It must rank as my favourite shop in town. And they're looking for people to work in it! Payscales are purely Imaginary, but in this case that's not the point.
I picked up a form and took it home to fill in. It took me days to get round to it: after all, what possible skills could a lapsed astrophysicist with a sideline in environmental campaigning bring to bear for working in a bookshop? Two weeks later I returned the form, with something vaguely convincing filling in the blank space. Then nothing happened, and I forgot all about it.
Until about a month after that, when a voice with a gentle Edinburgh accent arrived on the answerphone asking if I was still interested. I returned the call and fixed up a visit.
The funny thing about shops is the contrast between what you see on the orderly, presentable floor-space, and what lurks beyond. It's not unlike Backstage at the theatre, and in this case there are two whole floors of it. A dumb-waiter links them with the shop area, landing discreetly behind a revolving display of witty postcards ("Why should I tidy my room when the world is such a mess?"). In an office piled high with brightly-coloured former displays, shelves of incongruous objects (flower-pots, weighing-scales, lampshades...) and stacks of recycling-type boxes lurching under their weight of donated books, we arranged my shifts. I was to come back the following Tuesday morning.
The most straightforward thing to do is stock the shelves. Starting with "Politics", "Philosophy", "Business and Economics", "Science", "Sociology"... the weird thing about this is how many of the books turned out to be familiar to me: I'd either read them, seen them cited in books I'd read, read something else by the same author, or heard of them as classics of their kind. Perhaps it was just beginners' luck. Then there are entire shelves on "How To..." just about everything from tracing your ancestors, through winning at Bridge, to origami, knitting and boatbuilding. I seem to be the most agile person who comes in on either Monday or Tuesday so a lot of the shelf-stocking falls to me.
The following week they let me loose on the till.
The best bit is, nobody ever has to come in and browse secondhand books: it's not like, for example, shopping for food or clothes, which can be a bit of a treadmill: eat, work, get latest fashion, repeat... Here, by contrast, is a shop full of people who have only come in because they are genuinely interested in what we have to offer. Which, you could say, is the chance of stepping off the ordinary path, even if just for a short while, and into the wide, Imaginary dimension beyond.
Tuesday, 31 May 2011
Monday, 2 May 2011
The wet stuff
You're a Brit (well, perhaps not, but if you were...). You take it for granted. It's a trade-off: your garden's always green, but sometimes you lose the entire Outdoors, and the planned activities therein, because water is coming out of the sky and making everything wet. You learn, by the age of about eleven, that if your clothes stay that way for any length of time life gets distinctly unpleasant, because you don't get the warm version here. You carry your own fallout shelter everywhere, just in case it turns up unexpectedly.
You curse it. You insure yourself against it (I'd love to see the Pluvius Policy quotes for Wills and Kate!). You use it as a metaphor for bad times, because it beat down and rotted your ancestors' food in the fields. Your children wish it would go away.
And then one day it does precisely that.
It hasn't rained here, at all, since the beginning of last month. "April Showers", that have been with us as long as the English language itself, have been cancelled.
I'd been wondering whether three barrels for collecting rain was a bit OTT for our small garden, but now I realise it is no such thing: they are rapidly emptying as we run around trying to keep everything alive. I'd put off planting seeds, waiting for wet ground to give them a good start: now they're in, but have to be watered nightly. A stiff East wind spends all day pulling what's left of the moisture out of the soil, and then, if I so much as touch it, pulling away the soil for good measure. Last month's RHS-donated trees at the Orchard and the Battlefield have had to be watered several times (in fact that was what some of us were doing during the Royal Wedding).
Manicured grass is going yellow. The NFU is advising farmers not to promise their buyers too much grain. Moors are quietly burning underground.
For once in my life, I really, really want it to rain. The irony is, I'm pretty sure that once it starts, it'll be with us all summer and I shall end up being sick of it.
You curse it. You insure yourself against it (I'd love to see the Pluvius Policy quotes for Wills and Kate!). You use it as a metaphor for bad times, because it beat down and rotted your ancestors' food in the fields. Your children wish it would go away.
