Like Harry, I think my absolute favourite Shakespeare quote, and one of the few I know from memory, is Henry V's 'St. Crispin's Day' speech.

But I've always had a very soft spot for the most beautiful put down in the English language.

GLENDOWER
Cousin, of many men
I do not bear these crossings. Give me leave
To tell you once again, that at my birth
The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes;
The goats ran from the mountains, and the herds
Were strangely clamorous to the frighted fields.
These signs have mark'd me extraordinary;
And all the courses of my life do show
I am not in the roll of common men.
Where is he living,--clipp'd in with the sea
That chides the banks of England, Scotland, Wales,--
Which calls me pupil, or hath read to me?
And bring him out that is but woman's son
Can trace me in the tedious ways of art,
And hold me pace in deep experiments.

HOT.
I think there is no man speaks better Welsh.--I'll to dinner.

MORT.
Peace, cousin Percy; you will make him mad.

GLEND.
I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

HOT.
Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them?

I rarely get tagged in LJ MeMes - I'm not sure why; perhaps it's a sign that I need to write more. Anyway, just as I was thinking "Here's another meme that I won't get tagged in", both boglin and hekai tag me. I think that means I get to change two questions ....

1. What is essential for your happiness?

Time to myself and the company of friends. Something to read. That's about it, though music makes the world sweeter.

2 What clothes are you wearing at the moment?

Hawkshead boots (green), greenish gray cargo pants, a very old band teeshirt from when I was a student in Manchester, a blue jumper. What was the rule about blue and green not being worn?

3. What games did you recently finish?

Mind the Gap. An Unknown Armies / Neverwhere / Guy Ritchie crossover. Subtitled 'Geezers, Shooters, Monsters' it ran for 4 sessions and was okay, but like most of my more experimental games, needs some serious work before I run it again.

4. What is your favourite scent?

Coffee. I have a very bad nasal memory (if that makes sense?) and not a great sense of smell either.

5. What is your favourite recent memory?

On the train up to Shropshire last weekend, with mist in the fields. The train tilted as it was going round a corner, and something weird happened to the landscape to the port side. There was this moment where it felt like the train was perfectly level, but the land was just dropping away from it. It was like looking over a cliff. A magical moment, and one I'm not doing any justice to with this description. I laughed out loud with joy on the train.

6. What books are you reading at the moment?

Eric Meyer's More CSS. Cobra Trap by Peter O'Donnell (The last ever Modesty Blaise book and one of the few I've not read before.)

7. What do you drink the most?

Almost certainly black coffee, but less than I used to.

8. Do you trust easily?

Yes. And I'm trying to do so even more. People repay trust with trust, in my experience.

9. Who was your first big crush?

Probably a girl called Nicola Maiden at school; she was very cool and very very pretty.

10. What did you want to be when you grew up?

A monk - specifically a Franciscan. Then a librarian. Which I am, sorta ....

11. Do you have a good body-image?

Mostly, though it's taken a long while. I could still do with putting on about half a stone, I reckon, and I really need to work on my grip and upper body strength for climbing, but they're not things I beat myself up about. Generally, I'm happy with how I look.

12. What are you looking forward to at the moment?

My first training course of the year on Tuesday. A set of lectures that myself and a colleague are giving over this term - we've not done anything like this before. A friend coming to stay at the end of October. Planet Angel in November because I get to party instead of work. Going to Ireland next year with my Dad.

13. What websites do you visit daily?

LJ, Facebook, Planet Angel, Boing, UCL's pages and a few others

14. Random pet peeve?

I'm doing better at not letting the small stuff bug me, but people who meander on the Underground, especially if they haven't got their ticket out and ready for the barrier as they approach it are still pretty good at getting through my shield of zen-like calm.

15. What kind of person do you think the person who tagged you is?

boglin was someone I knew of through photos of her at Whitby long before I got to know her in person. She's lovely. I respect that she holds certain beliefs very strongly, but doesn't exude that oily superiority that some people do when they're standing on the moral highground. She looks great in a pink stetson too.

hekai - I only really got to know Pete when writing for the final NWO game, and it's fair to say that we butted heads on a lot of points about that game. I'll hold my hand up and say that it wasn't one of my finest moments. But Pete is a warm and friendly person, very intelligent, and very passionate about things. And once the game was running, I realised that I really liked and respected him, once I'd taken the Quaesitor stick out of my arse. We shared a beer at the end, and realised that when we said to each other "we'll have to agree to differ" we actually meant it; it wasn't just shorthand for "I can't be bothered arguing with you any more".

