Weekend of Stuff

[vin_petrol]

Friday night I wandered into the city with Trash, resyk, Phil and Anna. We went to Varsity, as Phil has some form of discount drinks card for this establishment, and it's full of pretty young women in short skirts :-) Howard showed up later, and we discussed unusual sleep patterns. At about eleven, resyk went off to The Reflex (80s bar) with Trash and Anna. I went home.

Saturday morning I wandered into the city for a "book and t-shirt buying" trip. I cycled in, and noticed a book stall in the car boot sale on the Knavesmire as I was passing. So I had to stop, didn't I? There was nothing on that book stall, but round the corner someone was selling some old Gerry Anderson annuals from around 1970. This included a 1971 Countdown annual for three quid. I flicked through it, and recognised a story in it about Captain Scarlet and a giant robot. I recall reading this story in about 1973 in the playground of the infant school I attended. So, it seemed reasonable to buy it for a re-read. It's not as good as I remember it. The plot is very simplistic, and character development non-existent. There are some great explosions though.

The Wendy House theme was pirates, which I couldn't really get my head round, but it gave me an idea. Back in the 80s the record companies has this "home taping is killing music" campaign, which featured a rather nice skull and crossbones pattern where the skull is a cassette. Loads of people used to copy CDs and records to tape in the 80s. Look how it killed music! Er ... it didn't, did it. Hey, d'ya think the record companies were talking bollox? Nah, they would never do that, would they? So I thought I would make a t-shirt with that on. I went to zik zak, who service all my custom made t-shirt needs.

Next stop was Jack Duncan books. I there witnessed that most terrible of sights: someone trying to browse books whilst the rest of the family are outside sending in bad vibes. I once saw this in Scarborough, at a very pleasant second hand book shop. The family consisted of mother plus several children. Every five minutes she would send a different child in to moan at father that he was spending "ages" in the book shop and they wanted to go. Eventually he gave up and stomped out.

I'm contemplating reading Gibbons Decline and Fall of the Roman empire, so I was looking for a reasonable "reading" copy. Jack Duncan has a nice Folio Society eight volume set for sixty quid. Small, easily readable hardbacks. I might treat myself to this next month. I have a (quite reasonable, I think) aversion to abridged or revised versions of texts. I like to read the original.

I had a list of Philip K. Dick books to look for, and Jack Duncan does have a nice selection of second hand SF, but no Dick. The bloke there did note that Dick comes in rarely, and when it does it sells quickly.

Next was Borders, where I was doing a kind of "pricing up" exercise. I've pretty much bought all the second hand books I can easily get my hands on, and I'm now in a realm of working out which is cheaper: second hand and paying the postage, or new and buying off the shelf. Oh, and Amazon's "spend thirty nine quid and pay no postage" as well.

I ended up buying NO BOOKS from Jack Duncan or Borders. A major achievement. Not because I didn't see anything I wanted, but more because I saw TOO MANY things I wanted. I should cycle to book shops more often. It leaves me with limited carrying capacity and stops me buying books.

I then wandered into the library, and finally got to caress The Grove Dictionary of Art, a major work that consumed about five years of my life from 1991 to 1996. It's hard to describe what I did on this. "Guru of the text database" might describe it. I'm in the acknowledgements, where it talks about my "attention to detail" :-) I flipped through this for a while, looking at all the problematic articles that I had to fix over the years, and admiring the glossy paper and nice typesetting. Oh, and spotting the odd mistake too.

I had to wait for the t-shirt to be made, so I assembled a lovely picnic of stuff to eat from Lawries on the marketplace (mmm, olives, mmmm, caramel shortbread), and sat in Museum Gardens eating that.

I then returned home to listen to Fulham vs. Middlesbrough on the radio. Boro lost. It's going to be a loooooong season. :-(

It was Wendy House night, but I didn't seem to be required for lifts, so I decided to ride over on my motorbike. This meant I was parked right outside the building, rather than the other side of Leeds, which was nice.

I met ant_girl and sheepthief (for the first time) shortly after arriving. Sheepthief and I started to talk about cars, and ant_girl give us a lovely withering look and wandered off to find some people more interesting to talk to. :-) Then the pirates started to appear: ketlogic, loucifer_, jezebel_z and mistressmalaise. Then a gay gypsy appeared: steer. There was much "arr-ing" and waving of swords.

I also got to meet sunflowerinrain for the first time too. I mentioned I had ridden over on the bike, and it transpired she had a full set of leathers plus helmet in her car. So, it was decided she would go out for a pillion ride on my VFR.

miss_wonderly had a more realistic skull and crossbones t-shirt on. We discussed "outfits". My t-shirt had taken, ooh, minutes to prepare. This is more minutes than I usually spend on a Wendy House outfit. I expressed the opinion that if miss_wonderly is Premier League of outfits, I've at least now moved to Conference. However, she decided I was still kickabout in the back garden :-)

As usual, I wandered around talking to loads of people, including several very drunk people - I have no idea who they were. I recall seeing cyberspice and smorgasbord too. Howard of York also came across, although he got a bit jetlagged on the train(!) There were others whose names and LJ names I simply cannot recall. My memory is not good for these sort of things.