And then one day it does precisely that.
It hasn't rained here, at all, since the beginning of last month. "April Showers", that have been with us as long as the English language itself, have been cancelled.
I'd been wondering whether three barrels for collecting rain was a bit OTT for our small garden, but now I realise it is no such thing: they are rapidly emptying as we run around trying to keep everything alive. I'd put off planting seeds, waiting for wet ground to give them a good start: now they're in, but have to be watered nightly. A stiff East wind spends all day pulling what's left of the moisture out of the soil, and then, if I so much as touch it, pulling away the soil for good measure. Last month's RHS-donated trees at the Orchard and the Battlefield have had to be watered several times (in fact that was what some of us were doing during the Royal Wedding).
Manicured grass is going yellow. The NFU is advising farmers not to promise their buyers too much grain. Moors are quietly burning underground.
For once in my life, I really, really want it to rain. The irony is, I'm pretty sure that once it starts, it'll be with us all summer and I shall end up being sick of it.
Wednesday, 27 April 2011
The face that launched 500 trees
I am looking back at a life's work. Thankfully the life in question isn't mine, though. It is the life of the Sustainability Subcommittee, now sadly demised.
It all started two years ago, when our local Green Party's chief Organiser of All Things, in the time-honoured fashion, organised it from her place on the Parish Council. I was an enthusiastic recruit, and became secretary (and ideas lab). Collectively we organised a Parish-wide cloth bag campaign, the installation of several cycle-racks, the introduction of Green Burials in the Cemetery (I've often wondered, but never dared ask, what was in the rest of their "Business Development Plan"!), a re-think of the Parish "Design Statement" so that it included proper environmental issues as well as just appearences, and the signing-up of the Parish Council to that pledge to drop energy use by 10%.
But best of all, we brought out the inner tree-hugger in our local City Councillor. The Parish signed up to "In Bloom". It sounds all prissy and ornamental, but actually the RHS have kind of eco-pimped it on the quiet over the past few years. Battle lines are no longer drawn simply on whose patch looks the prettiest, but also on how many (different types of) people are joining in, and how "sustainable" (including things like collecting rainwater, composting and growing food) the area is becoming.
The upshot of all this machiavellian shenanigans was that between them the Orchard and the Parish were given, by the RHS, no fewer than 525 native fruit and nut trees to plant. Finding places in which to do this, though, isn't as easy as you might think. Private landowners are never there to ask, and even if they were, they'd probably have other plans. Some of the common land is being deliberately kept tree-free, for the sake of beetles who prefer meadows. Built-up roadsides have infrastructure underneath. One of the flood plains is set aside for housing. And so on.
We rapidly came to realise that edges were good, and that the best of these lay between the old battlefield (now a playing-field) and the main road. A date was set: perhaps a little late in the season, but then the season this year has been particularly cold. The RHS brief asked us to make an event of it, so we did: the mayor came along in her pink dress and hat to plant the first tree for newspaper coverage, and someone had thoughtfully provided Cava, fruit-juice and cake for all of us. It was, in short, a perfect day.
But don't trees take up space, rather than creating it? Well, that depends on who you are. Obviously if you're playing football on the playing-field, and someone's carelessly gone and planted trees in the middle of it, then they take up your space. But if you're some item of wildlife, or someone who likes climbing trees, then they provide special spaces just for you.
It all started two years ago, when our local Green Party's chief Organiser of All Things, in the time-honoured fashion, organised it from her place on the Parish Council. I was an enthusiastic recruit, and became secretary (and ideas lab). Collectively we organised a Parish-wide cloth bag campaign, the installation of several cycle-racks, the introduction of Green Burials in the Cemetery (I've often wondered, but never dared ask, what was in the rest of their "Business Development Plan"!), a re-think of the Parish "Design Statement" so that it included proper environmental issues as well as just appearences, and the signing-up of the Parish Council to that pledge to drop energy use by 10%.
