Tuesday 15 December 2009

Hail - and Farewell

‘Tis the time for seasonal festive greetings to cheer the bleak midwinter. Warmest wishes to all regular and occasional visitors and posters for a Merry Christmas and a healthy, prosperous and – dare we say it? – more peaceful New Year.


Anticant won’t be blogging so much, if at all, in 2010. The Arena and the Burrow have had their little day, and when the salt loses its savour enough is enough. I’ve run out of steam. My thanks to all who have helped to make these sites fun, lively, and for the most part good humoured. That’s quite an achievement in these fratchy times.


And so to bed…….

28 comments:

Dungeekin said...

Another worthy Blogger leaves the sphere.

You'll be missed, and thanks for the articles.

D

Steelman said...

A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you as well, Anticant!

I've appreciated your blog postings, and always looked forward to seeing you pop up in the comments sections of some of my favorite philosophically themed online hangouts; a wise, age-tempered voice of reason amongst the upstart whipper snappers.

Jose said...

Happy everything for you, Anticant. If you go from the blogosphere a bastion will go. Somebody whose brain activity cannot stop saying the good things you always say.

Sad day indeed!

zola a social thing said...

I agree with all the comments above.
My dear Grumpy Aunt do you not know that many people look forward to your ramblings and even your grumps.

I tried to e-mail again. Nothing came back but a hotmail notice saying that anticant@hotmail.com does not compute.

I can keep trying.

By the way - so should you.

anticant said...

Dear Zola

It's anticant@hotmail.co.uk (NOT .com)

Do please try again, and I will write you a Christmas letter.

As for blogging, "fools give you reasons, wise men never try". Just now, I have run out of steam and energy for writing more posts.

But Achtung! The Burrow staff will be keeping a wary eye on Z-ink-spots and will doubtless put in a pennorth or two of their inimitable wisdom from time to time....

Happy Christmas to you, Mrs Zola and the sprogs.

Anonymous said...

I, for one, Sir Anticant, will continue to look out for your new articles and blogs in the hope that your unspoken motives for ceasing to delight us will either be overcome or ignored. The fact is, I rather enjoy reading your comments and even when I don't agree with them, I appreciate the integrity of thought and the skill of expression. I will wait and wait.... Meanwhile, have a wonderful festive season.

Regards - Phil

anticant said...

Thanks, Phil. Put it down to battle fatigue, advancing age, dwindling energy, and heaps of books clamouring to be read.

Bodwyn Wook said...

Listen, you devils, it DOES get stale from time-to-time. I, too, haven't been bastardising away about all these hopelessly extraverted policy issues, and there you have it. /Steam locomotives/ are the big deal, now, and yer all invited to have a look:

http://enginemanwook.wordpress.com/

Especially if anyone has something to put up about English steam railroading -- send yer posts & pictures to:

pombereales@hotmail.com

and I will stick them up!

B Wook

(aka 'Emmett R Smith')

Jose said...

Splendid photos, Emmet. Thanks for sharing.

Bodwyn Wook said...

Kind of you to say so, Jose. I do indeed enjoy being a kind of internet hobbit, digging through these elvish electronic archives...there is very nearly something like no end to it. It's especially nice at night with a wood fire burning in the black-iron kitchen range and when the coyotes come up into the yard from the rivver in the waning Moon. Both as to pictures and, now, OP books too! I've been down-loading to beat Hell onto removable storage all sorts of RR classic texts, by Ahrons, Bruce, R P Johnson, and everyone.

Needless to say, steam locomotives aren't the be-and-the-end-all (just close to it right now!), I came up with, of all things, a nice /candid/ picture of Pr Teilhard de Chardin, for my most recent Bodwyn Wook-posting....

And...HERE is what my ex-wife's youngest daughter is up to over there East of here, in Madison, WI:

http://dinahlangsjoen.wordpress.com/

Simon said...

Antony Grey
6 Oct 1927 - 30 Apr 2010

RIP Anticant, 82 was a good innings, farewell cousin.....

Jose said...

Oh! No! It can't be true! Anthony leaving us?. If he has, he's left a deep imprint in this world. Peace to him for ever.

zola a social thing said...

RIP peace my dear Anticant.

