everywhere you look, you can write a book

July 12th, I typed here, and made the title of the post "rum lightning."

It's an old-fashioned, and British way to use the word "rum" -- dictionary has "rum 1" - intoxicating liquor, and "rum 2" ...

odd; peculiar

'it's a rum business, certainly'
'they were a rum bunch'
'the whole thing's been distinctly rum from the word go...'

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     The only source in which I had seen "rum" used this way was in The Diana Chronicles, by Tina Brown.  In Chapter 15 Brown wrote about Charles and Diana's phones being bugged and recordings being provided to tabloid newspapers.

    ------------------- (excerpt:  In his memoir Dogs and Lampposts, Richard Stott, editor of the Daily Mirror, where the tape eventually was published, says it was made by a "Scouser" -- a dweller in Merseyside -- "who had had a few pints of lager and a curry and decided he would test out his latest gadget, an electronic homing device that picks up cellnet signals."  

The Prince was very close to a cellular transmitting station just outside the country home in Cheshire where he was staying, and his voice was immediately recognizable.


     "This bloke was reading a speech," said the lager-and-curry guy, "and I didn't pay too much attention until I realized it sounded very like Prince Charles.  That's when I decided to record it and straight away he started out with all this stuff.  I couldn't believe it.") -------------------------------- /end, excerpt//

     At widely-scattered spots in this book, the author inserts herself suddenly and unexpectedly.  

The first time I read it (oh no, scratch that, I only read it once -- that's my story and I'm sticking to it, after reading The Diana Chronicles once, have been re-reading the Bible and the U.S. Constitution [in that order] ever since...really...)


     The first time Tina Brown injected something about herself in the book, beginning a sentence with "I" -- I, myself, was startled and even a little frightened.  Was like -- Who in the hell is "I"?  This is a biography...there's no "I"...  It was very jarring.


     But she does that.  My guess is, when Somebody from the publishing world such as Ms. Brown writes, no one dares edit her.  But everyone needs a good editor, I think.

     So a chapter telling of the phone-tappings in headache-inducing detail begins one paragraph with this sentence:  "I am not all that impressed with any of the official denials in this rum business."

---------------------------- That was the first time I heard "rum" used that way.  I liked it, and so wanted to use it to describe the strange lightning we get now.

Tina Brown, in Vanity Fair office in the Eighties

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