I have spent a brisk week making a tomfool idiot of myself at work. Suffice it to say that there is now a 100-year-old copy of Euripides in the world with its back cover now upside down and masquerading as its front cover. Irretrievably. Ah, well, at least it’s no longer falling to pieces. And I have finally properly labelled two colleagues who, despite looking wildly different from each other, I had collapsed together into the same category and forced to share the same name. And I completely forgot I was supposed to be going to the theatre with a couple of good friends and went off and did something else instead, incommunicado with a dead mobile phone battery no less, and probably worried them exceedingly, for which I am most sincerely sorry. Not my most shiny and heroic week. It is probably just as well I haven’t been posting. I would have been guaranteed to start a flame-war or possibly have my computer catch afire or my server found and trampled flat by enraged hippopotami.
Am spending weekend in sack-cloth and ashes.
Addendum: As you can see, with a quick glance to your right, I have been re-arranging and expanding my blogroll. Oh, hey, it beats staring at the wee white text-box waiting for some words to turn up. We now have three categories: Comrades, for all you good people out there who I know and like and wish to invite to tea; Cohorts, for all the writery types I am finding and enjoying mightily; and Choice, for all the choicest selections of random Internet goodness. [Oh, the happy hours she spent sorting that lot out - Ed].
Poor Reed, don’t feel too bad about your not-so-great week, I do worse things most of the time! Actually it cheers me up to know that other people do this kind of thing (sorry that probably isn’t very helpful!). I’m honoured that I made it on to your Comrades list - if you are ever in the vicinity of the Library of Doom you would be welcome to come round for tea, and quite possibly doughnuts as well.
Left by Lilian on September 3rd, 2006
Ag, sounds as if you could have needed a Duvet Day - unfortunately, you usually don’t realize you needed one until after the damage is already done…
Left by Titania on September 4th, 2006
I\’d love a Duvet Day. As it is, I am having a Dentist day. My, how the world loves me.
Nevertheless, Lilian, I am so taking you up on that offer of doughnuts the minute I manage to hurl myself eastwards out of the sucking trap that is London.
Left by Reed on September 4th, 2006
I’ve never been anyone’s cohort before, not explicitly anyway. Thank you for including me. –BL
Left by bloglily on September 5th, 2006
‘I have been re-arranging and expanding my blogroll.’
I know displacement activity when I see it. Still, this sort of thing is only satisfying when they idea was to do something else. I hope the Editor wasn’t too cross.
Left by Sol on September 5th, 2006
The Editor thinks I am unspeakable. She’s also a little peeved because here I am with a whole day off work and I am spending it… going to the dentist. Who lives two-hours-by-train away. [Insert long and slightly sweary discussion of NHS dentistry - lack of, the iniquities of the government, the less than immense wealth of my good self, the cost oh-my-god the COST and all I’m doing is having the barnacles scraped off… ]
I will take a notebook. I will probably not write anything in it. Writing on trains is pants. No table, train keeps joggling, it turns you into a magnet for small children, drunk men and nutters. I’ll have to knit in self-defence - I can stab anyone who gets too friendly or too weird then.
Left by Reed on September 5th, 2006
Hello Bloglily! Thanks for dropping by.
I always wanted a good excuse to use the word cohort. Gleaming in purple and gold, with the sheen on our biros like stars on the sea.
Left by Reed on September 5th, 2006
Well, heckamighty! Can’t remember ever being a cohort before - thanks! Makes me feel kinda special somehow … do I now have to become somewhat mysterious and obscure? And do we get badges and t-shirts???
Left by azahar on September 5th, 2006
Oh shit, turns out I’m just a comrade, not a cohort at all. So scrap that last comment while I go and soak my head …
Left by azahar on September 5th, 2006
There’s nothing ‘just’ about comrades.
“The rain it raineth on the just
And also on the unjust fella;
But mostly on the just because
The unjust steals the just’s umbrella.”
Guinness. Mmm. I might even remember who wrote that versicle in a minute.
[Ogden Nash, you fool - Ed]
Left by Reed on September 5th, 2006
I’m delighted to be your cohort, and can certainly attest to empathy with forgetting social engagments. I was putting my son to bed one night when I suddenly realised we were all supposed to be out to dinner. How did that happen? Fortunately the couple concerned are still speaking to us…
Left by Litlove on September 6th, 2006
Cohorts now? I’d always thought of this lot as a circle.
I like your improvement of Euripides, it’s things like that that add character to any decent library. There was a copy of The Great Cat Massacre at Royal Holloway on which someone had written a tenderhearted “Ahhhhh!” after the title.
Regarding your mobile phone battery, I didn’t realise the writer’s block had spread so far. I presume you are now communicating with the world solely through the medium of your blog, like a mysterious Gibsonian techno guru.
Left by Ed on September 6th, 2006
“There’s nothing ‘just’ about comrades.”
Oh, okay then … blush and all that. I just felt stupid for mixing up the terms as I actually thought I had been talking about comrades rather than cohorts. And I do feel very special for being considered a comrade. And still want to know about badges and t-shirts.
Left by azahar on September 6th, 2006
Re: use of the word “cohort”
I was ridiculously pleased when my son, aged seven years old, informed his aunt that he’d been watching a cohort of ants on the path.
Neither of us told her he’d been reading a lot of Asterix.
Left by Teuchter on September 6th, 2006