Ring Out

Yay! The internet has been fixed!

I'll celebrate for a little while. Then I'll forget what it was like to be without it, and get complacent. I always do that.

Last winter, Lucy and I walked home in the ice and snow. It took ages, as we were trying to avoid slipping, cracking our heads open, or tumbling into the back of a cement mixer. It was really, really difficult.

The next day, walking on unfrozen ground, was beautiful and easy. We could skip and jump without the threat of ice-death. "We'll never take this for granted!" we jubilantly exclaimed.

But a couple of days later, we'd got used to it, and returned to complaining about the walk - how long it was, how boring it was, how lacking in slippery adventure.

So, I'm sure having access to the internet will eventually become the norm. But for now I'll treat each online escapade like a child on Christmas morning (excited, wearing pyjamas, picking pine-needles out of my sole etc).

***

If you're a Morris dancer, you can never use the expression: "I'll be there with bells on".

Because that's to be expected.

"Are you coming to the Morris dancing tomorrow?"

"I'll be there with bells on."

"Well... yeah. I know. So will I."

"I'm just saying..."

"What?"

"Uh..."

"Think you're a big shot, do you? Think you're the only one with bells? Huh? I've got bells. John's got bells. We all have bells."

"But..."

"Mine are better than yours. Bigger, too. Bigger, shinier and more numerous."

"Are we still talking about bells?"

The only way that the expression could be usable, is if you've previously been chastised for failing to wear bells, and you want to clarify that your incomplete uniform situation has been rectified.

An unlikely occurrence.

(I don't know why I'm speaking like this.)

***

My short attention span is causing me problems. I've had ideas for lots of blog entries that never make it past paragraph two.

I was going to write a long thing about Dawson's Creek and my own adolescence. But it seems like it will be tedious and whiny (like Dawson's Creek), and awkwardly unappealing (like adolescent me). Maybe I'll do it at the weekend.

In retrospect, I should have kept all my aborted entries and compiled them into an entertaining book. You know, like those books they sell at Christmas that you look through twice, eat some turkey, then put away on Boxing Day.

101 Ways to Wound a Greek

The Naked Scalextric Bible

The Beginners Guide to Apostrophe's

My Cat Pines for The Pope (and 60 other stories about things that are quite interesting, but not really that interesting)

I could add my book to that pantheon of bound paper coasters:

Oh That's Not Very Good: A Collection of Uninspired Beginnings

Here's a couple of extracts:

***

Woke up late today. Thought about the government. The thing about politics is yo

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The human condition is such that one's greatest ambition becomes an albatross of Damocles. When I was a boy I had a whisk.

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I was reading an article about bee-keeping, and misread the word 'hive' as 'cordless telephone'. Weird.

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We need to realise we are immigrants. There's no 'i' in immigrants. Not if you spell it 'wemigrants'. (Except for that other 'i').

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Yay! The internet has been fixed!

[Ugh. Glad I didn't use that one]