June 5, 2010
How to visit an aunt…
M: We’ll come in the afternoon.
H: It’s too rushed.
M: The only other alternative is you come and meet us.
H: I don’t go to x.
M: So if you don’t like to go to x then we’ll come in the afternoon otherwise we won’t see you.
H: I won’t interfere with your plans. Go ahead and do whatever you’ve planned.
M: I have planned to come and visit you.
H: It’s too rushed.
M: We’ll catch the train.
H: There are no trains. The trains are awful.
M: Can you find out what time the first train is?
H:The trains are awful.
Repeat exchange x 2. Then despair.
June 5, 2010
I have found it! Enfin a gym with no TV’s in it that resembles what I imagine a prison gym might look like. V 1980’s, bit grimey. Not too much equipment but the critical bar you can actually reach and swing on. The rooms are separate, as they should be, so if what’s happening in one is insufferable you can seek respite in another. Plus swimming pool in the same building gives the two forks in the one picnic exercise opportunity.
Gyms are one of the most banal gathering spots on the planet and there’s very little to say about them. Unlike swimming pools which are one of the more fascinating. Gym’s have one great prospect and it’s anthropological and finally I have found one where there’s something to watch. A curious amalgamation of men, some who show up to exercise in jeans and drift in and out. Today one fella was training another fella furiously. The fella being trained was waving an overweight dumbell over his head lying down and groaning like he was undergoing some kind of surgical mapping procedure. The self appointed trainer was riding him. The fella looked like he had seconds to live. I stared astonished at the unsychronised flailing and waited for him to expire and noticed he had armpits that were related to the fringe of a Shetland Pony or a very long haired domestic cat and began to wonder about his particular concoction of hormones. Eventually the poor man staggered to his feet, minutes passed and the younger dudes were all encircled a heated debate rose up. I became excited — nothing like a sweaty heated debate — it looked like it might erupt into a great Gladiator moment of males and dumb bells, but no the mad trainer (who was not a specimen of health it must be said) was laying into the young fellas about his poor puffing pony admonishing them. This man sweats more than any of you he was shouting. Look at him, he sweats more than all of you put together …. he roared. The poor pony fella looked a bit shaken by this new respect, but relieved to be out of the mad armlocks the fella had hitherto forced him to endure and he moved his head dazed like he was trying to figure out if he still had ears.
Later I noticed they retired to smoke in the car park. You couldn’t make it up. Would made a great Michael Jackson video for a song called … Respect is due for the pony who sweats.
June 5, 2010
Spotted today two vans. One read European Janitorial Services, the other British Trade along with plumbing services. Are people nationalistic when fixing pipes? My pipe can only be touched properly by the paws of an English man! And what exactly is a Euro janitorial service? How does one clean the Jax in a European manner? A memory of endless hole in the ground toilets across France en route to Lourdes when I was young flashed back to me. If it were possible to upload the smell of the average Iarranrod Eireann train toilet I’d offer to….
June 4, 2010
Maigret
God Monsieur Maigret had a marvellous time. He looked, he thought, he smoked. He looked again. He took his hat off. He announced. Everyone paid attention and he returned back to the beginning again and solved all problems of Paris in between. Plus he often got to be in the vicinity of staircases and boats. Best of all he regularly consulted himself in tete a tetes. Not to be confused with teats a teats.
June 4, 2010
I much prefer blogging to social medja. At least if you shout into a cave the sound carries. It’s an odd preoccupation the idea of “collecting” people who selectively converse. It’s like sitting at a massive picnic and having to walk among people dotted between the trees and none of them have faces that look at you.
And yet it is almost a great leak for if you half know someone or don’t know them you can acquire some pertinent info from their tweets or facebookery about their daily life and by the time you next set eyes on them a ton of ground work has been covered. So in essence it can speed up the process of “knowing”.
But how much can you really know if you do not take the time to invest in actual conversation rather than selective conversation and the odd jibber when the subject takes a person. And the least engaging subjects seem to take people to the top of the hill!
June 4, 2010
Comment c’est
The slugs have deforested my bean planting and are giving me grief. Found two pesky buggers muddling about munching in the teeny string of foliage left. They are in the 15mm – 20mm range which suggests they were birthed in my cabbage patch. The small male suggested rings of salt around the plants so we tried that on a few chosen precious ones but soon ran out of salt.
Tall male had excellent slug baiting knowledge being the offspring of a Cortes Island gardener and generally botany smart and had a three point slug capture plan which begins with beer. I’ll be heading off to the cabbage patch armed with a tin of Shaftesbury.
Another unfortunate is I appear to be distinctly allergic to something in my cabbage patch and return after each visit with sore throat like I’ve been drinking paint stripper. Hope it’s some early season thing that will calm once the sun shines and stuff starts sprouting.
June 3, 2010
Pamphlets, printing, a la litreacha
Lovely post here from Timothy Thornton’s blog about making a bewk, or pamphleteering …
June 3, 2010
Without spectacles I keep misreading things and misidentifying people in the street which often produces interesting and mortifying outcomes.
Last week I talked to a man as Aodhan’s cousin Paddy, who turned out to be the man next door called Michael. And on, and on, this confusion goes, it’s especially curious how long it takes me to figure out the person is not the person I think they are. It’s a salvage operation.
The misreading also produces the odd twisted ankle, but the bruising is never uninteresting.