I watched Four Weddings and a Funeral last night. It shares some of the features that make me like the Blandings books (almost eternal summer, romance) but with more depth and considerably more swearing.
One of my favourite film scenes is Gareth’s funeral. Not the famous poem, but the speech.
“I rang a few people, to get a general picture of how Gareth was regarded by those who met him: ‘Fat’ seems to have been a word people most connected with him. ‘Terribly rude’ also rang a lot of bells.”
This rings a lot of bells with me too. Despite recent efforts to diet, fat is still the first impression people have of me. I suppose it’s because my shirt buttons tend to enter a room a foot before I do.
Same goes for rude. I have a tendency to say what I think at the time I think it. That’s not always what people want to hear. It’s fashionable to refer to a lack of “internal censor”.
That this should be considered rude is just a comment on modern society.
I also have a tendency to treat people all the same. This sounds like a good thing but doesn’t always go down well either, as some people seem to think they should be treated better than others. Recruit an idiot, call him a manager and all of a sudden he’s demanding “respect”.
Respect used to be something you earned, now it’s something people seem to expect.
Even worse, I’ve noticed that Julia is starting to use me as a yardstick. The words “nearly as rude as you” seem to be slipping into her conversation more and more these days.
I’m sure that Messrs Volta, Newton and Faraday (plus others I can’t call to mind) would all be happy at the idea of having things named after them. I’m not so sure I want my name to go down in history as the man who gave his name to the International System unit of rudeness.
Ah well!