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Archives for: "December 2019"

Friendly society

Sun 22nd December 2019

I got paid £198 pounds net last week. That's a bit lower than normal, and what with £112 in rent, a quarterly payment of £80 for a ten-year savings plan to a railwayman's Friendly Society I set up in more bounteous times, and my £25 pounds a week to the… more »

4 comments »

Mindlessness is best

Thu 19th December 2019

Straight after Bordeaux, I had an email asking me if I could cover on Friday and Monday at the private school where I was a dinner lady for five weeks. It's like working in a cafe where you're only open for an hour but five hundred people turn up. On… more »

In Bordeaux

Sun 15th December 2019

I was informed a few weeks ago that I'd accrued ten days' annual leave. I found a return flight to Bordeaux for thirty-eight quid and asked Trina if she fancied a week with me there. Apart from a couple of hours when I had to work a bit trying to… more »

7 comments »

My boyfriend rapes me every day

Tue 3rd December 2019

Finally got a couple of hours in my own house. I've been kipping overnight at work, after kipping overnight at Trina's, after we went out a-bopping in Glasgow. A friend of mine knows his house music backwards and has the knack of attracting a good crowd… more »

6 comments »

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

M / 60 / 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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Archives for: "December 2019"

Friendly society

Mindlessness is best

In Bordeaux

My boyfriend rapes me every day

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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