What did the women's lib ever do for you?

19 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Poor (Failure) Take the test!

Yep, it would have been a bleak life for me as a 30s housewife. Dunno which counted against me more, the habit of cooking in my PJs or the fact that I don't "praise marriage before young women contemplating it".

This reminded me of an article I read some time ago (tried to google it but as it was an online newspaper thing, naturally it's gone now... :P) about three British women who aspired to be 'perfect' housewives, living in homes decorated in the 30s, 40s and 50s style, respectively. Presumably they begin their day by dressing in their lovely vintage clothes, doing their hair and face, then proceed to make a nourishing vintage breakfast for their manly husbands in their immaculately clean vintage kitchens (the 50s kitchen looked particularly enticing).

I can't remember if they mentioned what they do all day when their husbands are at work (besides bake pies and lounge in their painstakingly constructed fantasy worlds). My guess is that they hang around at ebay trying to find more lovely vintagey stuff).

Naturally, they all thought that life was much better, lighter, purer and less scary in the first part of the 20th century when men were men and women didn't have to worry about careers or having opinions of their own.

Such an easy life, I know, and I'll have to admit that there is something slightly appealing in the idea - until you realise that these are 21th century women who've had the choice to live like that, and who have husbands who have enough money to finance this silliness. The forties may sound like a charming place to be, with impressive-looking cars and jaunty hats, but imagine yourself running to a air-raid sheter in the middle of the night, dragging along half a dozen bewildered kids, and then tell me about how women in the past were so much better off.

Anyway, I'm off to the opera.

A crapulous summer altogether

The picture above proves that we had at least one sunny day this summer...or that we had a summer at all.

When the weather's continuously grey and depressive, there isn't much else to do but drink tea and read. I started Evelyn Waugh's Scoop some time ago because I had heard that it's a funny book - maybe even his funniest. Being a fan of Waugh's, I eventually picked it up - and have been making quite a slow read of it. Knowing his style, I wasn't expecting a silly laugh-out-loud romp ala Wodehouse, more that kind of book you can quietly smirk into.

I'm now halfway through and I've only smirked once or twice. It may be the weather, or perhaps my smirking muscles are suffering from paralysis - or it may just be the fact that I cannot in any way relate to the book. Basically it's a story of a gormless English squire who is sent to the heart of Africa to cover a local civil war for a newspaper called The Beast. My biggest problem with the narrative is that it isn't particularly subtle when it comes to depictions of the natives (or any other Others for that matter).

Anyhoo, the reason I brought up the book was actually an etymological discovery it helped me to make. What sparked this sidestep toward the OED was the phrase "a heap of crapulous black servants". Having only a faint notion of what might be going on, I looked up 'crapulous' . Turns out that like the Finnish word krapula (a colloquial term for hangover), it originates from the Greek word kraipale, 'drunken headache'. In Latin, the word is crapula, from which comes the English term for inebriation, crapulent, and its adjective form crapulous.

And yes, I am very easily amused.

Here goes...

Starting a blog is a bit similar to writing to a new penpal (remember those?): it's important not to sound too eager and tell everything about yourself at once. Yet, you'll have to tell all the interesting bits or else they'll never write back.

This blog, like most blogs, will probably include pointless ramblings about my daily life, the books I read and the music I enjoy, but occasionally I might be inspired to write some more pointed entries. These will most likely include ramblings about popular culture, women's rights, the price of milk, and postmodernism.


We have a rocking chair
Each of us rocks his share
Eating muffin buns and berries
By the steamy kitchen window
Sometimes we do
Our tongues turn blue.

- Joni Mitchell: Sisotowbell Lane