(no subject)
Feb. 9th, 2004 09:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaWell, I think it's time for an update while I eat my mushroom and cashew risotto. And yes, since you ask, traditional mushroom risotto is meant to have savoy cabbage in it.
These days, when I don't wander round Oxford for large parts of the day as I used to, my register of Oxford Eccentrics and Nutters is no longer as complete as it used to be. I've lost track of who's still around.
Saturday afternoon, wallking along Queen Street, I was delighted to see The Singing Man, whom I haven't seen around in years. The Singing Man is probably in, I'd guess his fifties or sixties, short hair, glasses, generally neat appearance. He is usually either walking along the pavement, or riding a bike, and is only notable for a reason that should be obvious - he sings. Loudly, expressively, and quite tunefully. Music hall songs, show songs, occasionally WWII songs.
He came to my attention in my second year, when he took a fancy to a friend of mine, and used to stand under Jeff's window, serenading him. Jeff, a remarkably straight-laced American Rhodes scholar, really didn't like this. However, if you've never walked over Magdalen Bridge in the dawn and met The Singing Man riding his bike up the slight incline, arms spread wide singing The hills.... are alive..., well you simply haven't lived. And anyway, he sang to me on Saturday, and it made me happy.
There is a pause in the update here, while I get very confused. A song, which sounds kind of interesting, is playing at me courtesy of MTV2. On the basis of the singer's voice, and overall sound, I decide it must be Idlewild, but they look all wrong. Eventually the little pop-up bar tells me it was in fact Blink 182. Eh ? Since when did they sound anything like that ?
And in other news, the other day I actually had a Big Issue seller trying to persuade me not to buy a Big Issue. I'd been to Argos, in pursuit of my by-now epic quest to get a CD tower. At last successful, I was carrying the only one in Oxfordshire back from the city centre to my car in the Westgate Centre car park. I leant the flatpack box against the wall, and advanced on the ticket machine. I leaped backwards and caught the box as it fell over. I re-propped it, gave it a severe talking to, and headed back to the ticket machine. I dived backwards in time to catch the box again.
At this point, the Big Issue chap took pity on me, and wandered over to babysit the box. I fed the machine money, and then asked the bloke for a Big Issue. Which I would have done earlier, had I not had my hands full of flatpack. He, however, seemed extremely concerned that I was "only" buying one as a return favour, and thus he repeatedly tried to tell me that I didn't have to have one.
There is a protracted pause in this update, while I get visited by an unexpected Samantha.
I'm currently having one of my sporadic fits of remembering that the postal service is a really good thing. OK, so they're slower than they'd like you to believe, and they do randomly lose stuff, and all that, but in general: for under a quid you can send stuff to people. All over the country! The world!
How cool is that ?
In this internet-era, it's easy to forget the post. After all, why would I bother with a letter when I can trot out an email ? And the answer is: because it means much more to get a letter. I swop emails, phone calls, and sms's with my parents, but I wouldn't trade my weekly letter, written by my mum on a Sunday night. Letters are tangible objects, sometimes they come with engrained scents, or a sense of the sender which is utterly lost in an email.
And you can send.... stuff. I sent![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
verlaine a CD I'd made up, honouring a promise I made a few months back to send him a compilation. For, oooh, about 60p or so, you can send someone a CD. For nothing more than the price of a normal stamp, my mum sends me press cuttings, recipres, and other random bits. Recently, stompyboots was offering to mail stuff to various friends of hers, and yay for her doing her bit to keep life interesting.
So, a challenge for this week: post someone something. Someone, maybe, who you're in regular e-communication with, or whose LJ you read, but whom you don't see as often as you'd like. Send 'em a letter, send 'em a picture, send 'em a tape or a story, send 'em something utterly bizarre. A small gift, even a bar of chocolate, is an exciting and funky thing to get through the post; I once posted someone two chocolate digestives, though there was a good reason for it at the time.
Sporadically throughout my life I have kept up a low-level guerrila campaign of surreal post, sent to people hapless enough to have given me a snail address, and whom I didn't see enough in the general course of things. I may resume it, it's been in abeyance for a few years now. Go on, get out, all of you, and put things in envelopes. (And remember - things that fit though letterboxes: good. Things you have to go and collect if you missed the parcel man: less good as a random surprise.)
There's been a bit of a hiatus in Designated Heroes of the Week, for various reasons. However, I'd actually like to nominate the doorman at the Zodiac last night, for completely failing to conform to stereotype, and completely failing to be randomly unreasonable. Notably, after only a bit of wrangling, he let me buy a ticket for the gig upstairs, nip out in the interval to see one of the support bands downstairs, then go back upstairs again. So I got to see Red Sky Coven and Bloc Party, despite the fact they were technically playing different gigs.
These days, when I don't wander round Oxford for large parts of the day as I used to, my register of Oxford Eccentrics and Nutters is no longer as complete as it used to be. I've lost track of who's still around.
Saturday afternoon, wallking along Queen Street, I was delighted to see The Singing Man, whom I haven't seen around in years. The Singing Man is probably in, I'd guess his fifties or sixties, short hair, glasses, generally neat appearance. He is usually either walking along the pavement, or riding a bike, and is only notable for a reason that should be obvious - he sings. Loudly, expressively, and quite tunefully. Music hall songs, show songs, occasionally WWII songs.
