Various things

[slemslempike]

Builder to his partner as they exited my bedroom: "We'd have that many books if you didn't keep giving mine away."

There's a company called "social researchers", who may be very good for all I know. Unfortunately, whenever they're referred to in writing, it's as "social researchers", which just look like scare quotes casting suspicion on their credentials. I think they could have thought that through better. Though maybe they did it to get the credit for all the studies where people can't remember who did it and they're just attributed to social researchers in general.

My security pass has "XD" on it.

Yesterday I was so cold in the office I thought that I might die, and I went to bed the moment I got home. I dozed from 6pm until 8pm, then read until 10pm (The Players and the Rebels) and then slept again until 7am. Today I feel GREAT, and will probably even manage food.

Reading the Betjeman biography I came across a line of his I didn't know before: "doubtless some pedant for his PhD has ascertained the facts", and today I was reading Playing the Harlot by Patricia Avis, which has the following: "When you're doing research you just go on doing it until you discover something. Then you write a paper about it. There aren't any exams." That does seem to cover the most important things.

Comments

[whatho.livejournal.com]

Builder to his partner as they exited my bedroom: "We'd have that many books if you didn't keep giving mine away."

Aw! I mostly want to send him books.

[chiasmata]

Oh oh oh, I do like that last paragraph.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I've never seen that Betjeman line either. I expect you know Larkin's "Posterity": "Jake Balokowsky, my biographer,/ Has this page microfilmed", etc.? Poets do seem to have a jaundiced view of academics - except, of course, that Larkin's actual eventual biographer was the current Poet Laureate. The irony!

[lsugaralmond.livejournal.com]

Doubtless some pedant for his PhD has ascertained the facts

I am hugely taken with this sentence.

[glitterboy1.livejournal.com]

Aww, that's a very sad line from the builder. Though I wonder whether he'd have *quite* that many books: you do have rather a lot.

Hee, that's a brilliant line from Betjeman.

It sounds like you needed that sleep! I hope you do well again tonight.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I know! I wonder what he used to have.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I don't know that, actually! I shall look it out. THe Patricia Avis book, you may know already, though I didn't, wasn't published until quite recently because it was considered libellous of, amongst others, Larkin, whom she had an affair with. All interconnected!