All in all, I had a great night out. At one point, they played Barbarella on the big screen. Howard of York and I were up on the balcony, looking down on the whole place. He expressed the opinion that he had once imagined a great nightclub where Barbarella was played above a mass of heaving, dancing bodies. He was now at it!

The return journey was made at great speed, as the roads of Yorkshire are somewhat empty at that time of night :-)

The next morning, I went round to jezebel's to pick up sunflowerinrain for our bike ride. It seems she keeps her leathers and helmet handy in case she meets random people with motorbikes and a willingness to take her out for rides. Cute! So, we went for an hours blast around the roads of North Yorkshire, which was fun. I haven't really done the Sunday ride thing for a few weeks, so it was nice to burn some petrol that way. It did make me aware that years of commuting have honed my traffic penetration skills, but my going round corners skills are a lot less used these days...

On our return, various life forms had arisen and were eating cooked breakfast. I can recall echo_echo, but it's a bit of a blank after that.

After an hours chat I wandered back home to go (cat) food shopping with Trash. We humans can go hungry, but we were low on cat food. You can't convince a mewing cat at 0600 that it can go without food. It will just meow till you go out and buy some. So cat food was required.

After that, I spent the rest of the day mellowing out: reading, eating nice food, snoozing. I even watched Antiques Roadshow! :-)

Comments

[sunflowerinrain.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the ride, it was super :))

in case she meets random people with motorbikes and a willingness to take her out for rides

#I'm just a pillion, so my story's seldom told...
(coming to a www.soundclick.com near you)

If you want to practise going round bends faster, try a ride-out with ukrmers - some of them do observed rides and give training. Knee-downs too (not recommended with a passenger, thanks :-p)

[vin_petrol]

If you want to practise going round bends faster

I can probably improve just going out myself some more. What I think has happened recently is that I've concentrated more on improving my high speed skills in my car. Well, really more just getting high speed skills in the car. I've not really gone out with a pillion on the back down 'twisty' roads for ages - certainly not this year!

I've taken the odd 'innocent' pillion out, but this has been mostly round cities, and is an entirely different experience. I didn't have to worry about 'scaring' you - you knew what you were going to get. :-)

[cyberspice.livejournal.com]

Yep. I once had the (mis)fortune to be in a ride with Champs, Batesy and Mat Tab (RIP). These guys were all on GSXR1000 and ZX9Rs and I was on my lardy Zephyr 1100. It was damn hard work I can tell you winding through mid wales with those nutters. Bear's another who's fun to ride with but hard work. White lineing it up the A303 with him from the West Country was, erm, interesting. Actually I'm quite proud as I have an honourable mention in a report of one of the Wiltshire loop runs ('98 I think) when I had only just got my first big bike, a GS550, and I was hairing this thing around the windies like there was no tomorrow. All bloody good fun.

[echo-echo.livejournal.com]

ello :)

[vin_petrol]

Hello. Shall we be friends? I'm low impact on your friends page 'cos I always use cut tags. And you may find my encylopedic knowledge of WWII films useful again :-)

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

I'm contemplating reading Gibbons Decline and Fall of the Roman empire, so I was looking for a reasonable "reading" copy. Jack Duncan has a nice Folio Society eight volume set for sixty quid. Small, easily readable hardbacks. I might treat myself to this next month. I have a (quite reasonable, I think) aversion to abridged or revised versions of texts. I like to read the original.


You can usually get the Folio Society ones free if you join, but then you end up having to buy exquisite leatherbound, beautifully typeset copies of out-of-copyright ephemera like Buggering Around In Botswana by Colonel 'Humpty' Humpington-Shagnasty for two years...

There's an OK three-volume Pengin paperback edition of Gibbon for (I think) 45 quid. Not pretty but functional. Or there's the Everyman Library hardbacks which you cna usually pick up cheaply.

Or of course you can download the Gutenberg version, but I much prefer print too.

[vin_petrol]

There's an OK three-volume Pengin paperback edition of Gibbon for (I think) 45 quid.

That's true, but the bloke in Jack Duncan pointed out that the spines go on this very easily. To be honest, the Folio Society set is soooo much more attractive as "something to read" I will buy that. It's only another 15 quid, for small hardbacks that are very durable.

Or of course you can download the Gutenberg version, but I much prefer print too.

I did this for volume 1, for various experimental purposes. The significant downside was that it was a later edition, with numerous footnotes, some by some christian bloke who disagreed with Gibbon. He reckoned 'God' had a lot more to do with the decline and fall of the empire than Gibbon gave him credit for. The footnotes were hard to distinguish in ASCII text, and often quite annoying. It was a situation where an e-book clearly showed its limitations.

The upside was that I found Gibbon's prose to be clear and readable, so the Folio Society version (unpolluted by other people's annoying footnotes) looks great.

The only bummer I can see is Gibbon's assumption that the reader knows Latin, so every so often he does the odd Latin quote that I stare at blankly. :-)