by Catriona Mills

Humiliation, Round Four: The Results

Posted 8 September 2008 in by Catriona

And the slightly belated results for this round of Humiliation are in. Finally, I am the most humiliated!

Catriona, Dune: 4 points
Tim, Little Women: 3 points
Leigh, The Wind in the Willows: 3 points
Nick, The Eyre Affair: 3 points
Wendy, Vanity Fair: 2 points
Matt, Gulliver’s Travels: 2 points
John, The Grapes of Wrath: 1 point (hardly humiliated at all, really)

I would like to take this opportunity, though, to point out that everyone who has any interest in books at all should read The Eyre Affair, because it’s awesome.

Live-Blogging Doctor Who: Midnight

Posted 7 September 2008 in by Catriona

So far this weekend, I’ve run errands, done the grocery shopping, hung a print in the bedroom after collecting it from the framer’s, baked a chocolate cheesecake, helped kill a dragon (and some kobolds), tidied the house, done three loads of washing, and prepared and hosted a high tea for Nick’s dad.

I didn’t manage to get any more marking done, alas.

I’m a little tired, now.

And I’m not sure I’m in the mood for this episode, which wasn’t easy to watch last time around.

So this is “Midnight,” the first of two episodes that concentrate largely on one of the two characters: this one focuses on the Doctor and next week’s (also so difficult to watch) focuses on Donna. My understanding is that they wanted to film the two simultaneously, and this was their solution. It’s certainly an interesting notion.

Ooh, a gorgeous shot, but Nick says spot the green screen when it turns up.

Finally, the Doctor succeeds in taking his companion on vacation, after all those promises that they’ll go to the beach.

Oh, there’s the green screen! Behind his head when he hangs up the phone! Well, it wouldn’t be Doctor Who if the sets weren’t a little wobbly. So to speak.

And both the Doctor and Donna do need a holiday, after the last two episode.

David Troughton! Last seen as the king in “The Curse of Peladon,” a Jon Pertwee episode.

I would absolutely go on this trip, if I had the opportunity. A waterfall made of sapphires? Awesome.

I like this hostess, too: she’s so weary and mechanical, as though she’s done everything, even told those jokes, over and over again. And there’s the Doctor’s reiteration of allons-y: I mentioned back in “Voyage of the Damned” that that would pay off in an interesting way—this is the episode.

He’s like a puppy, this Doctor, especially in this episode: look at him wondering who he can make friends with.

The Lost Moon of Poosh, eh? (Don’t correct my spelling!) I wonder if that will become relevant later in the season.

(Apparently, and this is interesting, the fact that the long-term relationship that this woman just ended was with another woman is an example of Russell T. Davis’s gay agenda, which frequently drives some on-line Doctor Who fans—the nutters—to slavering fury. As far as I can tell, Davies’s gay agenda rests on revealing that, apparently, some people are gay. I would add “how dare he?” but sarcasm doesn’t come across well in print.)

NICK: I wish they’d called it a leisure hive.

DOCTOR: Sorry, I’m the Doctor—I’m very clever.

Pay attention to that line.

Of course the Doctor wants to look outside. He’s the Doctor. And of course he convinces Driver Joe and Engineer (trainee) Claude to look outside. And the scenery is amazing.

Wait, Claude looks freaked out. He see something. I see nothing, and I’ve seen this episode before.

NICK: I’m trying to look, and I’m not sure I can see anything.

We’re geeks: we want to know what’s going on.

So, while things are settling down to wait for the rescue ship, I can run back to cover something I wanted to mention before: the passengers. We have the crusty professor and his put-upon research assistant Deedee who wants to do her own research; the middle-class tourist couple and their Gothy, surly son; and the hard-boiled businesswoman with a broken relationship. And the stewardess.

And they’re all turning on each other already, even before we get this: the knocking on the outside of the carriage.

Ooh, I don’t like this sort of thing. This, and inanimate objects moving on their own, really freaks me out.

