Week 121
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Honoured to address a branch of the Omnibus Society on Zoom. Whoever said thereās no such thing as society? Because hereās a whole society dedicated to the study of those weekend broadcasts of EastEnders, The Archers etc, where the past weekās episodes are concatenated into one. Although it turns out that the EastEnders omnibus ended a few years ago, killed by the iPlayer I suppose, which must be why the Society pivoted to focus on the āman on the Clapham omnibusā sort of omnibus.
I think a video recording will be published at some point. I forgot to say some of the things Iād planned to say ā in āChekhovās gunā terms, it was like Iād brandished a gun but never fired it ā but thatās OK. Everyone was very effusive, and any pigheadedness resulting from that was neutralised today (entirely unrelatedly) by a grumpy email from a charmless Graham, who made some valid points but⦠(I think I wrote some similar emails as a child, but I grew out of it. Learn about compliment sandwiches, dude.)
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Found myself scrolling through the Instagram account of a ācar-free [name of city]ā campaign. I think Iām as motor car intolerant as anyone, but suddenly I felt like a Mr Toad ready to combust some hydrocarbons. I donāt think they post very often, so with a few strokes of the screen I got a concentrated dose of a whole yearās worth of lobbying ⦠but ugh. In particular, itās shitty to complain about creative parking by delivery drivers, who are just trying to meet their paymastersā unrealistic targets, and who have never knocked me off my bike.
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On Sunday evening, I had a lovely bicycle around the unusually quiet streets, with the football commentary in my ears (AirPods Pro transparency mode), the radio stream lagging a few seconds behind pubsā televisions. And it was lovely. I was mildly annoyed by the police van parked on a pavement (sidewalk) blocking a bicycle lane, but Iāve nothing but respect for vans of all kind (see previous bullet point). And I saw a hedgehog.
āYou can shove your Lamborghini up your arseā is a fine thing to chant and Iāve never felt such national pride, because that make of motor car is stereotypically owned by folks profiting from exploitation, nothing to do with āthe politics of envyā or anything like that.
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I think Iām going to go to a foreign country at the end of the month. Incredible stuff. Iāll be slightly relived if a mutant variant or something means we canāt go, but ĀÆ\_(ć)_/ĀÆ what are the chances of that?