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Got to try
At some point shortly after the last entry I noticed that Firefox was warning me about "dangers" should I proceed to my own website. My SSL Certificate had expired.
I only had the vaguest understanding of what that means; all I know is that the new owners of my hosting company were asking £50 a year to pay for something that used to be free. Fortunately I found some instructions about how to do it yourself, so now loobynet is all badged and stamped.
A gay night after work drink in my local. Bouncing Glaswegians were chanting IRA songs after watching the Celtic game. I was moaning about my lack of a roster to a black lad, who said that he was a security guard at the nearby shopping centre and knows what he's doing months ahead. I got a bit bored with him after a while as he kept saying the same thing over and over again, so I turned to the white man on my left.
"I wouldn't change my upbringing for anything," he said, after telling me about going to a nuns' school in Ireland and being rapped hard on the knuckles "for nothing". Somehow the conversation veered into sex. "And I can tell you, he was better at sucking it than she was." He made a bit of a show about having missed his last bus, but I indicated no more to the barmaid and went home. The sex life I could have if I were gay.
Me and Mel went to Lille for a few days. A little girl photobombed us.
We went by train all the way, and arrived in an airbnb place so small it depressed me a bit, and I was surreptitiously looking on my phone around for hotel rooms we could stay in, before I resigned myself to it.
Lille's a grand city that feels like a capital. Our tour guide told us that the magnificent church of St Maurice is falling slowly into the high water table (Lille = L'Isle) as the wooden subterranean piles on which it stands are eroded.
The food was a bit of a challenge. I ordered sardines rillettes, which, for €12, was a can of sardines half-opened with the key, with a few splashes of paprika on the plate. In the main square, after failing to find anywhere in the better area still serving at 1.40pm, we had a local speciality called "Welsh", which consists of a beer-soaked hunk of bread buried under a mound of melted cheese. It was heart-strangling and difficult to eat. The story goes that during the Napoleonic Wars a captured Welsh soldier introduced them to rarebit, which they adapted and adopted. After day four, I was longing for something green and raw.The people were friendly. In a bar, a man mistook me for a waiter, so after explaining that I wasn't what he was looking for, I left him and his group to get settled, then got up and went over to them. "Alors, vous avez choisi?" Unfortunately my French wasn't up to understanding their jokey replies. But... on doit essayer.
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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
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
Eryl Shields Ink
Exile on Pain Street
Fat Man On A Keyboard
gairnet provides: press of blll
George Szirtes ditto
Infomaniac [NSFW]
Laudator Temporis Acti
Leeds's Singing Organ-Grinder
The Most Difficult Thing Ever
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
The Rambler
Resonance FM
Sequenza 21
Sound and Music
Talking Musicology defunct, but retained