the inadvertant burger

I should be telling you about my trip back to Bath, but I want to do it properly and, damn it, I'm temporarily exhausted by the necessity of "searching with unflinching patience for the right word, the only right word which will convey with utmost precision the exact shade and intensity of thought" (thankyou Nabokov).

So I'll tell you about signs here instead. There seems to be this sharp divide between a tone of polite diffidence and one of dire emergency. The buses and trains have little notices saying things like, "please consider other people's musical tastes and keep personal stereos on low volume" or "please avoid eating or drinking". I like the choice of the word "avoid" here--as if it were a matter of ongoing vigilance, and if you dropped your guard for a moment, you might find yourself suddenly consuming a double beef burger and strawberry thickshake that had appeared out of the ether. On the other hand, death by fire or electricity is something of a signage obsession. And there are pictures. Electicity substations have big yellow signs declaring DANGER OF DEATH, with a picture of a man writhing under a bolt of lightning. A banner advertising smoke alarms asks HOW WOULD YOU ALL GET OUT ALIVE? in letters two feet high. A box of matches says DANGER: FIRE KILLS CHILDREN. This is a reasonable statement. The picture of a stick figure child with an open wailing mouth and staring eyes, its right arm consumed entirely in yellow flames, seems a little gratuitous, however. If you ever wondered where Radiohead got ideas for their sleeve art, wonder no more.

I will tell you about Bath, I promise, and I'll post a stack of pictures of Brighton, too. I've become umbilically attached to my camera, after all. They'll make a tourist of me yet. I have to go now and cook up a planetload of fried eggs for my second breakfast (the first was fruit salad and low fat greek yoghurt, so it cancels itself out) in honour of this morning's phone call with Matt, and of a certain film currently in cinemas.