All of my lodgers have gone away! They are in France and Brazil for the holidays leaving me to listen to the Pixies at all hours and make everything sparkley and furry. Today I resurrected the BBC B computer that I used to play space invaders on when I was a kid. It all still works, with its big disks and tendency to fuse the telly. Must not let that happen this time. It's a holiday season of Arcadians, Chuckie Egg and Defender for me - 64K is all you need for a good time :)
And Debaser....
Hurrah! The dank cloud of English murk has lifted & today the sun had her hat on d:)
I'm reading a fantastic book: An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears. Marco de Cola, a Venetian experimental philosopher and pioneer of blood transfusion, is stuck in Oxford in the 1660s. Hanging out with Robert Lower, John Locke, Christopher Wren and Robert Boyle, he soon finds himself entangled in a dark tale of LustBetrayalSecretsMurder. Iain Pears has obligingly travelled back in time in order to produce this evocative story. My favourite bits are Cola's observations on the English, eg:
The English love making fun of foreigners, whose mere existence they regard as an enormous jest.
If the climate of England was difficult for a Venetian to become used to, then the food was impossible. [...] even the most delicate of ladies cheerfully downs a quart or two of strong beer during a meal, and infants learn insobriety in the cradle. The trouble for a foreigner like myself was that the beer was strong, and it was considered unmanly (and unwomanly) not to drink it.
Iain Pears himself looks a trifle scary and extremely clever. But perhaps its just the lighting. See picture and interview, http://www.thewag.net/pears.htm
Cambridge UK. Not my favourite place. Mediocre eating, grumpy people, schizoid non-city, academic plug-hole. But there are some consolations. So the first thing I'm going to do with my blog is keep track of them...
Market Square, second hand clothes stall (next to books on the Great St Mary's / Paperchase corner). The girl who runs this stall had a hangover today but she was making a point of saying hello to every single person visiting the stall. (This instantly classes her as a Person Against Cambridge Murk). She was mortified due to having drunk lots of wine and committed an embarrassing act last night. This relayed to her friend, the details whispered so I have no idea what the naughty deed was. She wisely prevented me from buying a green and purple skirt that made me look like a corpse. You need black skin to wear those colours girl. And made me try on a long skirt, orange purple 70s poly. £30 later and my wardrobe is 4 items funkier and I am 4 times happier. Probably going to get a cold now due to stripping off in the changing cubicle constructed from duvets slung around market scaffold poles. Red snotty nose just the thing to go with purple sequined tigery party dress :p
