we are the lucky ones
Jun. 30th, 2008 12:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenQuoth ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jacinthsong: "You're eating mango while you're talking to me, aren't you? You CUNT."
Some time later: "We've spent the last hour talking about kittens, mangoes, and our boyfriends. You know what? I think we might be girls."
In other words, o hai, I miss Oxford like burning, but mostly I miss the people. It is as if this is a surprise or something. Before I go on, some thanks are in order. First of all, I'm a little late in saying this, but whoever referred my post on white privilege to Blogbharti, I'm honoured. Thank you.
Second of all, to all those people who appeared onslasheuse's love meme and left me furtive love: thank you, thank you, and thank you particularly to the person who made me cry, thank you. And, actually, speaking of my missing Oxford, it seemed somehow natural that so many people on the meme should be Oxonians what I have known and loved, and I had ridiculous fun leaving anonymous and not-so-anonymous love for all of them. It seems quite appropriate, here and now, for it to be recorded that slasheuse herself is made of greatness; that everyone secretly wants to marry apotropaios and eat foreverdirt's brains; that I am not the only person who lusts over absinthe_shadow's shoes; that shimgray's most notable feature is that he is "endearingly meerkat-like" and that magic_doors is destined for greatness, possibly in the manner of CJ Cregg. It would be ridiculous to tell you all again how much I love you, but. I do. I do, I do.
(And, also. The meme is currently at 315 comments. These things max out at, I believe, 5000. There is world enough and time for all of you. Go and demand love. It is, by my time, very early on Monday morning, an excellent time to demand love. Go forth.)
In other news, I went into work today, and, well, the local populace had certainly been eating their crazycakes. I refer you to the woman who came in, looked confused, then said, "I'm looking for a book. It has something to do with the Fonz."
Long, long pause, while I stared, and she pointedly did not tell me the author or title of the book. Finally, I said, faintly, "As in Arthur Fonzarelli?"
Blank stare. I tried again. "The Happy Days character?"
She looked slightly happier. I sat down at the desk computer and wondered vaguely what would happen if I typed "something to do with the Fonz" into TBP. Eventually I did discover that Henry Winkler has written a series of children's books with titles like "The Curtain Went Up, My Pants Came Down: The Mostly True Confessions of the World's Greatest Underachiever". I ordered this book and felt pretty good about life.
Possibly a gesture from the universe to make up for this bout of weirdness, we got a late-afternoon visit from one of my favourite customers, a retired doctor who is endless in his affability and his total failure of recall when it comes to ordering books he wants. (Long-term readers of this journal may remember him as the man who came in and demanded a book called "The Assassin's Boyfriend" - and was delighted when I successfully got him The Time-Traveler's Wife.) Anyway! He bounced in, caught sight of me, drew to a comical halt and demanded, hands on hips, "Well?"
I thought about it for five seconds and said, "I don't know, they haven't come out yet."
"Well, many good wishes for a first - even though you went to the wrong-coloured university, you reprobate."
I thought about it some more. "Dark blue instead of light?"
"Precisely!" he boomed, gave beaming smiles all round and bounced out again.
He's a lovely man, just rather odd. Work this week has been mostly uneventful, as most of the regular staff are on holiday and, er, we don't have any customers. I met the latest of my replacements, a solemn, fluffy-haired boy called Matt, who is plagued by all the other male staff continually referring to "Matt's harem". I found this odd, because a boy less likely to have a harem I never did see. He did the morning shift and I did the afternoon one, so off he went at one o'clock. Watching him pass the window, I saw a girl come out to meet him from next door with an umbrella, and they went off together into the rain. "Oh, you're all being mean," I said, into the relative silence of the shop. "I think he's rather sweet."
Cue rustling and the sound of someone dropping a mug. "How the hell does he do it?" yelled Assistant Book Monkey, storming in and trailing coffee and ash everywhere. "You said, you said you thought he was sweet! He's half your age!"
"He's SIXTEEN!" I yelled back.
"They all said that! All you women! Crazy Al and Deb and Bernie! Even Her Upstairs, and she's a LESBIAN!"
