Ring Road (41 page)

saddest,

– tale, arguably, 318n.

sainthood,

– and tea-making, 91

salads, 77, 196, 237

Salinger, J.D.,

– author of the greatest work of twentieth-century fiction, allegedly, 156–157

–
see also entries under
autodidacts

salmon of knowledge, the, 275

salt,

– pinch of, 37

– of the earth, 13

sandwiches, 21, 23–24, 64, 85, 248–249

– and capitalism, 246

Santayana, George, 31

saveloys, 170n.

savings, pensions and investments, 221

scapegoat, 135

scene-setting, 14

scholarship,

– and homeless despondency, 73n.

school, 132–137

seasons,

– the four, 243

second income,

– fish-fingers and, 195

self-absorption, 204

self-conceit, 108

self-control, 143, 264

– complete lack of, 83, 216–218, 278

self-deception, 5, 40, 310

self-entrenchment, 155–156

self-esteem, 158

– new shower unit and, 102

self-impersonation, 20–21, 279

self-invention, 5, 22–23, 37, 88, 137–138, 142, 165, 242, 279, 286

serendipity, 327

–
see also entries under
coincidences

seventh son, the

– of a seventh son, evidence of God's amusement, 4

sex, 143–144, 170, 205, 306

– and teaching your grandmother to suck eggs, 181

– compared to prayer and saying thank you, x

– money, and death, 171

– Rotary Club raffle sounds like telephone, 291

– shop, first and probably the last, 183n.

shame,

–
ER, Sex and the City,
and Sebastian Faulks's
Birdsong
excite a sense of, 75

sheets,

– nylon, 148

– soiled, 104

Shloer, 213

shoes, 33, 84–85, 288, 291

– princess, 286

shopping, 172, 236

– and funerals, 263

shopping mall, the

– arguments in favour of, 289, 338–339

– depressing aspects of, 18, 238, 289

shops, 16–18, 84–89, 183, 202, 276, 312, 338

shout,

– how to, without getting a sore throat, 300

show business, 299, 302–303

showing off,

–
see entries under
show business
and
writing

signatures, 248–249

– sudden recognitions and revelations connected to, 130–131, 242, 295

signs, 23, 72, 73, 81, 190, 244–245, 252, 310

– and wonders, 80

silence,

– his mind moves upon, 26, 53, 103

– the rest is, 366

silent

– melancholy, the, of the plumber, 102–103

Silicon Valley,

– our very own, 245

sins, 306–307

Sisyphus, 250

sleet, 44, 54

small town, 14, 55, 230, 333, 345

– compared to city, 7, 127, 328

– compared to country, 152

Smart, Elizabeth,

–
By Grand Central Station I Sat
Down And Wept,
a surprising success among the older ladies in town, 240n.

smile, 21, 288, 315

– beatific, not very convincing, 274

– how to, without feeling happy, 300

– philosophical, example of, 8

–
see also entries under
grins
and
smirks

smirks, 277

smoking, 11, 97, 204, 208, 215, 308, 332, 333, 364

– kills, 116

snacks,

– between meals, inadvisability of, 209n.

–
see also entries under
food, Chip Crisps
and
Chunky Butts

snow, 31, 332–333

society,

– there is such a thing as, pudding as proof that, 125

sociology,

– town's only degree in, 3n.

Sodom and Gomorrah,

– skateboarding and, 308

solicitors,

– aspersions cast upon, 60

soul,

– the awakened, 101

soup,

– chicken and celery, recipe for, 123

– lentil, 307

– primal, 102

Spam,

– Hawaii and, 140n.

sparkling white wine, 81

standards,

– the difficulty of maintaining, 83, 212

status, 19, 38, 42, 108

storm,

– the gathering, 54, 69, 114, 242

success, 19, 39, 108, 117, 120, 138, 235

– cast-iron guaranteed secrets of, 250–251

suicide, 4, 197n.

Sunday,

– lunch, 29, 90–91, 319

sunflowers,

– Van Gogh's, evidence of the unendingness of art, 111–112

sunshine, 55, 70, 115, 180, 207

sushi,

– and Christian guilt, 307

sweets, 87–88, 149

–
see
also entries under butter-balls

System, The, 248

tan,

– the St. Tropez, 40

tea, 91, 116, 149, 153, 265

– and wine, 124–125

teacher,

– ‘career', euphemism for, 134

– English, 63–64

– leather-jacket wearing, readyrubbed rolling, 66

– Music, 135n.

teenagers, 261

teeth, 21

– Monica Hawkins's father's, true story about, 46n.