But best of all, we brought out the inner tree-hugger in our local City Councillor. The Parish signed up to "In Bloom". It sounds all prissy and ornamental, but actually the RHS have kind of eco-pimped it on the quiet over the past few years. Battle lines are no longer drawn simply on whose patch looks the prettiest, but also on how many (different types of) people are joining in, and how "sustainable" (including things like collecting rainwater, composting and growing food) the area is becoming.
The upshot of all this machiavellian shenanigans was that between them the Orchard and the Parish were given, by the RHS, no fewer than 525 native fruit and nut trees to plant. Finding places in which to do this, though, isn't as easy as you might think. Private landowners are never there to ask, and even if they were, they'd probably have other plans. Some of the common land is being deliberately kept tree-free, for the sake of beetles who prefer meadows. Built-up roadsides have infrastructure underneath. One of the flood plains is set aside for housing. And so on.
We rapidly came to realise that edges were good, and that the best of these lay between the old battlefield (now a playing-field) and the main road. A date was set: perhaps a little late in the season, but then the season this year has been particularly cold. The RHS brief asked us to make an event of it, so we did: the mayor came along in her pink dress and hat to plant the first tree for newspaper coverage, and someone had thoughtfully provided Cava, fruit-juice and cake for all of us. It was, in short, a perfect day.
But don't trees take up space, rather than creating it? Well, that depends on who you are. Obviously if you're playing football on the playing-field, and someone's carelessly gone and planted trees in the middle of it, then they take up your space. But if you're some item of wildlife, or someone who likes climbing trees, then they provide special spaces just for you.
Monday, 14 March 2011
How space can save your life
It's kind of horribly compulsive, looking at those arial pictures of Japanese tsunami damage. And of no help whatever to anyone who lived in all those houses that were there, and are now gone. Except to notice one thing, that might be useful in future: the few roofs still visible in the aftermath pictures all lie directly inshore from city spaces set aside for trees.Wednesday, 2 March 2011
Space, for kids
It's the kind of space you don't know you need, until someone grabs it from you.
The 'phone was ringing. I'd woken up in the middle of the night and the phone was ringing. I turned the face of my alarm-clock towards the window to see the time: someone was calling our house at five to one in the morning. And presumably Dad was still at Valerie's, because he hadn't picked up the extension in the main bedroom. Funny, he always made it back by midnight.
I never did like that house: it tried to be modern, but it was so dark. The sitting room had three windows but it never seemed to get any sun at all. The house, in fact the entire village, "nestled", which basically meant you didn't see anything or get any light. Which was probably a perfect end to the day if you'd been up on the fells since dawn looking after cows or sheep, but for an urban type like me it was a bit of a drag. It may have been something like the same feeling that had caused Mum to go and live with Douglas: obviously, because there was nothing bad about any of us. It had only been last month and it had come as a bit of a shock. I remembered wondering whether Chairman Mao's parents had separated when he was a teenager. That would account for a lot.
Come to think of it, the brightest "room" in the house was, in fact, the upstairs corridor, the length of which I was now walking to go and answer that 'phone. It seemed rather a lot longer than usual for some reason. I tiptoed past my brother's room _tiptoed, for heaven's sake why bother? and how could he sleep through that racket?_ pushed open the door, and picked up the handset
Now that I was no longer being ranted at, I could think a bit. Supposing I'd made a terrible mistake, and it was distress I'd been hearing, not anger? What if someone somewhere really needed help? Well I could at least find out who it was: in the days long before 1471 was even thought of, but when there was still operators, you could dial 100 and ask for the last call to be traced, as long as the lines had been quiet in the meantime. I picked up the 'phone again_
by the time I got back into bed I noticed that I'd misread the time: it had been five past eleven, Dad would be home by midnight, and I would get my eight hours. Just.
*****
"You wouldn't believe what happened last night", I began over breakfast. "This mad Scottish voice_"
"Oh, so she finally managed to wake you up without waking me, then" interrupted my brother.
