Tuesday 21 June 2011

Elizabeth Bowen and the Hairy Cornflake

I see there's another blast from Nigeness past on that happening blog, The Dabbler... Back on Nigeness present, my blogbrain seems to have gone into sleep mode. Perhaps it was the concussing impact of the news that the great Burmese should-be leader Aung San Suu Kyi was a big fan of Dave Lee Travis's Jolly Good Show on the World Service, and found solace and uplift in listening to the Hairy Cornflake (rather than, like the rest of us, a strong urge to slit our wrists and be done with it). You think you've got some kind of rough idea of how strange the world is, sensed at least where the outlines might lie - and then a piece of news like this comes along and you realise you know nothing, it's a whole lot stranger. But we should not think the less of Aung San Suu Kyi for this strange predilection. Perhaps it's another example of how, in all sorts of subtle ways, the East doesn't 'get' the West, any more than the West gets the East. Which is why so many men who appear to western eyes to be sad losers turn out to be babe magnets when it comes to oriental ladies - and I don't mean mail-order brides. Just so long as DLT doesn't get nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize...