Averted disasters

"...life is made up of a million misfortunes that one avoids because they happen to other people."

See the original Three Beautiful Things post at this link.

Hoity toity

This is a whole passage and a half from the latest Bill Bryson I read. Never found BB to have outright guffaw factor but this is the best one from the selection I've read so far. Umpteen amusement. And pay special attention to the Dad's reaction...ha..

Under the sink, my mother kept an enormous selection of jars, including one known as the toity jar. 'Toity' in our house was the term for a pee, and throughout my early years the toity jar was called into service whenever a need to leave the house inconveniently coincided with a sudden need by someone - and when I say 'someone', I mean of course the youngest child: me - to pee...I suppose I guessed that the toity jar was routinely discarded and replaced with a fresh jar - we had hundreds after all.

So you can imagine my consternation, succeeded by varying degrees if dismay, when I went to the fridge one evening for a second helping of halved peaches and realized that we were all eating from a jar that had, only days before, held my urine. I recognized the jar at once because it had a Z-shaped strip of label adhering to it...Now here it was holding our dessert peaches. I couldn't have been more surprised...

'Mom', I said, coming to the dining room doorway and holding up my find, 'this is the toity jar'. 'No honey' she replied smoothily without looking up...'Whats the toity jar?' asked my father with an amused air, spooning peach into his mouth. 'Its the jar I toity in', I explained. 'And this is it'.

'Billy toities in a jar?' said my father, with very slight difficulty, as he was no longer eating the peach half he had just taken in, but resting it on his tongue pending receipt of further information concerning its recent history.

'Just occassionally', my mother said. My father's mystification was now nearly total, but his mouth was so full of unswallowed peach juice that he could not meaningfully speak. He asked, I believe, why I didn't just go upstairs to the bathroom like a normal person. It was a fair question under the circumstances.

'Well, sometimes we are in a hurry', my mother went on a touch uncomfortably. 'So I keep a jar under the sink - a special jar'.

I reappeared from the fridge, cradling more jars - as many as I could carry. 'I'm pretty sure I've used all these too', I announced.

'That can't be right', my mother said, but there was a kind of question mark hanging off the edge of it. Then she added, perhaps a touch self-destructively. 'Anyway, I always rinse all jars thoroughly before reuse'.

My father rose and walked to the kitchen, inclined over the waste bin and allowed the peach half to fall into it..'Perhaps a toity jar's not such a good idea', he suggested.

To read more about the book, reviews and ordering info see this: link

Bunnies, doctors and a poxy bike

Guffaw(ing) moments from Doyle's The Snapper.

She read about eating. Nearly everything she normally ate was wrong. She decided she'd follow the instructions in the book. She wasn't getting sick in the mornings but she started having dry toast for her breakfast, just to be on the safe side. It was good for morning sickness. She ate raw carrots. She took celery home from work and chewed that. Jimmy Sr banned the carrots and the celery when the telly was on, except during the ads. If she didn't go easy on the carrots he said, she'd give birth to a fuckin' rabbit. And there were enough bunnies in the house already.
:-)

They laughed.
-Ah, she was nice, said Sharon. -Come here though. I nearly died, listen. She said she wanted to know me menstrual history an' I didn't know what she talkin' abou' till she told me. I felt like a right fuckin' eejit. I knew what it meant, like, but I was-
-Why didn't she just say your periods? said Yvonne.
-Doctors are always like tha', said Mary.
-Menstrual history, said Jackie. -I got a C in that in me Inter.
They roared.
:-)

Darren walked into the kitchen.
-Happy birthd'y, son.
-Happy birthday, Darren.
-Happy birth'y, Darren.
-Good man, Darren, said Jimmy Sr. -There y'are.
He handed Darren a thin cylindrical parcel.
-Wha' is it?
-It's your birthd'y present, Jimmy Sr told him.
-It's not a bike.
-I know tha', said Jimmy Sr.
-What is it?
-Open it an' see, son.
Darren did.
-It's a pump.
-That's righ', said Jimmy Sr. -It's a good one too.
Darren didn't understand. He looked at his da's face.
-I'll get yeh a wheel for your Christmas, said Jimmy Sr.
-An' the other one for your next birthd'y. An' then the saddle. An' before yeh know it you'll have your bike. How's tha'?
Darren looked at the pump, then at his da. His da was smiling but it wasn't a joking smile. He looked at his ma. She had her back to him, at the sink. Now he understood. He understood now: he'd just been given a poxy pump for his birthday. And he was going to be getting bits of bike for the rest of his life and --But the twins were giggling. And now so was Sharon.
His brother, Jimmy, stood up and was putting on his jacket.
-Yeh can pump yourself to school every mornin' now, he said.
-Yis are messin', said Darren.
He laughed. He knew it. He had a bike. He knew it.
:-)

People

'People are islands. They don't really touch. However close they are, they're really quite separate. Even if they've been married for fifty years.'

From, 'Casino Royale', Ian Fleming, Penguin Books, 2006 ed.

The Dancer

'....She was far more difficult and demanding than that. She wanted to be your friend, lover, parent, sibling, ancestor, child. She was not just a choreographer or a dancer or a poet or an activist or a painter. She was a lover of trees and flowers, of the sun and the moon, the sea and the sky, the shy mongoose and the intrepid kingfisher.'

From, 'Living in her time (Remembering Chandralekha whose dance was more a lifelong quest to know the body)', Tishani Doshi in The Sunday Magazine, The Hindu, 7 Jan 2007