Ha! The Doctor’s got his stethoscope out—I’ve always wondered why he’s carrying one of those. But then he also carries a clockwork mouse in his pocket, so a stethoscope isn’t such a stretch, really.

Ah, now the businesswoman is freaking out. She says, “she said she’d get me” and “it’s coming for me.” Now, that’s interesting: what on earth is the backstory to the breakdown of her relationship, that she freaks out this intensely, far more than the other passengers, and that it involved threats (Rose on the viewscreens, again!) of vengeance. That’s far more than the standard “She said she needed her space” that the woman—her name is Skye, by the way—mentioned to the Doctor when they were talking.

While I’ve been typing that, something has ripped into the ship, throwing them all around and killing both Driver Joe and Claude. Poor trainee Claude.

There’s something wrong with Skye, though.

Now Jethro, the surly teenager, is already starting to frighten people with the idea that whatever was outside is inside now.

And, judging from Skye’s face now she’s turned around, he’s right. This actress is fabulous—she looks completely different in this scene than in the previous ones.

So, even the Doctor finds it irritating when people mimic him. And yet he apparently had children—and all children find at some point that that drives people mad, and do it for as long as they can get away with.

So, she’s not just repeating: she seems to be ripping the words straight from the speaker’s brain.

Ah! And now she’s not just repeating any more. Now she’s speaking at exactly the same time as the speaker. Oh, Jethro: that’s not just weird. That’s horribly creepy. But, as Nick points out, the technical side of this episode is extraordinary.

And, of course, the Doctor would test her with the word “Bananas.”

This is disturbing: this episode is showing the Doctor in his most basic form. A new life form, it seems: one that has taken Skye over entirely. And, of course, he doesn’t approve of that. But he’s fascinated, and he can’t help that. He’s the Doctor.

He’s also, though, at his most arrogant in this episode, and that’s a problem.

Ah! And now the passengers turn. Mrs Cane—Jethro’s mother—wants to throw Skye out of the vehicle. And now we see the shift. Already there was the casual cruelty that Jethro—in an unthinking fashion—was applying, using the stricken Skye as a puppet, to make her say, “My name is Jethro” and “666.”

And now we have this: calculated murder.

I don’t know that I blame them. I hope—I hope sincerely—that I wouldn’t behave this way under these circumstances. I hope that my crippling fear that this might happen one day would stop me from going along with this kind of mob behaviour. But I can’t be sure. Of course, I can’t be sure.

And now they all turn on the Doctor. And, for once, his ambiguous nature—and, and I like this point, the joy he takes in this type of chaos—is being used against him. As when he says he’s a traveller and Mrs Cane responds, “Like an emigrant?”

Damn, this is hard to watch. But I admit, the fact that he takes joy in this chaos is something that has been worrying me for a couple of seasons.

And now Skye’s stopped mimicking everyone—everyone except the Doctor.

Oh, dear.

The fact that they’re not just saying “She’s stopped” but keep insisting “She’s let me go” is fascinating: they’re terrified. Of course they are. She’s been mimicking them as they speak: she’s been inside their heads. And I think we can all understand how insanely terrifying that concept is.

Oh, damn!

Now she’s speaking first.

NICK: On “Do we have a deal?” So she breaks the deal straighaway. Or refuses it.

Now all the passengers see the Doctor as the one repeating. They assume that whatever it is has passed into the Doctor.

And yet, Skye still doesn’t look the same as she did in the beginning of the episode. This actress (Nick tells me she’s one of Davies’s favourites) is brilliant: without shifting clothes, or hairstyle, or make-up, she’s created three different characters in the space of about forty minutes.

Ah, Deedee knows what’s happening. She doesn’t trust the argument that it’s passed into the Doctor and that Skye is safe.

Oh, I don’t like to see the Doctor immobilised like that, helpless, unable to act. It’s not natural.

Ah, and the hostess isn’t certain about the majority opinion. Deedee argues that Skye is using the Doctor’s voice, but that she’s still the one possessed. And she’ll be right, as she was right about the mechanical problems and the hydraulics.

