The vicar’s wife said one day to her husband, “I no longer believe in God.” He was furious and threw her out of his house saying, “I no longer believe in you.”
The vicar’s wife lived on happily for many years. The vicar went mad and died.
__________
Notes:
1. Written August 5, 2016
2. A sister tale to To Follow A Cat
I tell you this tale not because I expect you to believe it but because it is true.
I was born in this house and, God-willing, I shall die in this house. And when I die I hope you shall bury me here under the kitchen table so the devil won’t get me.
I am an old woman now but of course I was not always so. When I was young girl I was beautiful, no matter what you might think to look at me now. Nor no matter how often I was told back then I wasn’t, either. For the proof of your beauty lies in your belly, the old mothers round here used to say, and no sooner had I left the woods and gone to town for the first time my belly began to swell and before I knew it I was as pregnant as could be.
When it came time to give birth I hauled myself into the kitchen and laid myself down on the table there, because my bed was full of my sisters and I did not want to wake them.
And as I was lying there the devil walked in through the front door. He placed his hands on my belly and a chill went through me and when my baby was born it was as cold and dead as a plucked pigeon. And the devil was nowhere to be seen, because he had already taken what he wanted.
I buried that child under the front door step to keep the devil from coming back in and then I went back to bed with my sisters and slept all through the day.
Now in good time I went to town again, and soon enough for sure my belly was bearing the fruits of my beauty once more. And when it came time to give birth I hauled myself into the kitchen and laid myself down on the table again, for my bed was still full of my sisters and I did not wish to wake them.
And as I was lying there the devil came to the front door, but he couldn’t come in. I thought then he was gone but soon enough I heard him up on the roof, and down the chimney he came and he walked over to me with not a touch of soot on him, and he pressed his bony hands against my belly and a chill went through me. When those twins were finally born they were as cold and dead as plucked hens, and the devil was nowhere to be seen, because he had already taken what he wanted.
I buried those children under the fireplace to keep the devil from coming back in, and then I went back to bed with my sisters and slept all through the week.
Now, by and by, I got pregnant a third time. And once again when the day came I sneaked out of my bed so as not to wake my sisters and climbed up onto the kitchen table and laid myself down upon it.
I saw the devil at the front door, but he couldn’t come in. And then I heard the devil on the roof, but he could not come down the chimney. And then I saw the devil at the kitchen window, and he smiled at me. Smiled that smile of his I always saw in the city, the smile that made you know that he was going to get what he wanted come what may, and there was nothing you nor your hope could do about.
He was just about to climb through the window when I felt my children stir inside of me, and all of a sudden out from between my legs burst three hawks, their feathers as white as snow and their wings as loud as the wind, and not a single speck of blood upon them. And they flew round and round the room for what seemed like a lifetime and I looked at them in wonder and I looked at them with love.
And just as the devil was about to get in through the window the first one flew at the devil and scratched at his face and pecked out his eyes. The devil stumbled back, and he swept his arms around in a blind rage, and one of his hands touched the hawk and the hawk fell down dead upon the windowsill. And the devil in his pain and his frustration shrank back from the window and howled away into the woods and into the night, and I never saw him again in all my life.
The other two birds still flew around the kitchen table, and one swooped down and pulled the hair from my head and flew out the front door with it hanging from its claws like rat’s tails. And the other settled down beside me and plucked the teeth from my mouth, one by one, before flying up the chimney with them all held in its beak like a row of tiny white berries.
And I never saw them again, either, not in all my life.
I buried the dead bird beneath the window and I went back to bed with my sisters and they hugged me tight and I slept all through the year.
My sisters grew up and I grew old and in all the times my sisters gave birth (and there were many times, because my sisters were much more beautiful than I, as their bellies proudly showed) not once did we see the devil at the door, and not once did we hear the devil on the roof, and not once did the devil climb in through the window.
And not once did my sisters give birth to birds, nor ever did they have to.
___________
Notes:
1. Written August 2016
___________
Notes:
1. Written on 7th November, 2012
2. It should say “if she wanted” on the moon page
3. But it’s a bit late to change it now
My brother had this boat. It was quite a nice boat, as far as boats go. I’m not sure where he got it from. A boat seller, I suppose.
He had no idea how to sail, or even, as far as I could tell, how to row.
Every weekend he would wheel it out of his garage and onto the drive and wash it, or repaint it, or varnish it, or any number of other entirely pointless jobs designed mostly, if not entirely, to delay the moment when he would have to commit the thing to water and demonstrate, in public, the extent of his own incompetence.
His house burnt down one autumn, struck by lightning in a late and lonely thunderstorm. He lost everything, even his cat.
The cat wasn’t hurt, but he never forgave him, and ran away across the street and moved in with a neighbour, hissing in horror whenever my brother tried, forlornly, to claim him back. The sadness in his eyes on these occasions was heartbreaking. In my brother’s eyes, I mean. In the cat’s there was nothing but the fury of betrayal.
Everything else was covered by the insurance.
He moved in with me for a while, while his house was being rebuilt, and it was tolerable at first. But slowly he started filling up my house as the insurance slowly coughed up replacements for all his possessions, and to be honest by the time he moved out it was a bit of a relief. There’s only so many times you can sit in a living room filled to the brim with new TVs, bikes, computers, sofas, cupboards, plates and clothes, before the claustrophobia starts to seep into you and you dream, each night, of being crushed alive under an avalanche of pots and pans.
He never reclaimed the boat.
__________
Notes:
1. Written on September 27th, 2017
This is a list of earliests.