16. What's the last song that got stuck in your head?

I tend not to get songs stuck in my head, because more often than not I have music playing in the background, so that fills that gap.

17. What's your favourite item of clothing?

Either my Jed Phoenix tailcoat or a big grey snuggly wooly jumper, depending on how I'm feeling.

18. What do you like to give and what do you like to receive?

I like training people, which is giving advice, I guess. I get a real buzz out of getting someone to understand something that they don't, but really want to. I like receiving cuddles and hugs. I have very easy to satisfy tastes.

19. What's the book you've read most times?

Lord of the Rings; specifically the Scouring of the Shire chapter. I re-read that chapter a lot, even if I don't read the rest of the book.

20. Is there anything you want so bad right now?

Nothing that I can't easily satisfy.

21. What should you be doing right now?

Having a shower. Going to see ingenue_the and harold_chasen. Phoning my mum.

Whoops.

22. Whats the meaning behind your LJ username/name/nicknames you go by?

It's my initials. I've never really felt the need for a more complex nom du clef.

So - who to tag? Surely everyone who's likely to respond already has? Maybe that's why no-one ever tags me ....

I know! I'll tag liz_lowlife, liz_lowlife, liz_lowlife, liz_lowlife, liz_lowlife,liz_lowlife, liz_lowlife and liz_lowlife!

So where's it from?

It's not the same list as the BBC Big Read from 2003, which was voted for by the public.

As best I can tell it's nothing to do with the National Endowment for the Arts Big Read project; that doesn't have a top 100 list, let alone an assertion about 'average adults'.

Does it matter?

I hate 'list' memes generally; unless someone goes through to actually explain why they would highly recommend a book, or wouldn't touch another one with a bargepole they really don't tell you anything about the person who is doing the answering. Frankly, they're about as elucidating as the "Which Purple Power Puff Pony Are You?" questionnaires.

They're a way of keeping score? Well - I can see that. If we knew the provenance of the list, we'd at least know who we're keeping score against, and in what company. But this, with its vague attribution that doesn't actually hold up to scrutiny?

Each other, perhaps?

So here's a new Meme.

Pick one book from that list, and argue for or against it. Why should everyone you know read it, or why should all extant copies of it be pulped?

That's likely to be a lot more interesting than bolding, italicising and underlining 100 lines of text, neh?

Ganked from mister_ed

1.) Go to CareerCruising
2.) login nycareers password landmark
3.) Take the careermatch maker quiz and list the top 10 responses...

And my results?

1. Professor
2. ESL Teacher
3. Foreign Language Instructor
4. Lobbyist
5. Computer Trainer
6. Criminologist
7. Curator
8. Association Manager
9. Director
10. Public Policy Analyst

So what can we learn from this? Firstly that Career Cruising don't actually ask questions about having jobs involving foreign languages, because there's no way I'd want to (or be qualified to) work in that field.

But Professor / lecturer? Not bad. My actual job at no.5, and curator (which is a librarian specifying in realia, broadly speaking) at number 7 which both make sense.

But that leaves the really interesting ones.

Lobbyist? Public Policy Analyst? Criminologist?

The site allows you to click through and shows you why it suggested those roles to you.

It's rare that a meme actually offers food for thought.

First, the rules:

1. Leave me a comment saying anything random, like your favorite lyric to your current favorite song. Or your favorite kind of sandwich. Something random. Whatever you like.
2. I respond by asking you five personal questions so I can get to know you better.
3. You WILL update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and offer to ask someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be asked, you will ask them five questions.

(I reserve the right to stop after 10, depending on how busy I am at work over the next few days :))

So - lisekit asked the following:

1. Which piece of writing has inspired you most?

This is the most difficult question you've asked; mostly because there's so many pieces.

• The midwinter morning when Will Stanton wakes up to a world covered in snow in The Dark is Rising - there's a sense of wonder and discovery there that I remember from the very first time I read it, nearly 30 years ago.
  
• "I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and sky. And all I ask is a tall ship, and a star to sail her by" because Masefield's sense of rhythm and ability to paint a picture with words is so strong.
  
• "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers." - Henry V is such a complex piece about bravery, duty, patriotism ... so much else. There's a marvellously horrid part where Hal has to hang one of his old drinking buddies, Bardolph, because he broke the rules, and stole from a church. And Hal can't pardon Bardolph, because he's now responsible for the safety and well being of all his countrymen, and to keep them safe needs to keep them disciplined. Without that, I don't think he could have made the St. Crispian's Day speech.
  

