Sunday, February 06, 2005
Sauf Dimanche.
Why do I never remember? Camera shops are not open. Barbers are not open. Even the Park and Ride for the nearest town that might have some shops open, is not open. Not even if I try turning into it and find the gates in the way.
I think I work to the rule that if Sainsbury's is open, then so must be everywhere else. You'd think the absence of early closing in the supermarket's opening times might have suggested to me that such a theory is not true, but somehow it never quite sinks in. Bloody Market-Town-dom.
So I've spent a fun day trying to use my black-and-white-colour-process film for my photography course. This week we've progressed to having themes, and this weeks is distortion.
There's nothing like searching out every bit of curved metal or glass in the house to make one realise that there's an awful lot of housework which needs doing. So two towns, and umpteen Georgian windows, later and I have finished off the film. So now all I need to do is get it developed by Wednesday. Which guarantees work will overrun on the first 3 days of the week, thus blocking any chance I have of developing it. I've also got to find somewhere where the employees' brains aren't going to pop at the idea of a black and white colour film.
Dans d'autres nouvelles:
Someone's been translating me into French. I'm not sure how well I translate. Most amusingly, he of Casino Avenue comes out as L'inspecteur ponce. Oddly, the system does not translate the entire page (but it does translate links, hence I got Blogger's FP en francais).
Sorry, getting distracted by Sentiment sinistre, and trying to work out what that was originally.
Reverting to the trip into Notacity to finish off the film, having exhausted every curving surface in Tweeton. Somehow I managed to use up the rest of the film taking pictures of the river. My justification is that the reflections each contain multiple, repetitive distortions. In other words, lookee ma, theys thar is ripples. I know it's cheating, but most of the film was more reflections that distortions.
So having rapidly finished off the film, what did I do? Mill round. People watch. Decide people aren't all that interesting. Get bored. End up in HMV. Spend money. Buy DVDs I don't need. Feel guilty. Decide to go home. End up in Debenhams instead. Browse. Think pink has hit. New spring lines not very nice. Old reduced stuff about as bad. Be tempted up to the top floor by the promise of a free knife. Loiter, with intent to ignore spiel. Admire crockery, whilst waiting for the Scandinavian girl demonstrating to finish. Snigger at her attempt to make New Jersey sound exotic. Marvel at her not quite cutting through a hammer. Strangely she didn't try to cut through either of the tempered or strengthened bits. Begin to wonder about the excellent value for money the cluster of knives for only £23 represents. Realise that flexible blades might be a unique selling point, but it also not a very useful feature for a knife. Wonder if the McCloud brand is anything to do with Mr Grand Designs. Bollocksy sign says yes. Wait for her to try and get anyone listening to buy something. See her give up, as the Notacity crowd are all only here for the free stuff. Be informed to keep the knives in the box until we get home, otherwise it will saw through our bags (or we might notice it's not all that great). Wait turn to be handed a small, light box. Woohoo. I am now the owner of a brand new knife. A brand new stainless steel knife. A brand new "surgical" stainless steel knife. A brand new "surgical" stainless steel paring knife.
Isn't a paring knife the type of thing one uses for doing vegetables? So a glorified peeler then? Woohoo indeed. She lied: the company might be American, and based in the "Great American State of New Jersey", but the back of the box says Made in China. The front of the box shows a kiwi fruit, and is labelled $5. So that's just over £2.50 then.
Debenhams must love having this lot in. They drain the store of about 2/3s of the people (but it was Sunday afternoon), and stick them all in one place, blocking the aisle. The demonstration then bores everyone. We take our free knives and walk out of the shop en masse. Which means it's quite effective at sweeping people out of the shop without spending anything.
Overheard on the way out: I got given one of those free knives yesterday. They're crap.
Oooh, they have a website (which has a feel of Innovations cum JML). They company is apparently Twin Towers Trading. Unfortunate name that, as they can't even pretend it's after the twin towers of Wembley anymore. And they're based in the wonderfully named New Jersey town of Freehold.
Getting the knife out of the box. Well it's shiny. The picture on the box is bigger. The handle has a lumpy seam sticking out. The bevelled edge to the blade is not very even. The very edge of the blade has a couple of small nicks in it. Testing the cutting potential, and it just crumples the HMV receipt. Using it as a saw works a bit better, but it appears the faults in the blade help here. Generally needs sharpening, which given the blade proclaims it to be Forever Sharp(TM)...
In one sense you can see why they were giving them away. Yet one can also see a good reason not give them away.
Other stuff:
Come here/go there advertising. Isn't it fun guessing which country, travel company or airline it is this time round? Is it Ireland? Is it Canada? Is it New Zealand? No, it's Yorkshire. What's with that? And when, in the interests of fairness and equality, are we going to see a Visit Hertfordshire campaign?
Most annoying ad so far: Canada. If only for the annoying singing, and not featuring anything recognisable. Actually what is Canada? A leaf? According to all the Canadians I've ever met, not America. But what does it have that other places do not (other than the hybrid Scots-American accent)? Being cold isn't unique. Mountains aren't unique. Trees aren't unique. American lifestyles aren't unique. French buildings aren't unique. Even the jokes about Newfies aren't unique, if one replaces Newfoundland with Norfolk, Shetland, Kerry, Tasmania or Arkansas.
But the singing. Whoever sung the theme music is one of those annoying people who do professional singing, and therefore sing "Hugh" instead of "you". So the ad sounds like it's plugging a defunct bakers in Swanage [Huon Pine, who made the nicest bread I've ever tasted. When they got to nearly the end of several sacks, they used to bung in all the remaining flour, regardless of type. So the results would be very oaty and malty, or anything else they felt like].
Running with misheard lyrics. The Canadian at work often sings along to the radio. Recently Jamiroquai's Canned Heat was on. He sang part of the chorus as "Like candy in my hands tonight, baby". And here was I being all conventional and assuming that the line is connected to the title, and so runs "I've canned heat in my heels tonight, baby". But now I think of it, both of them are equally as nonsensical. But at least none of this is as bad as the Tambourine/Trampoline incident from a few years ago (the real line is "strong beliefs", but my brother heard me make a mistake, and then somehow managed to convince half of Warwick Uni to sing the wrong thing. Long story short: my brother is mean).
[And this is one of those posts which I never quite finished off, and so did not post. Now I can't remember where else it was going so I'll stop now]
Anyhoo,
