People who've had the questionable judgment to hang around here for a while know that I'm a wee bit of an Anglophile. Or maybe I fancy myself an Anglophile. Is there a test? Because I don't have a certificate or anything. Not yet. Those of you not made less intelligent by your visits here might wonder why I'm not a Francophone. I do have a degree in French, after all. But being a full-time Francophone is too much like work. It requires too much translation to encompass my growing need to be vapid. Or is it insipid? Stupid. Definitely lazy.
So I cut my love of things Francais avec (that means with) a fascination with and a desire to be English. It's really not so far afield. My ancestors are from across the pond. Nevermind the fact that they were from those places England took great pleasure picking on - Scotland and Ireland. It's all the same big island, right?
So yeah - I'm a Scots Irish poseur. That took a huge leap of your imagination, didn't it?
As proof of my Anglophile cred, please note that I watch a lot of British television and movies, especially the someone gets murdered or a bunch of people dress up in period costume, kinds of programmes. Even better are the a bunch of people dress up in period costume and someone gets murdered programmes. Did you see how I did that? Hang on and I'll spell something with an our instead of the boring American or. Humour. Behaviour.
I have my Facebook set on UK English. Fact. I'm not telling porkies.
Even as I type this (I'm not writing with my biro), I'm watching the new Sherlock on PBS. And loving it, by the way. So far I've identified about five British actors I recognize from the other shows I watch. I drive MathMan a little nuts doing that.
"Hey, you recognize that guy?"
"Which guy?"
"The guy with the thing. He was in that ----, you know the one where the woman with the daughter got killed."
"Oh, that guy."
"Do you recognize him?"
"Maybe?"
"What was he in?" (It's a quiz. I'm really just itching to prove my superior skills at recall.)
"Didn't you just say he was in ----?"
"Yeah. That's right. You're good, honey." (This is how I'm conciliatory, you see. I share my success even with the most undeserving.)
I think MathMan should win a medal for indulging me as much as he does. Sadly, he just has me for his prize.
And yes, since you asked, I love it that the new Watson's therapist suggested he start blogging to help him cope.
So knowing this about me, GMB put together this package of jolly good things...
There are two things in the photo that aren't British made.
The Palomino pencils are from Japan and the pencil sharpener is made in Germany.
An interesting point made by GMB and laughed at by me.
Thank you, GMB, for this wonderful package.
The pencils are a dream, as are the sharpener and the keen eraser.
The bag rocks - I'm the coolest person at the grocery store.
And did I ever tell you lot that MathMan eats crisps not for the crisps themselves, but as delivery systems for Coleman's Mustard? It's true. The Coleman's magnet is perfect.
And those pencils, so wonderful. I'm doing whatever I can to keep them out of the vortex of office supply doom that is Sophie's room. I have plans for them. Big plans. As in outlining my next book plans. In pencil. Japanese pencils sharpened by German steel.
Cheers!
Do you have a fascination with a particular place or time period?
Do you have a fascination with a particular place or time period?
I don't have anything coherent to contribute since I'm still having my coffee. I rejected tea this morning even though I have a cough - which suggests that I am NOT an anglophile.
ReplyDeleteHappy Monday
My affinity for things Japanese and a total anathema for war has made me wonder if perhaps a tiny part of my being reincarnated. I see a little girl kneeling on an eight tatami floor near a moon door learning the art of ikebana from a beautiful kimono clad mother. Was that flash a sparkle of light from a sunbeam on the koi pond?
ReplyDeleteIf I could settle anywhere out of the country, it would be Britain. For some reason, autumn in particular makes me think of England, a land I've never seen.
ReplyDeleteExcept, I'd need to import food.
If you did woodworking ... there's Record hand planes, Marples chisels, Tyzack hand saws and Rebone Chesterman measuring devices.
ReplyDeleteOf course, there's more but for those you must pay for the seminar!
The new Sherlock rocks hard.
ReplyDeleteI am crazy-mad-in-love with the new Sherlock Holmes series. Oh, and, we only have 15 episodes left of Midsomer Murders( it has taken us all summer to get through them and I don't want them to be over). I am, it seems, a lot like you. I am a anglophile and a francophile. The best possible situation would for me to live in Oxford and commute to Paris every weekend. Le sigh, that would be bloody brilliant!
ReplyDeleteRome between Julius and through Claudius. As a kid I read every book I could find in the school library and watched all the really lousy movies. Today I read Aeneas and Plutarch and Caesar's book on the wars. Go figure. I'm nuts, what can I say.
ReplyDeleteWhen I went to Tokyo I did kind of feel like, "Ah-hah! My peeps!" :)
ReplyDeleteBut I love all things Indian (one day I will go to India, dang it!).
I so wanted to be British because of all the cool ceremony to it - I think it is partly why I wanted to be in a sorority in college.