I'll stop with three, and I won't mention Kipling (actually, I will - Kim made me want to run away to India and become a spy, and The Flag of England showed me how it was possible to be a patriot without being a bigot).

Good writing is very important to me - ask me in a week and I'll maybe have a different 5 pieces.

2. What qualities do you seek in a significant housepet?

I like affectionate, intelligent animals, which is why cats and dogs are my chosen pets. I don't have enough time to look after the sort of dog I like at the moment - we had a springer spaniel when I was a kid and he was great, but he needed 2 hours of walking a day just to take the edge of his energy, and I don't have that to spare. So for now we have a cat who is definitely intelligent, and mostly affectionate (even if he does seem to be going through his sulky teenager phase at the moment).


3. Where has been your favourite place in the world to visit?


New York, I think, because it was like walking into a film set. I do wonder if that's why so many Americans like visiting London - somewhere you've seen images of all your life and suddenly you're in the middle of it. I have clear memories of so many parts of New York - the walk from the bus depot to TImes Square on a Sunday night; the wooden art deco wall panels in the ground floor of the Chrysler Building, the star studded ceiling of Grand Central Station. I'd love to go back.

4. What's the funniest thing in the world that you're thinking of right now?




:-) I'm a sucker for slapstick.

5. What's so bad about nested tables anyways?

You know, for a while I couldn't understand this question, until I realised you must have looked at my (very out of date) website.

Nested tables are an ugly kludge to allow people to lay out websites; they produce ugly code and they're awful when it comes to making a website accessible. They also let designers imagine that they can do very precise layout of their websites, which misses the point of the web. Designers don't control the end product when it's a website like they do when it's a print-artifact. And they waste far too much time thinking that they do.

I need to get better at CSS so that I don't use nested tables any more. Luckily, I've promised to run a CSS course for work next term, so I'd better get better.

As handed over by immerwhar, a double handful of 'aitches.

History: the only H listed on my Interests in Livejournal. I've loved history ever since I was aware of it as a separate subject at school - I still have fond memories of Mr. Cope at BRJ, and his term long project on how towns grow, which started with an a5 map of a piece of coastland in Celtic times, and to which we added houses, fortifications and fields. Each week, on friday he'd update the map, taking into account Viking raiders, wars overseas and the changes that would happen to our town dependant on the choices we'd made. I think we covered about 1000 years in the twelve weeks.

Hobbits and holes, I guess - a love of fantasy literature spawned by two people - Nici Hawkins, who's dad was a teacher and who was happy to lend books to Nici's friends, and Mr. Barnicott, who was my last teacher in Infant's School, and who spent each friday afternoon reading to us. You can get through an awful lot of good stories in a year - it was Mr. Barnicott who first introduced me to John Christopher (who wrote the Tripods trilogy) and to Peter Dickinson, who was responsible for The Changes.

Hippies: some of my best friends are :-) Like pornography, Hippies are difficult to define but easy to spot - they tend to have a casual approach to fashion, a desire to live ethically, and some of the best and worst taste in music; often at the same time. I have at times been accused of being one, but my mung bean sandals don't fit any more and my crocheted tofu hat is lost.

The Housemartins, and the Beautiful South, and all other purveyors of poppy wonderment disguising lyrics that are designed to wound. Lily Allen is much the same. Singing with their own accents rather than some mid-Atlantic drawl, and wielding "adjectives of annihilation" over a song that sounds like a summer's day. One of my favourite genres of music, though I really don't know how I'd identify it.

The Hounds of Love - still my favourite Kate Bush album, despite some strong competition. Beautiful videos, and a concept album about drowning on the B-side. How can that be beaten? Kate's still top of my list when it comes to female vocalists, and this is her at her ethereal best.

Hair - hirsuteness rather than hippies. I used to have long hair. I no longer do - the inevitability of genetics drifting from pater to pate. I will say that at my age, my dad was far balder than I am, but it's a phyric victory, really.  When I change my passport in the next couple of months, I will no longer have to know the French for "That photo was taken a very long time ago, m'sieur."

Happy. I mostly am, these days; far much more so than I was in my twenties. Scanning back through LJ postings, I notice just how many times I've felt the need to mark that fact - "I'm having a good day", "The sun is shining" ... and pretty much always the memento mori - "this too shall pass". It's as if, 5 years on, I still can't actually believe that I'm likely to have more happy days in the future. Sometimes I just need a slap around the back of the head.

