venta

As I mentioned a while ago here, I bought some of Dr Geof's embroidered badges of the First Tea Company, in the blind faith that a military-ish jacket would show up to sew them on. Six months later it did, in my local charity shop (the label proudly says it is made by NafNaf, who apparently are still going - in my head they're synonymous with the 80s).

I sewed up the rips in its lining, fixed its fastenings, and attached my badges. What surprises me is the extent to which it draws comments.

( Full Kettle Jacket )

Disjointed comments from the recent past...

If you have tropical fruit-related breakfast cereal, it's surprisingly nice with coconut water on it in place of milk. I discovered this totally because of my desire to try out new food combinations, and not even slightly because I am the sort of slack person who'd put cereal in a bowl before remembering we forgot to buy milk.

In a crowd on Sunday I was standing near a gentleman in a quite amazingly hi-tech electric wheelchair. It had expanding struts under the seat and (I think - I didn't see it in action) could be raised and lowered. The upshot being that, in a standing crowd, the chap sitting in it was on eye-level with everyone else. I'm lucky enough never to have had to use a wheelchair, but I imagine having your head a couple of feet lower than the people around you could make it hard to stay in a conversation.

A house on the road I walk down to the station had the top of its garden wall painted last week. It was a brilliant, pristine white. Overnight, it was visited by a fox with extremely muddy paws.

Owing to lack of warning signs, there is now a small patch of concrete on Haven Green with the print of my right boot in it. Converse, size 4, if you're curious.

Fringe benefits of being on the university campus...

( I guess we're near the art department then... )

Pottering around in the snow yesterday, I observed a number of snowmen (and one snowwoman, and one ten-foot-tall snowbehemoth, and a rather lovely snowdog). Almost all were built to the crazy three-ball snowperson pattern. When I were a lad child, snowmen were made out of two balls of snow.

When did this madness involving an abdomen come in? Am I right to blame it largely on Calvin? That's Calvin of "and Hobbes" fame, not the guy who founded Calvinism, who probably thought playing the snow was far too frivolous.

I also note that, in the absence of coal being readily available, the go-to objects for snow-eyes are plastic supermarket milk bottle tops. Mostly semi-skimmed, though I did see one wall-eyed snowman who was full-fat on his left-hand side. Carrots are still big news in the snow-nose world.

Last week I ambled up to a cashpoint and started the process of acquiring money. While doing so, I noticed that the guy at the nextdoor cashpoint was prying part of the plastic fascia off with a screwdriver.

Gosh, I thought. I'm not sure he should be doing that.

Then I noticed that he had on a fluorescent orange jacket. Like most of the world, I have ( orange jacket syndrome ), so I decided it was probably fine.

Although he did have a bag at his feet, an ordinary, rather 80's-looking, shopper, not the toolbox I might expect from someone fixing an ATM. Which was a bit weird. Maybe he was wise to the game, and was indeed committing crimes in broad daylight and relying on his high-visibility to make sure no one saw him.

As he turned to reach something in his bag, I saw blazoned across the back of his jacket: ATM SANITISER. A what now? Clearly a candidate for B-Ark if ever there was one.

Then I looked at what he was doing, using a piece of stiff plastic to scrape acumulated dust, grease, and fag ash from the corners of the ATM. And I looked at my machine, all sparkly clean. And I got my cash out, and said thank you to him, and went on my way.

That's a job I'd never even realised existed. But I'm really rather glad he's doing it.

Briefly ignoring any hayfever issues, for the moment...

Anyone who waxes lyrical about the scent of blossom in the spring air is not standing near a hawthorn tree. Fact.