Why do people ask, apropos one's working week/day - and not in the context of trying to arrange a meeting, when it's valid, but simply as a casual conversational gambit - are you busy this afternoon/at the moment/busy week ahead?/etc
Sometimes it's busier than others, but, like all archives, hello cataloguing backlog! not going to go away anytime ( Read more... )

I also wonder whether there is an observer issue involved similar to the 'Facebook effect', whereby any given individual assumes that most, if not all, other people they know have vibrant social lives, close intimate friendships, fulfilling marriages/romantic/sexual relationships, etc.

I think I noted this heretofore apropos of people thinking that ( Read more... )

The conference was remarkably well-run in terms of the catering and organisation generally - I had some issues with the restaurant on the first night, but appreciate that they were working under difficulties of finding somewhere which would take a booking and do a fixed price meal for numbers in question in a rather full town (and one not noted for ( Read more... )

Somebody from Talk to Me London responds to the article I linked a couple of weeks ago about this horrid notion, and is determined that we should all be ASSIMILAAAAATED and that we will love it once we are.

Honestly, ducky (you don't mind my using these vocative endearments, do you, sweetie, because a stranger is just somebody you haven't met yet, ( Read more... )

I had previously been unaware of this horrible initiative, Talk to Me London. This is not a good thing to encounter on an already misanthropic Monday.

There is not enough AAAAAAARRRRRGGGHHHH in the world, is there, my dearios?

I am seldom in concurrence with the younger male columnists of the Guardian, but Stuart Heritage has the right stuff in him ( Read more... )

Apparently there is cries in some quarters of SF B DED (sometimes pointing the finger at creeping PLYTIKLE KREKTNIS).

Can only remark that, if so, SF is like King Charles, walks and talks half an hour after having head cut off.*

Voila the absolutely record number of submissions for the Arthur C Clarke Award, well into 3 figures. And that is only ( Read more... )

This post by
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But I am just slightly niggled that nearly all the comments to my previous post were picking up on something in the extract from Lucy Mangan's piece which I had only included in order to provide context and coherence, i.e. the issue over vocabulary acquisition, age of, rather than the thing I was actually interested in, and discussing myself, about ( Read more... )

Riffing off on a tangent from a discussion somebody linked to:

One of the good things about being My Age is that if somebody (and in practice this has been a gender-neutral phenomenon anyway) makes an appreciative comment vis a vis the green streaks, I can assume it's just that ('Hey! today I saw this Cool Old Lady with green streaks in her hair ( Read more... )

I'm not talking about actual table manners here, but about that subtextual claim I was referencing yesterday that proper civilised eating takes place with all the household (except for the servants?) round the table, and engaging in suitable conversation - presumably the mess rules apply of no politics, religion, or sex, talk. Possibly with grace ( Read more... )