But now Skye is suggesting that the creature—she says the Doctor—is creating this chaos, this violence, by messing with their emotions.

And now they are moving—now they are intending to throw the Doctor out of the vehicle, and they talked about doing with Skye. Even Jethro gets involved, conflicted as he looks.

Until he tricks Skye into saying “allons-y”—and then the hostess knows. And she throws herself out the door into the fatal extonic sunlight, clutching Skye.

Damn.

The passengers are breaking, now—especially Jethro and the professor, both of whom were the most conflicted about the idea of throwing the Doctor out of the ship. Even Mrs Cane shows remorse; I suppose, at least, that that’s what her “I said it was her” is supposed to show. But the Doctor quite rightly greets that with nothing but flat scorn.

(Frankly, given that the driver, the engineer, and the hostess are all dead, I’m surprised the passengers aren’t all up on murder charges.)

Oh, damn; the Doctor’s so traumatised (gorgeous music, at this point) that he can’t even bring himself to return Donna’s hug for a moment. That’s bad, for this Doctor.

And that’s “Midnight.” That was a laugh a minute.

(The actress who played Skye was Lesley Sharp, by the way.)

Next week, “Turn Left,” the largely Doctor-free episode. Don’t let that put you off. Seriously.

Strange Conversations: Part Forty-Three

Posted 7 September 2008 in by Catriona

Nick and I discussing the things that scare us:

ME: Bloody J-Horror.
NICK: It could be worse. It could be J.Lo. horror: the story of Jennifer Lopez’s career!
ME: Where’d you get that joke from, honey?
NICK: I made it up.
ME: Just now?
NICK: Yep. That’s just the way I roll.

Humiliation, Round Four: The Voting

Posted 6 September 2008 in by Catriona

Apologies for the lateness of this posting. But now I’ve helped slay the dragon, this seems like the logical next step.

The nominations for this round are as follows:

I have never read Frank Herbert’s Dune.
John has never read John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath.
Tim has never read Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women.
Wendy has never read William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair.
Leigh has never read Kenneth Graham’s The Wind in the Willows.
Nick has never read Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair.
Matt has never read Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.

Voting, as always in the comments thread below.

An Inside Joke for the D&D Crowd

Posted 5 September 2008 in by Catriona

I’m not normally a big fan of in-jokes on blogs, but I couldn’t resist this one:

Saeana entered a square room. Each stone tile in the floor was carved with an ancient symbol, and the walls were covered in murals depicting the rise of a great king. In the center of the room, on an ornate pedestal, sat a golden idol.

Saeana made an Intelligence check with a difficulty of 20 . . . and rolled 13

Saeana wove a deliberate path on the stone tiles to reach the pedestal. She grabbed the idol and raised it above her head in triumph. A grinding sound made her look down at the pedestal to see it slowly rising, no longer held down by the weight of the idol. A much louder grinding sound made Saeana look up again in time to see a giant boulder rolling into the room — and straight for her! Saeana was able to run, jump, and dive to safety, but not without accumulating some minor injuries along the way. Too bad the idol had been damaged in the commotion.

Saeana took 19 damage.

Apparently, the fault lies with me, not poor dead Gurdis.

Okay, Now I Love My Elf

Posted 5 September 2008 in by Catriona

I’ve been a little worried about my Elf, as my previous posts have shown. In fact, the most recent adventure threw up this encounter:

Saeana quickly realized the depths of Nyx’s insanity and decided to embrace his madness. Saeana fell on her knee, proclaimed her utter devotion to Nyx, and extolled his power, his handsomeness, and his brilliance. Nyx was delighted to find a soulmate in his quest for fiendish tyranny, and proclaimed Saeana his consort. Nyx’s moment of paradisal bliss was tragically cut short as Saeana plunged a dagger in his heart. Nyx looked at Saeana with surprise and sadness. “My love?” burbled from his lips before he died. Saeana destroyed the dimensional portal apparatus and ascended from the castle dungeon.

