Thu 17th August 2023

It's not been a good couple of weeks.

Last Thursday I behaved appallingly at a social evening with Miss B's friends (cider was involved) and ended up sleeping on the pavement for a while and getting home at 3am. The following day I noticed the latest round of scooter "accident" injuries, involving my jaw, my leg and most persistently, my armpit. I've made abject apologies to all concerned. I was relieved that the hostess accepted them. It doesn't justify my boorishness, but she can get a bit self-pitying and accusatory as well when that fateful next bottle of wine comes out.

My computer started going very slow, and then the screen began jerking up and down, before it switched itself off, immune to my efforts to resuscitate it. Hours of reinstalling and recovery and setting up.

Then, after a tortuous recruitment process involving a long application form, a set of computer games which tested manual dexterity more than anything to do with the job, following by a "situational judgement" test -- I failed at the final hurdle, the interview. The job was being more or less in charge of two semi-rural stations in north Somerset, doing everything from selling tickets to chatting with the locals and helping people with the wardrobe-sized suitcases that they take with them nowadays. It would have meant a pay rise, a European rail pass -- after a year in the job -- but more importantly, being on a predictable roster, with the occasional long weekend. At the moment, on Wednesday evening, I don't know whether I'm working the following Sunday.

But I have acquired -- for free -- a lovely leather and wood backgammon board. Inside are some old newspaper cuttings from Omar Sharif's column for beginners, called Throws of Pleasure. Of which I could do with a few now.

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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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Off the rails

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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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