Oblong Scone

It will soon be time to start the next module on my OU course. I'm doing an English Literature degree backwards. The harder courses such as 'Twentieth Century Literature' looked more interesting than 'Approaching Literature' and thus I did the more interesting ones first. Trouble is 'Twentieth Century Literature' kind of assumed you'd done 'Approaching Literature' first and thus was a little ridiculously difficult. This is yet another disadvantage to not being what people call 'sensible'. 'Sensible' can be 'washing up as you go along' or parking your car in the garage. I don't have a garage, and washing-up as I go along makes me cry tears that were meant for standing on a cliff-edge staring into the middle-distance. Anyway this new module is the one you're supposed to do first. 'The Arts Past and Present' is its name, or TAPAP as I confidently predict people will become irritated with me saying. It looks to...

We brave misunderstood balding English, standing in battered bus stops under angry regimental downpours. This courageous underrepresented British minority desperate to reassert our identity against all that…you know…stuff. Them dragons…them dragons… THOSE WELSH ARE STEALING ALL OUR JOBS! Anyway, let me tell you - there was no way I was going to miss out on celebrating St Georges Day like THEY want us to. Them…you know the ones with their ‘Political Correctness’, their endless bullying that tries to curb our lazy hate. And there I was on the great day itself realising well over a minute before half seven in the evening that it was actually St Georges day (I’d walked past a pub that said ‘It’s St Georges Day’ on a sign [it also said ‘Why don’t you come in and slay a dragon?’ which didn’t so much make sense as rather not make sense, but look at me mum I’m using square brackets(probably haven’t done it correctly though[I’m so out of my deapth])] ) I stopped for a minute, watching a Y-reg...

I open the door and take a quick glance behind. Now this glance is only to check that there is no one directly behind me. It’s not some grand commitment to hold the door open for whoever might next come along. But whatever the intention of the glance, it can bring with it clumsy etiquette baggage. The problem occurs when there is someone walking towards the door behind you at what is called middle-distance. That is they are stuck between two categories, these being, A) close enough so that it’s clear that I should hold the door open until they get there and B) being far enough away that I can move on and let the door close behind me without having committed any kind of social spunk. Trouble is, it’s not always immediately obvious as to which category the person may be in. Often the second taken to ascertain this may have moved them from category B to the dirty cusp of category A. Uncertainty means I often just have to stand there and bare it. Now you may be asking ‘Why is it a problem...