Knowing my Elf as I do, I’m naturally a little worried about exactly when during the proceedings she stabbed the insane Tiefling wizard.

But then I came across this encounter:

Saeana noticed a typical prince calling for help from the top of a very tall tower. Seeing no other route to the top, she started climbing up the cobblestone exterior. It was pretty easy going at first, but all that climbing got tiring after a while . . .

Saeana made a Constitution check with a difficulty of 19 . . . and rolled 12

Saeana was about halfway up, when the prince started shouting down additional demands that Saeana bring up food, water, hair products, and so forth. Saeana climbed back down ostensibly to get these supplies but, weighing the risk versus reward, just took off instead.

Sure, I actually failed the Constitution roll. I do that a lot: my equipment is all focused on Strength and Dexterity.

And I would probably be rewarded for reaching the top of the tower. (If I know my Elf, I would be rewarded afterwards.)

(Apparently, if you succeed in this adventure, you find that the prince has disturbingly small hands and feet, and have to throw him over your shoulder before climbing down. It’s a very odd game.)

But I’m still proud of my Elf for just sodding off. If reading Fables has taught me anything, it’s to never trust Prince Charming.

And, after all, my upbringing, if not my Elf’s, is best summed up by a conversation that I’ve never forgotten:

MY SISTER: Are you worried at all that Catriona and I aren’t married with children?
MY MOTHER: Well, I raised you girls to be feminists.
MY FATHER: What? Behind my back!

Strange Conversations: Part Forty-Two

Posted 5 September 2008 in by Catriona

A couple of days ago, I had to do a brisk clean-out of the pantry in the search for a squeezy container of honey that both Nick and I are sure we bought recently. (We didn’t find it.)

I threw a number of things out but I was simultaneously holding a phone conversation with my Mam about books she’d bought on my advice for my brother’s birthday—Glen Cook and Steven Brust—so I wasn’t paying attention when I handed Nick a packet of lavash crisps we’d opened two months ago.

He dropped them.

These things happen.

He then swept them out the back door onto the grass.

I wasn’t so impressed by this.

But I’ve just been sitting on the back steps in the rain having a cigarette:

ME: One good thing: all that rain has completely dissolved those lavash crisps.
NICK: That’s good.
ME: That can’t have been your intention when you swept them out there.
NICK: Waiting for rain is one of my standard contingency plans.
ME: You couldn’t have forseen the rain we had yesterday.
NICK: Forseen? No. Hoped? Yes.

Mind, this is the man who dealt with a forgotten (long forgotten—oh, the horror!) container of silken tofu that we found at the back of the fridge by, surprisingly, throwing it onto the back lawn—and we didn’t even have rain that time.

Lost in Austen

Posted 5 September 2008 in by Catriona

Thanks to Laura, who commented on this post about Jane Austen sequels, I’ve now found out about this:

Lost in Austen.

According to Wikipedia—and why wouldn’t we believe what Wikipedia says?—it’s a four-part series about an Austen fan who switches places with Elizabeth Bennet via a magical door in the former’s bathroom.

Oooh-er.

I honestly don’t think my life could have been complete had I never found out about this. Sure, I may have had professional success, perhaps children, a successful personal relationship, many joys—but there would have been an aching hole and, since this scenario depends on me never finding out about Lost in Austen, I would never have known why that hole was there.

Okay, that was marking-induced, semi-hysterical hyperbole. (And let that be a lesson to you, Nick: he tried to claim earlier that “I don’t like cushions” was hyperbole, instead of a negative comment on my decorating abilities.)

But, hyperbole aside, I would very much like to see this programme.

I mentioned it to Nick, and his response was “That looks as though it would be rather fun”—whereupon I stared at him incredulously for about five minutes before exclaiming, “Have you seen my Jasper Fforde novels?”

It also stars Jemima Rooper, whom Nick and I always refer to as “the lesbian ghost,” which I’m sure is so discriminatory a comment that we could be sued in a number of countries. But, though we’ve seen her in a few things—and, unexpectedly, saw her topless in the second part of Perfect Day recently—we always remember her as Cassie’s dead girlfriend in Hex.

I’ll be honest: I don’t know much more about this programme than that the general synopsis hits some primal, geeky, nineteenth-century fiction and fantasy-freak fan-girl button at the base of my spine, making it impossible for me not to watch it.

(I’m also mildly surprised that everyone is thinking “Pride and Prejudice meets Life on Mars“ when I’m thinking “Wasn’t there a sub-plot in a later Thursday Next novel where they ran Pride and Prejudice as a Big-Brother-style reality-TV show?”)

But if you want the opinions of people who know much more about both Austen and the programme than I do, the Austen Blog has been keeping an eye on it, and the fabulous John Sutherland has a piece in the equally wonderful Guardian.

I’m going to watch it regardless.

Strange Conversations: Part Forty-One

Posted 4 September 2008 in by Catriona

Disinterested commentary:

ME: I don’t know why people complain that there are too many blogs on the Internet. It doesn’t really hurt anyone if every man and his dog wants to keep one.
NICK: It’s like complaining about animation generally because of Japanese tentacle porn.
ME: Yes . . . except Japanese tentacle porn is wrong.

Humiliation, Round Four: The Nominations

Posted 4 September 2008 in by Catriona

I think, in the wake of Classic Books That Must Be Read!!!, that it’s time for another round of Humiliation.

Same rules as before: in the comments thread below, nominate a book that you haven’t read, but that you think everyone else has.

Nominations need to be in by 9 a.m. Saturday morning (6th of September).

Once all the nominations are in, I’ll open a separate thread for voting. As always, you’ll receive one point per person who has read your nominated book.

The winner in this good-natured game is the most humiliated!

Classic Books That Must Be Read!!!

Posted 3 September 2008 in by Catriona

When we were in high school, a friend and I put together a list of “Classic Books That Must Be Read!!!”—sadly, complete with the three exclamation marks.

I found it this evening, in—and I’m embarrassed to admit this—a pseudo-hatbox with cherubs printed on it. (In my defense, I bought it when I was much younger and didn’t have any taste.)

There are seventy-five books on the list, so perhaps it’s not the best idea to transcribe the entire list here.

I notice I haven’t read all seventy-five, though. Frankly, there are some on the list that I have no intention of reading and some that I have read but wish I hadn’t.

I haven’t read Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which comes in at the bottom of the list because we’d clearly forgotten Edward Albee’s name. (Most of the books are alphabetical by the author’s last name). On the other hand, I have read Pollyanna—and have no idea how that made it on to the list. Certainly, it’s a classic children’s book, but it’s also thoroughly irritating. Nevertheless, I’ve read it, and there were two advantages: I was able to spend eighteen months making fun of it when I taught an Academic Research course, and it also gave me a good giggle in volume one of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

I have never read Heidi, which turns up just above Pollyanna—I don’t think there’s much likelihood of my reading Heidi at my age. (On the other hand, I do own a copy of Swiss Family Robinson, which is also on the list, and I fully intend to read that at some point.) But, to balance that, I have read King Solomon’s Mines, which was less racist than I had anticipated (while still being rather racist) but no less sexist.

I’ve never read Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, and I do regret that. I don’t regret it much, mind, because I still have time to read it. And, on the other hand, I’ve never read Black Beauty—at least, I’m fairly sure I haven’t—and I consider that a plus.

(What is it about children’s books and general cruelty to animals? Watership Down was devastating and as for Colin Thiele, I think he must have killed a dog off in every single book he ever wrote. Was he badly bitten as a child? That’s the only explanation I can think of.)

