It's all about meme
Jun. 21st, 2009 09:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
f4f3Words meme from chickenfeet2003
Reply to this meme by yelling "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you.
Five words from chickenfeet2003
whisky
I'd never had an alcoholic drink until I was about 17 or 18. I never tried beer as a kid, and I still don't like it. I spent four years at university without drinking anything other than the odd Black Russian. Then I left University, my fiance dumped me, and I dived head first into a vat of cheap white wine. That's right, a woman drove me to drink, and I never had the good manners to thank her for it.
I had my first taste of real whisky when I was about 22 or 23, and I knew that I'd found my drug of choice. I don't actually drink more whisky now than I did then, but I do buy a hell of a lot more.
I tend towards the Western whiskies, from Campbeltown, Islay, Skye, The Orkneys.
Argyll.
I'm a Glasgow boy, born and bred, and I don't think I could live outside of a city, but there's a part of me that's drawn to the sea, to islands and beaches and the cry of gulls. And part of me, also, that seeks continuity, that looks to the past in the belief that those who came before us where much as we are. Argyll gives me that, all within 30 miles as the raven flies from Glasgow. That's 90 miles of road, though.
I bought a small place in Ardrishaig about 10 years ago. Ardrishaig is in mid-Argyle, or Knapdale depending on who you listen to. Either way, it has all the attractions of the islands for me, except I can get there without a ferry. Kilmartin Glen, 10 miles north, has more prehistoric sites than you can shake a hand-carved shepherd's stick at. The land is lousy with history - Jacobites, the kingdom of Dalriada, the original Scots, commando training bases, James Bond locations... Ach, come on up and say hello.
seafood
Again, seafood wasn't something I had much of growing up in Glasgow, unless it was battered. But almost 20 years ago I discovered prawn tails sold by the bag from a shed at Ardkinglass, and there was no stopping me. It's part of the bounty of this country - salmon and lobsters, prawns, venison and steak, oh, and whisky too.
nationalism
I'm not too keen on nationalism. It's something that, like religion, seems always to go to the dark side. It's almost a way of organising people into a hate machine. I feel a lot closer to a worker in Delhi or Deleware or Durham than I do to the Duke of Argyll. So long as we're organising our politics in nation states, though, I feel that each state has the right to self-determinism. That makes me a supporter of independence for Scotland, but I don't think it makes me a nationalist.
comics
I was talking to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
unblinkered the other day about how I used to navigate my way around Glasgow from public library to public library. I had very few books at home when I was growing up - maybe a couple of dozen. There wasn't any type of anti-intellectionalism at home, far from it, but books were expensive, and borrowed from libraries, not owned. On the other hand, I was allowed to get a comic a week. Up until I was about 8 or 9 these were UK comics, like The Valliant (my favourite) The Hotspur and the Victor. They were all anthology titles, with strips about plucky athletes, plucky footballers and plucky criminals alongside war stories and comic cuts. I always read about 5 or so years ahead of my reading age, so I sort of topped out with them when I hit nine or ten. Luckily Marvel started reprinting their superhero comics about then, stories from the 60's or The Fantastic Four, Spiderman, and, my favourite of the time, The Silver Surfer. I didn't know it at the time, but Marvel were pitching their stories at college kids in the States, and they had a maturity of vocabulary and plotting that made them vastly different from Alf Tupper, the Tough of the Track. They were also very much products of the Kennedy age, peddling civil rights, fighting corruption and, later women's rights. I got hooked, and to a certain extent I still am.
Reply to this meme by yelling "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you.
Five words from chickenfeet2003
whisky
I'd never had an alcoholic drink until I was about 17 or 18. I never tried beer as a kid, and I still don't like it. I spent four years at university without drinking anything other than the odd Black Russian. Then I left University, my fiance dumped me, and I dived head first into a vat of cheap white wine. That's right, a woman drove me to drink, and I never had the good manners to thank her for it.
I had my first taste of real whisky when I was about 22 or 23, and I knew that I'd found my drug of choice. I don't actually drink more whisky now than I did then, but I do buy a hell of a lot more.
I tend towards the Western whiskies, from Campbeltown, Islay, Skye, The Orkneys.
Argyll.
I'm a Glasgow boy, born and bred, and I don't think I could live outside of a city, but there's a part of me that's drawn to the sea, to islands and beaches and the cry of gulls. And part of me, also, that seeks continuity, that looks to the past in the belief that those who came before us where much as we are. Argyll gives me that, all within 30 miles as the raven flies from Glasgow. That's 90 miles of road, though.
I bought a small place in Ardrishaig about 10 years ago. Ardrishaig is in mid-Argyle, or Knapdale depending on who you listen to. Either way, it has all the attractions of the islands for me, except I can get there without a ferry. Kilmartin Glen, 10 miles north, has more prehistoric sites than you can shake a hand-carved shepherd's stick at. The land is lousy with history - Jacobites, the kingdom of Dalriada, the original Scots, commando training bases, James Bond locations... Ach, come on up and say hello.
seafood
Again, seafood wasn't something I had much of growing up in Glasgow, unless it was battered. But almost 20 years ago I discovered prawn tails sold by the bag from a shed at Ardkinglass, and there was no stopping me. It's part of the bounty of this country - salmon and lobsters, prawns, venison and steak, oh, and whisky too.
nationalism
I'm not too keen on nationalism. It's something that, like religion, seems always to go to the dark side. It's almost a way of organising people into a hate machine. I feel a lot closer to a worker in Delhi or Deleware or Durham than I do to the Duke of Argyll. So long as we're organising our politics in nation states, though, I feel that each state has the right to self-determinism. That makes me a supporter of independence for Scotland, but I don't think it makes me a nationalist.
comics
I was talking to
unblinkered the other day about how I used to navigate my way around Glasgow from public library to public library. I had very few books at home when I was growing up - maybe a couple of dozen. There wasn't any type of anti-intellectionalism at home, far from it, but books were expensive, and borrowed from libraries, not owned. On the other hand, I was allowed to get a comic a week. Up until I was about 8 or 9 these were UK comics, like The Valliant (my favourite) The Hotspur and the Victor. They were all anthology titles, with strips about plucky athletes, plucky footballers and plucky criminals alongside war stories and comic cuts. I always read about 5 or so years ahead of my reading age, so I sort of topped out with them when I hit nine or ten. Luckily Marvel started reprinting their superhero comics about then, stories from the 60's or The Fantastic Four, Spiderman, and, my favourite of the time, The Silver Surfer. I didn't know it at the time, but Marvel were pitching their stories at college kids in the States, and they had a maturity of vocabulary and plotting that made them vastly different from Alf Tupper, the Tough of the Track. They were also very much products of the Kennedy age, peddling civil rights, fighting corruption and, later women's rights. I got hooked, and to a certain extent I still am. 
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Date: 2009-06-22 07:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-22 11:21 pm (UTC)Jazz
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