(At which point, the only customer in the shop, a little old lady with shopper, picked up her cane and went out.)
"What..." I started to say, and then saw Matt cross the glass in the other direction, with a different umbrella - and a different girl. "Right," I said.
"If we could only bottle Matt," said Assistant Book Monkey sadly, "that'd solve all our problems."
The shop's problems are pretty considerable at the moment, it must be said. I see it more than the others, because I come back every three months and see the changes, but this time it's really palpable. Every day, the takings are less, every day, the shop gets slightly shabbier because there's no money to pay people to tidy it up, every day, something else breaks and can't be replaced, every day I angst about taking money for a job that I do well. I think this is the last time I'll ever work here. When I come back next summer, it'll be gone. And that breaks my heart, because the cult of the independent bookshop is one of the few things I subscribe to without reservation. I love independent bookshops. I know most of the customers, I know the books, I know the people who come in to deliver, I know the place like the back of my hand. And, well, I've been working there for four years and coming in for ten. It's a long time for something to be a part of your life.
Blah. It's all fundamentally depressing. Once the shop is gone, I have nothing left holding me here at all; all my friends from up here are now in other places doing exciting things, and so it should be, but it makes me feel very remote from everything, a mere transient. I am getting twelve-fourteen-am maudlin. Moving on.
Further things of note.chiasmata and I are trying to get a cat. We're trying, because we don't know yet how the landlord feels about it, but, eeee, cat. I have never had a cat. I am, in fact, very much a dog person - the only pet I have had worthy of note was a long-haired German Shepherd - but I am open to persuasion on the matter. I shall probably be a lot of a geek-dyke-girl cliché, but. Cats are nice. So are geek girls. jacinthsong and I engaged in something of the Lament of the Monogamous Bisexual earlier. Etc.
Ye gods, I am dull. I leave you to go proof-read an eighteen-page guide to transvaginal ultrasound. (No, really.)
jacinthsong: "You're eating mango while you're talking to me, aren't you? You CUNT."Some time later: "We've spent the last hour talking about kittens, mangoes, and our boyfriends. You know what? I think we might be girls."
In other words, o hai, I miss Oxford like burning, but mostly I miss the people. It is as if this is a surprise or something. Before I go on, some thanks are in order. First of all, I'm a little late in saying this, but whoever referred my post on white privilege to Blogbharti, I'm honoured. Thank you.
Second of all, to all those people who appeared on
slasheuse's love meme and left me furtive love: thank you, thank you, and thank you particularly to the person who made me cry, thank you. And, actually, speaking of my missing Oxford, it seemed somehow natural that so many people on the meme should be Oxonians what I have known and loved, and I had ridiculous fun leaving anonymous and not-so-anonymous love for all of them. It seems quite appropriate, here and now, for it to be recorded that slasheuse herself is made of greatness; that everyone secretly wants to marry apotropaios and eat foreverdirt's brains; that I am not the only person who lusts over absinthe_shadow's shoes; that shimgray's most notable feature is that he is "endearingly meerkat-like" and that magic_doors is destined for greatness, possibly in the manner of CJ Cregg. It would be ridiculous to tell you all again how much I love you, but. I do. I do, I do. (And, also. The meme is currently at 315 comments. These things max out at, I believe, 5000. There is world enough and time for all of you. Go and demand love. It is, by my time, very early on Monday morning, an excellent time to demand love. Go forth.)
In other news, I went into work today, and, well, the local populace had certainly been eating their crazycakes. I refer you to the woman who came in, looked confused, then said, "I'm looking for a book. It has something to do with the Fonz."
Long, long pause, while I stared, and she pointedly did not tell me the author or title of the book. Finally, I said, faintly, "As in Arthur Fonzarelli?"
Blank stare. I tried again. "The Happy Days character?"
She looked slightly happier. I sat down at the desk computer and wondered vaguely what would happen if I typed "something to do with the Fonz" into TBP. Eventually I did discover that Henry Winkler has written a series of children's books with titles like "The Curtain Went Up, My Pants Came Down: The Mostly True Confessions of the World's Greatest Underachiever". I ordered this book and felt pretty good about life.
