Bank holiday

This is my coffeemaker spouting espresso deliciousness onto a demerara sugar cube. I love watching the coffee.

Everywhere has its own little microcosm of aphorisms and proverbs unique to it. Cambridge has one made up or mangled from bits of Shakespeare or lines of poetry or something from film noir via Zizek. A well-thumbed favourite is Cornford's line on Brooke: "Magnificently unprepared/ For the long littleness of life."

In my case, on the contrary. I'm terribly, tragically equipped for the long littleness. Moment with no -ous. Time passes like an egg scrambling gently in the pan with nothing but an absent-minded wooden spoon and a dab of butter. I have no idea where the days go. People ask what I've been up to, and the answer, to the nearest reasonable approximation, is nothing. Nothing other than thinking some thoughts and conversing some conversations and having a bath and eating noodles and enjoying minor new-word discoveries and layering up rainbowed strata of trivia from Wikipedia. World history and species designations and celebrity babies like one of those souvenir bottles with coloured stripes of sand in it.

Good afternoon, all you little. Pull up a chair.