Gaudy Night must be one of my favourite novels by any measure (simple pleasure-factor, number of rereads, Significance To Chaz, regularity of quoting, nostalgia-rating...). But it does also serve as a signifier of how-things-have-changed. One could point to the inherent snobbery, both intellectual and social - but one prefers not to. This, though, one will point to: that at one point Harriet tells the appalled Miss Schuster-Slatt that the English won't fill out questionnaires.
Patently, this is no longer true. I take it as endemic of the Americanisation (Miss Schuster-Slatt - do I need to say it? - is American) of the UK, that these days we do it all the time. In the '80s, we did it in the flesh, when women with clipboards accosted us in shopping-centres and took us to handy church halls to make us answer questions about our smoking habits and preferred brands; these days, we mostly do it on the internets. The clipboards are few and far between, it's one of the ways the city centre has changed since I've been living here. But the point is, that we do it without a second thought. Without a first thought, sometimes. Show me a poll on LJ, I'll make with the clicky.
Today? Has been all about the thinking. I filled in a long questionnaire about history and research and writing, in all those interstices when I couldn't bear to watch sports any more (Grand Prix and football and almost the cricket too, all running inevitably into outrage and disaster...) (But we won the cricket in the end!)
Now I want a drink, but I have once again hit the gin/no tonic interface. I would go out into the lovely warm sunshine and buy a bottle of tonic, only then it would be a nasty warm bottle and I wouldn't like that. I could make a Bloody Mary? *has tomato juice*
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