flemmings | (no subject)

The gov't sends me nudging emails about getting my second booster, but when I inquire at the pharmacy where I got the first I'm informed they have none. Gov't is saving them for the mass gov't run inoculation centres, where I have no desire to go. Well, shall see. Next omicron variant won't be around for a few months yet.

This was one of the things on my to do list which, by dint of ignoring my inertia reflexes, got done today.

Item: trousers to the tailor to be shortened to just below knee length so I can hopefully wear them in hot weather. I have one no-problem pair of heat wave pants that are growing thin. The new ones I bought turn out to be polyester, even if very loose, and I hate the feel of them. I have an ancient cotton pair that tends to ride down my hips and has been mended twice. All the others fit me fifteen pounds ago and don't fit now.

Item: getting new cheques on my lineof credit. Took forever because the clerk had to fill out all the details by hand, while consulting two other clerks. Evidently cheques on l.o.c and not on a chequing account is one of the things they didn't automate. Last time it was a matter of minutes, however many years ago that was.

Item: stamps from the postal outlet at Shoppers Drug. Not the closest post office to my house but feels like it is because it's east of me, not west. Now must fill out rebate form and mail.

Then went to Thai restaurant and dammit did have a cocktail and pad thai, even though there's still only one waitress there. It annoys me when I have an expensive massage and things still tighten up and spasm. Then went to new coffee shop three blocks over and had a caffe latte and a ginger cookie. Reckless indulgence. Worked it off this evening by bagging up vines I cut earlier, also many loads of cherry pits. And lower back still hates me.

Continue with Brideshead. Ex-Catholic me has a visceral Iya da! reaction to any and all Catholic characters. This may be the only thing I have in common with Southern Baptists, and that comparison ought to make me modify my attitude, but a reflex reaction is a reflex reaction, sorry. Though I agree with the character who called Sebastian's mother a vampire, and think her Catholicism was definitely a part of it.

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Iya da?

Emphatic no in Japanese. Segues into yuck. IME used mostly by kids who haven't learned polite ways of conveying 'I want no part of it.'

Right, thanks. So not only no, but ew no.

A word of many uses. Can also mean 'shan't.'

“Shan’t! Don’t! Can’t! Won’t! Pass it along the line…”

A chant from your childhood, I assume?

Kipling, I’m afraid. From a set of poems giving voices to camp-animals; camels in this case. I can’t remember the rest of it, but that part’s stuck in my memory and frequently comes to mind when encountering certain types of people.

(I seem to have got the can’t and shan’t the wrong way round, too. Bad Cogman, no biscuit.)

My comment seems to have vanished somehow.

I'm afraid the last one I can see, prior to this, is "A chant from your childhood, I assume?"

Vanished. Was going to say, that sorts with what little I know of camels. Also, bullocks as towing animals? But the British army was so attached to their cannons.

I think I read somewhere that the elephants were made unhappy by the smell of live gunpowder and the firing of the guns, so the bullocks were required to do the towing on the battlefields. (Sensible elephants.)

I was going to say, surely elephants would be more use, being more intelligent than dumb oxen. But of course, more intelligent involves 'I'm not going there!' While oxen have no nerves to speak of.