to go to a party... and come back afterwards. I
 BL> used to drive Mum to my brother's on the Gold Coast - 600 miles, one
 BL> way. Australia is really spread out.

I've heard that lots of people learn to fly for just that reason.  OTOH, 
Australians would rarely have to contend with our level of traffic.  Or 
with places like the one on the south coast road where they have five 
roundabouts, thoughtfully spaced at half to one mile intervals.

 RB>> I had this immediate flash of Prince Sameth and his schoolboy
 RB>> cricket team nailing down the Dead in LIRAEL :-)

 BL>  (grin) Good writing transfers actual images... I often wonder if
 BL> what I see is the same as what the author saw when he wrote it.

Maybe as long as you see -something- appropriate, he's done his job well.

     Regards,

              Robert.

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