{"id":8663,"date":"2004-01-17T18:23:31","date_gmt":"2004-01-17T08:23:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=8663"},"modified":"2012-10-22T18:24:08","modified_gmt":"2012-10-22T08:24:08","slug":"the-ebbing-tide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=8663","title":{"rendered":"The Ebbing Tide"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"JUSTIFY\">I\u2019ve just finished reading F. Scott Fitzgerald\u2019s THE GREAT GATSBY so I\u2019m going around using expressions like \u2018jolly good old sport\u2019 and \u2018oh, won\u2019t we just have the gayest time!\u2019 in broad, pompous English accents. Even though the book is set on the East coast of the United States&#8230; From what I\u2019ve gathered, people have very definite opinions on this Fitzgerald guy. Either they think he\u2019s brilliant or they cannot be bothered with him. I, unfortunately for me as it is one of my exam texts, am one of the latter. I never go in for that style where the author\/narrator, seems to be completely disconnected and helpless from that which he is writing. Although not quite as depressing, in my opinion, as Albert Camus\u2019 THE OUTSIDER, I do wish that the narrator, Nick Carraway would be a little more pro-active. It does seem to take off very suddenly in the final pages with a discovered love affair, a scandalous car accident, murder and the surfacing of a hidden life. Too little, too late I say\u2026 Old sport.<\/p>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\">From literary to lamenting,<br \/>\nLast night I caught up with a childhood playmate who I haven\u2019t seen for quite some time. Since the days of doll playing and running under the sprinkler in summer time, she has become a manic depressant, dropping out of school after several suicide attempts. Now, I am told, she will be going back to school with me next year at Glenunga. I\u2019m not sure whether I am happy about this. She was my very first best friend, we\u2019ve known each other since we were three, meeting on the kindy jungle gym at home time, hiding so that we didn\u2019t have to leave. And from that time onwards we did everything together. We got babysat together by a young woman named Ana who we would incessantly tease and play tricks on because all she did was chew jucy fruit and talk on the phone. We made up songs that we thought would become top of the charts, songs that I still remember to this day. We went to our first day of Primary school together holding hands. We bullied the boys in to playing kiss chasey\u2026<\/p>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\">So the thing is, she\u2019s coming to Glenunga where I\u2019m the only person she knows and I really hope that she gets it all together but I\u2019m just a bit worried, it\u2019s an awfully big responsibility. I know that sounds like such a cop-out, maybe it is. It\u2019s just that all my friends in recent years have been so very stable. I want to do what I can but I\u2019m just not experienced in these matters. And also\u2026 she\u2019s a bit weird. For example, last night their whole family came over and we went for a walk and on this walk, I swear, she was blabbering on with our two younger brothers for a good 30 minutes about poo. I will tell you, it got very detailed at one point. Am I just too old and boring? Probably, I admit that I\u2019m a bit of a grandma sometimes but is it really necessary to talk about bodily functions? Everyone knows what happens, we all accept it but do we NEED to talk about it in such depth?<\/p>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\">Anyway, I\u2019m off. We\u2019re going to Clayton (small South Australian town, or a few dwellings thrown together in random place if I\u2019m going to get technical about it) where my uncle has a shack on the lakefront and we\u2019re going to go water skiing! Or knee boarding if I don\u2019t quite manage the skiing. And if that doesn\u2019t work I\u2019ll just sit in the tyre and get pulled along \u2013 that\u2019s what usually happens.<\/p>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\">Con muchisimo amor siempre,<br \/>\ntu amiga fiel,<br \/>\nErin<\/p>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\">\n<p align=\"RIGHT\">Posted by <a href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20041127032713\/http:\/\/www.spy-magazine.net\/\" target=\"new\">Erin<\/a> @ 07:48 AM AST [<a href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20041127032713\/http:\/\/www.spy-magazine.net\/blog\/archives\/00000560.html\">Link<\/a>] [<a href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20041127032713\/http:\/\/www.spy-magazine.net\/blog\/archives\/00000560.html#comments\">No Comments<\/a>]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve just finished reading F. Scott Fitzgerald\u2019s THE GREAT GATSBY so I\u2019m going around using expressions like \u2018jolly good old sport\u2019 and \u2018oh, won\u2019t we just have the gayest time!\u2019 in broad, pompous English accents. Even though the book is set on the East coast of the United States&#8230; From what I\u2019ve gathered, people have &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[448],"class_list":["post-8663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8663"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8665,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8663\/revisions\/8665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}