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FREQUENTLY ASKED
QUESTIONS: THE ANSWERS
| 1 |
Yes. |
| 2 |
No. |
| 3 |
Every day. |
| 4 |
Spare spectacles,
too much change, credit card, debit card, library
ticket, library books, my Homebase discount
card, receipts, satellite phone, multi-band
short wave radio, two-litre water bottle, water
purification tablets, Maglite, waterproof matches,
whistle, gill net, candles, large metallic foil
bag, Leatherman multi-purpose tool, plasters,
antihistamines, sterile dressings and gauze,
Vaseline, suturing needles, anti-diarrhoea pills,
tetracycline, a hexamine block, a chequered
handle picnic knife, an extra-expanding calf-skin
gusset purse, some choice-blended China tea
in willow pattern enamelled tins, a solid ivory
fitted Russian leather dressing case with tortoiseshell
comb and toilet requisites, a razor, strop,
corkscrew, pencils (H, HB, B, 2B), correspondence
cards, mounting solution, prayer book, Bible,
Irish linen handkerchiefs, knee shawl, sleeping
socks, leather gauntlets, Scotch yarn home-knit
jersey, night shirt, Malacca cane, a door wedge,
thimble, tape measure, bodkin, sewing needles,
1 card each black and white thread, pearl shirt
buttons, linen buttons, safety pins, galvanized
iron padlocks, repeater alarm clock, 18-carat
gold full hunter, eyelet punch, picture cord,
piano wire, tack lifter, table vice, firefly
grinder, files for fretwork, skinning knives,
skull cap, folding opera hat, life belt, combination
knife, fork and spoon set, steering compass,
anemometer, rain gauge, portable sketching easel,
leather carriage cushion, brushes for water-colour
painting, unbleached handmade drawing paper,
two bottle travelling ink-stand, fountain pen
with 14-carat gold nib, moleskin notebooks,
silver hand blotter, ivory paper knife, mortar
and pestle, household lubricant, chicken broth,
small primus travelling stove, folding stretcher
bedstead with spring wire mattress, rabbit’s
foot, amulets, small memento mori figurines,
smoking equipment, wood bound steel cabin trunk,
Banbury cakes, potted meats, half a cooked ham,
a tin of mixed biscuits, and some boiled sweets.
I don’t get out much. |
| 5 |
With a pencil. |
| 6 |
Coffee. |
| 7 |
Can insufficiencies
in a pastry be compensated for by the quantity
of the meat? |
| 8 |
In Sanskrit aesthetics
I believe there are said to be 9 feelings that
art can excite: wonder, joy, sexual pleasure,
pity, anguish, anger, terror, disgust, laughter. |
| 9 |
A small circle is
as infinite as a large circle. |
| 10 |
Sorry. |
| 11 |
What’s not to
fear? What does Larkin say? ‘Life is first
boredom, then fear’. |
| 12 |
Oh, I don’t
know. Off the top of my head: Homer, Aeschylus,
Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Thucydides,
Aesop, Ovid, Martial, Augustine, Dante, Boccaccio,
Cervantes, Chaucer, Sir Thomas Malory, Sir Thomas
More, Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne, Francis Bacon,
Robert Burton, Hobbes, John Webster, Middleton
and Rowley, Bunyan, Milton, Swift, Samuel Johnson,
Defoe, Fielding, Sterne, Montaigne, Rabelais,
Rousseau, Erasmus, Goethe, Hugo, Stendhal, Flaubert,
Ibsen, Austen, Hazlitt, Dickens, Ruskin, Trollope,
George Eliot, Robert Louis Stevenson, Nietzsche,
Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Proust,
Tristan Tzara, Hardy, Kipling, Beerbohm, Chesterton,
Belloc, Conrad, Firbank, Beckett, Henry Green,
Evelyn Waugh, Wodehouse, Iris Murdoch, Golding,
Mervyn Peake, Orwell, Brecht, Kafka, Thomas
Mann, Robert Musil, Walter Benjamin, Joseph
Roth, Bulgakov, Pasternak, Knut Hamsun, Bohumil
Hrabal, Isaac Bashevis Singer, S.Y. Agnon, Faulkner,
Cheever, Philip Roth. They’re all very
good. |
| 13 |
I wish Richmal Crompton
had written another. |
| 14 |
The contemplation
of a neatly folded ham sandwich. |
| 15 |
The OED.
Norfolk. Peckham. Auden. The garden. The park.
The market. The sea. The swimming pool. The
bathroom. Hospital. Church. Synagogue. The gardens
and tearooms at Mount Stewart. BBC Radio 1.
BBC Radio 2. BBC Radio 3. BBC Radio 4. BBC Radio
Ulster. Opera. The Bible. Whitstable. Swings
and roundabouts. Romania. Arthur Mee’s
Children’s Encyclopaedia. Life’s
rich tapestry. Amazon.co.uk. Bangor Public Library,
80 Hamilton Road, Bangor, Co. Down, BT20 4LH.
(Hours: Mon, Tue, Wed, Fri, 10.00am –
8.00pm; Sat, 10.00am-1.00pm, 2.00pm-5.00pm). |
| 16 |
Assassination. |
| 17 |
Yes. |
| 18 |
Occasionally. |
| 19 |
Sometimes. |
| 20 |
Never. |
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