So, he came up to me and started reciting a poem.
What kind of poem was it? One he’d written himself? Or one he passed off as one he’s written?
I didn’t recognise it, but he didn’t specifically say that it was one he’d written. It sounded like an old-fashioned poem, I guess it wasn’t one he’d written himself. You seem surprised by this.
This never happened to me. But then again I’m male, so such things are rare. The kind of person who’d walk up to a stranger on the street and recite poetry at them is a very particular kind of man. It is always a man, of course. And the kind of woman who he’d walk up to is a very particular kind of woman.
Are you saying I’m a “particular” kind of woman?
Erm… yes, I guess I am. I mean it as a compliment, by the way. Being such a particular kind of woman has its advantages, even if you do have to deal with strangers coming up to you reciting poetry.
It’s happened more than once.
Really? I am becoming more impressed. Oh by the way…
Yes?
If anyone comes up to you and starts off with that Shakespeare sonnet, you know the one about being compared to a summer’s day.
I know that one. That would be bit obvious to go for that one.
Yes, it has turned into a bit of a cliche. Someone probably will try at some point, someone with very little imagination. If they do what you must do is shout very clearly in their face “That was written for a boy! A fair youth in fact!” and then push them in the gutter and walk off.
Sound advice that.
Via Harry Hutton, I have learnt that economist Paul Krugman has used his blog to post a picture of his cat.
There will be those who claim blogs are just “compendiums of banality”* who will use this as a weapon against those of us who chose to maintain a blog.
And then there will be those who will decry the fact that Mr Krugman has neglected to put a caption on the picture of his cat.
Either way, I feel that as a petless blogger I have somehow failed.
Therefore, via Popbitch is a grumpy looking newborn otter pup.
Maybe with this display, the Nobel Prize might one day be mine.
* That was in reference to Twitter, but you get the point.
I could never be a physicist. I’m just not very practically minded.
I suppose that is one of the attractions of blogging: without the tedium of so-called “real-life” I can get on with the business of self-mythologising. As it should be.
About the most practical thing that I have ever done in my entire life is rustle up a passable gazpacho soup and I haven’t done that for ages.
Abstract thought is far more my bag.
So if I’m talking to you and you see my eyes glaze over and you think I’m somewhere else, I’m not trying to work out the best way of arranging the clothes in my wardrobe. I’m probably trying to remember something completely pointless, like the equation of the volume of a sphere.
I blame the author of Discipline and Punish.
As you probably know, it’s rather hot here at the moment.
This has resulted in me having near-Tiny Tim numbers of showers and spending the nights attempting sleep in sweltering conditions.
Last night, I was very tired and so despite the heat managed to drop off to sleep fairly early. However I was woken at around 1am by some shouting in the street.
As usual, I couldn’t quite make out what was going on lying in bed, so I got up and moved to the bathroom, where I’d be able to here what was going on better. In addition, it gave me an opportunity to re-moisten my towel*.
The people shouting in the street appeared to be a man and a woman and the first thing I heard on moving to the bathroom was something about “breaking up”.
Ooh hello, said the prurient, curtain-twitching part of my brain, and I strained to listen more. It could have been better, one of them could have done something really awful at the party I assumed they were at, which had resulted in their being dumped on the spot, but I think the dumping had already taken place and one party was not willing to accept this. From the tone, I’d guess it was him.
Annoyingly though, despite the fact that they were annoying enough to think that shouting in the street was any way acceptable, they weren’t doing it loud enough for me to make out much.
Firstly, I could only hear what she was saying. I inferred we was coming up with a series of ever more ridiculous reasonings, which she was quickly dismissing. He certainly wasn’t doing my patented annoy-the-person-you’re-arguing-so-much-with-your-passive/aggressive-mumbling-they-storm-off-in-disgust argument “technique” more’s the pity.
I assume that alcohol must have had its part to play in the argument although there wasn’t any one involved. This third person would have to be very, very drunk indeed and saying things like “come on people, we were having a great time, leave it out…”
I was tempted to shout something out of the window, telling them to shut the fuck up as people were trying to sleep, but decided not to as I thought this would wake more people up, and I was a bit scared they’d use the opportunity to make up with each other, break into my flat and beat me to a bloody pulp.
