As a child I could often be found in the living room studying the Yellow pages. My natural inclination has always been to gather information – any information – stuff about plumbers; electricians; piano tuners; and even astroturf. When I grew up the internet came along and I found myself lost in a vast vat of Yellow pages – a veritable walk-in wardrobe of cobblers…
Well, that all sounds a bit peculiar. This is because I have lost the last 5,623 words of this post and I can’t be bothered to type them out again – especially the morose bit about feeling like an unwanted dog at a rescue centre.
Crikey, the gist of it was that I spend too much time fannying about on the internet to get anything done, and I have lost opportunities because of this – AND that I feel sad about all of that. And I regret all the time I have wasted reading about stuff that really is none of my concern.
However – I DO NOT REGRET BLOGGING!!! I mean the random surfing stuff.
Right, that’ll do. I really DO have OTHER STUFF to get on with. AND, be very grateful that those 5,623 whining words were lost as you might have been tempted to read them.
My most recent collage:-
I so want to make more collages with calligraphy….
This is the first bit of gilding I’ve done for a few years, I think. It’s a bit rough around the edges as it was an experiment to find out if I could gild on to any sort of paper – yes I can!
Do you know what I often feel glum about? Those loopy letters that I never sent. I failed. Maybe I will still send something to the addresses I have – though some of you have probably moved – which could be interesting!
More tomorrow.
Wonky Words 
That golden “g” has something Ameisiges an sich – it would be wrong to use the word “antsy” ; I just want to describe that the “g” in question on the first look reminded me of the sketch of an ant. I hope this does not sent you down a spyral of self-doubt or such.
Another thing pops up in my head, a line froma a song about “all the good times lost having good times”, but it’s a vague memory only.
Glad to learn that by sheer coincidence an ambulance came by, it was obviously needed !
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Mr Mags!!! It does look like an ant!! It reminds me of the opening credits to a 1970’s kids programme called Vision On – I will see if I can find a link to it later – but that looked like a cricket.
The ambulance – yes. For a small child that my dad knocked down with his motorbike. The child was fine – bikes didn’t go as fast in those days!!
Sx
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Vision On…was that one of Tony Hart’s gems? Oh gods! I LOVED him!
Um…I got a bit side-tracked. Something about some of us may have moved from the addresses you have? Um, yes, well…we might soon be moving. Not sure yet. Have submitted an offer. Vendor might (big word, that! Could mean sod-all!) have a response tomorrow. Or not. Tony Hart…sigh….
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Dinah – All the very best for your offer!!! BUT – you are one of the very few who did receive a Loopy Letter!!!! It was that memorable???!!!
Tony Hart was a gem of a man, wasn’t he?
Sx
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Letters you have lost are obviously meant to be lost, like when some man walks up to you in a bar and says “You don’t remember me, do you?”
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Mr Peenee – I have a problem with people who stop their cars to speak to me – they wind their windows down and talk to me as though they are long lost friends. I have no idea who they are. I am left baffled. At least you are meeting people who are polite enough to ask!
Of course I do the polite thing and pretend I know them back. It’s all very odd in Devon. Christ knows what would happen if I walked into a bar.
Sx
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“I spend too much time fannying about on the internet to get anything done” – Snap!
Your collage is delightful (as always) – small children knocked off scooters notwithstanding. And the gilded g puts me in mind of a queen bee, so still in the Hymenoptera order.
That’s three for three! Are you up for covering ALL of Jon’s holidays?
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Mr Devine – Am I covering all of Jon’s holiday’s? He doesn’t go on many really, does he – certainly not as many as Mitzi, so maybe I will, after all in the time between his holidays I could make some blogging fodder!
I have something planned for tomorrow, something scenic with not many words. Sunday is obviously Sunday Music, and then I’m on the home straight!
Sx
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When I was a child I was forever listening in to other people’s conversations via the telephone party line, with my hand covering the mouth piece like I saw my mother do on numerous occasions. I can see her now perched on the stool in the hallway saying to me in hushed tones “go and fetch me my cigs”
I like your letter G its very gracile.
You should get yourself a maid of all work to whinge and whine at, they’re a boon!
I remember Tony Hart and Morph not in Vision On that was a bit before my time but in Hartbeat not to be confused with Heartbeat the police drama.
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Mitzi – I will have to summon Charmaine from the attic, if she’s still up there. I haven’t fed her in years. She was always fond of a good whinge.
Meanwhile, yes! I grew up with a telephone party line as well! Really annoying when I wanted to call a friend. I used to yell at them if I heard a click on the line whilst I was chatting. I never found out who we shared the line with, I’d have loved to have found out. My dad said it was somebody round the corner, but was never specific. Anyhow, I don’t think they ever said anything that I found interesting.
Sx
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Mitzi reminded me of the “party line.” The reason we didn’t have a phone when I was a kid!
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Dinah – I’d like to have a party line now! Imagine! I used to hate walking all the way to the pho box to make a call with my pennies in my pocket. Haven’t times changed?!
Sx
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I’ll say! When I lived in rental flats, (in London in the 60s) there was a pay-phone (blimey! one still had the old 4penny mechanism!!) by the door and the housekeeper would answer, the bellow up the stairs for who ever was being called. “Jairf! Yer wanted on the phoooone.” And by the time poor Jeff got down to take his call the caller had probably run out of money!
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Dinah, I’ve been sitting here trying to remember the cost of a phone call in the seventies? I’m sure it was 2p, before going up to 10p.
There was a lot of shouting up the stairs in my house when we finally got a phone.
Was there such a thing as being able to receive calls on a phone, but not being able to make calls out? Or was that my mum making sure me and my sister didn’t run up a huge phone bill?!
Sx
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Sounds like your Mum was a crafty one! By the time I left (the 70s) I had a private phone in my flat and paid a monthly bill. But all pay phones by then had been converted to modern currency and sixpence was the minimum to make a call from a phone box. I think they also accepted 1/- coins. I forget the decimal coins! But they had to be sized to fit phone boxes, laundromats, ticket machines, etc. For a while, crafty buggers could get away with some foreign coins, but when that got out the GPO or whomever, scotched that little trick!
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My mum was up to something! I seem to have contradictory memories about when we actually got a phone!! Ack, it’ll come to me.
Sc
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Ah yes, the mantra “I spend too much time fannying about on the internet to get anything done” is quite a common thing these days! I have list of “things to sort out” that has been more-or-less on hold for ages.
Party lines were a weird thing – try telling a young person that such a thing existed! – ours was shared with a woman with exactly the same name as my mother, so there was endless confusion. I have no idea if she would sit there and silently listen to “the other Hazel”‘s conversations, like Mitzi’s mum did, however.
We loved “Vision On” when we were kids – Wilf Lunn, Sylvester McCoy, Tony Hart and (of course) Pat Keysell and her sign language skills [that we kids tried to copy, to ludicrous effect]. Amazing to think that it ended way back in 1976! It all went to crap when you actually heard Tony Hart speak – and that “caretaker” on “Take Hart” used to give me the creeps. Everybody loved “Morph”, though.
Jx
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Jon – I have looked up the caretaker on Take Hart, and it was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Bennett_(actor) as a coincidence he also appeared in a Yellow Pages advert!!
I think I managed to say enough about party lines last week!! – The phone theme continues!
I loved Morph too.
Sx
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