Save The Words!

Thanks to yourbob, I am now lost to human ken.

He has pointed me at Save The Words, and I may never emerge. If I do, I will drive y'all to distraction by flourishing an obscurantist vocabulary at you and asserting that I am doing good work.

But honestly. Scandiscope! A device for cleaning chimneys! *adopts*

A thoroughly alarming post

My walk to the Lit & Phil takes me past the railway station, and today there was this strange mechanical voice echoing beneath the vast Palladian portico. Clearly some kind of automated alarm system; at first I ignored it, because why wouldn't I? Only it went on and on, and it wasn't actually possible to ignore it; and once I'd decided that it wasn't coming from the station proper and clearly wasn't causing any anxiety among the travelling public, then I figured it must be from one of the vehicles under the portico, so it was probably just a version of this-vehicle-is-reversing and so really not very interesting at all; only actually no vehicle was reversing, and it did just go on and on and on, and...

Well. In the end, dear reader, I went back. I felt it my duty, as an enquiring writer.

And yes, it was coming from one of those vehicles: one of those white vans, indeed. With the steel shutter in the side and the security-company logo, one of those. And in between wails of alarm, the recorded woman's voice was saying "Help! Help! Security vehicle under attack! Please call the police!"

The vehicle was not, in fact, under attack, unless there was something cleverly cyber going on.* It was just sitting there by the kerb, with a bloke in the driver's seat who had presumably passed through all the stages between embarrassment and stoicism, and was now just reading his paper and disregarding the world entirely.

So I was very glad to learn that these vans do have an audible cry-for-help, I think that's rather sweet in these techno times; and I wonder now why they chose a woman's voice, in such an overtly masculine industry (they may have female security guards hefting cash-boxes in and out of banks, but I don't believe I've ever seen one). Are people more likely to respond, perhaps? Or do they just think so?

Anyway, nobody was responding; there seemed no occasion to do so. And I was cheerfully reminded of a time back in the '90s when I was in Toronto, and there was this rather lovely big motorbike parked by the hotel, and I went up for a closer look and it spoke to me; and it said, "Please stand back, I am thoroughly alarmed."


*I am in fact reading William Gibson as we speak.

In which boys benefit from authorial absent-headedness

Well, at least one boy benefitted. I just wasn't sure...

Thing is, I was preparing their tea, more or less driven to it in vague hopes of getting them out of my hair before I murdered them; and then there was a telephonic interruption. (Anyone suggesting that it was me wandering off to make a phone-call, rather than an incoming - well, you weren't here, you can't know that. Witness stands mute of malice.)

And when I hung up, there was Mac skipping excitedly about my feet; and I said "Have you had nice tea, then?" as I do, and wandered through to the kitchen in pursuit of wine - and found Baz up on the counter, cheerfully licking out one of the cat-bowls. One of the two, both of which I had clearly left up there full of their tea rather than putting them down on the floor in the traditional manner; and what are the chances of the boys having nicely shared the very limited counter-space, as against Baz hogging it all and emptying both bowls while Mac fussed and panicked down below...?

So Mac got a handful of consolatory kibble, just in case - and then Baz had to have one too, because of course it could be that Mac had wollufed down both bowls and come to brag at me about it and Baz was just garnering the last few licks...

So they've both had tea, and at least one has had extra tea, and it's eminently possible that one of them is on three teas out of four.

Hell, I don't care. I have downloaded new instances of my office suite onto three iterations of two operating systems, and they all seem to be working. Now I am going to knock up a quick early supper - four-cheese pasta with broccoli and mushrooms, since you ask (if I remember the mushrooms) - and then go out to the theatre. Now that I'm allowed out, I'm taking full advantage. Britten's Turn of the Screw - I am so looking forward to this...