Musical hold

 An excellent way to get to the front of a bank (or other) telephone customer service queue is to put on rubber gloves and start cleaning the bird bath.

Letter to the Guardian

Some time ago.

From a friend who died this month.

Ian Jack’s amusing remark that before the 1970s Britain’s drugs and beggars were “only in quantities small enough to look exotic” reminded me – somewhat tangentially – of a category of homelessness which now seems to have vanished entirely. I spend a lot of time in the countryside, often on foot, but cannot remember when I last encountered a real tramp; one of those much-bearded, many-coated gentlemen of the road who used to be as quintessentially part of the British landscape as oak trees and thatch. In fact I think the last one I saw was probably in a mirror.

Jeremy Muldowney

York

Symbol of seniority

I found a lovely little wheeled case for £3 in a charity shop today, very sturdy and practical, just the thing for weekends away. Discovered when I got it home that it's a bowls bag.

"Go to Father"

 

The Dancing Cabman

Alone on the lawn
The cabman dances;
In the dew of the dawn
He kicks and prances.
His bowler is set
On his bullet-head.
For his boots are wet
And his aunt is dead.
There on the lawn
As the light advances,
On the tide of the dawn,
The cabman dances.

Swift and strong
As a garden roller,
He dances along
In his little bowler,
Skimming the lawn
With royal grace,
The dew of the dawn
On his great red face.
To fairy flutes,
As the light advances,
In square, black boots
The cabman dances.

Nominative determinism again

 From the Smithsonian online magazine:

“I’m surprised [the paper] was published as is,” Flint Dibble, an archaeologist at Cardiff University in Wales, tells Dyani Lewis of Nature, which first reported the dispute.

  It's his real name. His father was an archaeologist.

A new dimension of light

I had a slight visual disturbance (again) which is a normal ageing thing but I wanted it checked, and got an appointment at Specsavers. They gave me those drops that make your pupils huge. 

Like most myopic people, when I look at any lights without my specs, they're not sharp but fuzzy little snowflakes. When I came out of Specsavers it was dusk and the Christmas lights were all shining. I happened to take off my specs.

The lights were now huge, shimmering, mingling hazes. Christmas lights, headlights, lights in windows, street lights, were pulsing portals into another dimension of light. I walked round town and the Museum Gardens (where the paths were lined with lights, and were now tunnels of gold), bumping into people and probably with my mouth hanging open.

No one else could see this massive silent firework display.

I nearly missed my train to Leeds because there was a tall Christmas tree on the station concourse which was now a conical avalanche. The wonder lasted for another hour and faded away in Leeds ...