Shooting Out the Lights

A various party had been invited to meet the new couple: the old aristocracy was represented by Lord and Lady Pentreath; the old gentry by young Mr and Mrs Fitzadam of the Worcestershire branch of the Fitzadams; politics and the public good, as specialized in the cider interest, by Mr Fenn, member for West Orchards, accompanied by his two daughters; Lady Mallinger's family, by her brother, Mr Raymond, and his wife; the useful bachelor element by Mr Slinker, the eminent counsel, and by Mr Vandernoodt, whose acquaintance Sir Hugo had found pleasant enough at Leubronn to be adopted in England. Daniel Deronda, George Eliot.

I like lists . . . but not the Rich List which I've mislaid that shows an increase of billionaires on the previous year. Ms Spec Savers is well on the way, or may be one, and 'Ma'am, can you see well enough to buy a painting?' The billionaire abundance seems paradoxical as if money itself huddles for warmth against the financial chill.
Tweeters and bloggers have been busy with insurrection, revolution and billionairedom but insurgents, counter-insurgents and the Newly Very Rich don't move in my circles.
Scarlet is right, it has been quiet on some blogfronts. I had thought that it was me having a phase of non-virtual busy-ness aka disenchantment with virtuality, and whilst I'm not throwing off the shackles of petro-colonialism or making mega-dosh, it has been a busy year. Busy seeing money scuttle away to safety, busier still being broke and far too busy to be blogging-around what with all the news we've been having.
Our newly adopted good Arabs have been tweeting and blogging like demons and getting killed for their pains, biting the bad Arabs in the bum, most of whom we or our once favourite enemies the USSR have been supporting, arming and trading with quite happily for decades, and other naughty naughty Arabs are biting us (for supporting, arming and trading with our nurtured, nay newly abandoned and re-defined bad Arabs) and are getting killed as well. None killed get a trial. Bum biters got killed and to hang with due process.
We've had the wedding which went according to sun shinny plan. Crowds crowded and the perfect girl next door got her prince while we look at those next door to us and wonder.
AV, that electoral reform that was sham reform bit the dust. To give credit where credit is due, to Mr Clegg, there is no further electoral reform in the offing.

Not reforming, not quite revolting yet and not rich, tweet, back to the blogging, back to lists.

I prefer lists like Eliot's above, and Fitzgerald's Nick's list of Gatsby's house party guests. (abridged)

From East Egg, then, came the Chester Beckers and the Leeches, and Doctor Webster Civet, who was drowned last summer up in Maine. And the Hornbeams and the Willie Voltaires, and a whole clan named Blackbuck. And the Ismays and the Chrysties ( or rather Hubert Auerbach and Mr Chrystie's wife ), and Edgar Beaver, whose hair they say, turned cotton-white one winter afternoon for no good reason at all.
Clarence Endive was from East Egg, as I remember. From farther out on the Island came the Cheadles and the O.R.P.Schraeders, and the Stonewall Jackson Abrams of Georgia, and the Fishguards and the Ripley Snells. The Dancies came, too, and S.B.Whitebait, who was well over sixty, and Maurice A. Flink, and the Hammerheads, and Beluga the tobacco importer, and Beluga's girls.
From West Egg came the Poles and the Mulreadys and Cecil Roebuck and Cecil Schoen and Gulick the State senator and Newton Orchid, who controlled Films Par Excellence.
A man named Klipspringer was there so often and so long that he became known as 'the boarder' - I doubt if he had any other home. Also from New York were the Chromes and the Backyssons and the Dennickers and Russel Betty and the Corrigans and the Kellehers and the Dewars and the Scullys and S.W. Belcher and the Smirkes and the young Quinns, divorced now, and Henry L. Palmetto, who killed himself by jumping in front of a subway train in Times Square.


Go Henry. Another tick off the list.