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Read a great news clip this morning:
A newspaper advertisement seeking a resident hermit for the stately Shugborough Home in Staffordshire, central England, has prompted a flood of replies from men eager to ditch stressed-out modern life for a spot of peaceful cave-dwelling. "There have been a few hermits in Britain since their heyday but they've usually just been recluses and loners. This is the first time the job of a resident hermit has been advertised in more than 250 years," organizer Corinne Caddy told the Daily Express.
The successful applicant will be expected to live in a cave on the grounds of the estate and abandon human contact, except for scaring visitors -- and will probably have to give up shaving and bathing as well.
Artist Anna Douglas, who came up with the idea to highlight National Heritage Week, told the paper that it had been very fashionable in the 18th century to have a hermit living in a remote corner of an estate. Hermits were always men and were paid handsomely in return for being tied to a five-year contract.
That is SO COOL! I love that it was once "fashionable" to have a hermit. I wonder if I should get one for the warehouse?
Speaking of which, I fired everyone off the job yesterday. I rehired them a few minutes later but Oscar and Richard were being so incredibly immature that I couldn't stand it anymore. They were fighting over one of them walking away during a meeting and one of them taking a phone call during a meeting, and I had to go over there and referee. *sheesh*
[Grow up!]
OK, enough about that. Just when I thought we had hit the August doldrums, we have a new story out of [yes, you guessed it] SCOTLAND! Home of poet William Topaz McGonagall, UFO sightings and the Chicken Hypnotist. And now: Gay Samurai Revue.
[Do not adjust your sets.]
This is the Fringe Festival, held every August in Edinburgh. Last year they had a troupe of female impersonators from Bangkok - this year it is gay samurais.
The audience certainly sees plenty of the dancers. For the glittering costumes soon fall to the floor and they are down to their skimpy thongs. They in turn are quickly discarded and, as their publicity blurb says, then comes a show "highly recommended for women and men who relish high camp, great fun and are not offended by total nudity."
And then the J-Boys show ends on what must rank as one of the most surreal sights at the Edinburgh Fringe -- the scantily-clad troupe launch into their last flamboyant dance routine to the strains of Latino heart-throb Ricky Martin singing "She Bangs, She Bangs."
[That hermit job is sounding better and better.]
I've posted some new pictures of THE HOUSE from the end of July.
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Quote du jour:
"The world was sad, the garden was a wild,
And man, the hermit sigh'd--till woman smiled."
-- Thomas Campbell (1777 - 1844) Scottish poet
[Note how I got both the Hermit and Scottish poet topics in the same quote. If only Thomas Campbell was also a Gay Samurai.]
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