You are cordially invited to the riots of the workforce

[sovay]

We have voted. We filled out our ballots and we dropped them in the box outside our ward's polling place. Now to hope they do what we want them to. My experience of voting in national elections has been more dispiriting than not and I'd like that to change.

(No love to the three separate men we met without masks who under no circumstances would give way or even a berth on the sidewalk to anyone else, because their complacency is worth more to them than the comfort, health, or survival of strangers. They were effectively symbolic, but it's not like we need extra symbolism at this point. The text ate the subtext alive years ago.)

I do not know what the etiquette of such things is, so I hope it is not considered rude to acknowledge it, but I have been informed that a piece of my fiction is in the Yuletide 2020 tagset and I am delighted.

Comments

[nodrog]

By the bye - and there is a vague connection here, if you squint - have you ever heard of British barrister John Mortimer's stories of "Rumpole of the Bailey"?  I ask because you are literally the only person I know beyond my brother with a non-zero chance of saying, “Yes.”

[sovay]

have you ever heard of British barrister John Mortimer's stories of "Rumpole of the Bailey"? I ask because you are literally the only person I know beyond my brother with a non-zero chance of saying, “Yes.”

If you met my parents, you would have two more people with a non-zero chance, although my mother and I are more book-oriented and to my father I suspect Rumpole will always look like Leo McKern.

[nodrog]

Well, but your father is right!  What I never knew until recently is that unlike any other example you can think of, the cart came before the horse here:  The stories are worked up from his TV scripts, not t’ other way ’round!  Of course the written word carries more detail and backstory, so the result is the same either way.

And it’s the stories I was thinking of.

[sovay]

What I never knew until recently is that unlike any other example you can think of, the cart came before the horse here: The stories are worked up from his TV scripts, not t’ other way ’round!

That happened with at least one story by Angela Carter! "The Lady of the House of Love" started life as the radio play "Vampirella." I am confident I've also seen some films which existed at least simultaneously with their written source material, but I'm not being able to remember them at the moment.

And it’s the stories I was thinking of.

I've still never seen any of the show. The books were in the house, so I grew up reading them.

The Road Not Taken

[nodrog]

With me it was the reverse, as with most people if you think on it.  My Rumpole Omnibus is stashed in a box somewhere now, so I don’t have story titles handy, but I became aware as I read them of what I’d never seen on telly:  Just how sad that man’s life was.  He sacrificed happiness for a political maneuver, turning away from the lovely and charming daughter of his Latin professor to marry someone who was neither, but her father was Head of Chambers, and this was a shrewd move, he thought…  But he was wrong, and their underheated and tacky apartment was never a home - he lived at Pomeroy’s Wine Bar, spent his time there, had friends there… Only when he had to, did he go to the joyless, loveless world of She Who &c.  As it happened someone else, already a QC, was made Head of Chambers - making the sacrifice of his whole life futile.

Meanwhile there was another woman whom he had loved - but she chose a RAF fighter pilot, whose life then stopped at war’s end, who spent the years thereafter endlessly reliving and trying to recreate the only time in his life that was worth a damn - their pub was a throwback to wartime, music and decor &c.… She drank brandy every day and tried not to think.  That, too, was just sad.

(I’ve seen the like:  As late as 1990 there were still bars in South Carolina dedicated to the early ’60s Southern beach scene, Myrtle Beach, Hilton Head, Foley’s Island, &c., where gerry boomers who should have known better still dressed up as they had and staggered around to the same music, like never-ending middle-aged high school reunions.  It was pathetic.)

That was all:  As I said, you’re the only one who has any knowledge of my subject, here.

[nodrog]

> some films which existed at least
> simultaneously with their written source material

2001: A Space Odyssey, for one.

(Arthur Clarke depicted Dr Floyd sitting aboard a Space Shuttle, surfing the Internet and pulling up news sites on his laptop while waiting to launch… in a book written in 1964.  I am NOT kidding.)