Oddly enough, I seem to have ticked Brideshead Revisited off the list, and I have no memory whatsoever of ever reading that book. I remember reading The Loved One for school: I adored it, but I was the only one who did. And I have a copy of Scoop that I’m saving for when I have a free afternoon. But I have no memory of Brideshead Revisited—except that I remember Sebastian’s bear is called Aloyisus. Is that sufficient cause for claiming I’ve read it?

I notice we’ve put Charles Dickens and Fyodor Dostoyevsky down without specifying particular works. Perhaps we intended to read all of them? Well, Dickens only has fourteen novels, if you don’t count the Christmas novellas and the incomplete Edwin Drood. I’ve certainly read some of them, and really should read the rest. I might save The Old Curiosity Shop for when I need a good laugh. But I don’t know if I’m ever going to get to Notes from Underground, Crime and Punishment, or The Brothers Karamazov.

(Confession: I have read none of the great Russian works. Not even Anna Karenina. I know I should, and I will. But as of now: not one. I have read a number of Boris Akunin crime novels, though, so I’m not without some Russian novels under my belt.)

I’ll freely admit that I’ve never read Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, though my mother keeps recommending it. Nor have I read Frank Herbert’s Dune, which would probably be a good candidate for a future round of Humiliation. I did try to read Dune, but I just couldn’t manage it.

I also note that we’ve added “Lawrence of Arabia,” apparently under the illusion that that was the book title rather than the author. Either way, I don’t think I’ll regret it much if I never read The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

On the plus side, I have finally read The Great Gatsby—but only because I had to. And I have read Heart of Darkness, Paradise Lost, and The Three Musketeers.

I suspect that this is now less of a reading list and more of a time capsule. I have no intention of working my way through many of these items, though I think that, now, more are read than unread.

I wonder, too, whether we consulted other people when we put this list together—I don’t recall whether someone else recommended Dostoyevsky or whether that was our pretentious teenage selves talking.

It’s nice to have this list, and to see what we thought were the Classic Books That Must Be Read!!!

But I don’t think it’ll be keeping it near me, to cross items off as I go.

I’ve read many books over the years, generally at the expense of doing all the other things that you’re supposed to do to “get a life.”

I see no reason why I shouldn’t read many more in the years to come.

But I doubt any of them will be Heidi.

Uncannily Prescient Lego Figurines

Posted 3 September 2008 in by Catriona

Many years ago, Nick and I made this picture using a website that allowed you to construct yourself as a Lego figurine. (There’s almost certainly a Facebook application that allows you to do the same thing.)

I found them this evening while I was rummaging through a box of letters, looking for the basis of the entry I’m about to write.

I was a little disturbed to see how faded the inks were looking, so putting it on the blog seems like a good attempt at conservation.

Plus, I’m frightened to see how prescient it is:

Is it just me, or does that device that we put in Nick’s hand seven years ago look exactly like an iPhone?

We'll Miss You, Pauline Baynes

Posted 2 September 2008 in by Catriona

I can’t believe that I only found out today that illustrator Pauline Baynes died a month ago.

But it’s fitting, with my current re-reading of the Narnia books, that I should find this out today.

Baynes didn’t only illustrate Narnia, of course. She was a favoured illustrator of Tolkien’s work and her illustrations appear on nearly every Puffin children’s fantasy book produced in the 1970s, as in this edition of one of Mary Norton’s later Borrower books:

Or this one of George Macdonald’s lovely The Princess and Curdie, the sequel to The Princess and the Goblin:

I actively seek out editions with Pauline Baynes illustrations, so central is she to the ideas about what fantasy should look like that I absorbed in my childhood.

But she is best known, perhaps, for her Narnia work. I know I’ve been carrying around these full-colour images from a commemorative calendar since about 1991.

We’ll miss you, Pauline Baynes.

Lessons I Have Learned From Reading C. S. Lewis's Narnia Books

Posted 2 September 2008 in by Catriona

Since books taught me all I needed to know about navigating my way through girls’ boarding schools, especially if they exist in the 1930s, I assumed that reading the Narnia books would give me the necessary information to become royalty in an imaginary universe—or at least to rule wisely, once that state of being comes about.

