Four Jobs I've Had
Among others…
Shelf-stacker at Iceland Frozen Foods, Southend-on-Sea.
Labourer in a small building and decorating firm in the East End of London.
Ticket Clerk at Victoria Coach Station, London.
Lecturer in Contemporary British Language and Culture, Lenin Pedagogical Institute, Moscow.
Four Movies I Could Watch Again & Again
Groundhog Day
Groundhog Day
Groundhog Day
Groundhog Day
Four Places I've Lived
In chronological order, the four most significant would be…
Moscow
Budapest
Edinburgh
Paris
Four favourite books
Aaaargh! Four out of so many? OK.
Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
The White Guard (Mikhail Bulgakov)
At Swim-Two-Birds (Flann O’Brien)
The King Must Die (Mary Renault)
Not to mention The Divine Comedy, Heaney's Beowulf, Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Catullus, Chaucer, Larkin (Next, Please), Auden (The Fall Of Rome), Eliot (The Wasteland), Cavafy (Waiting for the Barbarians), Tennyson (Ulysses) and so on ad nauseam…
Oh, and Terry Pratchett, Tibor Fischer and Tim Parks when I need a laugh.
OK - better stop there...
Four T.V. Shows I Love To Watch
Father Ted
Vicar of Dibley
Red Dwarf
Futurama
Four Places I've Been On Holiday
Venice
Rome
Florence
Madrid
Four Websites I Visit Daily
Blogs apart…
BBC News
Daily Telegraph
Le Monde
Washington Post
…and weekly:
The Economist
The Spectator
Four Favorite Foods
Bacon sandwich
Marmite
Boxty (Irish savoury pancake)
Any of my wife’s Hungarian specialities
Four Places I'd Rather Be
In no particular order…
Visiting my mum
Remembering my Dad with the regulars in his favourite pub
Paddling with the kids on the beach
Having a lie-in with the wife.
Four People To Tag
3H, if he’s interested
GB, likewise
Sam
And Des - he has no blog, but I could post his answers for him next weekend, if he likes :)
And that’s all she wrote.
Tag - you’re it!
11 comments:
'Slow news days'!!!!
Traitor! We've only just lost the bloody world cup! I think I'm turning into a soccer hooligan.
Interesting that 3 of the TV shows are British - I don't recognise the fourth.
You are obviouly a very erudite young man - but then I knew that.
Futurama's a cartoon by the creators of The Simpsons, Pat.
And we deserved to lose, what with that hooligan Rooney kicking the poor chap in the nethers.
Shhh - this is a World Cup free zone, you know. I'm rather glad to have gotten through it without having to resort to crudely xenophobic soccer diatribes.
But I was fairly sure we were on the last lap anyway - in the immortal words of Viz magazine "We're backing England all the way to the Quarter Finals!"
But did you see the tennis? Although a fellow Scot my husband doesn't like him but he played brilliantly.
Ooh sorry - is it a tennis free zone?
Murray mint, Murray mint, the tooo good to hurry mint!
Thanks fe - I must see if my Simpson addicts know it.
Wow! So I made it to the fantastic four of Ivan's blogular sancta sanctorum. Sheesh. I feel special. Mighty thanks, Tsar.
Can I go ahead, then? Here goes, then:
Four Jobs I've Had
I don't think I've had four jobs in my life. I'm a professional slacker, thinly disguised as a graduate student. But, before I incur the Protestant wrath of this blog's select readership, may I point out that quite a few magnificent people had a secret vocation for slacking off, not least among them my beloved Carlos Kleiber. However, at various times in my life, I've been:
Information and press officer
Low-wage, dead-end hotel employee in England
Cubicle slave in a university library
Eternal grad student
Four Movies I Could Watch Again & Again
Ken Russell's 'The Devils'
Peter Greenaway's 'The Draughtsman's Contract'
Terry Gilliam's 'The Adventures of Baron Munchausen'
Mike Hodges' 'Get Carter'
(Yeah, I guess I have a weak spot for British directors).