Now that you are dead I miss you more than ever.

Thank you for those memories.

Thank You.

Merkin said...

Hail, Anticant.
I can hardly believe it.

You brought so much to so many and your legacy will last forever.

Thank you.

Commiserations to The Beadle.

Bodwyn Wook said...

I will miss very much my on-line friendship with Aunty, in this otherwise most peculiar & un-traditional (!) cybernetic web-world.

His was, and in memory will be always I think, a most civilised and actually kindly presence, in the Internet.

Although he simply loathed half-wittedness especially when it was, precisely, deliberate as it is so often, alas!

I feel that we both found our hope both in the best of the old values (freed at last, and for good and all, of all cant!) /and/ the unfolding of the future.

Phil said...

I respected tremendously his honesty and decency. The world we live in bears many imprints left by him and many young people today lead happier and freer lives thanks to his passionate but sensible defense of gay and other down-trodden people's rights. Thanks, Antony.

Merkin said...

Well said, Phil.

The great and good will have an 'official' view of him which goes nowhere near to touching his real humanity.

Me?

My blog writings of three years ago show a bit of the man as he was.

Hopefully.

butwhatif said...

If I can rustle up a fraction of your bravery in my lifetime, it will have been one worth living.
Thankyou for your example; for your argument; and for your humour.
Peace.

zola a social thing said...

Some used to say that our Anticant and our grumpy Aunt and our Antony was a bit of an anarchist.

In a private chat he laughed at this and was even quite happy at this jibe.

Then we really had fun.

I called him a failed Fabian.

Before he had time to reply I then threw at him the label Christian Socialist in disguise.

It was then that he really moved.

Oh happy times.

Jose said...

I'd say Anthony was above everything a pragmatist. Just a human being.

Jose said...

I would like to pay my last posthumous homage to Anthony with a couple of excerpts from his autobiography "PERSONAL TAPESTRY", which are quite a synopsis of what his life was like:

quote:
"And indeed, it is high time to shut up, because this book has become far longer than was my original intention. It has, however, amused me to pull these threads of memory and of family history together when more strenous physical tasks have become impossible. In these last years I have had a rougher voyage than I had hoped for. But I still keep interested in life, and do not feel ready to depart yet awhile. When that time comes I hope that it will be as painless a passage as possible, and that I shall be supported by kind friends and helpers, I do not share the revulsion with death which strikes me as such a moral and emotional weakness of modern times. All of us are mortal, and to shy away from the unavoidable fact, and to indulge in grief-stricken histrionics, does no good whatsoever, and I am sad when loved ones die, and maybe a few people will be sad when it is my turn. But I should like them to remember Joyce Grenfell's lovely poem which I very often quote when writing letters to friends who have sufferedbereavement:

'If I should go before the rest of you
Break not a flower nor inscribe a stone,
Nor when I'm gone speak in a Sunday voice
But the usual selves that I have known.

Weep if you must,
Parting is hell,
But life goes on,
So sing as well.'

When I do go, I hope that I have been correct in concluding that there is no aftermath, and that I can look forward to an endless, dreamless sleep. But if perchance I am wrong, and I find myself brought before a deity or one of his acolytes to give a satisfactory account of myself, I shall look him, her or it reproachfully in the eye and ask 'Oh, God, how COULD you?'"

Unquote.

R.I.P., Anthony.

bwi said...

Thanks, Jose.

I'm crying. Honest, guv.

Fuck!

What's this internet banter all about, that I'm crying over someone I never met in the flesh?

Anticant: theorise that!

(That's if you were wrong. And, of course, once your done with telling God off.)

Bodwyn Wook said...

He was a good friend to me, though we never met....

Aaron Murin-Heath said...

Love and respect, dear friend. x

Anonymous said...

Not forgotten Antony

http://gatwickcity.phpbb3now.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2250&p=22933#p22933

Anonymous said...

Missed by many!

Jose said...

He's still there...

pela68 said...

Thank you- thank you Anthony for the friend you' ve been.
Thank you for the signed copy of "Personal Tapetries" that you sent me during a difficult period of my life.

I read it and passed it on to my next door gay friends.

I will miss our conversations- deeply.