Strange Encounters

I’m having a strange stiff correspondence with some admin woman in the children’s prospective new school in the UK. She is one of these very middle class women who clearly has a problem with the fact that I use her first name (and my own first name) instead of keeping everything on a Mrs So-and-So basis, as if we were two Edwardian women with pokers up our arses.

I suppose I should be charitable and just let her have her way, particularly as actually I think it would be rather entertaining to revert to title and surname – it would be like going back in time. But it bugs me that it bugs her. Let’s face it, I’m her customer. I should be able to call her Bogface, if I want to.

It seems to me that if I can call the chairman of Very Big Bank plc by his first name, I should certainly be allowed to call Mrs Uptight School Administrator by her first name. No doubt she thinks it’s all very “American” and cringes every time I do it. All I can say is, Move into the 21st century, woman.

Speaking of strange foibles, I was at dinner with a woman the other day, who on sitting down at table declared that she was pleased that the seating plan recognized her status as the most important person at the table, by virtue of the fact that the United States congress (or senate? Can’t remember) had confirmed her in her current role and she had received her commission from the President himself.

This was obviously meant to be ironic self-inflation, so I asked her if the President, on handing her the commission, also had to hit her over the head with a baton.

And she said, “No. Well, I received the commission from Bill Clinton, who’s a friend.”

Later on, it occurred to me that this was an odd thing to say. She doesn’t need to tell me that she’s a friend of Bill Clinton to impress me. I’m Chinese, for God’s sake. Her being twenty years older than me is all it takes to win about as much cordial interest from me as anyone can reasonably hope to gain in the context of a dinner party.

And why did she go in for the ironic self-inflation line if she didn’t want to go down the ironic self-deprecation route conversationally? Hmm.

Got some alumni bumf through the post yesterday, which led me to the newly-published book of an absolutely dreadful woman that I used to know at college. Praiseworthy review in the Guardian (note to self: time to switch to the Telegraph) and considerably more measured review in the NY Times. Here is an extract:

“But the Christian god will never win, for still, still proudly anarchic, in thunder and cunt, cock and lightning, the raw core of our human spirit is still untamed, full of will, eloquent, complex, kinetic and fleetly wild.”

It’s hard to think of anything I could say which might damn the woman more eloquently than her own prose-style. What I cannot understand is how anyone can read even one sentence of this drivel without reaching for the sickbag, let alone contemplate forking out twenty quid for it.