HTML and the web. For me, one of the best inventions and the greatest wastes of time invented in the last 40 years. The web sucks time into itself far more than television ever can, because of its interactive nature. I love it.

Horatio Hornblower - an anti-hero who fascinates me. He's resurfaced in the Seafort Saga SF series by David Fientuch (the titles of which all contain the word Hope), though he's now called Nicholas Seafort. A hero who doubts himself continually, who cannot believe that anyone sees him as heroic, or likeable, or attractive. Hornblower is a seething mass of insecurities writ large, and in a measure of schaudenfrede, whenever I feel insecure or un-confident, I can always look at Hornblower and say "well, at least I don't have it as bad as him ...". In writing this I looked at Wikipedia to make sure I was spelling Feintuch correctly, to find out that the author died in 2006.

And, finally, Horoscopes. I don't believe in them at all. Never have, never will. Which is why I find it funny that I've run my date / place and time of birth through a number of online horoscope generators and they all put 4 - 5 planets into the same house - Virgo. And, as most of you know, I am very much a Virgo. What I find amusing is the nature of faith and belief, I guess. I know lots of people whose horoscopes are just plain incorrect - even the broad strokes that they're usually written in don't apply. Mine do, and yet I still don't believe. Faith isn't a matter of choice, you see. You can't choose to believe in something. You either do, or you don't.

Usual offer - you want a letter, ask in the comments.

lisekit posted an interesting meme - take a letter, name 10 special things beginning with it. When challenged, she gave me a 'G' to play with. So here goes ...

1. Games - so much of my life is about games; board games, role-playing games - games teach us how to play, how to interact; they give us a safe place to try out new things. And they're fun. I express my creativity through games more than anything else.

2. Glowsticks - and dancing, clubbing and changing my life. Sounds strange, perhaps, but it's true - when I was 33 I turned it all around and glowsticks were one of the catalysts for change.

3. Gokkyu - one of the weirder Aikido techniques - it's a reverse Ikkyo, and it's very rarely used. I use it primarily to allow me to mention Aikido - a foundation of my adult life, and something I've just got back into after 12 years or so. It's hard work, but I'm still going. So that's worth while.

4. Nancy Griffith - I know, I know. But I love music that tells a story, and I love female vocalists. I don't like schmaltz, but then not all country music has to be schmaltzy. And Nancy Griffith sings with heart-rendingly simplicity about everyday things.

5. Randall Garrett - a relatively little known author - Garrett wrote a series of short stories and novels called the Lord Darcy stories - an alternate history series set in the 1950's where the Plantaganet kings never lost the throne, and the Angevin Empire has been alive for nigh on a thousand years. Darcy is a special agent for the King, part Raffles, part Sherlock Holmes, a little bit James Bond. They're great stories.

6. Gorecki - specifically his third symphony. I know some of my friends (Hey Nick!) don't like it, but for me, it is one of the two pieces of classical music that speak most deeply to me. (Mozart's Requiem, of course.) (And yes, I know about the link ...)

7. Google - I've been teaching people how to search the Internet since before the World Wide Web existed - Google changed (and continues to change) how I approached that. Google was a breath of fresh air when it first appeared; a clean easy-to-use interface that did the most important thing - it worked. One of my favourite web applications.

8. Greenwich - London is a series of small villages, glued together by proximity. Each has their own distinct character, though, and Greenwich is, for me, the perfect mix of a place; lots of little shops and pubs with character, but close enough to the centre of London that the city is open to you. Where I'd really like to end up in London (should we win the lottery.)

9. Greenwitch and the other four books of the Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper. Books that defined and shaped my childhood. I've never thought that I'm easily swayed by celebrity, but when I got to meet Susan Cooper a little while back, I was the archetypical drooling fanboi.

10. The Guardian - I admit it; I'm a vaguely left wing liberal, and for a long time, the Guardian was my paper. Even now when I read the Independent far more frequently, it's the Guardian website that I turn to for my daily fix of what's going on in the world. Still a good paper, but I can see their fnords just a little bit too easily for me to enjoy reading it regularly. The Observer is the best Sunday paper though.

So there you go.

Usual offer applies - if you want your own letter, just ask.

