Sideways Station

Sei Shonagon's Things - Lists from the Pillow Book (1)

(Sei Shonagon was born in Japan around the year 965 CE and served as a lady in waiting to Empress Sadako. In her Pillow Book, she gives an account of the things she saw and her feelings. Every now and then she provides a list of things, which are like tiny exhibitions organised by an unpredictable curator).





Elegant Things

A white coat worn over a violet waistcoat.
Duck eggs.
Shaved ice mixed with liana syrup and put in a new silver bowl.
A rosary of rock crystal.
Wistaria blossoms. Plum blossoms covered with snow.
A pretty child eating strawberries.

Things That Should Be Large

Priests. Fruit. Houses. Provision bags. Inksticks for inkstones.
Men's eyes: when they are too narrow, they look feminine. On the other hand, if they were as large as metal bowls, I should find them rather frightening.
Round braziers. Winter cherries. Pine trees. The petals of yellow roses.
Horses as well as oxen should be large

Things That Should Be Short

A piece of thread when one wants to sew something in a hurry.
A lamp stand.
The hair of a woman of the lower classes should be neat and short.
The speech of a young girl.

(Translation Ivan Morris - The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon - Penguin Classics)

People I met once and still remember 1-10

The other day writing about "Go-back-to-sleep Road" I stated, without being serious about it, that I was going to compile a long book which would be a list of people I had met once but still remembered. Well, now I have decided I will start it, in instalments, and see what happens. Maybe it will turn into something else. So here is part one:

1. The girl on the outskirts of Ougadougou at seven in the morning walking to market and still five miles from market bearing a sewing machine balanced on her head.
2. The hundred or so primary school children in Amsterdam using chalks to turn the whole of the paving of Leidsestraat into coloured chaos.
3. The madman in Greece who grabbed my guidebook and spurted down the gangplank just as it was being pulled up and leaped triumphantly onto the island, the name of which I have forgotten, and danced in circles waving it in the air as we sailed away.
4. The man in Ancona who had been shot lying on the billiard table.
5. The ship's officer on the Channel ferry who, seeing me (age about eleven) with a compass before me on a table, asked "Are we going the right way?"
6. The man in the shop in Times Square, New York, who asked me aggressively, "Are you a Jew?"
7. The man in Valencia who while we were waiting on the kerb for the lights to change asked me aggressively, "Are you an Arab?"
8. The man in Jordan who told me it was just as generous to accept a gift as to give one.
9. The man who invited us to eat with him in the desert and who opened a tin of sardines to celebrate and then killed a scorpion and tossed it to his children to play with.

10. The Chilean policemen searching cars  because "locos" were being smuggled. I thought he was mad too until I was told that in Chile "loco" is abalone.

San Serriffe Day

Sans Serriffe (main islands Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse) is a country  people first noticed on 1 April 1977 after the Guardian published a seven-page supplement on it complete with advertising. Philip Davies, the person who had the original idea, apparently said, “The Financial Times was always doing special reports on little countries I’d never heard of. I was thinking about April Fool’s Day 1977 and I thought: why don’t we just make a country up?” One special feature about the islands of Sans Serriffe is that they are migratory, therefore the map on the left no longer gives their exact position. 

Other 1 April facts and reports  are listed, described and documented in great detail at  Museum of Hoaxes, including the masterful Swiss Spaghetti Harvest, Alabama changing the value of Pi to 3.0, the left-handed  hamburger,  the  temporary closure of the Internet for Spring Cleaning and  the distribution of  powdered  water in Hong Kong. 

The Most Beautiful Thing

What is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen ?

Think about it for a while and when you have your own answer take a look at what some other people have said on the following page.