Happy Thanksgiving

This nightmare got me out of bed:

I was teaching college again and couldn’t get the whippersnappers to hear, let alone listen to, what I was saying – not least because my mother was visiting the class, and her phone kept ringing. It played the overture to Rossini’s William Tell.

I had to ask her to leave the room.

I hope the students understood the gravity of the offense.

Happy Thanksgiving. Karin took Daniel and Abel to her mother’s. I stayed behind with Samuel, who was ill. I cleaned the basement.

I’ve been mystified by a billboard proclaiming KFC’s temporary “festive” pot-pie. How’s it supposed to differ from ordinary pot-pie?

My research has yielded no satisfactory answer – although I’ve read that this pot-pie doesn’t contain turkey (as I thought it might).

Obviously, to find out, I should hike over to KFC and eat one of these new pot-pies.

P.S. Karin wonders if the campaign is a response to McDonald’s’s “holiday” pies.

R.I.P. “Lucy Pevensie”

… according to some. Lewis biographer Alan Jacobs isn’t convinced but happily pays tribute. Lewis devotees will recall the nice girl who lived at the Kilns during the Second World War. It’s good to hear how she turned out.

Her IMDb page.

Here she acts with Jean Simmons.

Some lives are blessed. Lucy’s (in the Chronicles) was even more favored. She reigned in Narnia; sailed to that world’s edge; and then, in her prime, was whisked away to Aslan’s country and the new Narnia.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Speaking of how “Narnians” turn out:

A new Blu-ray collection of the BBC’s Narnia has been released some forty years after the series was first broadcast. Included is a documentary, Return to Narnia, featuring the original cast.

I learned this from the tabloids. (It popped up in various feeds.) The sensational bit is that Narnia was filmed next-door to pedophile Jimmy Savile’s studio. No Narnia actors were harmed.

The afore-linked piece tells that Downton Abbey’s Lesley Nicol was in this series. For completeness’s sake, here are a few other familiar names:

Tom Baker

Warwick Davis

Camilla Power

(Familiar, that is, if you’re a British-telly glutton.)

So far, a different Narnia adaptation has been released every twenty years or so since Lewis’s death.

May each “Narnian,” in time, be brought to Aslan.

Postmen vs. dogs, pt. 2

(Cf. “Dumb Witness,” the entry before last.)

From the second “Adrian Mole” book (The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole):

Monday June 14th
Moon’s Last Quarter

Our usual postman has been replaced by another one called Courtney Elliot. We know his name because he knocked on the door and introduced himself. He is certainly no run-of-the-mill postman, he wears a ruffled shirt and a red-spotted bow tie with his grey uniform.

He invited himself into the kitchen and asked to be introduced to the dog. When the dog had been brought in from the back garden Courtney looked it in the eye and said, ‘Hail fellow, well met.’ Don’t ask me what it means; all I know is that our dog rolled over and let Courtney tickle its belly. Courtney refused a cup of instant coffee, saying that he only drank fresh-ground Brazilian, then he gave my father the letters saying, ‘One from the Inland Revenue I fear, Mr Mole,’ tipped his hat to my mother and left. The letter was from the tax office. It was to tell my father that they had ‘received information’ that during the previous tax year he had been running a spice rack construction company … from his premises, but that they had no record of such a business and so could he fill in the enclosed form? My father said, ‘Some rotten sod’s shopped me to the tax!’ I went off to school. On the way I saw Courtney coming out of the Singhs’ eating a chapati.

Did you know that the first two books made Sue Townsend “the bestselling novelist of the 1980s?” (according to the author bio). (Would that be YA novelist, British novelist, or novelist full stop? No idea.)

November’s poem

Tonight I recall Amy Macdonald’s stirring intonation, fifteen years ago, of “Flower of Scotland” (it preceded a defeat at Hampden Park).

I heard the anthem sung again today before Scotland played Denmark. Too rousing, I thought. Just watch, the Scots’ll come out pistols blazing and then get drubbed again. And, after McTominay scored a chilena in minute 3, Denmark did outplay the Scots, up and down the field – even, from m. 61, a man short. But the Scots, against the run of play, converted a tap-in (from a near-olímpico), then a blast from outside the box, and finally a lob from the center circle. They won, 4 to 2, and qualified for the World Cup. Yes, they were poor, but they clattered over the line. ESPN’s Scottish pundits were delighted.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

O Flower of Scotland

When will we see

Your like again

That fought and died for

Your wee bit hill and glen

And stood against him

Proud Edward’s army

And sent him homeward

To think again

The hills are bare now

And autumn leaves

Lie thick and still

O’er land that’s lost now

Which those so dearly held

That stood against him

Proud Edward’s army

And sent him homeward

To think again

Those days are past now

And in the past

they must remain

But we can still rise now

And be the nation again

That stood against him

Proud Edward’s army

And sent him homeward

To think again

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

(Roy Williamson, 1967)

Not Robbie Burns, not William McGonagall, just ordinary folk dreaming of having thrashed the English centuries ago and of maybe doing it again some day.

Dumb witness

I may have mentioned that this year, I’ve been finishing the dozen Agatha Christie novels I hadn’t previously read from beginning to end.

My current read is Dumb Witness (1937), a.k.a. Poirot Loses a Client. The hero – apart from Poirot – is a little Scottish terrier named Bob. (Hastings narrates.)

“I don’t know why dogs always go for postmen, I’m sure,” continued our guide [Hastings and Poirot are touring a house].

“It’s a matter of reasoning,” said Poirot. “The dog, he argues from reason. He is intelligent; he makes his deductions according to his point of view. There are people who may enter a house and there are people who may not – that a dog soon learns. Eh bien, who is the person who most persistently tries to gain admission, rattling on the door twice or three times a day – and who is never by any chance admitted? The postman. Clearly, then, an undesirable guest from the point of view of the master of the house. He is always sent about his business, but he persistently returns and tries again. Then a dog’s duty is clear, to aid in driving this undesirable man away, and to bite him if possible. A most reasonable proceeding.”

He beamed on Bob.

“A most intelligent person, I fancy.”

Sometimes, I want to hug Poirot.