He came to my attention in my second year, when he took a fancy to a friend of mine, and used to stand under Jeff's window, serenading him. Jeff, a remarkably straight-laced American Rhodes scholar, really didn't like this. However, if you've never walked over Magdalen Bridge in the dawn and met The Singing Man riding his bike up the slight incline, arms spread wide singing The hills.... are alive..., well you simply haven't lived. And anyway, he sang to me on Saturday, and it made me happy.
There is a pause in the update here, while I get very confused. A song, which sounds kind of interesting, is playing at me courtesy of MTV2. On the basis of the singer's voice, and overall sound, I decide it must be Idlewild, but they look all wrong. Eventually the little pop-up bar tells me it was in fact Blink 182. Eh ? Since when did they sound anything like that ?
And in other news, the other day I actually had a Big Issue seller trying to persuade me not to buy a Big Issue. I'd been to Argos, in pursuit of my by-now epic quest to get a CD tower. At last successful, I was carrying the only one in Oxfordshire back from the city centre to my car in the Westgate Centre car park. I leant the flatpack box against the wall, and advanced on the ticket machine. I leaped backwards and caught the box as it fell over. I re-propped it, gave it a severe talking to, and headed back to the ticket machine. I dived backwards in time to catch the box again.
At this point, the Big Issue chap took pity on me, and wandered over to babysit the box. I fed the machine money, and then asked the bloke for a Big Issue. Which I would have done earlier, had I not had my hands full of flatpack. He, however, seemed extremely concerned that I was "only" buying one as a return favour, and thus he repeatedly tried to tell me that I didn't have to have one.
There is a protracted pause in this update, while I get visited by an unexpected Samantha.
I'm currently having one of my sporadic fits of remembering that the postal service is a really good thing. OK, so they're slower than they'd like you to believe, and they do randomly lose stuff, and all that, but in general: for under a quid you can send stuff to people. All over the country! The world!
How cool is that ?
In this internet-era, it's easy to forget the post. After all, why would I bother with a letter when I can trot out an email ? And the answer is: because it means much more to get a letter. I swop emails, phone calls, and sms's with my parents, but I wouldn't trade my weekly letter, written by my mum on a Sunday night. Letters are tangible objects, sometimes they come with engrained scents, or a sense of the sender which is utterly lost in an email.
And you can send.... stuff. I sent
verlaine a CD I'd made up, honouring a promise I made a few months back to send him a compilation. For, oooh, about 60p or so, you can send someone a CD. For nothing more than the price of a normal stamp, my mum sends me press cuttings, recipres, and other random bits. Recently, stompyboots was offering to mail stuff to various friends of hers, and yay for her doing her bit to keep life interesting.So, a challenge for this week: post someone something. Someone, maybe, who you're in regular e-communication with, or whose LJ you read, but whom you don't see as often as you'd like. Send 'em a letter, send 'em a picture, send 'em a tape or a story, send 'em something utterly bizarre. A small gift, even a bar of chocolate, is an exciting and funky thing to get through the post; I once posted someone two chocolate digestives, though there was a good reason for it at the time.
Sporadically throughout my life I have kept up a low-level guerrila campaign of surreal post, sent to people hapless enough to have given me a snail address, and whom I didn't see enough in the general course of things. I may resume it, it's been in abeyance for a few years now. Go on, get out, all of you, and put things in envelopes. (And remember - things that fit though letterboxes: good. Things you have to go and collect if you missed the parcel man: less good as a random surprise.)
There's been a bit of a hiatus in Designated Heroes of the Week, for various reasons. However, I'd actually like to nominate the doorman at the Zodiac last night, for completely failing to conform to stereotype, and completely failing to be randomly unreasonable. Notably, after only a bit of wrangling, he let me buy a ticket for the gig upstairs, nip out in the interval to see one of the support bands downstairs, then go back upstairs again. So I got to see Red Sky Coven and Bloc Party, despite the fact they were technically playing different gigs.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-02-09 01:41 pm (UTC)Instructions:
Half fill a mailable container (old vitamin tablet bottles are good for this). Leave to set.
Write letter.
Wrap letter in a number of letters of cling film.
Fill remainder of container with jelly and leave to set.
Post to friend (with a little note on top of jelly that reads eat me).
They were remarably good fun, maybe I should start doing them again!!!
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From:Updates
From:no subject
Date: 2004-02-09 02:19 pm (UTC)Re:
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From:no subject
Date: 2004-02-09 03:12 pm (UTC)There's a "negative postal charges" gag to be done here, but not at all a good one.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-09 04:29 pm (UTC)Re:
From:no subject
Date: 2004-02-10 03:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-10 09:21 am (UTC)I once surprised![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lanfykins by sending her an
email by post. Irritated by the lack of quoting in physical
mail, I photocopied her previous letter, cut it into bits,
then composed a letter in email format.
Re:
From:no subject
Date: 2004-02-10 11:55 am (UTC)How were Red Sky Coven?
savoy cabbage
Date: 2004-02-10 01:19 pm (UTC)