ReplyDeleteI like ritual and understanding what is behind it. Plus, I wanted to be Lady Di when she was young!
Oh my gosh, I was dinking around with the reply feature on the blog. It wasn't working and bam! Now it's working!
DeleteI think I want the reverse of LBR's dream, an apartment in Paris and commute over to the UK now and then for anglophile fixes.
ReplyDeleteI can't wait to try the new Sherlock Holmes series.
Ah!! You spell "humour" with a "u"!
ReplyDelete:-D
Tee hee ... I find that if I'm feeling tense, bitchy, and wanting to harp at someone, my jaw gets all tight and I start sputtering with the Queen's English. I once found, in a wonky bookstore, a scathing "guide" to speaking PROPAH English -- the whole point was to eNUNciate without moving your jaw! Hilarious! I stood there in that store with one of my goofy friends and we jabbered away as if we both had lockjaw.
I've got Brit, Irish, Scottish, German, Polish, Breton, French, Welsh, and Pennsylvania Dutch blood in my veins ... PLUS, by affiliation and longtime love, I also claim some Bahamian, Yugoslavian, Finnish and Swedish ties. When I was 13 and madly in love with a Russian gymnast named Olga Korbut (remember her at the 1972 summer Olympics??), I bought myself a Russian dictionary and started to shoot off at the mouth with the language of people my father called 'THOSE GODDAMN PINKO COMMIES!!' -- He nearly gave himself a stroke, he was so riled by my saying "Please" and "Thank you" at the dinner table in Russian.
There's something in just about every culture that I adore and feel drawn to ... You name it, I resonate with it. I suppose that nowadays my dear old dad would fire up his fury at my reverence for certain beauties that have arisen from Arabian and Persian cultures -- like ecstatic poetry (Rumi, Hafiz, etc.), mind-blowing architecture and tile art, unparalleled hospitality ... Oh, whoops! I forgot! -- They're all terrorists, right?
>:-P
The whole world is a wellspring of gifts ... and from our species' migratory and evolutionary paths, it seems that we all originally come from Mother Africa ...
Ah!! You spell "humour" with a "u"!
ReplyDelete:-D
Tee hee ... I find that if I'm feeling tense, bitchy, and wanting to harp at someone, my jaw gets all tight and I start sputtering with the Queen's English. I once found, in a wonky bookstore, a scathing "guide" to speaking PROPAH English -- the whole point was to eNUNciate without moving your jaw! Hilarious! I stood there in that store with one of my goofy friends and we jabbered away as if we both had lockjaw.
I've got Brit, Irish, Scottish, German, Polish, Breton, French, Welsh, and Pennsylvania Dutch blood in my veins ... PLUS, by affiliation and longtime love, I also claim some Bahamian, Yugoslavian, Finnish and Swedish ties. When I was 13 and madly in love with a Russian gymnast named Olga Korbut (remember her at the 1972 summer Olympics??), I bought myself a Russian dictionary and started to shoot off at the mouth with the language of people my father called 'THOSE GODDAMN PINKO COMMIES!!' -- He nearly gave himself a stroke, he was so riled by my saying "Please" and "Thank you" at the dinner table in Russian ... and I loved to remind him that his steel-wool eyebrows sprang out like those of Leonid Brezhnev, who at the time was the "supreme ruler" of the then-USSR ...
The whole world is a wellspring of gifts ... and from our species' migratory and evolutionary paths, it seems that we all originally come from Mother Africa ...
Dang!! You mean an anglophile isn't someone with a fishing fetish? ;-)
ReplyDeleteWell I love "British-isms" - I like to pepper my own language with them sometimes because they're fun. I have a Scottish friend who peppers our conversations liberally with "Scottish-isms" - which are great fun, but I'm always saying something akin to "huh?" The "huh? becomes more of a "HUH???" sometimes, depending on the amount of wine he has consumed over the course of our conversation.
ReplyDeleteBut I digress. I am enchanted with the turn of the 20th century and probably right through to the 40s, thanks to movies. I would just love to revisit that time.
I live in a country that wanted to be "Little England". It is like England without its history and its millions of people. And with better food. You should come visit!
ReplyDeleteLisa -
ReplyDeleteIreland is NOT the same island as Great Britain, there is even the Irish Sea that separates them. Scotland, however, is on Great Britain, and not part of Ireland. Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom; the rest is The Republic of Ireland.
Now that I've shot your Brit street cred... I love the Brits, too, and visited on and off in the '90s for work staying sometimes for months at a time. The place is mad fun, London is very pretty (and I used to give a pretty good tour of it) and Monty Python is a documentary. Every skit has at heart some aspect of the culture and personality of the place.
