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ravenI decided early this morning that if I didn't leave the house soon, I was going to go stark raving insane. So I walked the thirty-five minutes into the village to get a pasty from Sayers - actually, let me have a point of digression here while I talk about how great pasties are. I did not know, until I moved to Oxford, that despite the fact there has been one everywhere I've lived - and there used to be one on the way into school, and I'd pop out during the afternoon and get flaky pastry all over the library carpet - Sayers are Liverpool-based only. I was delighted to discover, therefore, that there are in fact places that sell pasties in Oxford. But. But, these are pasties that you have to pay £2.50 for, that have, I don't know, ingredients, whereas a real pasty is made of indefinable vegetables and something-that-might-be-meat, all covered in astonishingly-bad-for-you pastry and is much too hot to hold, let alone eat, before you have carried it around with you for half an hour and made a glorious amount of mess, and it should be 79p, because more than that would imply that it were made of food.
Enormous digression aside, I bought a baked-bean-and-sausage pasty and a luridly purple fairy cake, and dropped in on the bookshop on the way home. I do like it when people are pleased to see me. At any rate, I stepped in and was greeted with, "Oh, fantastic, Iona, can you answer the phone and tell Assistant Book Monkey to give up smoking?"
I did both, to limited avail, and ended up idly stickering signed copies on the counter while they told me what I've missed through being away for three months. One of the reps has taken up astral projection ("Well, he said he'd spent a month in Birmingham sort of flying around, and people didn't believe him when he said he'd been projecting himself. There were a lot of Jamaican guys in the street selling weed. Yes, that is a funny coincidence, isn't it?"), Assistant Book Monkey is still in love with Her Upstairs ("She's gay, I'm an optimist"), Setch has gone to Loughborough and isn't at all falling into the insanely-sporty stereotype ("He came in the other day and told us he'd named his biceps.").
A customer came in at that point, but I just couldn't resist. "What has he named them?"
They looked at each other, looked at me, looked at the little old lady customer, and chorused, "Pinky and the Brain!"
Also, Anne Fine came in to sign books and, despite her epic amounts of kids' books (including Flour Babies and Goggle-Eyes, both of which I loved), she apparently doesn't like children ("Such bloody shrill voices!") or, indeed, Jacqueline Wilson ("I've been saying that for years, but no one ever listens to me," I sighed at that point); Katy Flynn has written yet another squidgy book of squidge and dedicated it to us; there are so many books exploding through the back of the shop that they've had to fill one of the toilets with proof copies and OS maps.
Situation normal, I said, promised to help out over Easter weekend, and paused to ask, before I went home with my luridly purple fairy cake, "If you could fly anywhere you wanted, would you stick around in Birmingham?"
"He's moved now, anyway," they told me. "In fact, you should look out for him."
("Passing through on a nearby jetstream?" I said, but no, apparently the Bloomsbury Astral Projection Rep now lives a couple of doors down from where![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jacinthsong and potatofiend lived last year. I take all of this as proof that all it takes for my life to get surreal again is for me to step out of the house.)
Anyway! I actually made this entry as an excuse to use this icon - which is great and marvellous, and probably indicative of much talking-about-philosophy I'm going to be doing - and for a meme, seen everywhere but most recently withglitzfrau:
Everyone has things they blog about. Everyone has things they don't blog about. Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don't blog about, but you'd like to hear about, and I'll write a post or comment about it. Ask for anything: latest movie watched, last book read, political leanings, thoughts on yaoi, favorite type of underwear, graphic techniques, etc.
I'm pretty sure I write about everything that pops into my head, but we shall see. And now I go back to doing some actual work, rather than eating cake and babbling.
Enormous digression aside, I bought a baked-bean-and-sausage pasty and a luridly purple fairy cake, and dropped in on the bookshop on the way home. I do like it when people are pleased to see me. At any rate, I stepped in and was greeted with, "Oh, fantastic, Iona, can you answer the phone and tell Assistant Book Monkey to give up smoking?"
I did both, to limited avail, and ended up idly stickering signed copies on the counter while they told me what I've missed through being away for three months. One of the reps has taken up astral projection ("Well, he said he'd spent a month in Birmingham sort of flying around, and people didn't believe him when he said he'd been projecting himself. There were a lot of Jamaican guys in the street selling weed. Yes, that is a funny coincidence, isn't it?"), Assistant Book Monkey is still in love with Her Upstairs ("She's gay, I'm an optimist"), Setch has gone to Loughborough and isn't at all falling into the insanely-sporty stereotype ("He came in the other day and told us he'd named his biceps.").
A customer came in at that point, but I just couldn't resist. "What has he named them?"
They looked at each other, looked at me, looked at the little old lady customer, and chorused, "Pinky and the Brain!"
Also, Anne Fine came in to sign books and, despite her epic amounts of kids' books (including Flour Babies and Goggle-Eyes, both of which I loved), she apparently doesn't like children ("Such bloody shrill voices!") or, indeed, Jacqueline Wilson ("I've been saying that for years, but no one ever listens to me," I sighed at that point); Katy Flynn has written yet another squidgy book of squidge and dedicated it to us; there are so many books exploding through the back of the shop that they've had to fill one of the toilets with proof copies and OS maps.
Situation normal, I said, promised to help out over Easter weekend, and paused to ask, before I went home with my luridly purple fairy cake, "If you could fly anywhere you wanted, would you stick around in Birmingham?"
"He's moved now, anyway," they told me. "In fact, you should look out for him."
("Passing through on a nearby jetstream?" I said, but no, apparently the Bloomsbury Astral Projection Rep now lives a couple of doors down from where
jacinthsong and potatofiend lived last year. I take all of this as proof that all it takes for my life to get surreal again is for me to step out of the house.)Anyway! I actually made this entry as an excuse to use this icon - which is great and marvellous, and probably indicative of much talking-about-philosophy I'm going to be doing - and for a meme, seen everywhere but most recently with
glitzfrau:Everyone has things they blog about. Everyone has things they don't blog about. Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don't blog about, but you'd like to hear about, and I'll write a post or comment about it. Ask for anything: latest movie watched, last book read, political leanings, thoughts on yaoi, favorite type of underwear, graphic techniques, etc.
I'm pretty sure I write about everything that pops into my head, but we shall see. And now I go back to doing some actual work, rather than eating cake and babbling.
