Wednesday 28 February 2007

LIKINGS & LOATHINGS

Everyone’s doing it! Blogs are riddled with them! Catalogues of 10 Likes and 10 Dislikes, beginning with a letter randomly handed you by a fellow blogger.

Silly Billy kindly gave me the letter ‘D’ and here are the resulting lists…

My D-LIKES
1) Deceptions…

An emporium full of magic, illusions, sleights of hand and tricks of the eye; enchantments and chimeras, mazes, riddles, puzzles and conundrums!



2) Disneyland…

Uncle Walt’s toy-littered rumpus room: a labyrinth of imaginative diversions and canny commercialism; a kingdom scaled to a size where a child feels like a king and a grown-up feels like a child.



3) Dreams…

Those outlandish extravaganzas in which I seem to get entangled almost every night: by turn uninhibitedly torrid, terrifyingly sweat inducing, frantically exciting or just ludicrously absurd!

4) Dinosaurs…

Once-living proofs of the rampant impossibilities of nature: beautiful, beastly and bizarre; lurching and lumbering through the past with creation-shaking thunderings and roarings; monstrous dancers in the ballet of survival and extinction performed with a fearful tearing of fangs and a ripping of claws.

5) Dandelions…

One of the world’s simplest, most honest and down-to-earth flowers; radiant sunbursts scattered in long grass like tossed handfuls of gold doubloons; or harvested and bottled as 'Dandelion Wine' by my friend, Ray Bradbury.


6) Doges Palace…


Because it’s in Venice - which even though the time of the Doge is long gone, is still the world’s most beautiful, captivating and haunting city - and because it’s next door to the Doge's personal chapel (aka St Mark’s basilica) which is the world’s most glorious and exquisite building!


7) Dickens…

Charlie-boy, the supreme master of storytelling, conjuring the greatest cast of characters - marked out by idiosyncratic foibles, failings and endearments - and setting them in scenes described with a painter’s eye for commonplace detail and suffused with a heart-touching distillation and refinement all human emotion and sentiment.

8) Dragons…

The winged, fire-breathing figurehead on an Ark-full of fantastical beings that we believed in with perfect ease when we were young but which was cruelly torpedoed by maturity and reason…

9) Derrières…

I’ve always had a fondness (oh, what the heck, fetish!) for what the dictionary fulsomely describes as: “The part of one's back on which one rests in sitting: buttock (used in plural), posterior, rump, seat. Informal: backside, behind, bottom, rear. Slang: bun (used in plural), fanny, tush. Chiefly British: bum.” Whilst, as you might expect, my interest has tended to focus mainly on the male derrière, I am sufficiently liberal-minded to appreciate a shapely example wherever I see one!

10) David...

My friend and lover of seventeen years who is still the object of my passionate desire from his soulful eyes to --- well, to his derrière for one thing!!



My D-LOATHES
1) Deceptions…

Lies, half-lies, fibs, cheats and scams committed by others - or myself…

2) Dentists…

And the relentless horror of lying there as their rubber-skinned fingers prod and probe amongst a mouthful of crumbling masonry in desperate and expensive need of being propped up or pulled down…

3) Doctors… and 4) Drugs…

Because I need them and I hate needing them and because that kind of dependence is really not healthy!



4) Deckchairs…

Can’t easily open them; can’t easily close them; can’t easily sit on them… So, what's the point?




5) Dusting…

Since it is never truly ‘done’ and therefore about as unfulfilling a task as you could wish to undertake!

6) Dancing…

Because I can’t! Whether it’s a waltz or the loosest of free form jigging-around, I am uncoordinated, instantly embarrassed and, in the event of trying, utterly humiliated! So, if you don’t mind, I’ll just sit this one out…

7) Debts…

Hideous, demonic, red-eyed fiends that rip, tear, bite and chew at - simultaneously - my bank balance and my peace of mind.

9) Dogs…

Soppy or aggressive, I’m really not keen. Big long haired ones make me sneeze; short haired one snuffle round my ankles; all of them always want to stick their nose in my crotch and, when I was a kid, a poodle once peed up my leg.

I’ll make exceptions for Snoopy, Fred Bassett, Lady and the Tramp and the 101 Dalmatians, but otherwise I’d really rather keep a python!

10) Drivel…
Listening to it or, worse, talking it…


So, anyone want a letter? Just let me know…

15 comments:

David Weeks said...

If it were 'L' then simply "Lists" would suffice for both like and dislikes!

:o)

Thank you for being a 'D' in the "likes" section.

;o]

Anonymous said...

Can I have a consonant, please, Brian?

Brian Sibley said...

Certainly QUENNY! Your consonant is 'R'...

Hope it's to your LIKING (and DISLIKING)!

Brian Sibley said...

SCROOGE: your letter is 'H'. Hope you're happy... :-)

Brian Sibley said...

GILL asks...

May I have a letter please? Preferably not x or z or other high Scrabble scorers?

Brian Sibley said...

GILL, your letter is 'P'... My pleasure!

Miss Deadline said...

Hi there! Thanks for your comments on my blog, I will sort the word verification and add your blog (as well as your site) to MP!

Riddley Walker said...

Brian, as an aside, I have a suggestion for you based on your liking for all things Disneyland. If you and your other half get the chance, visit the Efteling in the Netherlands, especially when they re-dress it as Winter Efteling. You won't regret it, I guarantee. Magical.

Now, throw me a letter and see if my brain is still functioning... ;-)

Brian Sibley said...

Never heard of Efteling... Intriguing web-site...

As with all theme parks, I'm fascinated by the way variations are worked on familiar themes...

I like the illustrative work of Anton Piek and I was interested to see that he is clearly an influence on this park - and, indeed, has an area named after him!

Meanwhile, your letter is 'L'... Good LUCK!

Anonymous said...

I can vouch for De Efteling... I've known it for years!
I'll take all the letters of the alphabet... it's a good way of getting off to sleep! Pick a theme and find a word beginning with each letter of the alphabet!

Anonymous said...

I think it's very sweet - not to mention inspiring - that you and David are still so much in love after such an impressive number of years. And thank you for the letter "R". And there's no "u" in Qenny!

Brian Sibley said...

Did I REALLY type QUENNY? Sorry! Good job it wasn't QUEENY, eh?

S.B. said...

Brian - that is quite a list. I agree 100% on the dusting and debts, but I have to object to you views on dogs

Brian Sibley said...

Well, SILLY BILLY, I must say YOUR little doggie actually looks rather sweet - just so long as he promises not to make me sneeze or to piss up my leg -- I still remember the devastating humiliation and embrrassment, as a ten-year old, of a) being mistaken for a lamp-post, tree or fire-hydrant and b) having to squelch home with a shoe full of dog-pee... Scarred for life, I was!

Anne said...

Helloooo....
Today I can leave a comment because I am using a real computer instead of my telephone. (The phone doesn't understand some blogs.)
The two of you have been together 17 years? That's amazing! And you're still on one-another's "Likings" section of the list. How lovely. :) I'll work on my list tonight or tomorrow, thanks again to you and Buttons.