Inspiration is a fine line but don’t quote me on that

RAB MCNEILL ON PG WODEHOUSE AND WHY THE BOOK OF JOB IS LOOSELY BASED ON HIS LIFE

THIS week, I’m going to give you all lines. “But what have we done, like?” you wail. Fear not, innocent waifs. These lines are not a punishment. They are for your edification, amusement and enlightened sense of despair.

I’m minded to witter thus after reading in that Herald newspaper about the discovery of four unpublished poems by Scottish writer Nan Shepherd. A line in her ‘Achiltibuie’ caught my eye. It spoke of “rock that is older than thought”.

I thought this right good, and it prompted me to do something I rarely do: add it to a file of quotations that I started many years ago.

This file doesn’t have a whole lot in it and, unless something really strikes me like that Nan Shepherd line, most entries date from the short period after I first got the idea to keep such a collection, and so are comparatively random with respect to the vast amount of reading that I do, or did before the internet came along.

All that said, I thought I’d inflict a few lines on you, as I can see through this interactive page that you are unkempt and have let yourselves go, and might benefit from a boot up the morale. I haven’t space for longer quotes and, indeed, must be right selective, but why don’t I take your advice, madam, and just shut up and get on with it?

Starting with fiction, here are a couple from The Bible: “Thou shalt shine forth, thou shalt be as the morning.” That’s from the book of Job, whose life is loosely based on mine.

In Deuteronomy, one finds a disgraceful instance of fatshaming: “But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness.”

Fat chance of a collection of quotes lacking Shakespeare, and

I must have been reading Timon of Athens at the time (don’t remember this and suspect I cribbed them from somewhere), from which came the following.

“Pardon him, sweet Timandra, for his wits/Are drown’d and lost in his calamities. Hoy-day! What a sweep of vanity comes this way!”

On being compared to the

English Bard, PG Wodehouse said: “Shakespeare’s stuff is different from mine, but that is not necessarily to say that it is inferior.”

I could fill the page with Wodehouse, but here are just a few: “I’ve often said that you sometimes have lucid intervals.” “[He] made on winged feet for the bar.” “I wouldn’t believe his word if he brought it to me on a plate with watercress round it.”

And, before I forget, there was this on daydreaming or absent-mindedness: “There were probably moments when Damocles forgot about the sword which hung over his head.” Sharp stuff, and proof of Joseph Joubert’s saying (recorded by HI

Mencken) that “words should stand out well from the paper”.

Pindar’s words are completely

3D, his view of humanity less so: “Man is but a dream of a shadow.” Auden’s words on the shadow of war are chilling: “There on the historic battlefield/The cold ferocity of human wills.”

I mustn’t pretend that all the quotes are grand affairs from poetry and prose. I have Mr Billings, the maths teacher in the film The Happiest Days of Our lives, saying inspiringly: “I love monotony.” And Peter Ustinov: “Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.”

The science-fiction writer Robert A Heinlein had serious things to say, such as: “The worst thing about living in the declining era of a great civilisation is knowing that you are.”

Which brings us nicely to Scotland where some folk are getting right impatient for independence, doubting Nicola Sturgeon’s cautious approach. It reminded me of the line by great “news singer” Tommy Mackay, who adapted words from Leonard Cohen in envisaging a Scottish insurrection: “First, we take Lumphinnans.”

Always makes me laugh. You too, I hope. Why, I do believe you’re looking smarter and happier. Or something along these lines.

Finger lickin’ mince

ALL the slogans are being shoved oot the windae, and you can quote me on that. KFC has dispensed with “Finger Lickin’ Good”, after deciding it “doesn’t quite fit” in the Time of Covid. D’you know, I don’t think

I’ve ever eaten a KFC. Never been to Nando’s. Haven’t set foot in a McDonald’s for more than 20 years.

And yet I’m never knowingly underfed. At last, John Lewis is ditching its daft “Never Knowingly Undersold” slogan. I could never work out what it meant. Did it mean they always sold loads of stuff? Did they over-sell things?

Scholars and translators have deduced that it meant they would always price-match, a claim that became laughable in the age of internet shopping. Slogans are the daftest. Remember these awful New Labour efforts? “A new tomorrow today” and suchlike bilge. Do schools still have slogans? My secondary had the motto: “Fortiter et recte.”

Translated loosely from the Latin, this meant: “Fortify your rectum.”

I’m not sure what they meant by that. They never caned us on the bahookie, though they did belt our hands, which I found a great aid to learning. Still, it was better than getting lines.

Good with words, Nan Shepherd and PG Wodehouse