Alexander Kerensky maintained a “no enemies to the left”
strategy, and it didn’t work out very well for him in the end.
Okay, let’s qualify that: it didn’t work out for him
politically. He spent the 1950s and 1960s teaching Russian history at Stanford
University, and he’s buried in the same cemetery as Sandy Denny from Fairport
Convention, also Hattie Jacques who was in Carry
On Nurse; there are worse fates.
Philosophy
student, waiting tables. “I’m observing – admiring – myself as a waiter. Bad
faith, Sartre says. Merde, admiring
my bad faith now. That’s terrible.” Loses concentration; spills drinks.
Other
Italian restaurant chains are available but none are such good value with
coupons – and one can’t help feeling that, while Pizza Hut’s a bit common,
Pizza Express is rather posh. No Pizza Hut’s also a jazz venue; that
tells you something. Coupon-wise, I always check Martin’s Money Savers before all
journeys to the leisure multiplex, having learned of this useful website during
my Diploma in Gestalt Counselling, when my own counsellor recommended it to me; she stepped slightly but harmlessly out of role to do so. All in, I guess I must've recouped the money laid
out on my own therapy during the course, not least through the Bank Charges Reclaim of 2005, that was definitely a moment.
I have to be
authentic with you about this (that’s what it’s all about, you see?): despite
having once met him in a dream, I’ve not actually read any Sartre myself ('yet': the all-important growth-mindset modifier). Okay,
I’ve started Being and Nothingness and the Roads to Freedom sequence two or
three times, but I’ve never got beyond about page twenty of either. Some other time, perhaps. I read Camus as a teenager – heck, who didn’t? – and Irvin
Yalom’s Existential Psychotherapy twice, more recently: it’s a tour de force, I’d
press it into your hands but I’d have to find it in one of the book boxes in
the garage first.
Met Sartre
in a dream? Yes, during a camping holiday at Three Cliffs Bay near Swansea, I
read Sarah Bakewell’s At the Existentialist Cafe: Freedom, Being and Apricot Cocktails. It gives vivid biographical sketches of Sartre, de Beauvoir and
their circle, plus forerunners and influencers such as Kierkegaard and
Heidegger, working outwards from group biography into an accessible exploration
of the philosophical terrain. A good read; I’d press *this* into your hands as well but I
read it on Kindle so not sure how that’d work. It must have been the late 1970s
in this dream, as Sartre was already an old man; journalists and hangers-on were present.
We’d taken some colouring for our daughter to do and Sarah was slightly bored but I
told her that it was an honour. With holidays, the best days out are enjoyable
for everyone; as this can’t be achieved every single time – at Disneyland,
maybe but not the Gower Peninsula, though I love it there - a spirit of
compromise is also needed. Jean-Paul Sartre, yes, but also Rhossili, the
Mumbles, the Emoji Movie and the Swansea LC which has the cool waterslides and
a four-storey interactive play area. I feel like I should read Merleau-Ponty at
some point too; he was apparently the most contentedly bourgeois of the Sartre/ de Beauvoir circle.
I met Angie
Bowie in a dream once as well. Where was David? Don’t know; forgot to ask.
Philosophy
student, waiting tables. “I’m observing – admiring – myself as a waiter. Bad
faith, Sartre says. Merde, admiring
my bad faith now. That’s terrible.” Loses concentration; spills drinks.
Met Sartre
in a dream? Yes, during a camping holiday at Three Cliffs Bay near Swansea, I
read Sarah Bakewell’s At the Existentialist Cafe: Freedom, Being and Apricot Cocktails. It gives vivid biographical sketches of Sartre, de Beauvoir and
their circle, plus forerunners and influencers such as Kierkegaard and
Heidegger, working outwards from group biography into an accessible exploration
of the philosophical terrain. A good read; I’d press *this* into your hands as well but I
read it on Kindle so not sure how that’d work. It must have been the late 1970s
in this dream, as Sartre was already an old man; journalists and hangers-on were present.
We’d taken some colouring for our daughter to do and Sarah was slightly bored but I
told her that it was an honour. With holidays, the best days out are enjoyable
for everyone; as this can’t be achieved every single time – at Disneyland,
maybe but not the Gower Peninsula, though I love it there - a spirit of
compromise is also needed. Jean-Paul Sartre, yes, but also Rhossili, the
Mumbles, the Emoji Movie and the Swansea LC which has the cool waterslides and
a four-storey interactive play area. I feel like I should read Merleau-Ponty at
some point too; he was apparently the most contentedly bourgeois of the Sartre/ de Beauvoir circle.
