Caped Gooseberry – Page 13 – Deborah Makarios

May 20, 2016October 20, 2017

Alone With a Homicidal Maniac

Almost alone. Which is to say, if you were trapped in a house with a homicidal maniac, who would you most want to have with you?

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I have been pondering this question lately. Not, you will be happy to hear, because I am trapped in the house with a homicidal maniac. Rather, it’s the fault of the Internet Archive.

More specifically, it’s due to some of the movies in their catalogue – thinking especially of The Case of the Frightened Lady and The Ninth Guest. Both of these films (spoilers!) include the trope of the homicidal maniac. And in both cases, the homicidal maniac looks perfectly normal (fair enough) – until the audience finds out who it is. Then, of course, it is all wide, staring eyes and rabid laughter.

As the actor Paddy Considine said, “All you’ve got to do is turn up and have a few facial tics and be a lunatic and throw someone around the room or blow their brains out and people think it’s good acting.” Very unsubtle, not to mention unrealistic.

But this is the problem with the aforementioned films, which otherwise aren’t too bad, as films go. There’s no subtlety. One moment someone appears perfectly normal, and the next they’re frothing at the mouth. If we are to take movies as our guide, what causes homicidal maniacs to lose their rag is someone finding out that they’re a homicidal maniac. Up until that point, they’re just politely and quietly homicidal when no-one’s looking. (Especially not a cameraman.)

Needless to say, this is not very realistic. In fact, according to this article, very few serial killers are actually insane. Of course, this is from a point of view that doesn’t consider someone insane just because they’re a psychopath. In order to be legally insane, you have to be sufficiently distant from reality to be unaware that killing people is wrong (and by wrong, they mean ‘against the law’). This is extremely rare. Most serial killers know killing people is against the law, they just don’t care.

That leaves us with the uncomfortable conclusion that most serial killers are sane. (For a given value of sane.) And it goes without saying – or it should, but I’ll say it anyway – that the vast majority of people with mental health problems are not serial killers. In fact, they are by some accounts more likely to be the victims than the perpetrators of violence. (Also, in case you were wondering, the whole multiple-personalities-and-one’s-a-psychopath thing is also a non-starter – for reasons explained here.)

But we still have that idea of insanity as all wild-eyed and slavering. I can even remember a case here in New Zealand where a normally ordinary-looking man (on trial for murder, attempted murder, wounding, kidnapping, aggravated burglary and shooting at police) took to wide-eyed stares and a bizarre haircut to bolster up his defence of insanity. The jury didn’t buy it; while he was undoubtedly of unsound mental health, he wasn’t legally insane.

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Now obviously, if someone comes at you with, say, a samurai sword, you shouldn’t pause to consider whether they’re insane, sane, or just stepping out for a spot of tsuji-giri. At that point, it doesn’t really matter whether they are of sound mind; you should be taking evasive action.

Perhaps, then, the question should be “If you were trapped in a house with a homicidal person-of-indeterminate-sanity, who would you most like to have with you?” A hostage negotiator? Vin Diesel? Mummy? Someone you really don’t like, to act as a diversion while you leg it?

Personally, I think I’d like to have the Caped Gooseberry, for general comfort, quick thinking, and long limbs. The latter would be useful for making a quick exit through a window, which seems like the rational choice if trapped in a house with a killer (instead of the usual “let’s separate and have a look around in dark corners”). Of course, the window method only works on ground-floor buildings – or first floor, if you’re desperate – so if I receive any invitations to penthouse parties from people I don’t know, I will just have to regretfully decline.

January 15, 2016

Swings and Roundabouts

No, this is not a post about playgrounds, although while I was on holiday I did pay a brief visit to the largest playground in the Southern Hemisphere. (Well worth a visit. I especially enjoyed the Archimedes’ Screws, reminding me as they did of piston-filling fountain pens.)

Rather, I thought I would start my fourth blogging year (can you believe it?) with some exciting news on the Simplicity Front. Remember the epic quilt of craziness I slogged away at in my Year of Finishing Things? I finished it.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am now an official card-carrying member of that mysterious cadre, People Who Finish Things. (All right, there isn’t a card. But there should be. Maybe I’ll make one. I’ll even finish it…)

Not only did I finish the Giant Quilt of Craziness, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I also delivered it to the intended recipient and it is no longer in my house. I do still have the scraps, but I am intending to make a hussif with them as a permanent reminder to myself never to begin such an enormous and ambitious project again.

