Memo to Self

Before you next write an annual report, please ensure that you have constructed a list of synonyms for "appropriate". Here's one to get you started: "apt".

Please write out the word "appropriate" one hundred times long hand, until you have learned you can spell it correctly, so that - even though you've clearly set up Auto Correct as You Type to avoid "appropiate" - you don't have to sit and think about it.

No one but you will care, of course, but that's no excuse no to be elegant in public writing.

R.I.P. Ken Campbell

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2008/sep/01/obituary.ken.campbell

I'd heard of the Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool, and its epic productions of The Warp and Illuminatus, and much coverage of his PKD inspired monologues on Loose Ends. He even stood out from Jarman's The Tempest. I didn't recall him from the various Alf Garnett programmes.

What I'd forgotten was that I'd probably seen him, and certainly saw his plays, at Nottingham Playhouse: certainly Bendigo and I'm sure he was behind one on navies and another called something like Phantasmagoria.

But my closest encounter was at the PKD day at Epping Forest Community College in 1991, when I suggested the term adicks and possibly dickheads to him. As the bar slowly cleared on the Saturday night, it got down to Campbell, James Kneale and myself, drinking single malts. We were treated to an edited highlight of monologues past and present - on Charles Fort, on reading Lo!, on how incantatory it was, on how he teleported someone from Tottenham Court Road toilets to Newfoundland, and above all on how significant it would be to read Ben Hecht's autobiography A Child of the Century and how this would help me understand Dick (it's a great read, but it didn't). The sun came up, and in time we snuck James into breakfast. At no time did I feel "But enough about you"; he was genuinely interested in us, but he gave good anecdote.

*Sigh*

And then there is the special hell...

... that is the post office sub branch.

Sadly the convenient sub branch closed - which is ironic since it was one of the two subbranches that was going to be kept despite the national closures, yanno, the ones we were consulted on. So there's the main one in WH Smiths (how convenient, not) and the one near work. Frankly I should have gone into work except I'm hiding still.

Into a space about the size of a professional snooker table add:

one mother with screaming bairn who has been served and hasn't yet left.

one family who are trying to do something odd with money and all apparemtly have to be there - five or six of them.

then me with a parcel I have to send recorded delivery

how much is it worth?

how much are essays worth? Priceless or worthless.

oh, and the post code I've been given doesn't work

by the time I leave there's a queue of fifteen people inside the post office, none of whom are smart enough to queue out the door or to move to let me out to give them space.




Was that a flurry of snow on the way home?