– Clarence Kemp's, true story about, 318n.

television,

– is a huge comfort, 28

– Morecambe and Wise on, 36

– programmes, inheriting other people's, 337

– stool, the, 122

– wide screen, 127

temptation,

– and the smell of barbecued meats, 83

– is Christmas in Tenerife, 194 texting, 31, 74

– a guide to Christian, 32n.

themes,

– disowning of, xi

– residual evidence of, Iff

time,

– and money 120–121, 251

– ‘Wounds All Heels', 312

‘Too much pudding will choke the dog', 169n.

tragic, the, 103, 314-315

travellers,

– and the pool of Narcissus, 139

– are tourists in other people's reality, 356

– change climates, not conditions, 264

True Christian Manliness,

– the Boy's Brigade and, 141

truth,

– is very probably non-existent, 162–163

Twain, Shania,

– video, as an aid to communicating effectively to the church's young people, 83

twilight,

– the coming of a universal, 15–18, 29, 54, 100–101, 107

ukuleles, 231

underwear 39, 269

unhappiness,

– irreducible, 29, 82, 154, 238, 255

upholstery,

– as a business, 118

– limits of, as a hobby, 236

urine, 5, 207, 306

Van Gogh, Vincent, 112

–
see also entries under
sunflowers

velocity,

– maintaining, importance of, 13, 18, 54

violence, 63, 105, 278

Virgin Birth, 52

– unorthodox view of, 53

Virgin Mary, 52

– business advice from the, 120

– hanging out the Christ child's clothes, 53

– plaque, 49

virtue,

– examples of, 49–50, 64, 195, 200

vision,

–
see
delusions

vomiting, 58, 103

–
see
also diarrhoea

vulgarity, 43, 63–64

waffles, 336–337

wages, 251

– the, of sin is death, 183

waiter,

– forgotten arts of the, 301

wallets, 14, 120

wallpaper, 128–131

walls,

– of Jericho, 297

war,

– First World, 311

– Second World, 173–174

wart-charming, 275

waste,

– the, even in a fortunate life, 29, 347

weather,

– about the, 1, 11, 31, 55, 70, 84, 102, 115, 132, 164, 180

– more about the, 195, 207, 219, 243, 256, 270, 296, 311, 332, 366

weddings, 89–90, 213, 258, 285–286

wife,

– is the key of the house, 267

wild oats,

– sowing of, 83, 204–205

wills, 59–60

wind, 19, 270–271

windscreen-wipers, 11–12

wine, 75, 88, 140

– and tea, 124–125

Winterson, Jeanette,

– having read, and yet still having to work in an in-store bakery, the unfairness of, 215–216

wolf in sheep's clothing, a, 141

wooing, 294–295

woolly,

– hat, for seamen, the knitting pattern for, 50

women,

– role of, in the New Testament, 305

– who have never had their colours done, 291–292

work, 92, 285

– donkey, 61–62, 128–129

– kills you, 115–116, 172, 251

– nice, 89, 288–289

world,

– end of the, 197

worship, 79, 186

writers, 156–157, 240

– arrogant, xi

– baseless hopes of, 154

– bullying, xi

– done up in fancy clothes, 110–111

– self-regarding, ix–xii

– wilful and selfish individuals, x

writing, 324

– the, is on the wall, 130–131

yearning, 29–30, 108

yes,

– an enormous, 366

zeal,

– without knowledge, 164–166, 309–310

Zeitgeist,

– author clearly au fait with the, 32, 91, 363–364

For previous acknowledgements see
The Truth about Babies
(Granta Books, 2002), pp. 335–7. These stand. In addition I would like to thank the following. (The previous terms and conditions apply: some of them are dead; most of them are strangers; the famous are not friends; none of them bears any responsibility.) I am particularly grateful to
The Enthusiast.

