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I had an aunt who loved a plant, but you're my cup of tea
I was made aware earlier this evening that the current administration issued a proclamation on the 850th anniversary of the murder of Thomas Becket celebrating his martyrdom in the cause of religious liberty with all the anti-abortion bullhorns and Christian hegemony to be expected from this dominionist crowd.
I prefer to remember that in high school I watched Becket (1964) with the friend who made my brain turn to lemon pudding with just the smell of her hair and that spring we lay freezing beside one another in a hastily pitched pup tent on the track field because the temperature had plunged below zero during a twenty-four-hour charity relay and despite what years later transpired to have been an extremely mutual interest we still didn't end up making out because neither of us had the gaydar God gave a rock to turn over in the dark and say, I'm cold, Thomas. I can still hear it in her voice. We'd quoted it all winter. A rock.
We wrote our first animal song about fifteen years ago, I suppose. We've written a great many more in the interim, which we find a very good place to work. We have recently embodied all these songs about animals in a new LP called The Bestiary of Flanders and Swann for Parlophone—BMC1164, actually. Very easy number to remember if you think of it as a date, 1164 being of course the date of the Constitutions of Clarendon at the time of Thomas à Becket, marking a very important stage in the quarrel between Anouilh and Christopher Fry.
—Michael Flanders and Donald Swann at the Haymarket Theatre, 18 October 1963
I prefer to remember that in high school I watched Becket (1964) with the friend who made my brain turn to lemon pudding with just the smell of her hair and that spring we lay freezing beside one another in a hastily pitched pup tent on the track field because the temperature had plunged below zero during a twenty-four-hour charity relay and despite what years later transpired to have been an extremely mutual interest we still didn't end up making out because neither of us had the gaydar God gave a rock to turn over in the dark and say, I'm cold, Thomas. I can still hear it in her voice. We'd quoted it all winter. A rock.
We wrote our first animal song about fifteen years ago, I suppose. We've written a great many more in the interim, which we find a very good place to work. We have recently embodied all these songs about animals in a new LP called The Bestiary of Flanders and Swann for Parlophone—BMC1164, actually. Very easy number to remember if you think of it as a date, 1164 being of course the date of the Constitutions of Clarendon at the time of Thomas à Becket, marking a very important stage in the quarrel between Anouilh and Christopher Fry.
—Michael Flanders and Donald Swann at the Haymarket Theatre, 18 October 1963
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Fry's Curtmantle (1962) is also a retelling of the relationship and conflict between Henry II and Thomas Becket. I have not read it and therefore can only speculate that it may be more historically accurate than Anouilh's Becket (1959), which even the author acknowledged wouldn't be hard, but is almost certainly not as hella queer.
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That is very fine.
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I still occasionally see Anthony à Wood too.
Both long dropped by academic historians.
I've been re reading Eliot's 'Murder in the Cathedral'.
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For example Thomas à Kempis is a translation into law French of Thomas van Kempen and is correct as far as it goes as that is where he came from, but the assumption that Becket is a place name is incorrect.
None of which explains Anthony à Wood! :o)
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It’s a very pretty rock, though. Complex. *brushes leaves off it for you*
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We were reading Mary Renault and Tanith Lee. One of our other movies was Dead Again (1991), with its genderswapped reincarnated lovers. I don't how it's possible to be that obvious and that oblivious at the same time. I am amazed anyone survives adolescence.
It’s a very pretty rock, though. Complex.
I'm very proud of the lichen.
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Were you... possibly... co-protags in a movie? Did you check?
*hugs*
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I think if we were in a movie, we should have at least made out in a tent!
*hugs*
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LOL. I was raised on Flanders & Swann, but somehow was never exposed to this classic Flanderism.
Oh dear. That makes me want to reach back in time and give wee!sovay a warm cup of tea and a gentle, loving thwap! on the shoulder.
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It's from the introduction of a concert recording of "The Sloth" collected on More Out Of Another Hat (1963), which I got from the highly recommended, titanic box set Hat-Trick (2007). I laughed out loud.
That makes me want to reach back in time and give wee!sovay a warm cup of tea and a gentle, loving thwap! on the shoulder.
It never occurs to me that people are interested unless they tell me! And she had seen me dating a mutual male friend and concluded I was straight, which is even more hilariously sad since that relationship was the one that taught me never to agree to go out with a person for whom you feel no sexual interest just because you're friends and they've asked you.
Parents did flock to the field with blankets and hot cocoa. It was the end of May. It was ridiculous.
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I managed to get that lesson by osmosis instead of direct experience, by watching Janni (before we started dating) go through it. This was the same boyfriend who taught me that deliberately staged snits do not make the intended audience feel sympathy, but sad laughter.
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It contains all the usual suspects and then a wealth of rarities, including some fantastically early stuff performed by the people it was written for, e.g. Max Adrian narrating a "Guide to Britten" which is completely unfair and really funny. Swann does a terrible American accent for the McCarthyist satire of "Brave New Worldling." Also a lot of the variant introductions from the live recordings are amazing. "Now there's a tune you must know, 'Greensleeves.' Even Donald Swann knows it. As a matter of fact, he doesn't like it very much. He says it always reminds him of an afternoon he spent in Christchurch Meadow. It was Swann-Upping Sunday."
This was the same boyfriend who taught me that deliberately staged snits do not make the intended audience feel sympathy, but sad laughter.
Oh, dear.
It was my first time dating anybody. It was a learning experience. At least I got it out of the way in high school, instead of marriage.
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(Nowt wrong with treacle, either.)
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I bet you could have pitched a narrowboat among the tents and no one would have noticed.
*hugs*
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a rock. weren't we all at some level rocks. eesh.
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Thank you.
a rock. weren't we all at some level rocks. eesh.
I like to hope I've at least leveled up to paper since.
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She also had the Mozart concerto on vinyl that was riffed on in Ill Wind.
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Nice! That is a good sort of thing to be warped by early.
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It truly is, especially since they have shown no signs before now of caring about other Catholic or Anglican saints. He's a convenient excuse to claim again that America is a Christian nation, because that's all that "freedom of religion" means to these people—another bid to undermine the Constitutional separation of church and state. It is disrespectful and icky and frankly I hope it's ignored. I didn't link to the text for a reason.
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Aww!