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being a doll who is easily distracted
Oct. 24th, 2012 12:13 amNow I am an easy type for distraction at the best of times, being a doll who is prone to wandering off when her attention is caught by something of interest, that something often being a book, or perhaps another book, or maybe some wool. Yet when a new copy of the yearly compilation of Alex should happen to be in the shops while I am purchasing other things in the shop, then I am afraid that I am very distracted indeed. Sadly this distraction is only made deeper by my discovery that there is one of the Lord Darcy stories by Randall Garrett on Gutenberg, and I fear that I am spending the rest of the evening in determining whether there is more there as well, as I am a doll who has a great and sentimental liking for the Lord in question.
(I am also a doll who has been rereading her Damon Runyon, but you probably guessed that one.)
But in the end I am also a doll who has to give a training presentation about SNOMED CT and cross-mapping at nine o'clock in the morning, so perhaps I should be considering sleeping. And while normally I would take this suggestion most unhappily, there being many other things that I could be doing with my evening, I suppose that soon enough I will be being very lazy indeed, so perhaps some application of common sense might be appropriate, or indeed a good idea.
---
The season of strikes seemed to have run itself to a standstill. Almost every trade and industry and calling in which a dislocation could possibly be engineered had indulged in that luxury. The last and least successful convulsion had been the strike of the World’s Union of Zoological Garden attendants, who, pending the settlement of certain demands, refused to minister further to the wants of the animals committed to their charge or to allow any other keepers to take their place. In this case the threat of the Zoological Gardens authorities that if the men “came out” the animals should come out also had intensified and precipitated the crisis. The imminent prospect of the larger carnivores, to say nothing of rhinoceroses and bull bison, roaming at large and unfed in the heart of London, was not one which permitted of prolonged conferences. The Government of the day, which from its tendency to be a few hours behind the course of events had been nicknamed the Government of the afternoon, was obliged to intervene with promptitude and decision. A strong force of Bluejackets was despatched to Regent’s Park to take over the temporarily abandoned duties of the strikers. Bluejackets were chosen in preference to land forces, partly on account of the traditional readiness of the British Navy to go anywhere and do anything, partly by reason of the familiarity of the average sailor with monkeys, parrots, and other tropical fauna, but chiefly at the urgent request of the First Lord of the Admiralty, who was keenly desirous of an opportunity for performing some personal act of unobtrusive public service within the province of his department.
“If he insists on feeding the infant jaguar himself, in defiance of its mother’s wishes, there may be another by-election in the north,” said one of his colleagues, with a hopeful inflection in his voice. “By-elections are not very desirable at present, but we must not be selfish.”
-- The Unkindest Blow, Saki
(I am also a doll who has been rereading her Damon Runyon, but you probably guessed that one.)
But in the end I am also a doll who has to give a training presentation about SNOMED CT and cross-mapping at nine o'clock in the morning, so perhaps I should be considering sleeping. And while normally I would take this suggestion most unhappily, there being many other things that I could be doing with my evening, I suppose that soon enough I will be being very lazy indeed, so perhaps some application of common sense might be appropriate, or indeed a good idea.
---
The season of strikes seemed to have run itself to a standstill. Almost every trade and industry and calling in which a dislocation could possibly be engineered had indulged in that luxury. The last and least successful convulsion had been the strike of the World’s Union of Zoological Garden attendants, who, pending the settlement of certain demands, refused to minister further to the wants of the animals committed to their charge or to allow any other keepers to take their place. In this case the threat of the Zoological Gardens authorities that if the men “came out” the animals should come out also had intensified and precipitated the crisis. The imminent prospect of the larger carnivores, to say nothing of rhinoceroses and bull bison, roaming at large and unfed in the heart of London, was not one which permitted of prolonged conferences. The Government of the day, which from its tendency to be a few hours behind the course of events had been nicknamed the Government of the afternoon, was obliged to intervene with promptitude and decision. A strong force of Bluejackets was despatched to Regent’s Park to take over the temporarily abandoned duties of the strikers. Bluejackets were chosen in preference to land forces, partly on account of the traditional readiness of the British Navy to go anywhere and do anything, partly by reason of the familiarity of the average sailor with monkeys, parrots, and other tropical fauna, but chiefly at the urgent request of the First Lord of the Admiralty, who was keenly desirous of an opportunity for performing some personal act of unobtrusive public service within the province of his department.
“If he insists on feeding the infant jaguar himself, in defiance of its mother’s wishes, there may be another by-election in the north,” said one of his colleagues, with a hopeful inflection in his voice. “By-elections are not very desirable at present, but we must not be selfish.”
-- The Unkindest Blow, Saki
