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Of a calm and quiet disposition, and not over-intelligent he used to spend his time quietly regretting the past, grieving over the customs and institutions of the day and continually repeating to his wife, who would lift her eyes, and sometimes her hands, to heaven, as a sign of energetic assent: “Good gracious! What a government!”
Guy de Maupassant – Friend Joseph (1880s)
5 comments:
A lovely lady chum told me that on Sundays, they'd all meet up at some big gastro pub in North London, and they'd just wallow in all the rags, have a few beers come midday, then maybe a sandwich, and think...
Can't be bad really!
When I left school I went into what is euphemistically called the "print", this had one advantage over normal mortals in that daily copies of all the publications were available 'free' and I became an avid reader and learnt to scan newspapers at speed.
It stuck with me for years but the decline in the printed word has left me with little appetite to purchase newspapers today and that Sunday morning hour or two immersed in whatever your fancy has long gone.
The Telegraph was in those days easily the best for sports coverage with expert writers covering all sports, to show how far that publication has fallen it was caught out with fake writers a couple of years ago covering syndicated pieces in their sport section.
The great philosophical question posed by the picture is which one of them is reading the sports pages. Or have they just had a row over who's turn it is to take the dog for a walk?
Why 'not over-intelligent', what little quirk of character does this give to the protagonist? Perhaps whining about the government is the sign - rather like sea captains who complain about weather. All governments will necessarily be unsatisfactory to many and all ships go out in weather. Other theories are available.
Scrobs - that's the way to do it, with preliminary lubrication.
Wiggia - I used to be a regular reader but now I only read paper papers in the dentist's waiting room, so that's the Sun or the Mail.
Demetrius - or are they reading to the dog?
Roger - I think it's that, the automatic tendency to lay things at the government's door.
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