Wednesday 10 February 2010

A desk entrained

Once one starts looking, one finds desks everywhere. I spend at least three hours every working day at this one, the sumptuously appointed table in a Southern Railways carriage. This picture was shot early in the morning, about 6.45, as I sat down at my accustomed place and waited for the arrival of my fellow passengers. There's a man who brings his breakfast with him to eat on the train, muesli in a tupperware box, and a plastic container of milk. He always raises the tupperware to his lips to propel the last drops of milk into his mouth, belching thereafter. He leaves the half-finished milk behind when he gets off the train. I don't know whethere I'm more irritated by the mess or the waste.

I work here, blog posts, some idle writing and reading, some Greek study, even sometimes work connected to the day job. The days of jolly sociable commuters belong to a past time, when trains had compartments. We all hate one another

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There's a post in gestation on the definition of a desk.

I wish I had a cool user name, like cockatrice or vir beatum (Psalm 112, set by Monteverdi perhaps?). I long to be known as gratindauphinoisboy or archaeopteryx but every time I'm confronted by a web page that wants me to choose a username, originality deserts me and I end up using my real name. My best attempt in these matters is the persona of Sir Anthony Streeb-Greebling, as Sascha Loske sometimes knows me, but that I stole from Peter Cook

2 comments:

  1. Psalm 112 set by Monteverdi would be a terrific way for me to be announced at parties. What a wonderful thought. And the people of those parties will say, with some justification, that 'he shall gnash with his teeth, and melt away'.

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  2. Seeing a fossilised archaeopteryx at the tender age of 9 was one of the most defining events of my childhood. Don't say "geeky child", do say "don't you just love when dads take their daughters to museums of natural history". Anyway, one of my computer log-in names is Tacomatrailer, just to throw one into the ring as well. I'm sure at least Streeb-Greebling knows what that's all about.

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