f4f3 | Five Words From Coughinbear (Reply)

Music
Not a part of my life the way it is for some people who know the language of classical music, or who see things in notes. I can just about see the attraction of string quartets and even orchestral works, but for me it's very much an intellectual thing - I don't easily engage emotionally with classical works. And opera just annoys me. I can get a bit more carried away with popular music, but mostly through concerts - last year's Blue Nile gig was definitely an emotional experience. I'm more a fan of song, than music, and I guess that's because I'm mostly a fan of stories. My favourite singers and bands tell stories - Springsteen, Steve Earle, Warren Zevon, Billy Bragg, Ezio, Lloyd Cole - and it's the words I react to, not the music. The words can be incredibly potent, though, when they link up to a story I know well, like lost love, or lost loves, open roads and open country. I heard a song the other day and thought - "that sums up the death of that relationship perfectly. I wish I'd heard it five years ago..."

Zelazny

I like genre fiction, a lot, to the extent, in fact that I think all fiction is genre fiction. I have my favourite SF and Fantasy and Crime authors, but only one Uncle Roger. Zelazny began to be published about the time I was born, and I discovered his voice somewhere in the mid to late 70's. By that time he'd more or less stopped writing SF and was producing his Amber series of fantasy novels. I've heard the Amber books described as hard-edged fantasy, but I'm not sure how to describe them myself. All I know is that his "Lord of Light" is a book I can return to time after time, that "Home is the Hangman" is the best novellete about sentience I've read, that "A Rose For Eclesiastes" and "The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth" were the perfect goodbye to the Mars and Venus of Burroughs and Verne, that "Roadmarks" fascinates me, that "Doorways in the Sand" made me want to climb university buildings, and that he was taken from us far, far too young.

cycling
I like it. There's nothing hugely complicated here, I've always liked cycling, and came back to it in my mid-thirties as an occasional exercise. When my son took up downhill mountain biking in a big way I get a half-decent mountain bike and went to some trails with him. I think I'm coming round to touring now, as a low cost way to cover some lovely ground in the highlands and islands.

socialism
I came by my socialism honestly - I inherited it. Well, partly that, and partly I absorbed it from my surroundings. I suppose there are two reations you can have to being born smart in poor suroundings. You can learn to loathe the people and places you're born into, and justify your escape as self defence. I've seen it happen. Or you can decide that there's an unfairness here, and that something really should be done about it. I love John Rawls work on A Theory of Justice, where he suggests that the best way to design a society is not to know where your place in it will be. I'd love to offer that deal to anyone who can vote Tory. My socialism, by the way, is inclusive, international, it's about building bridges, not tearing down houses, it does involve whisky and fish suppers, but has no problem with champagne and canapes - after all, as Marx may have said, the revolution is about getting rid of the crap, and keeping the good stuff.

unblinkered (hmm, that's not meant to be intrusive, just what occurred to me. Substitute cats if you prefer, as I thought of that next.)
Well I did answer someone else's question about unblinkered, so I have no guilt on moving onto cats. I'd never had pets until I got married, and acquired puss-puss, with her long black hair and once broken hip. Then there was Katie, the squirrel-cat, who climbed garages and trees, and ignored the heart defect until she couldn't, and then, and currently, there is Anna. A self-confessed Princess, who has adapted to being mostly an indoors cat, who is convinced she can make me lactate if she only kneads me just right, and who sleeps when she isn't dozing.

(and green paint).
I still have a pair of jeans which are flecked, very lightly, with the green paint we used in the hall at Foxtrot Mansions, on the weekend I met you, and Itchy. I smile whenever I put them on, although I didn't always.