2001: A Space Odyssey A Bout de Souffle Aguirre, the Wrath of God Alien All About Eve Apartment, The Apocalypse Now Badlands Black Narcissus Boyz N the Hood Brazil Breakfast Club, The Cabaret Chinatown City of God Come and See Dawn of the Dead Donnie Darko Erin Brockovich Fanny and Alexander Fight Club Heavenly Creatures Hero Ipcress File, The King of Comedy, The

Ladykillers, The Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India Lost in Translation Manhattan Manhunter Mulholland Drive Night at the Opera North by Northwest Pink Flamingos Player, The Princess Mononoke Pulp Fiction Raising Arizona Royal Tenenbaums, The Scarface Searchers, The Secrets and Lies Sexy Beast Shawshank Redemption, The Terminator 2: Judgement Day This Sporting Life Three Colours Blue Touch of Evil Trainspotting Walkabout

23/50 - assuming three score years and ten, I'm a little behind schedule. I'm disappointed that of my top 5 movies, only one of them (The Shawshank Redemption) is in there - no Some Like It Hot? No Seven Samurai?

I'll be interested in reading the justification for these choices. Lists are always a funny thing - they're either a popularity contest (and popularity is only one measure of value) or they're an increasingly idiosyncratic and individual choice. 

Anyway - if I can be bothered to follow the imperative 'you must see before you die' - I now have some choices ahead of me.

I take it with the FilmFour tie in, I'll be given the chance to see many of these over the coming months. 

I saw the birthday meme that everyone else was doing, so off I hied to Wikipedia to see what went on the date of my birth.

And one of the deaths stopped me in my tracks.

September '77
Port Elizabeth weather fine
It was business as usual
In police room 619

I shared a house with a guy called Chris in Manchester, who was a massive Peter Gabriel fan. So I saw video performances of the POV video more often than I care to remember. When Peter Gabriel was singing this song, the chanting and the feedback from the audience were breathtaking.

But I remember something else, even more. When it came to the song "Lay your hands on me" there would come a point when the crowd would be singing, and Peter Gabriel would turn his back on the crowd, spread his arms out wide, and fall back into them.

When I try to sleep at night
I can only dream in red
The outside world is black and white
With only one colour dead

It wasn't just crowd surfing, Chris told me. He'd been in the front row three or four times. Peter Gabriel was giving himself up to the crowd, trusting them to catch him. That's why he turned around. He couldn't catch someone's eye. He couldn't check that there were people there ready to catch him. All he could do was hope. Hope that people were listening. Hope that people understood. Hope that people were willing to catch him.

You can blow out a candle
But you can't blow out a fire
Once the flames begin to catch
The wind will blow it higher
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Yihla Moja, Yihla Moja
-The man is dead

Once he fell, Peter Gabriel was in the arms of the crowd - as long as they were chanting, and as long as they were supporting him, he lay there. And when they were willing to return him to the stage, he went.

Why do this? It's overblown, it's corny, it's crass. It's all the things we can expect of a rock star playing to an audience. But Chris told me that every time Peter Gabriel started falling, he held his breath, because he was caught up in the moment of what was going on.

The above came to me in a rush of images, sounds and words, when I read the line in Wikipedia:

1977 - Steve Biko, South African anti-apartheid activist (b. 1946)

"It is better to die for an idea that will live, than to live for an idea that will die."

Ganked from a few people ....
1. iain m banks score: 15
2. omega lrp score: 13
3. maelstrom score: 12
4. call of cthulhu score: 12
5. freeforms score: 10
6. iain banks score: 9
7. gaiman score: 9
8. omega score: 9
9. cult tv score: 8
10. forteana score: 8
11. lorien trust score: 8
12. nicholas hawksmoor score: 7
13. the yellow sign score: 7
14. getting inside people's heads score: 7
15. the king in yellow score: 7
16. marmite score: 7
17. mervyn peake score: 7
18. live roleplaying score: 7
19. old maps score: 6
20. cheese dreams score: 6

Changed by ouwiyaru based on code by ixwin
Find out more

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Lets see ....

3, 11 and 16 - are you mad?! Do you actually read my LJ or know me in real life? (Well, no, obviously - you're a list generated by some interesting algorithym, but still ...)
2 and 8 - that old thing? Don't any of you update your interests?
4, 13, and 15 - I know who I'm blaming for those ...
1 and 6  - and those.
7 - isn't everyone?
12 - I'm reading (slowly) Ackroyd's Hawksmoor - does that count?
19 - Yes.