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Monday: I went on a train. A man made a lot of announcements on the loudspeakers, grandly introducing himself as our “senior conductor” and going on about this and that, and kept pausing dramatically for emphasis, only slightly more normal-sounding than the viral Manchester Civil Justice Centre answerphone message. The man who walked through the train checking tickets seemed relatively quiet and normal, and I struggle to believe they were the same person, maybe they were just the normal/junior conductor.
And there was a loose connection or something, so the sound would periodically cut out mid-announcement, but alas never during the name of the train operating company (CrossCountry).
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My records show that I previously encountered a senior conductor almost exactly a year ago, and I drafted some observations about the garbled announcement “the cafe bar will be closing at Diss” which confused my tired brain – it sounded like Diss was one of these new times they keep inventing like prosecco o’clock – but in the end it didn’t feel interesting enough for that week’s notes.
- The Sublime Text spellchecker has no knowledge of prosecco.
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Thursday: I had a bath immediately after chopping a chilli pepper. I slightly worried the stinging sensation was because I’d not properly rinsed away the Mr Muscle Platinum Shower Shine residue, but no it must have been the capsaicin.
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Saturday: I had to go near the coast.
Turns out the Coasthopper drivers aren’t just up against motorists who don’t know the width of their own vehicles, there are also many rowdy passengers on pub crawls and actually maybe that’s why there are no buses later in the evenings. The audio announcements they have now are a bit quiet, I wonder how their text-to-speech software copes with some of the less logically pronounced place names, and the disembodied artificial man voice sounded familiar from various sloppy videos on TikTok and Instagram – as with the train earlier, I’m sorry I didn’t record a recording.
I was delighted with all the ladybirds in a pub garden, and I learn that the collective noun is “loveliness” which is quite right.