Interview meme.

[slemslempike]

These are from blue_monday. As ever, comment to ask or be asked.

Do you have one favourite book ever, if so what is it?

Probably Cricket Term by Antonia Forest. I like the summeryness of it, and how the play and the cricket mean so much to different girls in different ways.


You can rule a small country for a week. Where is it and what do you do?

I think my true answer is that I do very little, being more of a figurehead ruler with all the money and status, but no actual power. Somewhere warm, or somewhere snowy. If they had any pesky human rights violations I could try to get those sorted out, except a week probably isn't long enough. I also suspect that I might be a bit of a left wing fascist at heart, so the time limit is probably a good one.


Would you rather be Angus, Ian or Paul?

Ian! I would get to edit Private Eye, and libel people and go to court and lose. I like Paul, but I don't think I'd want to be him. And if I were Angus, even on hignfy, I would get mocked and be the less funny one.


What are you most looking forward to about having your own house?

No-one being able to throw me out, and having less of that kind of worry. I won't have quite a few of the other benefits, because it will be my parents', and it's shared (although I'm really pleased about that), but feeling much more secure will be very nice.

If someone offered you £10,000 to never read a book by one specific author ever again, is there any author you would say yes to the offer for?

Lots. May Wynne, Winifred Norling, any author ever who wrote for Pickering & Inglis (evangelical publishers of children's books including school stories that look as though they're going to be good and then crumble to pieces). I think really, I could bear never to read quite a lot of authors, even ones I quite like, for £10,000. That probably makes me a bad bibliophile, but there are so many great books in the world that not reading one author isn't really going to detract from that.

Comments

[whatho.livejournal.com]

I would quite like to answer questions, as today's options appear to be Talk Incessently To Myself or Go Back To Bed, or possibly put my face through the living room window. Do you want to be asked questions as well? I'm a bit rubbish about it. I'll probably end up giving you a spelling test, and those work so badly in print.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Oh god I want a spelling test. I love spelling tests! Possibly from pictures? No. Phone post yes? Although you'd have no guarantee that I'm not cheating, I promise I wouldn't. but yes please, questions.

Do you get on with your brother? Have you always (not)?
Spell kon-dyo-itt
You are ONLY allowed EITHER blue or green in your life for the rest of your life. Which do you choose?
Tintin or Asterix?
What is the best word for male genitalia to use
a) in fic
b) in a sexual encounter
c) in a medical procedure
d) as an insult

[whatho.livejournal.com]

Spell:

Day-noo-mahn
Fy-ahns (painted glazed earthenware. Why, yes. I am reading the dictionary.)
Herss-yoot
Mer
Za-ba-lyoh-ni

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Denouement
??
Hursuit
Mare (?)
Zabaglioni (?)

*checks dictionary*

Yay!
Still no idea what it is.
Oh, bugger. I knew it wasn't 'e', but I completely forgot about 'i'. And then got the rest of it wrong as well. Although if this wasn't a spelling test, I would have looked it up as I knew it wasn't right, but didn't know how to correct it.
Well, if it was mare, it's right. But that seems too easy a word. Mur as in demur?
Hurrah!

[whatho.livejournal.com]

It was myrrh. The second one was faience.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Ah! I would probably have got that, but would have gone with feance for the vase thing.

[chiasmata]

Questions please! :-D

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Do you dream in German?
Do you think you would like to have had sisters?
Do you want to have children some day?
Compose a haiku on the subject of breasts - the overarching mood of the piece is at your discretion.
You are stranded somewhere, and there will definitely be a rescue, but not for a week or so. You are responsible for keeping yourself alive, but also for your friends. There is no food, but there is a local petting zoo. In what order do you eat the animals?

[percyprune.livejournal.com]

Ask me a question.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Where does your user name come from?

[percyprune.livejournal.com]

Good question.

Percy Prune is the name of a cartoon character, full title 'Pilot Officer Prune'. He was invented in 1941 as the creation of an artist named Anthony Armstrong who devised training manuals for the Royal Air Force. Under the pen name "Tee Emm" (for "Training Manual") he created Prune as an exemplar of everything a proper military pilot should not be.

Prune was a bungler, an idiot, an incompetent. So in the cartoons he would cheerfully ignore cockpit drills and make all sorts of thoughtless errors that would result in an aircraft crash or someone getting hurt. There was a point to it all, of course. Little poems would accompany the cartoons, such as this one on a failure of concentration:

He happened then in course of time
To muddle up this pantomime,
Whilst coming in to land one day
In (what he thought) the usual way.

He accidentally pulled the catch,
That jettisons the exit hatch.
It quite surprised him when he saw
His gunner vanish through the floor,
Then hurtle downwards through the air,--
To burst beside the signal square...

And so on. Prune survived in the training manuals until 1945 when he was demobilized. But not before Armstrong managed to lay his hands on a genuine certificate for the Iron Cross, Second Class, liberated from the ruins of the Reichschancellery. The naughty artist filled out a medal award for Prune for his services to the Luftwaffe in crashing so many British aeroplanes, and forged the signature of Herman Göring.

I have held the callsign 'Prune' since 1992. But how I came to have it is another story...

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

That's great! I love the rhymes too.

[percyprune.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. You are free to ask another question if you wish.

[percyprune.livejournal.com]

A question: do you put tea in first or milk in first?

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't drink tea, so neither. I generally get other people to make their own, but if pushed, tea in first.

[percyprune.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Another question: what is the origin of YOUR user name?

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

"slem slem pike" is Norwegian for "bad bad girl" - it comes from a Nemi strip (the cartoon goth in my icon) tha I really like. In Norwegian it's pronounced "slem slem pee-kuh" but I don't really mind being called pike.

[percyprune.livejournal.com]

While we are on a roll, are you Norwegian? I only ask because I read the Nemi strip every day in the Metro, but don't know if it has penetrated into the rest of the country. I have been working on the theory that you are a Norwegian goth, but that could just be wishful thinking.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

No, I'm English. I got into Nemi through a Norwegian friend, and I knew the Norwegian strips before I found out that there was an English translation. I get a lot more of the jokes now!

[blue-monday.livejournal.com]

I like your answer to the last question. I nearly asked you if you'd take £10k to never read any books in a particular genre ever again, but thought that was a bit mean.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

That is nasty. Hmm. I think I could cope with not reading horror again, or rmance, but then that closes off an awful lot of stuff.