UnorthodoxY Archive It's wasn't what you thought

February sees the start of “Edinburgh’s very first citywide reading campaign“. They’re encouraging everyone in the city to read the same book (“Kidnapped” by Robert Louis Stevenson) by giving away 25,000 free copies in various libraries from the 1st of February. There’s various events scheduled throughout February that tie in with the book and they’ve also created two new versions a ‘simplified’ version and a graphic novel. It’s interesting to see a literature campaign unashamedly plugging a graphic novel, I’m wonder if a few purists raised an eyebrow at that. I’m not sure if the whole thing will make that much of an impact but it’s a novel (if you’ll excuse the pun) approach to getting the city reading.

The cynic in me does wonder if, since the original text is out of copyright, the new versions are just a way of making some money once the freebies run out. Particularly since all the versions are also for sale and there’s two other versions of the graphic novel with the same artwork but different text (one using Scots language and one in more modern text) that aren’t going to be available for free.

Still it seems a worthy cause, I’m not convinced it’ll take off but I’ve never read the book so I’m might try and give one or more of the versions a read if I can get hold of a copy.

I overheard an interesting order while I was waiting for my lunch in the sandwich shop today. I wasn’t deliberately listening but my curiosity was piqued when the lady ordering looked at me in a guilty fashion and then lent right into the counter to whisper her order.

I didn’t catch all of it but it seems she wanted a hot sausage roll. On a bread roll. With brown sauce. A sausage roll roll, if you will. There may have been more components that I missed. Sadly I didn’t get to witness the eventual masterpiece as my turkey sandwich and a pie arrived before it was complete.

And I thought the deep fried mars bars where the low point of Scottish depravity. I’m only glad that the Americans have already laid claim to deep fried butter.

Gah, I just realised that this is a ‘what I had for lunch’ post.

I had a rant written out yesterday about the general unreliability of builders. While the bulk of it still stands the venom is somewhat dulled today, as the company in question actually started being somewhat competent and flexible this morning. Of course if they’d turned up yesterday, when they should have, then I’d not have had to get up two hours early this morning.

The upshot of all of this is that I now have a hole in my fake bathroom ceiling, revealing a hole in my real bathroom ceiling (and yet another dubious looking wiring job). Hopefully one of the people I’ve had in will manage to grasp that sending me an estimate might be a good idea, a first step to the ultimate resolution of no holes, and less ceilings, and me paying them.

To take my mind off ceiling issues I’ve taken advantage of RyanAir’s current “free flights” deal which I found from the, always useful, Cheapflights newsfeed. This time, unlike a lot of their cheap deals, they mean really-almost-free — they even pay the taxes, but only if you’ve already booked with them already in the last fortnight. Although they still charge for checking luggage and for paying using anything that’s not a RyanAir branded credit card so you’re likely to end up paying a few quid a flight. Still pretty cheap.

So I’m in Dublin this Saturday night. Groovy.

Something to distract yourself with:

Open a box in Warehouse 23