One small example: I was in Bracknell at the office, which was essentially a bullpen - no cubicle walls, just rows of desks pushed back-to-back. I needed to meet with a software developer, and so I asked one of my colleagues to take me to his desk. "Well, I would, but I don't know him myself," he said. I pressed him to just "give it a bash" and so with great apprehension he walked me down the next aisle and introduced me tothe guy whose desk was butted up against his own desk. They had been sitting facing each other for at least two years and had never spoken because no one had introduced them.
If you want to really understand the Brits, then you must go to Chelsea and Crofft's; I think the Brits love their gardens and dogs more than each other.
Regards,
Tengrain
I've always been facinated with the period around the late 1800's.
ReplyDeleteDon't get me wrong, I'm thankful for indoor plumbing and the invention of the blow dryer, mascara, and female sundary items. I just love that part of history.
I'm dismayed that I'm just learning about this new Sherlock now. I've got to pay attention more.
ReplyDeleteRome, strangely. I mean, there are lots of places I love and want to visit and dream of: Japan, for one -- the one of old with the tatami and gardens. But Rome feels like I was there in another life or something. Don't laugh...
ReplyDeleteB
The Middle Ages
I'm enthralled by the American West in the great period before Europeans went and ruined it. Bison and tee-pees, hogans and peach orchards, sunsets without contrails, Mandan quill-work on dew-claw rattles. My places, my People... they and I were separated at birth - by 400 years and 200 miles...
ReplyDelete...and here I sit, gone all Iron Eyes Cody on ya. Hey, that's what sleeves are for...
Glad you liked it. Because I wanted to respect your restraint, I didn't send toffee, marmalade and wine gums. Ok, the wine gums aren't all that great, but the toffee....oh my. In any event, enjoy and definitely use the pencils on your manuscript. That would be very cool.
ReplyDeleteI'm a barely-functioning hillbilly. Such is the state of things.
ReplyDeleteoh dear dear me. UK is not often like its portrayed on the tele dramas.
ReplyDeleteAlso most of it may all be the same island but its a diverse place made up from different countries with different and overlapping histories with regional dialects etc etc
We don't all talk posh, 10 percent of the population hold 90% of the wealth and the rest of well...
at the moment I dread where we are heading
Bollocks knickers shag bloke birds!
ReplyDeleteMy husband knows I love me some BBC...he's got the Sherlock saved and we're looking forward to it like it's this huge date night...I hope it's good!!! Don't tell me anything!
ReplyDeleteHi Lisa,
ReplyDeleteYou sure have a way with words! I am Italian and I am fascinated with the Italian culture. It would be fair to say I fit most of the stereotypes and I like nothing more than sitting down to a big pasta dinner surrounded by family and friends. It's where for me, the stuff that dreams are made of come to life.
PS I love your new blog design!
Oh my gosh, have you watched the IT Crowd yet? It's my absolute favorite British sitcom. Freakin' hilarious! :)
ReplyDeleteThe In-Betweeners is pretty hilarious, too. I think you'd like that one (the In-Betweeners), because it would nurture the teenage boy inside of you. *grin*
Sherlock!! :D
ReplyDeleteSo yeah, I basically tripped over my own feet when I noticed the title of your post in a blogroll. (I swear I do not know the entire series by heart. Yet.)
I'm a huge Anglophile. In fact, I spend so much time there sometimes I think I might as well migrate :P
*follows blog*
Totally with you as an Anglophile. The area where I have the biggest preference is humour--British humour is just so much funnier, and I'm not sure WHY. Much of Monty Python is so ridiculous descriptively, but SO FUNNY. But think about... say, the Black Knight... could Adam Sandler pull that off? NO. FREAKING. WAY.
ReplyDeleteBut American humor tends to be so... hit you over the head, adolescent, obvious. I just want to imitate Hugh Laurie and call them Cloffing Pimholes. *cough*
Congrats on the win!
I don't really have an affinity for much...except books. I really, really do not like books written by men usually. I make exceptions for Tropper, Grisham and King. And when I am picking a book out at the library, for some reason, I tend to reject any books written by Canadaians, with the exception of one or two. "The Handmaid's Tale" made me sit up and beg more than once.
ReplyDeleteI find your Anglophilia most endearing, dear Lisa. Under my tutelage, you may become truly English, and I forgive you for the Irish/Scots roots. They are near enough.
ReplyDeleteTo speak of humour or behaviour is good, but you can go a step further and refer to an eraser as a rubber, ignoring the American slang associated with this word.
I am so glad you eat crisps and not chips. Have you yet been here to Blighty (a completely out-of-date wartime slang for the Home Country, i.e. England)?
As an American (I presume) you certainly are not, and could never be a Francophone, although you have clearly made your choice between Francophilia and Anglophilia.
ReplyDeleteHa! You nailed that mistake. Wait - can't I be Morocco? Pleeeeaaaase?
Delete