Old-Fashioned Fruitcake
An overbearing townie wants to buy Pippi Longstocking’s cottage and pull it down. What will she do?
Without delay, she seized the fine gentleman about his fat waist and threw him up in the air, twice. Then she carried him at arm’s length to his car and threw him into the back seat.
Why is it that strengths are so often also weaknesses (and, of course, vice versa)? Three days in to Spinning Plates, and its strengths and weaknesses are being revealed, with a great deal of overlap between the two.
One of its main strengths is that it seems to work even when I’m tired. Yesterday I was positively zombiesque, after a busy day the day before – aka ereyesterday or nudiustertian (I am not even making this up) – followed by a dramatic if somewhat sleep-deprived night involving blood, screaming and three speeding police cars, albeit all in separate incidents. (The police cars were together; the blood and screaming each came separately.)
To make a Barren Tree bear Fruit
Having girt and tucked up your clothes, and having taken an axe or hatchet, approach the tree with resentment, wishing to cut it down: but when any body comes to you, and deprecates the cutting of it, as if responsible for a future crop, seem to be persuaded, and to spare the tree, and it will fruit well in future.
Thomas Owen, Agricultural Pursuits (a translation of Geoponika, 1805-6)
quoted in Lost Crafts: Rediscovering Traditional Skills by Una McGovern
