25 January - Oxford Literary Quotations

We went to see 'Rachel Getting Married' which was a bit close to home as J's brother is a relapsing addict who disappears for ages, goes to prison, reappears and generally focuses all the family on himself. They're nice middle class so no shortage of support there but a slow, stressful strangling of parents and sibling's sympathy well. The film did a good job of showing how selfishly addicts act and was equally placed in an affluent and liberal family, but was overlong and tedious in places, though great performances.

Then we went home and without wanting to turn the TV on, Toph picked one of the books I'm trying to get him to get rid of (he has too many, don't just take the side of books, some are really not that relevant to your life) and started reading from the oxford dictionary of quotations and J. was playing ball with him. Most over my head of course, and the book was published in the late '70s so am sure in a more current edition some of these quotations have been expurged in favour of more modern or topical ones being included. Some were really dire, believe me.

But how much fun was that? With the boys finishing each other's sentences, how mighty learned of them.

I had to tell them that D. was all upset recently about "Since when did we start adopting the US spelling for aeroplane?" She said The Times coverage of plane landed on Hudson River in NYC said 'airplane' in the headline. I love it. Don't get us started on grammar and syntax.

Then I made the mistake of turning the TV on, on silent,but it was a great film so we watched most of Carlito’s Way which I have always loved for many reasons, though I think I shocked Toph by saying that I dated someone who looks like Al Pacino and is equally short. I know, I know, it's a niche fantasy as clearly Brad Pitt wins right?

All this to take J’s mind off the fact that his lover G’s boyfriend was actually in London this w/end and J. had all his london clothes in her flat but couldn’t go get them, was banished from contacting her and of course he was thinking about her and wouldn't be able to fall asleep anyway. He's a idiot and his situation is now very farcial, but I can't really comment.