"A hungry man is more interested in four sandwiches than four freedoms"

Miserable sods. I'm alone in the building, working on Threshold Concepts. There's been a meeting complete with a posh buffet in one of the classrooms, and all the lovely food is locked in there, taunting me, waiting to be thrown in the bin. It won't be long before my friend Richard arrives from Glasgow: he can smell a buffet from miles away and will happily chew through a door to get to one.

Which reminds me of one of my favourite jokes:

Q. What do you call a fat goth?

A. Vampire the Buffet Slayer.

Thankyewverymuchladiesangennelmen, still available for weddings, birthdays and barmitzvahs.

(Quote is by that cynical diplomat of the Golden Age, Henry Cabot Lodge).

I wandered past a nasty pub today. It annoyed me, as it always does, because it's called 'The Moon Under the Water', which is the name Orwell gave his imagined perfect pub in one of his essays (I'm a lazy man and can't be bothered to find the reference for one reader). It isn't the perfect pub, it's a run-down Wetherspoon's. I wouldn't begrudge this theft if the chain made the effort to follow GO's prescription, but it's horrible, although the beer is very good. 

Anyway, outside this pub was a smoking Goth. Or rather, a Goth, smoking. I like Goths, having lived with some gentle, vegetarian Goths in Bangor. This one annoyed me because smoking was clearly a part of his rebellious image. I know Goths have, like all subcultures as Hebdige pointed out, been appropriated and diluted for marketing purposes, but they think they're rebellious. I wanted to point out that in a corporate world, smoking is the ultimate act of non-rebellion. Sure, governments tell us not to smoke, but they're far less important than corporations as far as our daily lives go. Governments should be far more intrusive but they've been captured by corporate interests. Deliberately shortening your life and reducing your physical strength (and financial power) by smoking just make you a slave. I have more respect for kerb-crawlers: at least both sides are getting something out of that transaction.