Bored* of All I Survey

Dear Conference Organizers

If you want me to respond to a survey, it’s probably a good idea not to address me as ‘Dear madame’… I realize I’m not particularly famous, but I have spoken at your conference many times and I’m even on this year’s programme committee, so you should have some idea of my gender. (My connection with the programme committee also means that I have some idea of how well attended the conference is really likely to be, so let’s not big it up too much.)

Oh, and I don’t really need the email in triplicate.

Excuse me while I wipe the brick dust from my forehead before I consider whether there’s any point in answering your questions.

David Harley

*The quote I’m parodying from Cowper’s The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk is actually ‘I AM monarch of all I survey’, but it’s misquoted so often as ‘Lord of all I survey’ that I’m happy to go with the popular misconception on this occasion. Besides, I can’t think of a suitable word to rhyme with monarch.

 

More Flattening than Flattering

Jude finally found something useful to do with a couple of my author’s copies: specifically, two volumes of a very bulky, heavy and expensive book for which I wrote a couple of chapters a few years ago. That is, for flattening photographs that have spent the past few years rolled up in a cardboard tube.

However, she also put this up in my studio. I’m hoping she isn’t implying that I’m too loud and a bit dozy.

David Harley