Joe and G. and I broke out of St Andrews on Saturday morning for Dundee, where I found new socks and pyjamas (yay for over-large winter jammies), and the slippers I’ve been meaning to buy for about 12 months, and bought pretty much every kind of noodle the chinese supermarket
had to offer as well as the most humungeous bag of five-spice powder. I also ‘accidentally fell’ into Schuh to eye up winter boots, and ended up buying a pair. I have huge problems buying boots, because I have calves, and so I need lace-ups, which can be harder to find. I had a nice pair from Fat Face, except they wore down ridiculously quickly and gave me blisters if I did much more than wear them too and from the office. These beauties are lovely lovely Rocket Dog, and hopefully will not wear down, for they are snuggly and warm and comfortable and I love them.
Oh, and of course we went to Borders, because you have to go to Borders, and because it was coffee time, so we decided to live it up as evolcapitalistbiatches and get coffee in Borders’ Starbucks. None of us were supposed to buy anything else, except for me, because I wanted to get Pauline’s birthday present in the Paperchase bit of the shop. Hahahaha. One William Gibson (Joe), Umberto Eco (G.) and Jonathan Lethem (me) later, and we were ensconsed with coffee reading new books. I shouldn’t have been allowed. Or I should have bought something that wasn’t a really good novel that sucked me in after 20 pages, because I still have 900 pages of Anathem to read, and I’m really enjoying that too. And I have to finish it before I go to Madrid, because it really is Too Huge for a holiday book. But I bought a novel. Silly me. I also bought a novel book bag, because it was just too cute, and it will hold a novel that is not the size of Anathem. Andrew and I started examining it more closely in the pub on Saturday night to work out how many of the books we’d read. I made it to one. ONE. A Perfect Spy by John Le Carre. Clearly this bag is decorated with the wrong kind of books. But it’s still ace.
October 14th, 2008 on 14:38
I love the Starbucks in Borders, and the bleeding heart lefty in me – well, bleeds. But I love the atmosphere there, it’s absolutely perfect for working in. I find it hard to concentrate in libraries because I’m disturbed by every little noise, whereas in coffee shops I can block it all out. And my friend and I go in and read the magazines without paying for them, har har har, which sort of balances out the capitalist pig coffee sitting next to me.
Also yay for winter boots, and snapsies with the calf problem – have only once or twice found leather boots that I could actually get on, but both times they didn’t look comfy…