So far so good. The house is less one large sewing project, which is a good step in the direction of simplicity. But… what you lose on the swings you make up on the roundabouts.

There’s the Box. The ancestral box which came down to me from my grandmother via my mother (the latter, I am happy to say, is not deceased, but rather, well ahead of the pack when it comes to pruning).

The box started out as three bags full (which should give you some idea of what was in it, if this didn’t). Actually, four bags full – there was a small one hiding behind one of the big ones. What it worked out to, once I had cunningly smuggled it home in my luggage (and the Caped Gooseberry’s luggage, obviously) was a 60L clear plastic storage container full to lid-not-fitting with yarn. “A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over.” Instant stash (although not SABLE, unless I pop my clogs well before my odometer ticks over to three-score and ten).

Not all of it is actually wool: some of it is 100% acrylic (I am shocked, Gran, shocked) and some of it was made up of worn out slippers and odd sleeves, button bands etc. Some of it was a Gordian Knot of odds and ends partially wound into little balls and partially wound into each other. This was gradually unwound over the course of three days with the help of The Occasional Visitor. (Alexander may have had a swift solution to his knotty problem, but I’d like to see him try to knit with it afterward.)

Deceased slippers and assorted body-parts aside, I am welcoming this boxful into my home. Why? Because the point of simplicity isn’t to have as little as possible of anything. The point of simplicity is to have just enough of the right things – that’s lagom – and for me the right things include knitting wool. It makes me happy, and I make it into useful things for keeping people warm and well-dressed.

But fear not! I have by no means given up on pruning, or on Finishing Things (details to follow). In the meantime, I have large quantities of mystery yarn to test for fibre content. By which I mean setting bits of it on fire. So much happiness, from just one box…

December 18, 2015

Quality

My grandmother believed in buying quality: the best you could afford. The idea of buying an item simply for the status of the label would have been completely foreign to her. What she would have said about buying an item simply for the status of the faked label, I don’t know, but it would have been short, sharp and unflattering.

Buying good quality is, to my mind, very sensible, and probably the reason why a lot of what the Caped Gooseberry and I own comes from our ancestors. Not just big things like furniture, but the sorts of things which these days are subject to obsolescence and its more evil twin, planned obsolescence.

We still use my grandmother’s VCR for watching videos. We still use my grandfather’s heater. They’ve been gone for ten and twenty-one years, respectively, but they bought quality, and it shows.

I still wear their dressing-gowns, too. Admittedly, the cord on my grandpa’s wool dressing-gown needed replacing this year, but that’s not bad after more than two decades of wear.

It’s the same on the Caped Gooseberry’s side. He regularly wears some of his grandfather’s clothes (his grandfather’s been gone more than thirty years now); and I use his granny’s teapot (made in the early ’20s) on a regular basis, pouring tea into my gran’s teacups.

We are still using my gran’s everyday crockery set – despite years of wear it was in much better condition than the set I bought new (and cheap). The same goes for her oven dishes, and my grandfather’s china jugs.

One of my favourite winter hats (très chic) originally belonged to the Caped Gooseberry’s granny. I also have one of her summer hats, which she wore to meet Prince Charles back when he still had hair. Dark hair.

I wrote the entire first draft of my WIP (158k words) with a fountain pen dredged up from somewhere in my husband’s ancestry. I still use it every day. It just keeps working.

We still use my gran’s lawnmower (with my grandpa’s WWII petrol tin). It wasn’t working so wonderfully well lately, so I took it for a shamefully overdue maintenance visit to the mower man. The blades were not only blunt but actually broken. (I shudder to think what my gran would have said.)

Mercifully, maintenance and spare parts are still available for mowers. The same cannot be said of everything. Time was, you could pop down to the local stationers to have your fountain pen nib sharpened. These days, most of them don’t even sell real fountain pens, just fountain-looking pens with disposable insides (which do not count).

I do worry about what we are going to do when these practical heirlooms eventually wear out or break down. It’s very hard to get things repaired or mended these days – you’re just expected to buy a new one. Where will we find another such heater? Where such a perfectly dripless teapot?

Time was, if you were prepared to pay, good quality was available. These days it is perfectly possible to pay a high price for something which is still of inferior quality, and which will not last. Gran would not be pleased.

I’ve reached the stage in my life where I’d rather pay more for something I know will last – though as things stand in the world today, it’s not looking good for the grand-kids.