Book Blither
May. 11th, 2010 08:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
susie_floGood evening fiends. Are you all glued to the telly watching poor old Gordy shuffle back into his invisibility cloak?
Today I almost went into anaphylactic shock when I discovered that I had left my iphone at home and would have NO INTERWEBS on the way to work! However this turned out to be a wonderful blessing in disguise because it forced me to pick up my sadly negelected and still wine-soaked paperback of The Pursuit of Love.... which in turn led to me spending the next 20 mins hooting in an unseemly manner all the way to South Kensington.
I'm amazed I have managed to avoid reading this novel until now. Why in god's name do I choose to divert myself with farcebook and twit-land when I could be experiencing the unadulterated glee of Nancy's prose every morning? Besides the impossibility of reading it without smiling, it makes me feel all cosy and nostalgic for a 1930s childhood that I never had. Obviously excluding the whole country-estate side of things, I have seldom identified so deeply with a character than that of twelve year old, animal-obsessed Linda, ridden with angst over the plight of cows and dormice. (I used to pray earnestly in bed every night for all of the horses and other animals that were spending the night out in cold fields).
Anyway, I'm sure the works of Ms M are all very old hat (though it may be worth mentioning the recent release of Wigs on The Green).
Moving on, I had a random thought this evening about money. If things continue to develop as they are, I believe in a few years there will be no such thing as cash. We'll all just carry cards. And then I suspect that credit cards will die out quickly and we'll all just carry some kind of universal swipe-card-chip-thing (e.g. like an Oyster card or microchip) which can download the equivalent of what used to be credit cards or be updated with the equivalent of loans and so on.
So then I started to wonder... how would you give money to a tramp? Would the tramp have to carry a chip-card and you would just swipe a few quid onto it for them from yours? If the only way to have money was via such a card, would this mean that nobody - even tramps - would be able to 'opt out' of society any more, for fear of starving to death? Would it become effectively the same thing as a national ID card?
Hmmm... 'tis all very interesting.
Today I almost went into anaphylactic shock when I discovered that I had left my iphone at home and would have NO INTERWEBS on the way to work! However this turned out to be a wonderful blessing in disguise because it forced me to pick up my sadly negelected and still wine-soaked paperback of The Pursuit of Love.... which in turn led to me spending the next 20 mins hooting in an unseemly manner all the way to South Kensington.
I'm amazed I have managed to avoid reading this novel until now. Why in god's name do I choose to divert myself with farcebook and twit-land when I could be experiencing the unadulterated glee of Nancy's prose every morning? Besides the impossibility of reading it without smiling, it makes me feel all cosy and nostalgic for a 1930s childhood that I never had. Obviously excluding the whole country-estate side of things, I have seldom identified so deeply with a character than that of twelve year old, animal-obsessed Linda, ridden with angst over the plight of cows and dormice. (I used to pray earnestly in bed every night for all of the horses and other animals that were spending the night out in cold fields).
Anyway, I'm sure the works of Ms M are all very old hat (though it may be worth mentioning the recent release of Wigs on The Green).
Moving on, I had a random thought this evening about money. If things continue to develop as they are, I believe in a few years there will be no such thing as cash. We'll all just carry cards. And then I suspect that credit cards will die out quickly and we'll all just carry some kind of universal swipe-card-chip-thing (e.g. like an Oyster card or microchip) which can download the equivalent of what used to be credit cards or be updated with the equivalent of loans and so on.
So then I started to wonder... how would you give money to a tramp? Would the tramp have to carry a chip-card and you would just swipe a few quid onto it for them from yours? If the only way to have money was via such a card, would this mean that nobody - even tramps - would be able to 'opt out' of society any more, for fear of starving to death? Would it become effectively the same thing as a national ID card?
Hmmm... 'tis all very interesting.
