Tuesday, 14 February 2012

Roses Are Red

I do not understand the carry on over "booking a table" for this evening. How do you know that she even likes snooker?

I shall be spending it at the monthly meeting of Lanchester Parish Council. It will be amusing to see how many, or how few, of the henpecked husbands turn up.
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20 comments:

  1. Anonymous14 February 2012 at 13:24

    Is this how all "Academic/management staff", to quote the university directory, spend their evenings when there are no college dinners to attend? Or is it only the ones who are so grand that the university would not dream of publising their work email addresses on the Internet?

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  2. David Lindsay14 February 2012 at 13:30

    It is the same as it has always been, ever since October 1997.

    The library card may long ago have become an academic staff one, entitling me to call in books from lowly essay-writing students purely for my own amusement if I were so minded, and in any event enabling me to keep hold of them for months on end. How do you think that I write my own? But the email address is immutable.

    However, if you are trying to get in touch with me, then it is wired up to my home one - davidaslindsay@hotmail.com

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  3. Tom14 February 2012 at 14:43

    Your classification on the directory sounds a bit like people who are classified as "Royal Naval Reserve", say no more. Look out for the old RD decoration among the great and good of campaigning organisations, think tanks, that sort of thing. Everyone knows about Durham and almost every picture of you seems to show you in black tie. That said, you undeniably make use of the staff library card that goes with it, you must be one of the best-read men around, especially still in their thirties.

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  4. David Lindsay14 February 2012 at 14:52

    You are very kind. But on topic, please. Admittedly, such as it is in the case of this post.

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  5. V14 February 2012 at 15:19

    Tut tut, Tom, you have mentioned the unmentionable, the mysterious question of David Lindsay's exact status for well over a decade and counting. He will not publish this but I need to get it off my chest. His unbroken retention of a staff library card and email address (that we are not allowed to know). Shadowy positions invented for him. Everyone from the JCR's biggest social players to the cream of the university hierarchy making a beeline to shake his hand or embrace him at the grandest functions, his swarthy looks and immaculate black tie only adding to the feel of something out of The Godfather. He should wear a ring for them to kiss because they would bloody do it, you know. The strange pride in his occasional publications taken by grandees of the utmost academic distinction. The refusal of anyone in authority to hear a bad word against him. The complete impossibility of getting rid of him, with people who point out well-researched facts about him branded liars, treated as pariahs and sometimes savagely punished by the less accountable arms of the central and local state. I have given up trying to understand who he must really be, but he must really be quite someone.

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  6. Tom14 February 2012 at 15:29

    As you wish, Mr. L. But it is no wonder you fell out with a neocon publisher. The wonder is that they ever took you on. Maybe star writer Oliver Kamm got wind and made them eff up the galleys in order to get rid of you? Imagine his reaction if they had published you. Will the Times give him Confessions of an Old Labour High Tory to review?

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  7. David Lindsay14 February 2012 at 15:33

    I have declined to invite him to contribute to the back cover, precisely so as not to cost him his fee for reviewing the whole book in The Times.

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  8. Anonymous14 February 2012 at 16:21

    From what we have heard, Kamm has nothing like the sheer grandeur necessary to make it onto that blurb. David Lindsay, the man who has read everything and knows everyone.

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  9. David Lindsay14 February 2012 at 16:42

    As I have written before, if Kamm will submit his Anti-Totalitarianism as the centrepiece of an application to the House of Lords Appointments Commission, and if Douglas Murray (who is younger than I am, with a considerably thinner CV) will do the same with his Neoconservatism: Why We Need It, then I should be more than happy to base mine around Confessions of an Old Labour High Tory.

    Do they not consider themselves up to it, or do they not consider their respective political positions entitled to a parliamentary voice, or both?

    Let's see who gets lucky first. If it is Kamm, then I might permit him to contribute a line to the back cover of one of my future volumes. Then His Lordship will really have arrived.

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  10. Henry Euston14 February 2012 at 16:52

    That crowd would deny it, but they cannot keep away from reading this blog, Kamm probably most of all. What would you do if this challenge were taken up? Win it, I expect. You are incorrigible.

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  11. Euston Jackson14 February 2012 at 17:49

    The next one is not expected until the end of the year. By then, Kamm will be in the new HMP Murdoch that is going to have to built to lock them all up in.

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  12. Anonymous14 February 2012 at 17:50

    He'll be glad of even that once the closure of the Sun has closed down the Times. So, next week, then.

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  13. Harry14 February 2012 at 18:11

    But where does that leave the silly little boy? His academic record probably stops him from parctisng law, his wider record almost certainly would, and no other newspaper stable would ever employ him.

    Your finest hour against that lot was when you banged on so much about how they were still accusing all critics of the Iraq war of antisemitism that Harry's Place had to stop doing it or at any rate do it a bit less than several times per day. You say you have a chapter on those issues. I do so hope that this particular little fact is in it.

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  14. Anonymous14 February 2012 at 18:39

    You might take a more balanced view of the police campaign against NI if it were not for the links to "the silly little boy". Rumour has it, by the way, that his problems have only just begun. Are you in college later in the week?

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  15. David Lindsay14 February 2012 at 18:49

    Of course.

    Now, if you will excuse me, the Parish Council beckons.

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  16. Anonymous14 February 2012 at 21:36

    The husbands at your council meeting are married men & I gather marriage is meant to be the bedrock of society. So why don't you get married David & start making your own direct contribution to the Culture of Life? I'm sure the ladies must be queueing up to be with such a dapper & well-read chap.

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  17. David Lindsay14 February 2012 at 21:39

    My father did not get married until he was 54, so I have 20 years yet.

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  18. Anonymous14 February 2012 at 22:15

    Come on David! You could make a young lass very happy now & not in two decades time. Think of how many children you could have together in twenty years. A minivan worth of young souls raised in the fullness of the Holy Mother Church, that's how many.

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  19. David Lindsay14 February 2012 at 22:31

    Then I'll have to wait for the full bus service to be restored to Lanchester, won't I?

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  20. Anonymous15 February 2012 at 08:10

    Now now David. Many Catholics have done their duty to the Culture of Life with more pressing problems than the lack of a decent bus service.

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