Possibly a gesture from the universe to make up for this bout of weirdness, we got a late-afternoon visit from one of my favourite customers, a retired doctor who is endless in his affability and his total failure of recall when it comes to ordering books he wants. (Long-term readers of this journal may remember him as the man who came in and demanded a book called "The Assassin's Boyfriend" - and was delighted when I successfully got him The Time-Traveler's Wife.) Anyway! He bounced in, caught sight of me, drew to a comical halt and demanded, hands on hips, "Well?"
I thought about it for five seconds and said, "I don't know, they haven't come out yet."
"Well, many good wishes for a first - even though you went to the wrong-coloured university, you reprobate."
I thought about it some more. "Dark blue instead of light?"
"Precisely!" he boomed, gave beaming smiles all round and bounced out again.
He's a lovely man, just rather odd. Work this week has been mostly uneventful, as most of the regular staff are on holiday and, er, we don't have any customers. I met the latest of my replacements, a solemn, fluffy-haired boy called Matt, who is plagued by all the other male staff continually referring to "Matt's harem". I found this odd, because a boy less likely to have a harem I never did see. He did the morning shift and I did the afternoon one, so off he went at one o'clock. Watching him pass the window, I saw a girl come out to meet him from next door with an umbrella, and they went off together into the rain. "Oh, you're all being mean," I said, into the relative silence of the shop. "I think he's rather sweet."
Cue rustling and the sound of someone dropping a mug. "How the hell does he do it?" yelled Assistant Book Monkey, storming in and trailing coffee and ash everywhere. "You said, you said you thought he was sweet! He's half your age!"
"He's SIXTEEN!" I yelled back.
"They all said that! All you women! Crazy Al and Deb and Bernie! Even Her Upstairs, and she's a LESBIAN!"
(At which point, the only customer in the shop, a little old lady with shopper, picked up her cane and went out.)
"What..." I started to say, and then saw Matt cross the glass in the other direction, with a different umbrella - and a different girl. "Right," I said.
"If we could only bottle Matt," said Assistant Book Monkey sadly, "that'd solve all our problems."
The shop's problems are pretty considerable at the moment, it must be said. I see it more than the others, because I come back every three months and see the changes, but this time it's really palpable. Every day, the takings are less, every day, the shop gets slightly shabbier because there's no money to pay people to tidy it up, every day, something else breaks and can't be replaced, every day I angst about taking money for a job that I do well. I think this is the last time I'll ever work here. When I come back next summer, it'll be gone. And that breaks my heart, because the cult of the independent bookshop is one of the few things I subscribe to without reservation. I love independent bookshops. I know most of the customers, I know the books, I know the people who come in to deliver, I know the place like the back of my hand. And, well, I've been working there for four years and coming in for ten. It's a long time for something to be a part of your life.
Blah. It's all fundamentally depressing. Once the shop is gone, I have nothing left holding me here at all; all my friends from up here are now in other places doing exciting things, and so it should be, but it makes me feel very remote from everything, a mere transient. I am getting twelve-fourteen-am maudlin. Moving on.
Further things of note.
chiasmata and I are trying to get a cat. We're trying, because we don't know yet how the landlord feels about it, but, eeee, cat. I have never had a cat. I am, in fact, very much a dog person - the only pet I have had worthy of note was a long-haired German Shepherd - but I am open to persuasion on the matter. I shall probably be a lot of a geek-dyke-girl cliché, but. Cats are nice. So are geek girls. jacinthsong and I engaged in something of the Lament of the Monogamous Bisexual earlier. Etc.Ye gods, I am dull. I leave you to go proof-read an eighteen-page guide to transvaginal ultrasound. (No, really.)
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no subject
on 2008-07-01 12:57 pm (UTC)I have been leaving comments on the love meme, but I don't think I know enough people to post my name.
That's really sad about your bookshop. I'm re-reading No Logo at the moment, so am all fired up about corporate restriction of choice.
no subject
on 2008-07-01 07:10 pm (UTC)I ought to read that - people keep telling me it's good. Though possibly it will just make me more sad.