gamboling.co.uk

As I sit here waiting in the lingerie section of a shop on Oxford street I am reminded of an encounter I had once with Kylie Minogue – internationally petite pop star.

The particular location of our encounter was in the shoe department of a well known shop in lower Manhattan, New York, New York – women’s section of course.

By this point in the day I had already been to many shops and so I was feeling particularly tired. So I decided to sit down. I chose for my seat one of those banks of eight stools which people sit on while they are trying on their shoes.

Now at the time of my initial reclining I was the only person sitting down. While I was sitting my eyes immediately turned to the vast array of footwear that was on offer. I was so distracted by this that I hardly noticed the “excuse me” that was directed at me. I looked up and there she was, Kylie. As I came to my senses I realised that while I had been distracted all of the other seats had filled up of people trying on footwear. Kylie wanted my seat so she could try some shoes on.

So, of course, I stood up. I apologised profusely for my having been in what was clearly not a seat for the likes of me. It was only then that that the stories of her legendary shortness came home to me. She was, and according to popular reports, still is, very short.

And I couldn’t help feeling while sitting in this lingerie department that although I still didn’t exactly belong the fact that bras are tried on in privacy and while erect meant. I wouldn’t be moved on. Which made me a little more comfortable.

Just as I was cooking my trademark secret recipe pasta sauce the other night I was suddenly disturbed by a loud banging at my front door.

I use the term banging advisedly because although ostensibly the sound was also a knocking it could not, with any degree of accuracy, explain the noise that was being produced.

He was standing there, the mythical new neighbour. He’s lived in the flat above me for at least four months and we’ve never met. But more disturbingly, I realise as I look at him, I’ve never even seen him. He must keep some very strange hours if he goes out at all.

However all of these thoughts are retrospective. My first though when I see him is to notice his thin nylon tracksuit. His incredibly large bald head and his eyes that look, at first, like they’re sweating but actually it turns out that his forehead is sweating, and the swat is running down his eyebrows and into his eyes and then back out again. I wonder now why I didn’t then think that he had been crying but clearly it was obviously a different thing. It was for a start because he would have had to have been crying out of the top of his eyes to account for the tracks. But more importantly because the sweat was crossing his eyes in the middle not in the corners where tears most usually come from.

At any rate I could tell from his demeanour that something seemed to be the matter. “Good evening. Can I help you with something?” I asked. If ever there was a man in need of help it was he. “Can you turn that music down?” he enquired.
“I don’t have any music on.” I replied.

Now at this point perhaps I should explain something. Until this man had come knocking at my door I had been listening to music. But between him knocking and my answering I had turned my music off. Clearly this had caught him off guard.
“But…” he suggested.
“Yes?” I seemed to imply that I wanted him to go on.
“But you did have music on before.”
“Yes.”
“It was very loud.”
“Oh,” I positioned myself in an apologetic stance, “I didn’t realise.”
“Yes. It was very loud. You’re always playing music and I can hear it.”
“Oh I’m very sorry. So this has happened before?”
“Yes many times. And I’ve banged on the floor. I’m always banging on the floor.”
“Oh why didn’t you come and ask me to turn my music down before now? That would seem the most sensible thing to do.” I pointed out.
“Well can you just keep your music down” he blustered?

And it was right then that I placed him . He was a maths teacher. He might not actually be a maths teacher precisely but in his heart he was a purveyor of arithmetic.

He had come down, girded up for a big argument. And I had apologised, promised to keep my music down and all in all acted reasonably. But that didn’t matter. He wanted to tell people off. But that was, something I wasn’t going to allow to happen.

I think we might need a new term. We have a very nice term which can be used in the following way “I will forgo that.”

It’s very useful. But the biggest problem is that it has no past tense. What happens when you carefully explain that you will forgo something but then after you have to explain what happened. What we need is simply the word “forwent”.

And if you say to me, hold your horses* there don’t you have a dictionary or something I shall simply say to you “No, I forwent that”.**

*I could say “I don’t own any horses”.
**Of course if I consulted a dictionary, which I have now, I would realise that “forwent” is a real word. What a shame. Now, some might say that I should just scrap this article. However I will simply let it stand as a kind of cautionary tale.

Today the second half of two halves of a conversation. In case you didn’t yet see the first half then take a look at it first here: Girl: …yeah….