If I never unexpectedly become High Queen of a fantasy kingdom (and if that’s the case, I’ll be rather annoyed, frankly), at least I’ll have grasped the following important points:

1. Wardrobes are inherently untrustworthy. Not only do they sometimes contain fantasy kingdoms, which is confusing if you’re only trying to locate your winter clothes, but they also sometimes don’t contain fantasy kingdoms.

I know! It seems unfair to me, too.

In fact, sometimes the same wardrobe can randomly switch in a matter of moments between being a magical gateway to another kingdom and a space-wasting repository for clothes that, let’s face it, I’ll never wear again.

This has taught me two things.

Firstly, if someone walks in on you while you’re trying to see if your wardrobe is the magic kind, it can be very embarrassing. Especially if you’re in your twenties at the time.

Secondly, it’s safer just to keep your clothes in random piles on the floor, and save yourself the heartache.

2. Bears are stupid. So are giants. Giant stupidity is worse, however; giants are prone to bursting out of the woods at completely the wrong point during a battle, causing horrific casualties to their own side.

At least the worst a bear will do is suck on its own paws when it’s supposed to be acting as a marshall during your duel with a usurper. This will, necessarily, make the entire army look gormless, but it probably won’t be fatal.

(Except perhaps to the bear, depending on whether you’re a beneficent monarch or not.)

3. Spending your childhood and much of your adult life as rulers of a fantasy kingdom and then unexpectedly finding yourself falling out of a wardrobe back into your adolescence in 1940s’ England presents no problems at all for your mental health.

You won’t find it difficult to head back to boarding school when you’ve been accustomed to subduing giants on your northern border or partaking in tournaments in the Lone Islands.

You won’t end up in trouble from shouting “Uncover before your queen, knave!” to people whom you pass in the street.

You won’t have any trouble whatsoever reconciling the fact that you’ve lived several extra decades and are now a child again, despite the fact that you remember those decades in sharp detail, right down to the specific occasion on which you lost one of your chessmen while playing in the orchard outside your castle.

Clearly, anyone who suffers a psychotic break under such trifling circumstances is not fit to be a king or queen, anyway.

4. Kissing a badger is not a girlish thing to do if you’re a king. (Or, presumably, a girl.)

This dictate refers specifically to a kingly salute to the badger’s forehead. The books are rather silent on whether snogging a badger is a girlish thing to do.

(Note: this blog does not recommend snogging badgers. In fact, underlying every entry on this blog, no matter how far removed the subject matter may seem, is a strong recommendation not to try and snog a badger.)

5. Foreigners can’t be trusted, especially if they dye their beards scarlet.

The problem is that you can’t always tell which people are the foreigners (unless they dye their beards scarlet).

Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve don’t count as foreigners, to begin with. But the Telmarines—who are as human as anyone, being descended from pirates who happened to find their way through a gap in reality—do count as foreigners. At least, the bad ones do. And no-one ever explains whether the people from Archenland are also Telmarines, or where the Calormenes come from.

At this point, it’s often easier to give up and just stick to trusting badgers.

6. Bears that have lived on honey are fruit are apparently delicious, whereas bears that are meat-eaters taste rather revolting.

You’ll have to trust the books on this one, since I have no intention of attempting to eat a bear (for, oh, so many reasons. I mean, have you seen a bear? They’re enormous!).

7. But the most important lesson is this: if you’re too interested in boys and nylons, you’ll never be allowed back to Narnia, even if you die in a railway accident.

I understand the embargo on boys (although I’m not sure if the embargo applies to both genders, or whether the embargo also applied to girls) but I’ve never really understood what’s so sinful about tights.

Still, better safe (and cold in winter) than sorry, eh?

Categories

Blogroll

Recent comments

Monthly Archive

2012
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
2011
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
August
October
November
December
2010
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
October
December
2009
January
February
February
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
2008
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December