You really need to click on this photograph to see the details.
If you stand on the other side of the mound where we live you see these rows of escarpments; ridges of earth and rock that were pushed southwards during the last ice age. They extend all the way to the horizon. It’s the kind of thing one normally can only see from an aeroplane. Standing on the ground here, in the middle distance I can see fragments of our local town behind the dark avenue of chestnut trees. With the sunset and the snow it looks like the sort of landscape a Flemish painter might have invented five-hundred years ago. It needs angels and peasants.
A Bad Guide 
The world is much nicer and prettier without angels. I do like the angles, though.
Yes, and the saxons.
No, not the Angles, the angles.
Oh, yes. I thought it was odd, you being Danish and liking the Angles. Do you mean the angles in the photograph: the hillside and the track? I really ought to check it for golden sections.
On the upper right, I see what looks like a ufo trying to hide behind a cloud. But its whole left side is visible. What’s the angle on that?
I don’t know, Stu. It wasn’t there when I was taking the photograph, it only showed up later. There’s a heavenly turnip in the top right corner, or perhaps it’s a Swede.
I did mean in general originally, but it is indeed a very nice photo – and landscape. Angels would really ruin the beauty.
Ufo? You mean the dark thing?
That’s a squid.
There! No longer un-identified.
What you need is to combine your last two posts: Hunter in the Snow.
What you mean the Bruegel painting? That’s funny, I was looking at that earlier in connection with this. Well done, Jim. You get a prize.
Yes, the Bruegel! My art history is thin as cheap paper, but I love Bruegel.
Expensive paper can also be very thin.
Okay, you win a small porcelain figurine that doubles as a candle-holder.
Expensive paper can also be very thin.
I didn’t believe my publisher and I don’t believe you.
you win a small porcelain figurine that doubles as a candle-holder.
Robin will be ecstatic.
Aargh — PUBLISHER.
A note just told me, I was publishing comments too quickly — slow down. I said I know, that’s why I made the typo, and it told me to go fuck myself. What’s up with that?
A virus; probably swineflu. Maybe it was your publisher.
There’s a German publisher of expensive Dünndruck (thin-paper-printed) editions. Remember those bibles on ultra-thin paper? I think that kind of paper is hard to print and bind, because it tears so easily. Also, the paper can’t be too thin because the print will shine though. That all contributes to the cost.
Such an edition of a book is much lighter than one printed on normal paper. You can take a Dünndruck War and Peace to the beach with you.
You could. Except you’ve paid $200 for it and the wind will tear it to shreds.
I don’t know where you spend time at the beach. Where I go is the top-floor reading room of the Hôtel Plage de Langouste Mayonnaise, where you can see the ocean as well as what the tourists are getting up to in the dunes.
The way to make War and Peace beach-friendly is to tear out each leaf as you finish it. Soon it’s quite a thin book.
The last time I went there, I came home looking like a lobster.
Yes, that happened to me as well in the beginning. I had taken the mayonnaise to be suntan lotion, but it didn’t work very well.
But the lobster at breakfast had a delicate tan.
In the old days before people were so conscious of the dangers of skin cancer, we used something called suntan lotion. I’m not sure what it was supposed to do — maybe insure that we turn a nice color as we cook. Nowadays it’s called sunblock, or sunscreen, and there’s more reason to think that it protects you from harmful rays.
I once spent a week in Hawaii at an academic conference, and at one point I wandered away in quest of touristy experiences with an older German colleague and his wife. What I remember is her urging him to smear something protective on himself and him insisting that that stuff doesn’t do anything, it’s just fat, or perhaps he was saying Fett. He got burned bad.
Fett can mean grease or (viscous) lubricant, as well as (animal) fat.
Yes, it was pretty clear that grease would have been the idiomatic translation. But I found Fett to be phonetically well-suited to his scornful rejection of the stuff.
jamessal, when it says you are publishing comments too quickly, it’s just a system hiccup. If you hit the back browser (after doing a “copy” of your original comment for insurance) then hit forward browser, you should be good to go.
It’s true, suntan oil doesn’t do anything but make your skin is smooth and moisturized so it will burn with an even color. If you want protection from the sun, you need sunscreen, but alas, I’m too fair for even that to work, so every season I must rely on getting burnt several times before my underlying tanning mechanism kicks in.
Why do my posts always turn into discussions about suntan oil? I think “It’s just viscous lubricant” would be an appropriate idiomatic translation for an academic conference. Ø, have you read any of David Lodge‘s very funny novels about academic life? I think one takes place in Hawaii. Small World is maybe the best, or Changing Places.
If you hit the back browser … you should be good to go.
Thanks, Nijma!
David Lodge’s very funny novels about academic life
I did read Changing Places many years ago, while on a months-long visit to the University of Edinburgh. I enjoyed the book but don’t remember it very well.
The David Lodge you are thinking of is Paradise News, I believe. I still laugh on re-reading. And with lots of UK/US contrasts, reminding me that Lynne Guist has been discussing “Crisco” vegetable shortening: A head nurse friend of mine (in America) actually uses Crisco as a…baste?…when she basks. She says unless you don’t want to tan, anything else is a waste of money.
The only people who still smoke are nurses and a few doctors.
For those who like academic thrillers and can appreciate the picture of the milieu, there is Eric Wright’s The Night the Gods Smiled. Eric Wright is a well-known crime mystery writer in Canada.