Just come across my mate R’s writeup of our night in a pub a fortnight ago. It made me realise quite how much territory it is possible to gallop through in an evening’s chat with an enthusiastic conversation partner, especially when aided by a couple of pints of cider.
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I see the Italian education minister is now claiming the Italian government funded the tunnel [sic] from Geneva to L’Aquila along which the neutrinos in this week’s news appeared to travel fractionally faster than the speed of light.
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Just wanted to refresh the design a touch, so I’m now on another standard WordPress template. Down to 2 columns, sans serif font, lots more whitespace – monitors have gotten bigger since I picked the last one. Haven’t yet chucked my own header photos in, but they will (eventually) be back, honest.
Sat on Richmond Green, enjoying an excellent pistachio ice-cream from Gelateria Danieli (genuinely extraordinarily good; drop by). Watching kids running around with footballs and dolls. It all seems incredibly far away from sovereign debt and credit default swaps and service-oriented architecture… Does this say more about how amazing humanity is at tackling complex stuff when it would really rather be in a park, or something vaguely zen-ish about maintaining room for a little bit of play and even silliness in life?
Yet another snippet entering what passes for my consciousness more-or-less unbidden:
“As ridiculous as two walnuts judging a quilting competition and failing all entries for not resembling penguins.”
Quick and incoherent thoughts on my return…
Most important: go to Texas, because virtually everything you think about Texas and Texans is wrong, and since coming back I’ve decided it’s actually Europeans who are dreadful people – snotty, self-important, dismissive, ignorant, petty, humourless nations with a proud history of persecution and a propensity to dictatorship. (Post-holiday blues, moi?)
Texans are great. Humour as dry as a bone, enormously hospitable and all consumed with an honest curiosity about why on earth anyone would come visit them.
I am going to be saying “Awesome!” a lot for the next couple weeks.
My mates are also great people. Ten days hanging around with such focused, straightforward, do-y people did me the power. Thanks, guys.
Swimming is awesome. I need to do more.
Tubing is not just awesome, it’s totally awesome, but doing it on the Guadalupe River at 40 Celsius is going to be rather nicer than doing it on the Thames in October, so that’s one to save for a future trip.
Aside: the ice-cream place where M bought me a bakewell tart ice-cream in Richmond today is also awesome, but is not Diet.
The Ford Escape is the worst, sorriest, most appalling excuse for a simulation of something which might under the right circumstances qualify as a vehicle that I want to write to its design team and invite them to explain themselves very briskly indeed. Whether it was drifting round corners if taken at above 2 mph, creaking as though it were ship-built, or just being completely and utterly gutless, it never once gave me a moment’s pleasure. Driving it for a week ought to be reserved for people who hurt kittens for pleasure.
I have now eaten in a revolving restaurant. (In the linked page, I am the diner on the right, enjoying a typically low-key soft drink.) And we got there by going along the River Walk — a successful urban regeneration project for once….
Perfect final activity: watching beer be bottled, sterilised, labelled and packed in the Spoetzl Brewery in Shiner, “the cleanest little town in Texas”.
Texans are proud of things; it seems to come naturally to them. On the odd occasion they do have to go looking a little harder for the prize, though. I was constantly expecting women to mention in passing that their son, Skeeter, was the tallest pre-pubertal Caucasian teen born south of San Antonio on a Thursday since 1972.
Should more spring to mind, there will be updates.
Right, I think this is ripe for a good fisking and a good fisking I shall give it.
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Every time something in today’s little episode of chucking makes its way to the black plastic bag of Ultimate Truth, a.k.a. the bin, I’m noticing my reaction with interest.
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Only a little bit, mind you, but I am really, really glad that the magic of technology has helped me spruce up and rescue this audio file. It’s an “interview” (I was a singularly incurious interviewer at the time, under the influence of puberty and obligation) recorded when I was I suppose 13 and my nan was in her late 60′s, about her experiences in the war.
Personally, I spent 8 minutes yelling “ASK HER MORE ABOUT THAT BIT!!!!” at my former self, but hearing her voice again after getting on for 17 years was pretty extraordinary in itself. Thanks I guess are due to whichever of my teachers at Treviglas got me to do it; I suppose it must have been Mr. Firmston (history), but it could equally have been Mrs. Sleep (English).
Anyway, my own personal blast-from-the-past. 1991 or 1992 vintage. I rescued this off tape; how long will an mp3 on the internet last? Makes you feel like a donation to the Wayback Machine, or “rogue archivist” Carl Malamud, or if you like the big picture, the Long Now foundation.
Do yell if this doesn’t work in your browser.
Moral of story:
Do not stay in tourist hotels. Ring ahead and check that they think they’ve sold you what they’ve actually contracted to supply. Never dip below four stars.
I feel like a freed hostage.