Sainsbury's Basics

The grocery store, Sainsbury's has it own cheap brand called Sainsbury's Basics. I love Sainsbury's basics 1. Because they're really cheap, but usually good. 2. Because the plain white and orange packaging usually includes a tagline saying why the particular item is so cheap.

Apples: No lookers. Just as Juicy.

Orange Marmalade: Less oranges. Still Seville.

Jaffa Cakes: Some jam, som chocolate -- definitely Jaffa.

Plastic wrap: It wraps, it covers.

Laundry detergent: Cleans. No added promises.

Linksies

Purty purty -- but unlike Nat and Nicole, I can't post songs on my bolg. bolg.

And I put this on facebook too, so why not here, where only the favorites read anyway.

To ol' D.H. Lawrence (see turtle poem below).

"It has got to go"

"Borage is wonderfully good taste."

If you give a mouse a cookie

The Rhodes email list is infamous for filling one's inbox is reams of unsolicited information, announcements, and observations. The natural result of giving a few hundred type-A personalities a platform and a captive(ish) audience. There are certain names that will elicit cries of exasperation from almost any rhodie. Others are a delight. I present for your consideration the following exchange which took place on the Rhodes list this morning. Rhodie C is one of the delightful contributors. She doesn't comment often, and when she does, it's always with a poem that is somehow related to the exchange at hand. She never explains how it's related, but if you think about it, it ususally makes some sort of sense. Background: The Rhodes Ball is aobut a week away and the list has been flooded with "anyone have an extra ticket" requests lately.

Subject line: A Solution maybe to the Tickets Problem?

Rhodie A:
I am just curious. Given the fact that MANY people want extra tickets, it seems to me the only thing preventing people from getting extra tickets is dinner seating. However, it seems after dinner, the Rhodes House can hold more people. Is there a way that tickets can be sold at a cheaper rate just for people to attend the festivities after, minus the dinner? That way everyone who needs extra tickets can have them.

This is likely a question for the organizers, and maybe there is some fire safety issues and so forth. Also, granted, I have no clue about the insides of organizing this. However, that seems logical to me.

Is that possible?

Rhodie B (who is on the ball comittee):

Pretty sure we are at capacity in terms of Health and safety regulations.

Rhodie C:

Since the majority of me
Rejects the majority of you,
Debating ends forwith, and we
Divide. And sure of what to do

We disinfect new blocks of days
For our majorities to rent
With unshared friends and unwalked ways,
But silence too is eloquent:

A silence of minorities
That, unopposed at last, return
Each night with cancelled promises
They want renewed. They never learn.

-- Philip Larkin

Bear with me

Tortoise Gallantry
D.H. Lawrence

Making his advances

He does not look at her, nor sniff at her,

No, not even sniff at her, his nose is blank.

Only he senses the vulnerable folds of skin

That work beneath her while she sprawls along

In her ungainly pace,

Her folds of skin that work and row

Beneath the earth-soiled hovel in which she moves.

And so he strains beneath her housey walls

And catches her trouser-legs in his beak

Suddenly, or her skinny limb,

And strange and grimly drags at her

Like a dog,

Only agelessly silent, with a reptile's awful persistency.

Grim, gruesome gallantry, to which he is doomed.

Dragged out of an eternity of silent isolation

And doomed to partiality, partial being,

Ache, and want of being,

Want,

Self-exposure, hard humiliation, need to add himself on to her.

Born to walk alone,

Forerunner,

Now suddenly distracted into this mazy side-track,

This awkward, harrowing pursuit,

This grim necessity from within.

Does she know

As she moves eternally slowly away?

Or is he driven against her with a bang, like a bird flying in the dark against a window,

All knowledgeless?

The awful concussion,

And the still more awful need to persist, to follow, follow, continue,

Driven, after æons of pristine, fore-god-like singleness and oneness,

At the end of some mysterious, red-hot iron,

Driven away from himself into her tracks,

Forced to crash against her.

Stiff, gallant, irascible, crook-legged reptile,

Little gentleman,

Sorry plight,

We ought to look the other way.

Save that, having come with you so far,

We will go on to the end.

Just the facts

1. They clap after lectures here. I don't get it.

2. I walked by a dignified-looking, silver-haired old man sitting on a bench in university parks this morning. He was about to take a pill that he had in his hand. Viagra.

3. Today is May Day. Morris Dancers were jingling around Oxford all day. Around lunch time, I passed a group of them. They were all dressed about like this, but with feathery headgear, except for one guy, who was wearing all the traditional garb and a Packers Cheesehead hat. I listened when he walked by, and he definitely had an English accent. I was tempted to ask, but I didn't.

4. I keep buying food and leaving it in other people's fridges to pick up later. My groceries are scattered all over Oxford. I picked up my milk, bread, and yogurt earlier today. I still need to pick up my cheese.

A square or a cat shape

SAINSBURY'S
Belgian
Milk Chocolate
Spread
USAGE INSTRUCTIONS

A smooth rich spread made in Belgium. this is wonderful melted on hot toast, stirred into yogurt, blended with ice cream or spread onto digestive biscuits. Melt and combine with cornflakes or rice crispies, form a square or a cat shape, refrigerate and you have a great, quick cake. Melt and use as a sauce for pancakes or a base for chocolate fondue. Use as a topping or a filling for a great chocolate cake.
Store in a cool, dry place.
Best Before End: See Lid.