Hornless B

Some Vikings invaded the local park the other week. They were very friendly though there was a bit of pursuit with spears going on at times. We did get a rebate on our Danegeld though, in the form of some freshly-minted sliver pennies as you can see below.



They seem to have gone away now which is useful as they were beginning to confuse the dog walkers who thought they might be a Draconian response to the fouling problem.

The new notebook has been broken open and with it I have defined a new system for notes and decided on keeping it neater. First up is this article ABOUT CAPS - YOU MUST READ IT. I'm not sure that anyone should lose their job for using all CAPS but a quiet word (possibly in italics) might be in order. And loosely connected to notebooks is my daughter's purchase of a perfectly formed facsimile of The Journal of Impossible Things - the dream diary of John Smith from the Human Nature episode of Doctor Who. Because it came with a sonic screwdriver pen, I was convinced that this would be a throw-away cash-in but it turns out to have 72 printed pages of rough notes in terrible handwriting, interleaved with charcoal drawings of many of the things from the recent series. Fantastic value! I can only hope that whoever created it has been well paid - this really is like a window between the real world and the Whoniverse.

Daughter has also bought and constructed a half-scale cardboard Dalek which is currently creating further restrictions to entering her room by being stuck to the door.

FARG, GRAF, GARF, FRAGmentary

There is a disused church near us – Christ Church Old Church which this weekend was host to a history display by a team of Vikings. I am sorry to say that we took the car instead of walking due to the rain which does not usually bother us. Well it was a bit far to walk I suppose. We parked in a street which rather aptly seemed to fit the music playing on the radio which was Bedsitter by Softcell. The Vikings themselves seemed to have pretty dropped in from the past, without any reference to modern times which was quite weird. A display of sword and stick fighting was in progress watched by a number of children in full fancy dress, though the cries and grunts of the warriors was interspersed with the youngest child shouting “externimate” at the top of his voice. My daughter thought for a moment that she was allowed to participate though the swords in use were a good deal longer than she is tall. Not that she was disappointed because she was allowed to wear a proper helmet though the weight of it caused her to go around with her head on one side. I was allowed to wear it as well – I am wondering if real Vikings had the comfortable padding that this one had in their helmets – no horns though. I am afraid I have not yet uploaded the pictures but most of the participants seemed made to be Vikings. Not one of them wanted to reseat my motherboard though. There was food, there was weaponry, there was music all under cosy tents with a calming smell of wood smoke all around. Much better than the overpriced and disappointing Jorvik Centre in York where the best part of it was the String Quartet who played for the people in the queue – I think we heard about an album’s worth while waiting to get in.

Inside the church there were various tables of local history – I was impressed with the poetry in some of the local school magazines from the sixties which was deep and non-naff. The quality of the magazines was also of note – I am beginning to sound like Pevsner or that bit that Alan Bennett read in the middle of George Martin’s production of Under Milk Wood. I have been meaning to scan in some of the pages from my old school magazine from the late 70s, early 80s. (Nearly had a grocers’ apostrophe there.) It is a shame that such an impressive building is disused though it seems to have escaped being vandalised apart from a few bits of graffiti on the outside walls.
The fact that “grocers’ Apostrophe” actually contains an apostrophe has reminded me that I bought “I Am a Strange Loop” this weekend which I thought was a much better buy than a new copy of GEB. I am alternating reading this with Cloud Atlas though Cloud Atlas is winning at the moment.