Which would be very annoying.
To my annoyance, despite feeling more awake that I thought possible I fell back asleep and woke up a tangled sweaty mess some hours later.
The argument had finished. Thankfully.
If only it had been more like this:
* A wet towel draped across the ankles has a wonderful cooling effect. Trust me.
So Stephen Wells AKA Swells AKA Susan Williams AKA Seething Wells AKA the-man-with-loads-of-hyphens-and-PLENTY-OF-SHOUTING-off-of-the-NME-back-when-I-was-a-teenager-and-it-was-good has died.
Other people have done tributes, so I am going to post this instead, a music video he was involved with.
And bloody hell, me old mucker Sky Saxon has died too. This is a depressing day.
Sloane Crosley, who resembles nothing more than a cross between David Sedaris and Carrie Bradshaw if the reviews are to be believed, has the following to say on her childhood blankey:
Our Siamese cat, who we loved so much he survived on mass affection and insulin injections until I was twenty-five, was called Skyler. Skyler used to curl up in my pink blankey, which I still have. When I started middle school, my mother began encouraging me to get rid of it. What are you going to do, take that thing to college? When I started college, she said, What are you going to do, have it in bed with you and your husband one day?
Except from Christmas in July.
Here’s mine. It’s not pink, and I’d never call it a blankey. I’m not a lolcat.
I don’t spend every waking moment reading books of essays, by the way.
This is without a doubt my favourite sentence I have read this month:-
There is something deeply surreal about standing behind a female performer in hot-pink peau de soie, a woman whose clitoris and perineum you have priorly seen, and watching her try to get a microwaved egg roll onto her plate with a cocktail fork.
(excerpt from Big Red Son)
Listen to this, it’s fantastic.
In almost every place I ever worked at, there has been a least one couple working there too. Frankly, I find the whole thing a little bit odd.
In the vast majority of cases, they work in different departments and often do completely different jobs, so it isn’t like they interact with each other much in a work fashion. They come in work at the same, have lunch together, and leave together, but that’s about it.
There are situations where they DO work closely together though, and I wonder how they cope.
On one occasion I worked alongside a married couple who shared one job, so it was very rare they’d both be in on the same day. What I found odd about that was that you ended up treating them as one person, they shared work and finished off things the other one had been working on a such like. Assuming that both members of the couple like doing the same thing, I see this as an acceptable solution.
But how does this situation start in the first place? They must have met working there, as the idea of them finding a job together is just too freaky for words. Has this ever happened?
I’d ask someone, but they might think I’m being rude. Or nosey. Or worringly interested in every aspect of their private life.
I don’t want that.
There are two things I notice in a public toilet:
- The quality of the graffiti.
- The quality of the soap.
There’s nothing like toilet graffiti, a mix of deranged racism, football rivalry and sexual come-ons. Sometimes though, unintentional comedy shines through.
I will always remember the person who wrote all about the cocks he liked to suck and such like and then gave a landline number you could contact him on if you’d like to discuss this further.
Now why would you do that? I can imagine an awkward conversation ensuing. At least with a mobile phone you are pretty much guaranteed to speak to the person whose phone it is.
In addition, I also recall someone setting a date for a meeting a few months in advance only to check on a calender (yes, yes, I know) and realise that it was LAST year. More up-to-date stuff needed please. Or better cleaning and tidying up.
Soap is another matter. The only place you get decent soap is in luxury hotels and it is a rare occasion indeed that I get to use those. It is a rare treat…
Most men’s hand-washing habits (I can’t speak for women, not being in the habit of visiting their public toilets and checking out their habits) seem to consist of the following: run hand under tap for a few seconds then stand for what feels like hours under the hand dryer.
Don’t start me on hand dryers. Hand dryers, which is the single worst way of drying your hands, bring back paper towels for crying out loud, they can be recycled after all and you don’t end up with the drying pointlessly blowing nothing for thirty seconds after you’ve given up and walk out, drying your hands on your trousers.
I used to be like this, now I’m better. I now wash my hands properly, but of course as long as hand dryers are present in the toilet of my choice, I still dry my hands on my trousers of course.
It’s either that or carry a whole load of paper towels on my person.
That isn’t going to happen.