Four Places I've Lived
Rome
Paris
Manchester (the real deal, the one in UK)
Baltimore
Four favourite books
Gosh, this is tough. I dunno what to say here. Anyway, how about this:
"Pale Fire," by Vladimir Nabokov;
"Ficciones," by Jorge Luis Borges;
"A Good Man is Hard to Find," by Flannery O'Connor;
"The Secret Agent," by Joseph Conrad.
I have a bond of solidarity with three of the above writers through a common contempt for that hack Dostoievsky. Guess which.
Four T.V. Shows I Love To Watch
Family Guy;
Dave Chapelle;
The Wire;
I don't watch much TV these days.
Four Places I've Been On Holiday
Florence;
London;
Los Angeles;
New York.
Four Websites I Visit Daily
The Day of Wrath;
The British Aunt, BBC;
Arlington Copley Hynes' scrambled musings;
Laura Rozen's 'War and Piece.'
Four Favorite Foods
Does beer count?
Turkish kofte;
All-American burgers;
Swordfish steaks;
Many things Mitteleuropaeisch
Four Places I'd Rather Be
California;
Hangin' out with some of my best friends from college;
Anywhere in Italy;
Did I mention Italy?
Four People To Tag
OK, this blog has spawned a near-incestuous readership, so don't be surprised:
Pi;
Aunty M;
Footsie;
The elusive Cantemir.
Whew. That took a while. Thanks a bunch, Ivan--that was rather fun. And sorry for your loss in the World Cup, guys. it looks like, once again, the Deutschkies are an inexorable steamroller. Thanks god they don't have tanks, this time. Better luck in 2008.
Cool set of responses there, Des! If you like I can stick 'em up front and centre next weekend, if we don't see a lot of responses in the comments :)
Here's me.
4 Jobs:
Veterinary's surgical assistant after school. Often, by tea-time, I'd have helped knacker several unfortunate furry things and sent them home bewildered and defeated. Then, sometimes, I'd go to Girl Guides. !
Shop assistant in health-food shop.
Assistant in the identification and purification of the anti-inflammatory components of honey-bee venom.
Scullery maid.
4 Movies:
Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid
Mary Poppins
Cyrano de Bergerac
Grease
4 Places I've lived:
Stornoway, Isle of Lewis
Glasgow
Minneapolis, MN
Ojai, CA
4 Favourite Books. Blimey. Can't be held to this, mind:
Bleak House
The Screwtape Letters
Crime and Punishment
The Human Stain, Philip Roth
I gobble up Pratchett too, Ivan. And David Sedaris and John Mortimer for me larfs.
4 TV Shows
The Daily Show
Real Time with Bill Maher
Deadwood
California's Gold with Huell Howser (Seriously)
My all-time favourite is A Bit of Fry and Laurie
4 places I've been on holiday
Prague, Budapest, Vienna on one fabulous trip
Hong Kong (before handover) and day trip into China
Rome
Paris
4 Daily Websites:
Slate
BBC News
McSweeny's
The Daily Mumps
4 Favourite Foods
Rum babas
My Granny's Eve's Pudding
Oranges, not dry, fibrous ones, not too-sweet ones, but the tart ones from our tree.
Curry
4 Places I'd Rather Be
London or New York
Luskentyre on the Isle of Harris
The Castle Grounds, Stornoway, with my children
Anywhere with my old pals from home and uni.
4 People to tag
Erm, I guess I should have done this on my own site, but I already have something similar on my About Mememememe page.
I second all your tags though, Des. Just to pressure 'em into doing it. And Nanas, but I think you might have tagged him already, Ivan, right?
The Screwtape Letters? Good choice :)
Scullery maid is a little confusing tho'. Didn't they die out after WWII?
des honey pi is exempt on account of I have done a me me already and as I feel my blog is all me me and reluctantly had to refuse dearest Randall.
Been away. Thanks for playing. And it wasn't that hard, was it?
Viz your prior post. When I read Millington, the shock of recognition was almost too much for me. I think German women are the same, what with the plants, using all the utensils in the house to make a peanut butter sandwich, etc. Even the official children notice it.
After one strange moment, the official daughter looked at me after watching the EMBLOS leave the room and said, "Now I know why German men left to invade Poland."
Cheers.
Chicago, 1947, Canty?
Post a Comment