Category: old blogging

Hello to visitor 25,000, whoever you were (someone using Navigator on a Mac with a .org.uk address, who visited at 2.24pm, apparently). See you again soon.

Beer last night with Paul F, Aris and Dave in the Nags.
Busy at work today, so not much blogging.

Lazy day today. Did some reading, trawled around the city getting quotes for a mobile phone (and decided to go with Genie), bought a new book (Freezer Burn by Joe R Lansdale – not likely to win any major awards, and certain to upset anyone who has PC opinions, but fairly entertaining), went for lunch with Sarah in Starbucks, then headed to the park to sit and read and enjoy the sun.
The main discovery of the day is that my free-at-evenings-and-weekends dialup ISP doesn’t consider a bank holiday Monday to form part of a weekend. guh.

Decided not to go to Claudette’s party after all – a combination of feeling fundamentally tired (I slept for nearly two hours when I got in from work) and the fact that a day filled with rain does not a good outdoor party make.
So now I’m sitting here, feeling sleepy and lethargic. I really should do *something*, like tidy the flat or start reading one of my marketing books, but instead I feel like just vegging out and doing nothing. Maybe that would be a good thing to do.

Out for beer tonight. Sighted: Paul C, Kearn, DA and DAGS (parents to be! ohmigod! congratulations!!!!!!), gorgeous Mich, Arron, Dan, Steve C, Kristian and Cat. Drinks with Julie, Andrew, the eternally lovely Jo and the splendid Andy – top people if ever there were any.

OK – why are fruit fools called “fruit fools”? That has to be the most ridiculous name for a dessert ever, but I’m sure that someone who reads this knows the reason why. Whatever the reason, they taste good.

Class.

Yes (in my opinion) – it’s even ok to decide that you don’t like someone at all. But be warned that this medium has lots of problems – most especially that it is open to misinterpretation due to the fact that it is text based and gives no opportunity for non-verbal communication. As I’ve said before.

Book review: Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem.
Simply put, this book is utterly brilliant. On one level, it is a fairly typical Marlowe-esque American crime novel. But there is a deeper side to it than that, a more emotional side. The principal character is an orphan and suffers from Tourette Syndrome – at first, the Tourettic ticcing appears humourous, and then is portrayed in a much more sensitive way, and becomes an intriguing plot device. As a reader, you begin to have some understanding of what it must be like to be a Tourette sufferer, the way that other people interact with sufferers, their perceptions of them.
Aside from those issues, the plot itself is fantastic – a total page-turner that makes the book very hard to put down, slowly revealed as our protagonist conducts his investigation, and not without one or two twists and surprises along the way.
Dedicated readers may recall that I have raved about Jonathan Lethem’s writing before. Well, I’m definitely on the look out for more of his writing now. He could easily be elevated to most-favoured author status.

After yesterday’s early morning fog, today Chichester has been treated to an early morning thunderstorm, quite a violent one too. But it has done nothing to ease the sultry stickiness that is all-pervading this morning.