Flying is easy, if you are properly equipped and have the experience.
For some time now I have a block about two words - frugal and thrift. When I try to remember them, though I am drawn to the modest virtues which they represent, they tend to vanish from my mind. On the spectrum extending from extravagance and prodigality at one end to parsimony and avarice at the other, they fit neatly into the middle, where you would expect to find moderation, common sense and a balanced way of life.
I wake this morning full of resolutions to roll up loose pieces of string and store them in a drawer, to collect the rubber bands, which the postman drops on the garden path, to save paper clips, to reuse envelopes (no, I stop short at that); and to write the book of recipes which I have longed planned on the creative use of left-overs, above all on how to make left-overs look as though they are prepared for the first time, the remains of mashed potatoes, for example, transformed into potato cakes.
At the entrance to the park called Calverley Ground, there is a former gatehouse where a group of dentists have been nesting for some time. I am struck this afternoon for the first time by the way these dentists have substituted the word "surgery" with "studio" on the notice outside. If dentists can have studios, I walk home wondering, will artists and broadcasters, for example, want to complete the swap? But it is an open question whether the word "studio" is, somehow, more sophisticated (a better way of selling their services) , than "surgery", which is presumably the dentists' reason for adopting it. Then it strikes me that if you have an operation, you have it in a theatre. Deep water, this.
3 comments:
members of parliament hold surgeries in their constituencies
And "theater of operations" is Pentagon-speak for a war zone.
'Thrift' is especially nice because of the flower named after it, growing all pink and luxurious on seaside rocks. On the other hand I remember in Elizabeth Arnhem's 'The Enchanted April', an inconsiderate husband undeserving of a charming and imaginative wife who was a great one for thrift, which got into his wife's clothes rather like the moth, but he didn't care for it when it got into the steak he had for dinner...
'Frugal' certainly sounds wholesome, and I love leftovers sometimes better than the food at first appearance. I sometimes do feel my life is a little over-dominated by the making and consumption of chicken stock, but I can't seem to help myself...
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