Posts by Tom Beard
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Oh man, if I apply Tom's metaphor to my life, I'm unemployed with the occasional bout of berry-picking.
Berries, eh? Is that what they're calling it these day?
And I guess the "job" metaphor could be (over)extended in all sorts of directions. Freelancing, moonlighting, underemployment, self-employment, going on a sabbatical, taking a working holiday, work experience, vocational guidance counselling, a servant of two masters, on-the-job training...
Right, I'll stop before I get too far into Benny Hill territory.
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I'm not sure about the full context of the conversation you were referring to Emma: were they talking specifically about the job of a "wife" in a way that would be different from more generally being a "spouse" or "life partner"? If that's true, then it's promoting a view of gender roles that seems hopelessly outdated. Otherwise, I'd say that the "job" of a wife is the same as the "job" of anyone who loves someone and cohabits with someone: as Stephen said, "emotional partner? companion? counsel? muse? receiver of unexpected gifts? firm but fair?" One might not usually think of that as being a "job", but there would certainly be occasions in any long-term relationship when one would have to remind oneself of one's duty as part of a partnership rather than doing it automatically out of love.
Which may be why I'm not very good at such jobs. For now, I'd rather stick with a series of short-term contracts rather a long-term career.
Hunter S. Thompson's widow Anita
For a moment there I thought you were referring to William S. Burroughs' wife. If that were the case, then the most important part of her job would be to duck.
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Interesting comment Tom -while, as a writer, I am obviously part & product of the wider culture/s, I dont see interconnections between my story/poem/whatever and readers & critics. It's just me and the words.
Readers & critics come after everything is finished.I wouldn't have worded my response quite they way that Sacha did, it's basically what I mean. When I wrote seriously (and that's a loaded term, but by that I mean poems and criticism rather than blogs about boozing) I was always conscious of being part of a conversation.
I also came to make not much of a distinction between creative and critical practice, to the point where I would aim for intensity, prosody, allusion and ambiguity in my essays and analytical rigour in my poems. Funnily enough, that was about the time I stopped writing...
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I always found writing to be very collaborative: not necessarily in a sense of writing in a group, but in the sense that the interconnections between writer, reader, critic and wider culture are always very important.
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Will work for bar.
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Megan Wegan, These guys are dodgy.
I'm pretty sure that Megan knows that very well by now.
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Devonshire teas, anyone? And I'm sure there's a way to smuggle in a jug of Pimms No. 1.
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You have a thermos, right Tom?
No, actually, but I can investigate. I presume that, unlike the Stadium, one can bring thermoses into the Basin?
Anyway, you wanna get in before they build that motorway fly-over right next to the terraces.
Well, some of us are doing our best to stop that, or at least the worst of it. The options that NZTA are currently assessing are a bit different from those presented to the public, since they've evolved through a workshop process. The ones that involve only ground-level intersections are probably going to get short shrift from the traffic engineers, but it's worth noting that none of the flyover options currently on the table are as close to the Basin as the earlier renders show. If we have to have a flyover (and not everyone is convinced), then at least some of us are trying to push it further from the Basin and give it some relationship to the urban grid, rather than swerving around like a drunken snake.
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But the large gaps between fielders did throw me. The few times I've watched cricket on TV it seems as though the ground is teeming with them.
That's because the Windies' poor performance encouraged Vettori to be aggressive with the field placements, so all but a couple were inside the circle.
I also quickly caught on that the fans love to hate Kyle Mills.
I'm not sure why. Is it a provincial thing? He's been pretty wayward as a bowler at times in the past, but I wouldn't have thought that enough to engender opprobrium. The only thing the fans might have hated him for at this match was that he bowled so bloody well, meaning that the Windies never got settled and we ended up with a short match.
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The next one definitely has to be at the Basin. They serve G&Ts and cucumber sandwiches at the Basin, right?