Tom Roper's Weblog

Personas: my inpenetrable skirts

After something of a struggle, I persuaded Personas to work. It's amusing to watch it at work, confusing me with the impostors around the web who have used my name. And it gives a pretty graphic at the end:

As it progresses it throws up some intriguing items. I was reassured to come upon the phrase, 'Tom Roper is not like a British politician', but puzzled by the assertion that 'Tom Roper is back with an incredibly powerful flipper, and practically inpenetrable [sic] skirts'.

University Challenge

There's no betting on the result of tonight's University Challenge final between Corpus Christi, Oxford and Manchester. As the programme is recorded and the contestants sworn to secrecy, there'd be an opportunity for the unscrupulous to put pressure on those in the know.

I would back with my shirt, house and the children's tuition fees Corpus to triumph over Manchester. They may be the smaller institution, with 350 undergraduate and postgraduate students to Manchester's 35,441, but their form so far, captained by the impressive Gail Trimble, has been terrific.

See Mary Beard's post on the competition and Ms Trimble

Pantomime or #twitpanto

I have to admit to a secret liking for pantomime.True, as a child the singing would bore me witless, but the vulgar humour, the slapstick of Wishee-Washee and Splishee-Sploshee and above all the innuendo, amused me no end as a child.

I have just witnessed the most bizarre things, a pantomime conducted on Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitpanto.Or see it here: http://dracos.co.uk/temp/twitpanto/

It was rowdy, bawdy and sometimes hard to follow, just like the real thing.

On simians

Why should there be a monkey on top of the Christmas tree? The origins of the custom, like well-dressing and beating the bounds, are ancient. But there always has been. Once there were two and adolescents would take pleasure in arranging them in positions suggestive of copulation. This year I could only find one.

Haircut

One can understand a man's life through his haircuts. This was the latest, performed by a student of the Hair and Beauty school at work, South Thames College. It was curious experience, to have one's hair cut while a few yards away a lecturer taught a group of students about shampoos. It took a long time.My first ever haircuts were performed in the barber's department of Joshua Taylor, a department store in Cambridge long since closed, by Mr Collins, who cut my father's hair, whose patient he was. In my teens the haircuts became less frequent, and I never frequented, as some of my contemporaries did, the barber in All Saint's Passage who was notorious for the provision of soft-porn magazines for waiting customers. Reputed to be an ex-boxer, an odd preparation for barbering, he got religion, and replaced Knave and Mayfair with evangelical tracts. I marked the great days of punk and its aftermath with a crop, usually a number 2 or 3. Then my hair grew somewhat, and, while working in central London, I would frequent Truefitt and Hill and Taylors. These days I use an excellent establishment in the North Laine area of Brighton. I reverted some years ago to the schoolboy side parting style. It is more seemly for a man of my age.

Springtime for Roper

'In the spring, Jeeves, a livelier iris gleams upon the burnished dove.'
'So I have been informed, sir.'
'Right ho! Then bring me my whangee, my yellowest shoes, and the old green Homburg. I'm going into the Park to do pastoral dances.'

Wodehouse, P G
Jeeves in the Springtime

spring

The Eve of St Agnes

Apparently if maidens do not look behind them when going to bed tonight, they will dream of their future husband. I discovered that tomorrow is St Agnes' day, and that today is therefore the eve of that feast, while looking for excuses to serve cake at work tomorrow.

 

What can this mean?

'Britain's shoppers have increased the amount spent on bacon to more than £1bn in the past year, figures show'
Guardian News in Brief

Lolinator

I should use this blog to give the world my opinions on the great issues of the day, such as the Martin Amis and Terry Eagleton controversy, the twenty-first century version of  C.P. Snow versus F.R.Leavis confrontation of my childhood,  or the government's mislaying of child benefit data
Instead of this I have been amusing myself with mangling my institution's home page with Lolinator: http://lolinator.com/lol/www.sussex.ac.uk/