Below the fold

Published on Wed 12 Jan 2011

Oh my God - I've written 3 times this year and 3 times I've started off by complaining about something. It's like the good old days. I got home from an unsatisfactory pub quiz yesterday (seriously, 17 points out of 100 or so for naming the 17 Pete Postlethwaite films that the quiz master judged to be "big budget". We got about 5, no thanks to me. We only managed to name one of Francis Drake's Seven Seas though. I will learn them) to find an envelope hanging from my front door, in full public view, that anybody could have just come and taken. It contained some really nice pictures from Dreamery Studio, printed on pages ripped out of a 19th Century German-English dictionary, and, despite "DO NOT BEND" being printed on the envelope in huge letters, it had been folded firmly in half, I can only assume in an obviously doomed attempt to fit it through the letterbox. I actually couldn't believe it. How clear do instructions have to be?

It had been lovingly packed, with a nice little thank you message, and I'm still really annoyed that the postman, out of sheer laziness (the sorting office is literally 30 seconds away) ruined my moment of unwrapping. And the prints to an extent. I was even more angry than the time they chucked a widescreen monitor over the back fence in the rain and didn't tell me so I didn't find it until I took some recycling out a few days later, and the time they left a bombarde on the doorstep all day for passers by to pinch (imagine everyone had been away for the week!) because this time some damage was done. You can't even complain to them though can you, because the postman will figure out who it was that got them in trouble, and all your mail will get even less care taken of it, or be delivered on fire or smeared in shit or something.

I managed to mostly smooth the creases out in the end, and they look nice in their frames. I'm still not happy about it all though.

I was wandering round the market the other day and, while browsing a book stall, I found a novel by someone I was at university with among a load of things that I'd read and really liked. It seemed too much like Fate to not buy it, so I did. I'll let you know how it goes.

I'm off to New York again on Friday for an ever so slightly too short trip: Rosanne Cash is playing there hours before I get in and the Decemberists are playing hours after I leave. I do get to see Joseph Arthur and David Bazan though so I shouldn't complain. Apparently I need warmer clothes and bigger shoes than I have.

Look at the game of chess I played with Chris the other day. The Empress set has the white king missing and replacing it with all of the draughts pieces makes an actual difference to the strategy you need to use. Castling becomes important just so you can see what's going on. I won, though as you can tell from the picture, Chris wasn't giving it 100% of his attention.