Mon 7th February 2011

We went out to see Lancaster University's Big Band who were playing a small club attached to a local pub. I was pleased to see how Frances struck up conversations with strangers. I like not having to worry about people when you take them out. My friend Veronica, who was quite drunk, embraced me and kissed me unexpectedly warmly, perhaps feeling insulated from any unwanted advances by the fact that I was with someone else.

Several young people were texting throughout it, faces buried in phones. The woman sitting next to me was checking hers every few seconds. After the hundredth flash of blue light from her screen during the music I was ready to snatch it out of her hand and smash the bloody thing to pieces.

Say three drinks during an evening. That's nine quid to go out texting. I don't understand it.

2 comments

Comment from: heybartender [Visitor]

Oh gods don’t get me started about the texting. Over here everybody does it while driving- DRIVING! I can’t tell you how often I come up on somebody’s left on the interstate and see that they are typing away at 65 miles per hour, only half an eye on the road. Makes me want to scream. And what about people who sit across a table from each other at a restaurant and never make eye contact because they’re too busy worrying about the friends that aren’t there?
Whoops, sorry. Touched a nerve, I guess.

Tue 8th February 2011 @ 23:51

Comment from: looby [Visitor]

I can’t stand it, it’s so rude. It’s as if people have given up the idea of taking the evening as it might be, good or bad, but continually want to check if there’s a better position to be had somewhere else.

Thu 10th February 2011 @ 23:06

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looby, n.; pl. loobies. A lout; an awkward, stupid, clownish person

M / 59 / 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

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The Mysterious World of Young People, part 398

2 comments

looby, n.; pl. loobies. A lout; an awkward, stupid, clownish person

Rummage in my drawers

The Comfort of Strangers

"Just sit still and listen" - woman to teenage girl at Elliott Carter weekend, London 2006

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