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There may be trouble ahead
At the next table, two bus spotters are having a couple of pints. Taking advantage of their seat next to the curving window, they are watching the buses coming into the bus station.
I wonder if that's a 56?
--We'll find out in a bit.
It's going round the corner.
--Yes it is.
How can you tell?
--The emergency window curves up like that round the edge.
Why does it do that?
--I don't know.
Down the pub the other day I saw a couple I know walk in. The man has been generous and good company to me over the years. He's also got a gorgeous wife.
Keeley looked very tired (and quite sexy with it, in her pale brown cord skirt cut on the bias), chasing after their two-year-old daughter. The last time we three met was about eighteen months ago when I was seeing Frances, and that night I went back to hers. While we were having sex in possibly my favourite position, her sitting on me facing me, I told her about seeing Keeley. Frances was quite encouraging, and with my cock buried inside her I started describing in slow detail the pleasure of seeing Keeley, her lovely tits and the stretchy Lycra scoop neck she was wearing. "There's not many women you could do this with" I thought, even at the time.
Such thoughts shimmered across my mind as I talked to them both.
I was the lucky recipient of a hot ticket last weekend - to the tenth anniversary bash of Lancaster Brewery, held in their swish visitor centre. Unlimited ale, wine and cider, and abundant, delicious food (hot fluffy cheese and onion buns, mini steak pies, little cones of tiny finger pieces of fish and chips, and a huge tower of profiteroles).
One of my old customers from the wholesale flower place was there, a woman I detained with endless flirting queries and tilty-headed helpfulness. During a disastrous few weeks working at a bank (they never found that £500 and I certainly didn't steal it), she was standing in the queue behind a rather dashing man who was paying in some money. "Oops," said my fellow teller. "If I had pressed this button I'd have credited your account with £40,000."
Straight away, she leant over his shoulder coquettishly and said 'What are you doing tonight?" ("I'm not doing anything," I felt like weakly piping up.)
Outside the premises there's a large illuminated sign: "Lancaster. The Brewery". Swelled with ale and pleasure, I stopped for a minute and felt proud of my city, glad that people like the brewery's owner are here and helping Lancaster regain some of its lustre, without, this time round, it depending on the slave trade (much of the old money round here is of ignoble provenance).

Tomorrow it's Kitty's birthday so we'll be cracking open the champagne with her cousin ("Ooh dear Kitty, that's my third [glass of wine]!"), but with a need not to jeopardise my mens sana in corpore sano as I'm entertaining Mary-Ann here the day after.
I've found the card for her for 14th. In case you can't see, on the back of the card it says "Multipack card. Not to be sold separately."
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| Me | Harry Redknapp |
The episodic nature of this post is due to the fact that all events this week have had to compete with a frequently overbearing preoccupation. I'm about to skid into a patch of black ice ahead, in that I might have misinterpreted some technical details of the law. A bit like the recent case involving a leading English football manager; with, I hope, the same result. But on a "least said, soonest mended" basis, we'll just carry on for the time being and hope it sounds convincing enough on the day
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looby, n.; pl. loobies. A lout; an awkward, stupid, clownish person
M / 61 / Bristol, "the most beautiful, interesting and distinguished city in England" -- John Betjeman [1961, source eludes me].
"Looby is a left-wing intellectual who is obsessed with a) women's clothes and b) tits." -- Joy of Bex.
WLTM literate woman, 40-65. Must have nice tits, a PhD, and an mdma factory in the shed, although the first on its own will do in the short term.
There are plenty of bastards who drink moderately. Of course, I don't consider them to be people. They are not our comrades.
Sergei Korovin, quoted in Pavel Krusanov, The Blue Book of the Alcoholic
I am here to change my life. I am here to force myself to change my life.
Chinese man I met during Freshers Week at Lancaster University, 2008
The more democratised art becomes, the more we recognise in it our own mediocrity.
James Meek
Tell me, why is it that even when we are enjoying music, for instance, or a beautiful evening, or a conversation in agreeable company, it all seems no more than a hint of some infinite felicity existing apart somewhere, rather than actual happiness – such, I mean, as we ourselves can really possess?
Turgenev, Fathers and Sons
I hate the iPod; I hate the idea that music is such a personal thing that you can just stick some earplugs in your ears and have an experience with music. Music is a social phenomenon.
Jeremy Wagner
La vie poetique has its pleasures, and readings--ideally a long way from home--are one of them. I can pretend to be George Szirtes.
George Szirtes
Using words well is a social virtue. Use 'fortuitous' once more to
mean 'fortunate' and you move an English word another step towards
the dustbin. If your mistake took hold, no-one who valued clarity
would be able to use the word again.
John Whale
One good thing about being a Marxist is that you don't have to pretend to like work.
Terry Eagleton, What Is A Novel?, Lancaster University, 1 Feb 2010
The working man is a fucking loser.
Mick, The Golden Lion, Lancaster, 21 Mar 2011
Rummage in my drawers
The Comfort of Strangers
23.1.16: Big clearout of the defunct and dormant and dull
16.1.19: Further pruning
If your comment box looks like this, I'm afraid I sometimes can't be bothered with all that palarver just to leave a comment.
63 mago
Another Angry Voice
the asshat lounge
Clutter From The Gutter
Crinklybee Defunct
Exile on Pain Street (inactive)
Fat Man On A Keyboard
gairnet provides: press of blll
George Szirtes ditto
Infomaniac [NSFW]
Laudator Temporis Acti
Leeds's Singing Organ-Grinder
On The Rocks (inactive)
The Most Difficult Thing Ever (inactive)
Quillette
Strange Flowers
Wonky Words
"Just sit still and listen" - woman to teenage girl at Elliott Carter weekend, London 2006
5:4Bristol New Music
Desiring Progress Collection of links only
NewMusicBox
Purposeful Listening (né The Rambler)
Resonance FM
Sequenza 21
Sound and Music
Talking Musicology defunct, but retained


