Monday 2 November 2015

The Nerd Connection.

Two oddly related facts from today’s sojourn:

1. The Balaclava seems to be making a comeback. I saw two in different shops today, a standard woolly one and a fabric one with ‘thermal’ lining. (Don’t you just hate how manufacturers continue to strut that meaningless term ‘thermal’ in an attempt to hoodwink people into thinking they’re getting the benefits of space age technology?)

The home knitted variety

The posh variety

The ‘what the hell are they
doing to my image?’ variety

When I was a kid, every kid had one. Mothers who didn’t know how to knit one even ran the risk of having their children taken away and placed in care. But then they fell out of fashion and took brief refuge in the nerd realm before disappearing altogether, and I haven’t seen one in many years.

2. I was in a shop and noticed a sign advertising vynle records.

‘You’ve spelt vinyl wrong,’ I said to the man behind the counter.

‘How should you spell it?’ he asked. I told him. ‘Oh, right. I’ll pass it on.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ I added hurriedly, partly to make him feel better and partly out of a sudden horrified realisation that I was doing a Thorndyke.

So what’s the connection between these two seemingly unrelated facts? Thorndyke is. If you can be bothered to watch this short clip you’ll see what I mean.

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