Fries with that?
I finally had to venture out of the house, to seek out treasury tags with which to aid my 'tidying'. I try to avoid walking into the town. Partly because it means I end up in the town, having passed through other bits of the town. Partly because it's always so damn hot. Especially the last couple of hundred metres up our street, where there is no shade and it seems always to be fiercely sunny, which also conspires to make the hill seem steeper than it is.
Anyhoo, I spent a fruitless ten minutes in our slightly inadequate branch of WHS (not that it's one of my favourite stores even in its better versions. I now realise how sub-optimal it was for that to be the only remotely decent shop around when I was growing up. Perhaps those who sneer at the early additions to my [classical] music collection should consider that. But then again they won't be reading this)... then trekked back up the street a bit to the independent stationer that I should have visited in the first place. Here, within about 90 seconds I'd made my purchase, having chosen from the range of treasury tags that the proprietress had found and demonstrated for me, and had even had time for smalltalk about the weather. Much more satisfactory.
In closing, I recall a column by Clemency Burton-Hill in which she exhorted Radio 3 listeners and suchlike to retaliate against those, erm, 'characters' who think we'd all like to share in their dance music / gangsta rap, by turning up their car stereos - sometimes - too. A fine idea, though bear in mind that if it's R3 you're listening to you're going to have to turn it up a long way even for you to hear it, not to mention anyone else.
(couldn't find the column in question, but here's another of hers that seemed apposite)
PS the suggestion made by at least one Emma that I try out writing for a living is flattering, and harks back to some of my early ambitions (back when I had them... journalist, lorry driver, postman... incidentally there's an advert in today's paper for postmen... well that's not what they called them, but I didn't pay attention to the jargon). It's not unheard of for stuff that starts in blogs to end up in print either. But we can't all be Cleolinda and it's not with ambition in mind that I'm writing this. I just like to be able to tell my friends what I'm doing and thinking; something I probably couldn't manage in real life for logistical and confidence reasons, not to mention they probably wouldn't listen, hehe. On that point, what with everyone being away from university now I can't actually tell from my statcounter who my current readers are, which is a little unsettling.
PPS Apropos my rant about big businesses yesterday, it occurred to me that we spend years and years trying to develop ourselves as people, yet in the end we don't get to be people. We're only wanted as corporate drones, living under the yoke of salaried enslavement, perhaps sometimes allowed to go 'home' to our [sub]urban box to gaze blankly at the TV, get tastelessly drunk, or perhaps sleep. Sorry if I sound like a Socialist Worker; far from it, in fact; it's just if these fears are veridical I don't really fancy the life. Of course, not knowing anyone with a 'career' means I have no easy way of finding out...
PPPS The result of all that heat is that whenever I walk to the house I have to spend some time sitting in a darkened room drinking water. This may be aggravated by the fact that the minimum skin-coverage I tolerate for myself is quite high. I wouldn't consider wearing shorts, for a start. So I'm in the unhappy position that I wear too many clothes to feel cool, but too few to look cool, which seems to require a lot of layers and accessories and suchlike...
Anyhoo, I spent a fruitless ten minutes in our slightly inadequate branch of WHS (not that it's one of my favourite stores even in its better versions. I now realise how sub-optimal it was for that to be the only remotely decent shop around when I was growing up. Perhaps those who sneer at the early additions to my [classical] music collection should consider that. But then again they won't be reading this)... then trekked back up the street a bit to the independent stationer that I should have visited in the first place. Here, within about 90 seconds I'd made my purchase, having chosen from the range of treasury tags that the proprietress had found and demonstrated for me, and had even had time for smalltalk about the weather. Much more satisfactory.
In closing, I recall a column by Clemency Burton-Hill in which she exhorted Radio 3 listeners and suchlike to retaliate against those, erm, 'characters' who think we'd all like to share in their dance music / gangsta rap, by turning up their car stereos - sometimes - too. A fine idea, though bear in mind that if it's R3 you're listening to you're going to have to turn it up a long way even for you to hear it, not to mention anyone else.
(couldn't find the column in question, but here's another of hers that seemed apposite)
PS the suggestion made by at least one Emma that I try out writing for a living is flattering, and harks back to some of my early ambitions (back when I had them... journalist, lorry driver, postman... incidentally there's an advert in today's paper for postmen... well that's not what they called them, but I didn't pay attention to the jargon). It's not unheard of for stuff that starts in blogs to end up in print either. But we can't all be Cleolinda and it's not with ambition in mind that I'm writing this. I just like to be able to tell my friends what I'm doing and thinking; something I probably couldn't manage in real life for logistical and confidence reasons, not to mention they probably wouldn't listen, hehe. On that point, what with everyone being away from university now I can't actually tell from my statcounter who my current readers are, which is a little unsettling.
PPS Apropos my rant about big businesses yesterday, it occurred to me that we spend years and years trying to develop ourselves as people, yet in the end we don't get to be people. We're only wanted as corporate drones, living under the yoke of salaried enslavement, perhaps sometimes allowed to go 'home' to our [sub]urban box to gaze blankly at the TV, get tastelessly drunk, or perhaps sleep. Sorry if I sound like a Socialist Worker; far from it, in fact; it's just if these fears are veridical I don't really fancy the life. Of course, not knowing anyone with a 'career' means I have no easy way of finding out...
PPPS The result of all that heat is that whenever I walk to the house I have to spend some time sitting in a darkened room drinking water. This may be aggravated by the fact that the minimum skin-coverage I tolerate for myself is quite high. I wouldn't consider wearing shorts, for a start. So I'm in the unhappy position that I wear too many clothes to feel cool, but too few to look cool, which seems to require a lot of layers and accessories and suchlike...
posted by Z31 at 4:03 pm
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