a nose as red as blood, probably because of the secret drinking

[freckles_and_doubt]

In the Department of The Malice Of Inanimate Objects, my alarm clock hates me. Despite being set for 7am, it woke me up this morning at 1am, 2am and 5am, at which point I muzzily turned it off and trusted to luck that I'd wake up sometime before lunch. Investigation when slightly more awake reveals that the minute hand is apparently dragging the alarm hand around with it on a more or less random basis. Things To Do This Evening: buy new alarm clock. Oh, and go back to the gym. The gentle protrusion of my stomach is beginning to depress me.

Today's random linkery, in the Department Of Severely Postmodern Fairy Tales (an important and vociferous department in my personal Kafka-esque bureaucracy): An Old-Fashioned Unicorn's Guide To Courtship. Sarah Rees Brennan is perhaps better known to anyone who reads this blog as mistful - she writes very funny HP fanfic and an even more amusing blog, and has just landed a contract for her original Y.A. fantasy series. This story is witty, irreverent and thoughtful; in my professional fairy-tale opinion, Tanith Lee juveniles and Patricia C. Wrede also ran. Also: "the Rapunzel category"? Absolutely true!

In keeping with this theme, favourite kiddie fairy-tales! I was going to rhapsodise about James Thurber's Thirteen Clocks, but that's probably cheating: if you lot don't share my undying devotion to the book after lounging around on this blog for more than about three seconds, there's no hope for you. Instead, A. A. Milne! No, not Winnie-the-Pooh. (My love for Winnie-the-Pooh didn't actually survive Dorothy Parker's response to The House At Pooh Corner¹). Did you know that A. A. Milne wrote a satirical children's fairy tale called Once On A Time?² This is particularly important in my memories because I read it precisely once, when I was about 11 and found it at a school friend's house (her parents were Rich, TM, and she had beautiful toys and books); thereafter I couldn't find it again, until about four years ago when it turned up in one of my second-hand haunts. It thus has the particular appeal of the long-term unattainable. It features the foolish and unnecessary war between the neighbouring kingdoms of Euralia and Barodia; also, the desperately well-meaning Princess Hyacinth, serving girls called Wiggs and Woggs, a prince with a rabbit's head, and the beautiful, fascinating, thoroughly evil and scheming Countess Belvane. The characters are all bona fide eccentrics, and the political message surprisingly biting. It's also a bit Princess-Brideish in that the narrator continually references the historical accounts of one Roger Scurvilegs, mostly to disagree with them violently. Another in my favourite category of "off-the-wall", I would say.

¹ "Tonstant Weader Fwowed Up!"

² Good lord. I'm a bit shaken to discover that putting "a.a. milne once on a time" into Google gives a hit for a scholarly article entitled "Twelve short tandem repeat loci Y chromosome haplotypes" in the top three. They ain't making fairy-tale lit like they used to, is all I can say. Or, presumably, short tandem repeat loci Y chromosome haplotypes.

Comments

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

Your alarm clock has physical hands? How ... 20th century.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

oh, yes. I have a deep-seated fondness for them: unlike most of the human race, I've never thought of digital watches as a pretty neat idea. Fake plastic time-telling. As opposed to my alarm clock, which is genuine plastic time-telling.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

We have a wooden cabinet with a calm female voice, quiet blue lighting and digital radio reception.

While technically it is a "digital watch", I contend that in terms of style, it is nothing like those lumps of black plastic that were popular in the 1980s.

[mwotn.livejournal.com]

Accidental or deliberate quoting there?

My alarm clock appears to have a large block of lead in the bottom of its badly cracked plastic carapace. In fact, it's a miracle that the thing still works, given the abuse it's suffered (mostly me throwing my pillow off my bed into my bedside table for no discernable reason), but its gentle ticking still sooths me to sleep.

Well, kind of, given that it's easily audible a room or two away.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

oh, definitely deliberate. One of the First Rules of Extemporanea: if it sounds like a quote, it probably is. I sprinkle them across my writing and speech in a sort of ongoing private game to see if anyone catches them. Since you witterers are a scarily literate bunch, I suspect a lot of them are noticed. On the other hand, I don't think anyone else reads quite as much early twentieth-century English lit as I do - I suspect my frequent Wodehouse quotes are wasted upon the desert air. Sigh.

[mwotn.livejournal.com]

Note to self: Read more Wodehouse.

Are we going to get a review of the Phantom Tollbooth? Or is that too mainstream for this exercise?

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Phantom Tollbooth was definitely on my list of possibles, but I was vascillating about it for precisely the reason you mention. I'll probably succumb and include it. I love that book.

[mwotn.livejournal.com]

Huzzah!

I shall reread my copy in celebration (there is a dearth of second-hand bookshops near me).

[bronchitikat.livejournal.com]

All in favour of clocks with hands. I don't want to know what the time is now, precisely or otherwise. I usually want to know what 'now' is in relation to 'soon', & how long soon may actually be!

[(Anonymous)]

That's one of my favourites! I love the bit with the army-of-one running around a tree. I have been sadly wondering whatever happened to my family's copy, lo, these many years. Never been lucky enough to turn one up in a secondhand shop, so I've taken to stalking Abebooks instead; unfortunately, there are plenty of copies there, many of them sounding very beautiful, and I've paralysed myself with Too Much Choice. One of these days I'll have to actually dive in and *buy* one. Oh, decisions.

Also:
1. I too like alarm clocks with proper hands. But the one we have has become rebranded in my mind as Loud Ticky Thing, because when I'm falling asleep, well, it gets quite distracting. Beloved considers this terribly funny since he doesn't notice it, and I have terrible hearing. Anyway, so I'm sort of in the market for a Not-so-loud Ticky Thing, but hesitate to buy because it's probably a safe bet that any clock will sound perfectly silent in the shop, but become quite aggressive when the lights are off.

2. I get the Wodehouse quotes! ...Probably.

scroob

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

The late, defunct alarm clock, before it went all feral and Nam flashback and kept giving false alarms, had a very comforting tick - companionable in those small-hours insomniac vigils. I shall have to see what my new one does. I seem to tune the tick out quite easily, which is something I wish I could say about the steady drip-drip-drip noise currently coming from my ceiling. Sigh.

I'm quite sure you get the Wodehouse quotes. You are a lady of infinite literary taste and sagacity.

[veratiny.livejournal.com]

In my house the ones with hands are called ticky-tockers...
MM has never considered clock to be a word worth using!

Once on a Time

[bronchitikat.livejournal.com]

Good grief, another trip down memory lane. My sister got given this for Christmas one year. Dunno if she read it, but I did - I was the family bookworm, still am.

Don't remember how old I was at the time (12-14? She's three years younger) but do remember finding it slightly odd, & very unlike Winnie the Pooh!