‘Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect – simply a confession of failure.’ 

It sounded good last night, but remembering one of my readers made me reconsider. One should always strive for consistency, and in particular if one’s ideas or emotions are of a limited scope and not worthy of bothering to vary. But one should also remain open to new ideas and acknowledge good ones even if one doesn’t agree. (But who am I kidding – you aren’t capable of understanding this much metaphor anyway).

resting

But feeling guilty about any periods of non-productive activity, owing to the Mother! Of course it’s not all like that. In an example of permitted productive relaxation, Mother and sister made a gigantic shell mirror.

Why did your mother make a gigantic shell mirror?
She decided it was a good thing to do.

Aren’t shell mirrors, well, a bit kitsch?
Apparently not. Of course it includes our (mum’s) own memories of 30 years of shell collecting, and better quality shells than the ones in the cheap shops.

Do you have any opinions that aren’t your mother’s?
We tend to fall in line. One could characterise this situation as overbearing on a browbeaten family, except the Mother is usually right and has done well in significant matters of house choice, schooling, career and of course home decorating.

The mirror is quite beautiful. Meanwhile I have done my own craft, working through a set of construct-yourself paper toys some foolish relative gave to us years ago. They all have various moving parts. The overall working level of the three I have done would best be described as ‘kinda’. I am doing them out of sheer obstinacy, and some vague effort to prove to the creators of the box that no, these aren’t really suitable for children with a bit of adult help! Children would be in tears the first time they glued something in the wrong place and totally destroyed the model, nevermind keeping at it for 3 hours for the average one.

Boy keeps then watching movies late at night, which is not very good. On the plus side I have now seen Vantage Point, Sea Wolf and the Bank Job.

I have wanted to write about The Portrait of Dorian Gray for ages now. It really ignited my desire to be one of ‘the idle classes of a country’ who seemed to sit around doing nothing but talk and think, angst and love.  ‘A grande passion is the privilege of people who have nothing to do’ – at least in those days, in that class, in the idealised condensation of it in the novel, people could speak in terms of a grand passion. Of course most of them actually went around being boring most of the time, and I guess that they had to suffer through a great deal of awful bon mots and aphorisms – which is to say just poor generalizations – to get a few gems. But they had time, with a dinner party every second night, a picnic here and a gentlemen’s club there, to have a great deal of conversation. Just so much time to spare!

We’ve had a little lately, a little time to lie on the couch drinking tea with my sister and discussing her breakup, but it’s never enough.

I had various things to say about the heat and the sailing, but scanning the novel again has quite borne my mind away from anything day-to-day. Very satisfying and relieving. Suffice to say it may be too hot in my room to sleep and I will have to sleep in the living room with the air conditioning.

One last from Mr Wilde – ‘Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect – simply a confession of failure.’

I updated it

I want to keep a list of books I’ve read this holidays, yes I am just showing off, so far is:
After the Flood
Oryx and Crake
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Island of the Day Before
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
The Faithful Spy
The Lovely Bones
The Art of Fielding
Dirt Music
A Visit from the Goon Squad
All the Sad Young Literary Men
Defining the Beaufort Scale
The Executioner’s Song
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (soon…but it’s term so I’m kinda out of time)