Thursday, June 26, 2008

The shuddering wouldn't stop ...

No, that's not a description of my life right now, it's the beginning of my results from a random page meme Mark Lawrence has just tagged me for (and that he got from Galaxy).

You grab the nearest book, turn to page 123 and post the fifth sentence.

So, from page 123 of Novel About My Wife (Emily Perkins):

The shuddering wouldn't stop, even at home, even in bed through that cold, cold night.


The one that's more like my life (from under a cold) on the same page:

My meagre productivity slowed to a trickle, nothing more than surrounding myself with pages of redrafts and spending hallucinatory afternoons watching the telly at the foot of the bed.


I'm really not that sick though. Productivity has slowed to a trickle, but I only dream of abandoning myself to telly at the foot of the bed.

Okay, and a really GOOD sentence (or clutch of sentences) on the facing page, page 122:

I despised myself for the nervous middle-class grandad routine, getting down with the kids, but was aware of having no alternative. This was me: this was all I could do. For at least the last decade I'd been under the illusion that I was invisible to male aggressors, whether they were my own age or younger. It was the one decent thing about getting older: guys with something to prove didn't give a shit about you any more. Unless, like now, you were trapped on the other side of some bars like a monkey in the zoo, an early evening entertainment.


I tag ... anyone who wants to do this! Otherwise I'm just going to tag all the usual suspects AGAIN. Come back here and tell me if you've done it.

A good little five minute procrastination meme, this one.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The middle class granddad trapped behind bars, vulnerable to the testosterone-dripping, something-to-prove males, was probably in a shopping centre or mall, uncomfortably close to the 'gangs' as they show off to each other by taunting and shadow boxing.

I like your selections.

R.H. said...

I've already done a meemee, can't do two in one year.