The erstwhile all around good guy who, as it so happens, is currently living and breathing to great effect, Golden Rule Jones points to this alcoholic combo favored by Anthony Burgess:
Into a pint beer-glass doubles of the following are poured: gin, whisky, rum, port, and brandy. A small bottle of stout is added, and the whole is topped off with champagne. It induces a somehow metaphysical elation, and rarely leaves a hangover.
In honor of the late Burgess, we shall indeed try out this concoction this Saturday for NaDruWriNi and report just how metaphysically elating it is.
Erstwhile? Have I been succeeded? E’en before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain, etc. Before high piled books, in charact’ry, which hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain, etc. It seems unfair somehow
You folks caught me. What can I say. My subconscious thinks “glory” and slips up on the “formerly” part. 🙂
Gotcha. I think I’ll take the rest of the day off.
I usually pause when I write “erstwhile” and think, does that really mean what I think it means? It seems to lend a kind of grandeur to the usually undesireable state of not being altogether what one once was.
It also makes me think of a great line from the sonnets:
>When lofty trees I see barren of leaves / which erst from heat did canopy the herd.Tenements uncouth I was fain to house in:
“Let such lodging be for a breath-while,” thought I,
“Soon a more seemly.”
Damn did that get fouled up. Guess that’ll teach me not to use arrows as quotation markers.
What I was trying to say was the following.
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It also makes me think of a great line from the sonnets:
“When lofty trees I see barren of leaves / which erst from heat did canopy the herd.”
That’s fun to say.
And also this line from Hardy’s “The Temporary the All,” which you might get a laugh out of.
“Tenements uncouth I was fain to house in. / “Let such lodging be for a breath-while,” thought I, / “Soon a more seemly.”
At least I think it’s funny. In that old, let’s-laugh-at the Edwardians kind of way.
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