‘Listuary’ Part Three

List PROMPTS 18-21

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18.  Characters from books, traditional tales, films, songs. What makes you remember them? How have they influenced you?

19. Teachers who have influenced me. Write about one of them. List things they have had in common. List how you have been influenced.

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20.  J’aime, je n’aime pas Rolande Barthes: a list of likes; a list of dislikes, from his autobiography Roland Barthes.

• I like: salad, cinnamon, cheese pimento, marzipan, the smell of new-cut hay (why doesn’t someone with a “nose” make such a perfume), roses, peonies, lavender, champagne, loosely held political convictions, Glen Gould, too-cold beer, flat pillows, toast Havana cigars, Handel, slow walks, pears, white peaches, cherries, colours, watches, all kinds of writing pens, desserts, unrefined salt, realistic novels, the piano, coffee, Pollock, Twombly, all romantic music, Sartre, Brecht, Verne, Fourier, Eisenstein, trains, Medoc wine, having change, Bouvard et Pecuchet, walking in sandals on the lanes of southwest France, the bend of the Adour seen from Dr L’s house, the Marx Brothers, the mountains at seven in the morning leaving Salamanca etc.

• I don’t like white Pomeranians, women in slacks, geraniums, strawberries, the harpsichord, Miro, tautologies, animated cartoons, Arthur Rubinstein, villas, the afternoon, Satie, Bartok, Vivaldi, telephoning, children’s choruses, Chopin’s concertos, Burgundian branles and Renaissance dances, the organ, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, his trumpets and kettledrums, the politico-sexual, scenes, initiatives, fidelity, spontaneity,, evenings with people I don’t know, etc.

from Shaun Usher (2014) Lists of Note London: Canongate & Unbound

Over to you:  I like; I don’t like.

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21. Outfit for an Excursion. This is part of Henry David Thoreau’s list of equipment for a trip he made to Maine with one companion and a Native American guide. Here are two categories from his rather extensive list:

• Wear – a check shirt, stout old shoes, thick socks, a neck ribbon, thick waistcoat, thick pants, old Kossuth hat, a linen sack.

• Carry -in an India-rubber knapsack, with large flap, two shirts (check), one pair thick socks, one pair drawers, one flannel shirt, two pocket handkerchiefs, a light India-rubber coat or a thick woollen one, two bosoms and collars to go and come with, one napkin, pins, needles, thread, one blanket, best gray, seven feet long.

  Then there are provisions, camping equipment, a ‘best pocket map, and perhaps description of the route,’ a plant book and red blotting paper, paper and stamps, a spy glass. There were matches and old newspapers, tin plates and dippers,  and so on.

from Shaun Usher (2014) Lists of Note London: Canongate & Unbound

What about your expeditions? What do you take with you? What is in your school bag? What’s essential for shopping, or hiking, or a trip to the seaside?