The earliest it can be when as many women as men have won Best Director at the Oscars is 2111. [4]
The earliest it can be when as many women as men have won Best Director at the BAFTAs is 2068. [5]
The earliest it can be when as many women as men have won the Nobel Prize for Literature is 2104. [6]
The earliest it can be when as many women as men have won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction is 2050. [7]
The earliest it can be when as many women as men have won the Booker Prize for Fiction is 2035. [8]
The earliest it can be when as many women as men have won the Turner Prize for Visual Art is 2034. [9]
The earliest it can be when as many women as men have won the BBC Sports Personality Of The Year award is 2058. [10]
The earliest it can be when women have been president of the USA for as long as men have is 2252. [11]
The earliest it can be when women have been Prime Minister of Britain for as long as men have is 2289. [12]
The earliest it can be when women have been Queen of England as long as men have been King of England is 2723. [13]
__________
Notes:
1. This was written in January 2019, so facts are correct for then (except for any mistakes I’ve made, of which there are probably many).
2. I was going to make a thing that auto-updated these dates each year but it was too hard, so I gave up.
3. Below follow some clarifying notes on the items above.
4. There were no women nominated for Best Director at this year’s Academy Award (which was the catalyst for this list). Although this year’s Oscars is the 91st edition, there’s actually been 94 different winners (including whoever wins it this year), only 1 of whom has been a woman (Kathryn Bigelow in 2009). At the first Academy Awards in 1928, two different directors won, because they had two different film categories (Serious Films, and Not Serious Films), and in 1961 and 2007, two different directors won because the films were co-directed (West Side Story in 1961, and No Country For Old Men in 2007). But for this list I’m assuming one winner per year from now on, ignoring the possibility of joint directors, ties, etc, because otherwise you could just say the earliest is next year and be done with it and then what’s the point of even talking. (In the ten years since Kathryn Bigelow won best director, of the 50 directors nominated for this award one has been a woman – Great Gerwig for Lady Bird. Meanwhile, David O. Russell has been nominated three times in those ten years.)
5. BAFTAs for best direction have been awarded since 1968. Depending on whether you count Fargo as having been directed by just Joel Coen or by Ethan Coen as well (The BAFTAs only gave it to Joel Coen, there have been either 51 or 52 winners of this. All but 1 have been men (Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker again being the only exception). For this list, I’ve counted it as 51 (and again, I’ve assumed just one winner per year from now on). This years nominations include no women, mirroring the Oscars.
6. There’s been a 100 men and 14 women who have won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Although there’s been a number of times multiple authors have been awarded in the same year (there were 2 winners in 1904, 1917, 1966, and 1974), I’m again assuming just a single winner per year (and anyway it’s more common to have no winner than multiple winners in any given year).
7. The first Pulitzer Prize was awarded in 1918. There have been 92 winners of the award since then – 62 men, 30 women. Interestingly, the actual answer to the earliest when was various times between 1924 and 1943. 12 out of the first 23 winners were women, after which the next 15 winners were men, with no woman winning the prize again until Harper Lee in 1961.
8. The Booker Prize has been going since 1969, and thee have been 53 different winners so far (there were 2 awards in 1970s – although one wasn’t awarded until 2010 – and a couple of occasions where two books were joint winners – 1974 and 1993). Of these 53 winners, 35 were men, 18 women. The date assumes a single winner each year from now on.
9. The Turner Prize is an annual award given to viusal artists in the United Kingdom. It’s been running since 1984, and there have been 35 winners – 25 men (including both Gilbert and George in the year they when they won it), 9 women, and the art collective Assemble, which has an indeterminate number of ever-changing members, which really messes up any possible calculations for this. You can always rely on artists to cause a right old mess. So to cope with this I’ve just ignored them, and also assumed just a single winner from now on each year. Please don’t hate me. (As an aside, the last three winners have all been women – Helen Marten, Lubaina Himid, and Charlotte Prodger.)
10. The BBC Sports Personality of the Year award has been running since 1954, and is awarded by public vote (at least it is now, I don’t know if it originally was). There have been 66 winners in 65 years (Torvill and Dean won it together in 1984). Of these 66 winners, 13 have been women, the last being Zara Phillips in 2006.
11. I’m assuming Donald Trump will be president until the end of his current term at least, rather than being immediately impeached, along with everyone else in his administration, and replaced by, I don’t know, Nancy Pelosi or someone.
12. I’m counting from 1721 here, although it’s not until about 100 years after that that the term came into use. In those 300 years, there have been just over 14 where the Prime Minister has been a woman (Margaret Thatcher between 1979 and 1990, and Theresa May since 2016). You can add on anywhere between 500 and 1000 years to the date quoted in the post if you want to get into the various different forms of leaders of parliament, government, etc, immediately beneath the monarch, for all the various countries of the present kingdom, but rather than a list this’d turn into a branching tree of hellish density and complexity.
13. In the 1132 years since Alfred The Great took the throne, there have been 918 years of Kings, 203 years of Queens, and 11 years of Cromwells. There’s also been a few years of overlapping/competing monarchs, but I haven’t counted them twice (this means I’ve had to leave out any time Empress Matilda potentially might have spent on the throne).
14. Any mistakes in these numbers are almost certainly mine (although they might be wikipedia’s).
15. If we do this again next year, it’s quite likely most of these dates will have shifted even further away (with the exception of the last two on the list), as every time one of these prizes is won by a man, it’ll take two subsequent years of women winning to get back even to this depressing distant schedule.