Guy: So yeah so she wouldn’t speak to me and neither would you.
Girl: Right?
Guy: Well then when I was looking for another person to go out with I suddenly realised that I didn’t know any women.
Girl: But surely there were lots of girls at uni?
Guy: Yeah but I don’t know them. What I realised was that I needed to have a female friend who would try and set me up with one of their friends.
Girl: Oh I see.
Guy: Yeah and so I didn’t have one of those so the whole thing ended up being a bit of a washout really.
Girl: I see.
Guy: And I keep falling asleep in the afternoon.
Girl: Falling asleep?
Guy: Yeah. I can’t get through an afternoon without falling asleep. It’s playing havoc with my course. I settle down for an afternoon of reading, and I suddenly wake up hours later asleep in the book.
Girl: Why don’t you play some loud music or something?
Guy: Oh I hadn’t thought of that.
Girl: I see.
Guy: Yeah. But I’ve joined an acapella jazz band.
Girl: Really?
Guy: Yeah. We’re going to be doing a tour of the west coast.
Girl: What? Cornwall?
Guy: No. The West coast of America. You know California.
Girl: Oh, I wasn’t sure
Guy: But everyone knows that when you say “west coast” of America.
Girl: Well that’s where your argument falls down.
Guy: How?
Girl: Well everyone can’t know that because I didn’t and I’m part of everyone.
Guy: Oh I see.
Girl: Yes.
Guy: Well this is my stop. So what are you going to do with your life?
Girl: I think I’m going to be a geography teacher.
Guy: Oh, that sounds good. I hope you enjoy that. Bye.
Girl: Bye.

Two halves of a conversation today. This real life conversation that I overheard happened so close to me on the tube that I couldn’t help but overhear both sides. The first line suddenly piqued my attention and then I was hooked.

Girl: But, Adrian, once I found you in her room naked the second time I found it difficult to trust you.
Guy: I don’t really understand that. I explained, at the time the circumstances of my situation.
Girl: Yes you did. And I even kind of believed you. But I just thought that I didn’t really want my boyfriend having to come up with excuses to be naked in other people’s rooms.
Guy: I see.
Girl: I’m glad you do.
Guy: You know it came at a very bad time for me.
Girl: Really?
Guy: Yes. It turned out that Sam hated me.
Girl: Oh, but I thought you would have… you know…
Guy: Oh no. You see I really was just naked in her room those two times. And…
Girl: …yeah…
Guy: …well it turns out she didn’t take very kindly to that.
Girl: I see.
Guy: So did she.

Let me interrupt the conversation at this point. But please be in no doubt that the second half will return tomorrow:Girl: Right?

It was an hour to go until the New Year was upon us. I had finally finished smoking a salmon [See: I know of four categories of people.]. When the Pope phoned me up [See: Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday, Britney, Beyonce, Christina? Madonna! and Madonna! Pope Eugenius III..]

“Hello?” I suggested.
“Eh Alphanzo howzaitgoin’?” he was clearly so drunk that he’d forgotten that despite being the pope in Rome, he was in no way Italian and was in fact Polish.
“It’s going well your Popeishness. How about you?”
“Oh not too bad, I’ve been getting into a bit of trouble with this new movie by Mel Gibson but other than that I’m fine.”
“I’m glad to hear it. So… Is there anything I can help you with?”
“Well there is as a matter of fact. We’ve decided to consider your calendar. But first I want you to try it out on your website. That way we can see if it works. Whaddaya think?”
“Well I’d be glad to give it a go. I’ll add it onto the archive page.”
“Sounds great – I look forward to it.”
“Great, well happy new year your honour.”
“What, is it the new year?”
“Yes.”
“Man I need to get me one of those calendars you seem so keen on.”

And with that he hung up.

I know of four categories of people. People who hold no truck with New Year resolutions, people who make resolutions knowing full well that they are going to break them, people who make resolutions thinking they are going to keep them who then fail and finally people who make new year resolutions and keep them.

And I think that last one doesn’t exist. I’m not sure anyone has ever really kept a new year resolution.

The thinking behind my theory is this: people who actually have the self-control required to keep a resolution like that don’t need the crutch of having an excuse to make the resolution. So, I think, all the people who could keep a new year resolutions are people who hold no truck with such resolutions.

And all of this would be true except for the fact I’m going to prove myself wrong. See I’m somebody who really holds no truck with New Year resolutions but last year I was forced by friends to make one. So I did. I resolved to not take up smoking. I’ve never really smoked and over the past year I haven’t either and unless the urge suddenly, and rather miraculously, occurs in the next couple of hours I’ll have made it though a whole year keeping my resolution.

So maybe they do work after all.

Now I’m not sure if all of the fair readers of the site will be aware of this phenomenon but it’s out there and so I feel it is time for me to document it.

I’m sure you’ve all used the search engine google from time to time. If you haven’t then you should, it’s very good. It has catalogued over 3 billion web pages. So when you do a search it’s normally likely that many pages come back for even quite complex criteria. If nothing comes back it usually means you’ve spelt something wrong. Google has a built in dictionary, and it will underline the words in your search if they are in the dictionary (the words are then links to their entries in dictionary.com).

The holy grail though, the thing that’s really unlikely, is that it will return just 1 page. Out of the 3 billion pages there is only 1 page that matches. This is called a googlewhack. The only conditions are that the words have to be in dictionary.com (they can’t therefore be names – or spelt incorrectly), and the page that comes up can’t be a word list (a word list might, for example, be a dictionary which listed every word on a page – luckily there isn’t a complete one anywhere or this wouldn’t work). And that’s pretty much it.

This very site is a googlewack. But obviously I can’t tell you what it is because if I were to write it in here then this page would be also return a result from google and then it wouldn’t be a googlewack anymore. But what I can do is show you a screenshot of the google page which has the words in it. The words in the box make the googlewack.

I just thought you’d like to know.