It's horses piss and the doctors are raking it in

Yesterday at the bus stop at the Elephant there was some proper hilarity from an old woman with no front teeth. She told me that the buses were going to the dogs and that children shouldn’t be allowed to travel for free (a bit rich coming from a pensioner, if you ask me). She said that in “the good old days” (meaning 1948), things were much better, because- and I quote: “We had an empire, we had a commonwealth, you paid in the shops in farthings and shillings, and Prince Charles was born”. I think she is my new favourite bus stop person though the man who has the bag seen in this photo (usually spotted around Camberwell Green) is also in the running.

Other recent occurrences have included pushing a broken-down car, drinking instant tea, finding out that the potential doom is probably not going to happen, looking for jobs and considering getting a hair cut. Although I have been trying not to feed my ever increasing wikipedia obsession, I succumbed as #1 and I were having a debate as to the name of the guy in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure who isn’t Keanu Reeves. How on earth people managed before the internet, I really don’t know. More to the point, how did people ever resolve (I say resolve: I mean win) arguments?

Bill and Ted sorted, my next concern is this: How did linguists write the phonetics before computers, ie when they still had to use typewriters? Did they have special massive typewriters? Or did they have to write everything by hand? It’s questions like this that keep me awake all night.

Progress report on the CV: completed.
Likelihood of getting a job: next to zero.
Fear, on a scale of 1 – 10: fifty-eight.