The Alabama 3, Janet and Allen Ahlberg, Mulk Raj Anand, Gerry Anderson, Aharon Appelfeld, Robert Alter, Diane Arbus, Louis Armstrong, Matthew Arnold, Roger Ascham, Clement Attlee, Erich Auerbach, Edward L. Ayers Jr, Ronnie Barker, Mel Bartholomew, Susan Wise Bauer, the Be Good Tanyas, Simon Russell Beale, Richard Beckinsale, Derek Bell, Hilaire Belloc, Arnold Bennett, Irving Berlin, Rodney Bewes, Lexy Bloom, Dirk Bogarde, Paul F. Boiler Jr, George Borrow, Louise Bourgeois, David Bowman, Myrtle Brown, Sir Thomas Browne, Kurt Brungardt, Gavin Bryars, Robert Burton, Aldo Buzzi, Café Brazilia, Abraham Cahan, Sandra Calder, Stephen Calder, Calexico, Betsy Cameron, David Cannadine, Frank Capra, Joe Carey, Anthony Caro, Harry Carpenter, Humphrey Carpenter, David Carradine, Jim Carrey, Alison Carson, Charlie Carson, Ciaran Carson, the Carter Family, Nick Cave, CBBC Scotland, Paul Celan, Anton Chekhov, G. K. Chesterton, Nick Clarke, George Clooney, J. M. Coetzee, Nik Cohn, Eddie Condon and his Band, Caroline Cooper, Mr and Mrs Cooper, Mrs Conville, Henry Cooper, Brendan Cormican, Ben Cove,
Miles Coverdale, Jim Crace, Mr and Mrs Cromie, David Dabydeen, Nick Davies, Sara Davies, Les Dawson, Peter Day, Richard Deacon, Daniel Defoe, Iris DeMent, Govindas Vishnoodas Desani, John Dewey, Hugo Duncan, Dave Eggers, Barbara Ehrenreich, Ralph Ellison, Lucy Ellmann, D. J. Enright,
The Enthusiast,
Bill Evans, Gil Evans, Lee Evans, John Evelyn, Robert Faggen, Frantz Fanon, Ronald Firbank, Carol Fitzsimmons, Richard Flanagan, John Florio, Northrop Frye, Janice Galloway, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, Dr Gaston, Malcom Gladwell, Philip Glass, Brian Glover, Nikolai Gogol, Ray Gosling, Antonio Gramsci, Mark Gray, Anna Greene, Davey Greene, Jane Greene, Jenny Greene, Sophie Greene, Jane Greenwood, Alec Guinness, the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Reg Gutteridge, Christine Hall, Terry Hall, Sophie Harrison, Alethea Hayter, Hannah Henderson, Werner Herzog, Christopher Hitchens, Peter Hitchens, Eric Hobsbawm, David Hockney, Courtney Hodell, Min Hogg, A. M. Homes, Rachel Hooper, Irving Howe, Susan Howe, Victor Hugo, T. E. Hulme, Julian Humphries, Tilly Hunt, Kenneth T. Jackson, Kevin Jackson, C. L. R. James, Sid James, Skip James, Tove Jansson, Richard Jefferies, Justine Jordan, John B. Keane, Alice Kessler-Harris, Khaled, the Sir James Kilfedder Memorial Trust, Roy Kinnear, Victor Klemperer, Ivan Klima, Eric Korn, Karl Kraus, Kronos Quartet, Andrey Kurkov, Jean de La Fontaine, John Lahr, Le Corbusier, Kim Lenaghan, Daniel Libeskind, the staff of the Linenhall Library, Belfast, Professor Longhair, Edna Longley, Michael Longley, Robin Lustig, George McAuley, Peter McDonald, Robert MacFarlane, Rev. F. W. McGee, Liam McIlvanney, Cherrie McIlwaine, McKeown's, James MacMillan, Dr McNutt, Ian McTear, Bernard Malamud, Neeraj Malhotra, Sir Thomas Malory, David Mamet, Greil Marcus, Marcel Mauss, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Jonathan Meades, Arthur Mee, Johnny Mercer, Billy Miskimmin, Trevor Miskimmin, Eugenio Montale, Eric Morecambe, William Morris, Grandma Moses, Frank Muir, Randy Newman, Michael Newton, Red Nichols,
Lorine Niedecker, Catherine O'Dolan, Charles Olson, Peter Owen, Camille Paglia, Tom Paulin, Nicholas Pearson, Itzhak Perlman, Harold Pinter, Sadie Plant, Cole Porter, Robert Potts, Francis Poulenc, Philip Pullman, Gordon Ramsey, the Redskins, Dan Rhodes, Charlie Rich, Jonathon Richman, Richard Rorty, Jonathan Rose, Leonard Rossiter, Julian Rothenstein, Josiah Royce, John Ruskin, Mark Russell, Edward W. Said, Will Salmon, Sampson's Cycles, Robert Sandall, Ted Sansom, Gerald Scarfe, András Schiff, Ben Schott, Kurt Schwitters, David Sedaris, Richard Sennett, Doctor Seuss, John Seymour, Shakira, Verity Sharp, Carol Shields, Sho'Nuff Records, Roger Scruton, Aura Sibisan, Mike Skinner, Christopher Smart, Smylie's Sectional Buildings, Sharon Smith, Stevie Smith, Muggsy Spanier, the Specials, Johnny Speight, Francis Spufford, Graham Swift, Jonathan Swift, Jeremy Taylor, Tesco.com (Knocknagoney), Edward Thomas, Irene Thomas, Rosie Thomas, Rosie Thornton, Peter Townend, Louise Tucker, William Tyndale, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Geza Vermes, Gina Vitelli, David Wardle, Steve Wasserman, Evelyn Waugh, Tim Westwood, David Wheatley, E. B. White, Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, David Widgery, Norman Wisdom, Ernie Wise, P. G. Wodehouse, Stevie Wonder, Usa Yardley, Rafi Zabor, Israel Zangwill, Slavoj zizek.