Mostly they come out at night. Mostly.

I've been pretty quiet, blog-wise, but I figured I would make a quick hello post. There are a few things about Britain that I just don't understand, and I'd like someone else's opinion about whether I have a point or I'm just being weird.

The first thing - this sign.



I understand that it means there's a traffic camera, but why the old-timeyness? It looks like it's warning us that there's dangerous do-it-yourself macro photography ahead .... eek. That one might just be me.

But this one is legitimate. The bathrooms, at least the public ones, all across Britain, have floor tiles covered in little sparkles. I'm sure they looked pretty when they were being picked out, but mostly, when you see little reflective sparkles on a bathroom floor, you don't think "Pretty". You think "Huh. Somebody peed here ... and here ... oh my god ... there's pee EVERYWHERE." Seriously, I'm not a freaky urine-phobe or anything, and this isn't the sort of thing I usually devote a lot of mind time to, but I have to think that having half the public bathrooms in the nation look like they've been peed all over just can't be a good advertisement. I briefly considered that perhaps British people like to pee on the floor, and the sparkles alleviate their guilt by making all floors, peed on or not peed on, appear the same. But that's insulting to British people, and I tend to like British people, so I reject that outright. Instead, I blame the tiling manufacturers, and the builders of public washrooms. Someone should be fired.

That is all.

In the airport

... on the way to London. Finally, after what seems like a year of waiting, I'm on my way to England and Scotland for a half-working vacation that I sorely need. I have already lost my phone and almost left my passport a handful of places, but who's counting? Next time I post, I will be in England, and writing furiously. As I've said, I want to come back with a vast array of at least starts for stories, if not a notebook full of poems and stories. The football work I'll be doing over there will be great, but its a means to an end also. Literary work is what I really want to get done over there. We'll see.