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Dear Woman Upstairs Who Just Moved In This Week,
Welcome to the building! I hope you’ll be happy here. This is a great place to live, and we’re all friendly here. Don’t be afraid to knock on my door if you need a cup of sugar or an ear to bend!
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I live upstairs from a total nutjob.
I always seem to end up with weird neighbours. In Paris, the old woman who lived across the landing from me used to spend hours every day on the stairs, and would often mutter to me as I passed her, “Tous mes amis sont morts!” (“All my friends are dead.”) In San Diego, I lived next to two psychotic, violent crystal meth addicts, against one of whom I eventually got a restraining order after months of deranged harassment...
This past weekend was Brighton Pride, the UK’s biggest gay pride event - yes, bigger than London’s, so they say. We were very lucky with the weather: the days before and after were intermittently grey and gloomy, but Saturday, the day of the main parade and festival, was perfectly sunny and hot from start to finish.
The picture above is of one of the parade floats, with the legendary Barbara Windsor herself on it, waving to the crowds...
The other day I walked right through the middle of a Woody Allen film set without even realising it.
I was wandering down the seafront by the pier, minding my own business, when I saw a big metal frame ahead of me. As I passed beneath it, I looked up and saw that it was rigged with sprinklers, ready to spray water onto the pavement below. I looked to my right and saw several film cameras, with people milling about getting ready for a movie shoot...
So, for much of last week I was in the Dutch town of
which is more commonly known as Den Bosch, probably because that’s easier to pronounce and spell. (I mean, honestly, who begins a word with an apostrophe?!) It’s a small town in the south of the Netherlands, about 75 minutes by train from Amsterdam.
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Yesterday I ran an unlicensed copy of Windows XP on a Mac … at Microsoft’s UK headquarters. I am like such a rebel.
I did wonder for a second whether the sudden Blue Screen of Death I experienced was caused by some detection mechanism in the building, and half expected piracy prevention officers to swoop down on me and drag me away. But no, it was just Windows being Windows. It works fine on my MacBook most of the time, but opening a couple of applications will cause it to BSoD instantly, which is rather vexing. I have no idea why. Maybe I’ll just have to not use those applications...
Many are the songs in Madonna’s back catalogue that are average in the ordinary version, but excellent in the remix.
Browsing through iTunes, however, I have come to the conclusion that the song American Life is not one of them. Not only is the album version absolutely dreadful, but there is not one single good remix of this song either. Yea, verily, this is a turd that cannot be polished, no matter how good the producer...
As Oscar Wilde said, “I can resist everything except temptation.” Yesterday I yielded, and bought the MacBook that I looked at last week in London. I did restrain myself a bit, however: I got the smaller 13" white 2.0GHz model, which is quite adequate for my needs. (If this were going to be my only computer, I would probably have gone for the 17" MacBook Pro, but it’s not - I still have a perfectly good PC laptop as well.)
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