Catching up
Recent blogs have been diverted by various inept attempts to prepare for my vacation to America, undermined by other emotional concerns. As regards the accutane diaries, it is now playing merry hell with my forehead. Everybody tells me that it works beautifully in the end, so this is my little slice of purgatory to be endured before arrival at the blessed mountain. Oh well. Could be worse - I could have had my hair cut before I flew out.
A couple of weeks back I was stuck in one of those devil/deep blue sea moments. Attending a quiz, did I admit that I actually knew who recorded the Birdie Song and therefore hole my reputation below the waterline, or did I keep quiet and imperil our chances?
I took the only honest course: I 'fessed up and blamed my parents.
But really, my parents' taste in music evaporated - if their vinyl collection is any guide - almost exactly when they married. Apart from Nancy and Lee and Abba (and I can foresee some raised eyebrows there), all their record purchases after 1967 were the subgenre that is collated and used in quizzes under the title 'Someone Must Have Bought It!' This included 'Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs,' 'Black Superman,' 'Seven Tears' (which I think is actually not a bad record) and Terry Wogan's 'The Floral Dance.' It's a wonder I ever recovered, and there are plenty of people who would say I didn't. I don't think exposure to this music can altogether account for my homosexuality - my brother and sister are straight - but it might be a contributory factor.
About my brother and sister. Just before I left the country, my sister-in-law gave birth to a fine daughter, the first grandchild in the family, whom I was fortunate enought to see before I left. Now, small children do nothing for me at all, and my insistence that I don't want children was only strengthened by the parents' agreement that they never knew poo could be such a riveting topic of conversation. But she is my niece and, thankfully, all the avuncular feelings seem to be in place.
She was unnamed when I left, having been called Honeysuckle in the womb, and only recently have I learnt that she is to be named Robyn Hebe Gaia. The only Hebe I knew was a character in HMS Pinafore, but a quick googling reveals that Hebe is the goddess of youth and the duaghter of Zeus and Hera. Which is all well and good, but hebe is also a plant native to New Zealand, and as my sister-in-law is a botanist...
My sister, by contrast, has been locked in an ex-Soviet sanitorium outside Kiev. Readers will remember my dash to the Ukrainian Embassy (Visa/Consular Section) and this is what happens as an indirect result. She described it - along with the chains and cages left in situ by those caring professionals in the Communist bloc - as the most despair-inducing place she's ever been. As she's been to Digbeth Bus Station, this is no small statement.
That cheap crack could also have easily been applied to Buffalo, where my family was once impounded at immigration. I had thought nothing could beat Buffalo for humorlessness, but one should never underestimate the capacity of the human race to push back the frontiers of achievement, and a lady called Spence at JFK immigration now holds the laurel for least welcoming and generally unpleasant introduction to America. Rude, surly and obnoxious, she couldn't or wouldn't grasp that although I was a registered Yale student, I wasn't at the moment physically resident at Yale because I was engaged in working toward my PhD.
Eventually, having concluded with regret that my papers had neither error nor omission that would require me to be given unto the tender mercies of unsmiling men with guns, she pushed them back across the counter and huffed 'it sounds like yo' registered a Yale student but yo' don't actually go to school!'
Well, tough. I've done my time, honey. And I know who recorded the Birdie Song.
A couple of weeks back I was stuck in one of those devil/deep blue sea moments. Attending a quiz, did I admit that I actually knew who recorded the Birdie Song and therefore hole my reputation below the waterline, or did I keep quiet and imperil our chances?
I took the only honest course: I 'fessed up and blamed my parents.
But really, my parents' taste in music evaporated - if their vinyl collection is any guide - almost exactly when they married. Apart from Nancy and Lee and Abba (and I can foresee some raised eyebrows there), all their record purchases after 1967 were the subgenre that is collated and used in quizzes under the title 'Someone Must Have Bought It!' This included 'Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs,' 'Black Superman,' 'Seven Tears' (which I think is actually not a bad record) and Terry Wogan's 'The Floral Dance.' It's a wonder I ever recovered, and there are plenty of people who would say I didn't. I don't think exposure to this music can altogether account for my homosexuality - my brother and sister are straight - but it might be a contributory factor.
About my brother and sister. Just before I left the country, my sister-in-law gave birth to a fine daughter, the first grandchild in the family, whom I was fortunate enought to see before I left. Now, small children do nothing for me at all, and my insistence that I don't want children was only strengthened by the parents' agreement that they never knew poo could be such a riveting topic of conversation. But she is my niece and, thankfully, all the avuncular feelings seem to be in place.
She was unnamed when I left, having been called Honeysuckle in the womb, and only recently have I learnt that she is to be named Robyn Hebe Gaia. The only Hebe I knew was a character in HMS Pinafore, but a quick googling reveals that Hebe is the goddess of youth and the duaghter of Zeus and Hera. Which is all well and good, but hebe is also a plant native to New Zealand, and as my sister-in-law is a botanist...
My sister, by contrast, has been locked in an ex-Soviet sanitorium outside Kiev. Readers will remember my dash to the Ukrainian Embassy (Visa/Consular Section) and this is what happens as an indirect result. She described it - along with the chains and cages left in situ by those caring professionals in the Communist bloc - as the most despair-inducing place she's ever been. As she's been to Digbeth Bus Station, this is no small statement.
That cheap crack could also have easily been applied to Buffalo, where my family was once impounded at immigration. I had thought nothing could beat Buffalo for humorlessness, but one should never underestimate the capacity of the human race to push back the frontiers of achievement, and a lady called Spence at JFK immigration now holds the laurel for least welcoming and generally unpleasant introduction to America. Rude, surly and obnoxious, she couldn't or wouldn't grasp that although I was a registered Yale student, I wasn't at the moment physically resident at Yale because I was engaged in working toward my PhD.
Eventually, having concluded with regret that my papers had neither error nor omission that would require me to be given unto the tender mercies of unsmiling men with guns, she pushed them back across the counter and huffed 'it sounds like yo' registered a Yale student but yo' don't actually go to school!'
Well, tough. I've done my time, honey. And I know who recorded the Birdie Song.
posted by BoB at 6:15 PM
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