Saturday, 24 May 2008

Pig Ma Lion

I'm supposed to be writing a review of My Fair Lady, as envisioned by Opera Australia and spectatified by me last Tuesday night; My Fair Lady, the one about Hispanic precipitation patterns, lots o' glottal-stopping choklit, and the misogynist linguist with the unexamined belief that lah-dee-dah English is objectively more euphonious than Cockney. I was supposed to write this review on Wednesday, then Thursday, then Friday, but things kept coming up. Emails to answer, seminar papers on androcentric food-guilt in modern Indian literature to audit, tradespersons of great skill and few words to usher through one's baronetcy and instruct in the wicked ways of the rotten window sashes. But tonight, so committed am I to writing this review, I have capitulated to early-onset Winter and lugged down the electric heater even though it's still only the 24th May and I made a public pledge somewhere to leave the heater on top of my wardrobe til the 1st June, I've resigned myself to not watching the Eurovision Song Contest, and I'm - as you can see - all - ready - to - write - my - review. Now here's a thought: is "Lots of chocolate for me to eat/ Lots of coal making lots of heat" the Eliza Doolittle redaction of £500 and a Room of One's Own?

While you're pondering the marriage of Virginia Woolf to Lerner and Loewe, two more questions for your nimble minds:

1. Is the word "parrot" related to the word "parody"?

2. Fancy a dining setting? Genuine leather-look olive-green vinyl upholstery!

Note: I am not procrastinating. Not I.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

is "Lots of chocolate for me to eat/ Lots of coal making lots of heat" the Eliza Doolittle redaction of £500 and a Room of One's Own?

Well, it would be reducing your expectations somewhat, I think, but then a women's fashion chain I spotted recently was using a bookshelf with artfully scattered copies of Three Guineas as a winter window backdrop, so maybe a new trenchcoat is the only dream one can legitimately hold these days. My mother wants me to go to MFL with her, so I look forward to your review.

"Parrot" is only related to bad parody. And if I were a Victorian I would love to buy your table and chairs (believe I may have sat on one, had no complaints).

trixie said...

Which editor would parrot diligence? Or should that be parry? Weary me. In procrastinatory chocolaty parroty solidarity...

Alexis, Baron von Harlot said...

Trixie's getting practice in for Bloomsday.

Eyrie, this isn't my old table what you've et ginger bread orf, this is the table left at my new Residence by its erstwhile Vendor, who has gawn orf to join the army and apparently doesn't need to take her table with her (or her chairs, or her bar stools, or her coathangers, or her raspberry-flavoured junket tablets, or the moosh of superannuated cake stuck to the floor under her fridge.

lucy tartan said...

Eyrie, was Peter Alexander the shop you saw with the bookshelf in the window? If it wasn't then there have been at least one other shop doing that display this year. Is this a bad thing? Don't know. I did stop and look at all the titles in the PA window and I think i'd remember if TG was one of them. There was quite a bit of Hemingway and Lawrence if I remember rightly.

There was a wardrobe, a chesto of drawers, an ugly purple chair and a scratched black varnshed bedstead in this house when we got it, plus an unflushed poo in the toilet.

Anonymous said...

Ah good, Alexis, as I seemed to remember your table being round and the seats grey (?), so it's nice to know that the memory is still intact. Apart from the cake, that is a good haul there (it's a mystery to me why someone wouldn't clean up for the next person. I'd die of shame rather than have someone else have to sweep up my superannuated cake- or worse- but then I am exceptionally bourgeois). It sounds almost like a profitable throw out (well, it would be if you wanted it all).

Lucy, not Peter Alexander. I think it was Sussan in the local shopping centre and Room rather than Guineas now that I think about it. I was a bit hazy because I'd just spent 1.5 scintillating hours at the dentist. I think I saw a women's clothes shop just off Oxford St (in Paddington, Sydney) doing the same thing a few years ago, only with Madame Bovary and assorted Austens and you could actually buy them. Grumpiness aside, I don't know if it's a bad thing either. It was one of the old Penguin covers (blue and white), so they were going for the design angle too. The fact that it was all the same book reminded me of a book-lined cafe in another Sydney shopping centre which has signs saying "Please do not read the books, as they are for display purposes only".

Anonymous said...

Here we are. It's the last two pages of the catalogue. The window display was just the books.

Anonymous said...

And also on this theme (if Alexis will pardon the momentary diversion):

The David Jones ad on p.14 of Clara Tuite's Romantic Austen:
'Loosen up. Laze around in the sunshine. Talk to the trees. Make some jam. Or curl up with a Jane Austen novel. Autumn's all yours'.

Alexis, Baron von Harlot said...

I sold the dining setting! $71.000000000!

That's two thirds of a square metre of floating floorboard plus professional installation, that is.