Sat 19th May 2012

Did my second supervised session on reception at Really Late the other day. I like it and I hope my CRB result doesn't disbar me. There's a Confidentiality Agreement, even the boundaries of which I am leaving unapproached, but I admired the goodwill of couples making an effort, and felt sympathetic towards their awkwardness as I tried to make small talk about the weather and watered the geranium with a show of insouciance.

"You'll get a lot of tears here looby; you've got to be ready for that," said my supervisor. She told me how to deal with seeing clients in the supermarket or post office afterwards, how to show them out of a misleadingly marked door lest they be seen by someone leaving the offices of Really Late, how never to say the organisation's name when answering the phone.

Got the girls off to bed and made it to the offy with minutes to go. Looking for some out of date Hobgoblin which he sells off cheap, I notice a man from my bookgroup buying a bottle of wine and some Polish lager. I ask the shopkeeper "Is it all downstairs?" "Yes, sorry, there's only me here at the moment. I can't get it." "No bother, that's alright."

"Are you after something special?" says Bookman. "Yes, he's got some Lithuanian white cider at 99p a gallon. Some say it's got antifreeze in it but I think that's a slur on the Lithuanian people."

At that moment I am arrested by the appearance in the shop of a beautiful late teenage girl with stylised plastic flowers in her long brown hair and a colourful Hawaiian skirt made out of strips of plastic. "Is this your daughter?" I ask Bookman. "No," she says. "I'm his daughter's best friend. Sorry to appear in such an outfit." Look at me.

"Oh no," I say. "Not at all. You're introducing a welcome element of Hawaiian sunshine into the usual Lancaster gloom."

"Buying drink then," she continues. A comment, or a question? "Yes, well," I say, "this is where all the respectable middle class dads get caught out -- ten to ten in the offy." "What's your name, middle class dad?" "Cliff." She guns her index fingers towards me. "Busted."

Modern girls, aren't they lovely?

8 comments

Comment from: [Member]

Lolita in plastic. Danger, danger, dangerdangerdangerdanger!

Sat 19th May 2012 @ 13:14

Comment from: [Member]

She’ll be OK… she was with another couple of Hawaiian Sirens and whatever the male equivalent is, and I doubt whether she’d put up with any crap.

Did occur to me though - where do you keep your money, keys and phone in a Hawaiian skirt and a loose top?

Sat 19th May 2012 @ 15:29

Comment from: twisted scottish bastard [Visitor]

Sudden aweful thought.
Sitting at the Relay Late office and your Mum & Dad walk in.

The horror.

Lithuanian White Cider?
What’s wrong with good old Diamond White?

DId you know that down here in sunny (but rather chilly at the moment) NZ, it is legal to make distilled spirits for your own personal consumption?

Quite a few blokes make some really terrible beer than distil it into their own whisky.

My order for a still is in process.

Daisyfae is so right.Lolita Danger, danger, dangerdangerdangerdanger!

Such ways end in disaster, death or being put on the sex offender’s list. Again.

Though I bet she’s cute.

Sat 19th May 2012 @ 20:55

Comment from: [Member]

I’m a bit confused here – I hope I’ve never given the impression that I would have any interest in the 18-y-o best friend of my friend’s daughter. “30-63″ it says. With a degree of flexibility more at the upper end than the lower, I mean it. I hope this is me being dim, or not getting a joke. I wasn’t interested in chatting her up for God’s sake!

Sat 19th May 2012 @ 22:28

Comment from: twisted scottish bastard [Visitor]

Lust never sleeps.

Sun 20th May 2012 @ 04:16

Comment from: Kolley Kibber [Visitor]

I didn’t think you were perving on her, as it goes - just observing with appreciation. It IS possible.

Sun 20th May 2012 @ 08:09

Comment from: young at heart [Visitor]

I’m laughing….at or with I’m not sure….but I am laughing!!

Mon 21st May 2012 @ 08:46

Comment from: Furtheron [Visitor]

TSB - Lust Never Sleeps - might just have to still that for an album title!

Whenever I come here I’m transported into a different reality, not difficult for me, I’m barely in my current reality frankly

Mon 21st May 2012 @ 14:36

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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.
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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.
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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.
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Terry Eagleton, What Is A Novel?, Lancaster University, 1 Feb 2010

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8 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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