Styley cafe the Elephant House was packed this arvo, a long queue for the counter, quite unusual. Got chatting to a guy in the queue with me over the sign by the tip jar saying that the staff had pledged their tips for the week to the tsunami appeal, and that management would match it – they’re a good bunch there. This chap was really interesting and as the queue meandered forward we got deep into a discussion about spiritual journeys and his own path which led to him converting to Islam. He was really quite interesting and bought me my latte, and I hope I run into him again.
(Obligatory disclaimer: No, mum, I’m not becoming a muslim.)
My plans to do some writing were scotched by sharing a table with an incredibly talkative Italian girl who talked and talked and talked for about ninety solid minutes. Still, since she was talking in Italian, I was able to do some reading and got stuck into Ulysses. I’m about 200 pages in and it’s a revelation to me. I was, I’ll admit, a bit intimidated going in, but it has been nothing but engaging and readable since word one. Thoroughly enjoying it.
I also managed to go through my general notebook and scribble some developments on various projects and ideas that are bubbling up, some of them dating back five or more years but finally finding a place to stand of their own. some of them only a few weeks old. It was invigorating to see so much energy in these ideas, and I bounced off down the hill with enthusiasm when time came to go home.
(Also enthusiastic because the first new issue of Paul Chadwick’s great comic Concrete in about eight years was in my hot little hands. I’ll be talking about that again.)
The evening has been spent watching DVDs. We’ve watched episode 2 of Doctor Who: The Caves of Androzani, episode 1 of series one of Teachers and we’re about to watch episode 2 of series one of Twin Peaks. It is SO GOOD to have old TV on DVD. The world has changed so much since I was fifteen, and ratty VHS copies of old TV broadcasts were passed around among near- and total-obsessives.
When I was fifteen I convinced my English teacher to let me and some friends go home in the middle of the school day to watch an episode of Twin Peaks, under some dubious rationale. That was pretty cool.
Hmm. Toastie pie. Yum.