"It's Douglas' wife" said Dad "Just ignore it". Like you can ignore a 'phone?? This was the 1970s, when phones were mighty chunks of engineering hardware that made a right royal racket, not the slim little items you get today that discretely slip out of your pocket and get lost in the park, or on the bus. And they were hard-wired in, too, you couldn't even unplug them. Or switch them off. And if you took them off the hook they turned into air-raid sirens. We thought of wrapping the 'phone in a quilt and stuffing it in the Evil Wardrobe, but somehow never got round to doing this every night.
*****
"Right, pay attention" said Mr Square "Who can tell me how to use one word to remember what Inductors and Capacitors do in an electric circuit?.. Lunchista?"
I always sat in the front row in Physics. My enthusiasm, terrible eyesight and the fact that, in the driech summer we were having this year, it was the warmest part of the lab, made it the perfect place as far as I was concerned.
"It's CIVIL, sir. C for Current leads...er..." Hang on, "I" is current. So what was the "C"?.."Sorry sir, I can't remember". This was so unusual that the rest of the class went quiet behind me. It sounded odd. Mr Square asked sympathetically if I was alright. "I...
(suddenly realised that saying in front of the entire class that I'd got woken up in the middle of the night by a mad Scotswoman on the 'phone, would probably not be a good idea) "...didn't get much sleep last night, Sir"
Some wag in the back row helpfully added "She was on the job, Sir", which sent a giggle round the whole class. Including me, because the idea was so utterly incongruous: I must have been the least likely prospect in the room for that kind of thing. Even if you included all the lads. "Get Lunchista on the job" added the class reprobate, in a flat tone that implied that he had tried, but found it completely impossible, to imagine.
*****
Douglas turned out to be an interesting and humourous friend ("A collective noun for people who run Universities? Oooh, how about "A Lack of Principles"?"), and Valerie turned out to be the sort of person you could really confide in. The dreadful dark summer of 1977 seagued into a delightful autumn, and the nightmare calls faded away. My old school reports, which turned up in a recent house-move, show a dip followed by a bounce. And I now have two extra parents.
But to this day I consider "I don't have to answer that bloody phone!!" as the statement of an inalienable human right. And of course, we have an answerphone.
*****
*we apologise for the unwarrented intrusion of cheese into this post. The gentleman's name was in fact Rockford.
The 'phone was ringing. I'd woken up in the middle of the night and the phone was ringing. I turned the face of my alarm-clock towards the window to see the time: someone was calling our house at five to one in the morning. And presumably Dad was still at Valerie's, because he hadn't picked up the extension in the main bedroom. Funny, he always made it back by midnight.
I never did like that house: it tried to be modern, but it was so dark. The sitting room had three windows but it never seemed to get any sun at all. The house, in fact the entire village, "nestled", which basically meant you didn't see anything or get any light. Which was probably a perfect end to the day if you'd been up on the fells since dawn looking after cows or sheep, but for an urban type like me it was a bit of a drag. It may have been something like the same feeling that had caused Mum to go and live with Douglas: obviously, because there was nothing bad about any of us. It had only been last month and it had come as a bit of a shock. I remembered wondering whether Chairman Mao's parents had separated when he was a teenager. That would account for a lot.
Come to think of it, the brightest "room" in the house was, in fact, the upstairs corridor, the length of which I was now walking to go and answer that 'phone. It seemed rather a lot longer than usual for some reason. I tiptoed past my brother's room _tiptoed, for heaven's sake why bother? and how could he sleep through that racket?_ pushed open the door, and picked up the handset
RRant RRant RRant RRant hoose RRant RRant!!!eh?
RRant RRant RRant Yew RRant!Someone was obviously very upset and, to add a surreal twist, she had a huge Scottish accent. I didn't know anybody Scottish, except Douglas, and my Grandfather who lived in Scotland, and they were both very polite and softly-spoken. And of course, they were both men.
I'm, er, very sorry but I couldn't hear what you said_
RRant disnae RRant RRant RRant RRant RRant RRant wukkud RRant RRant RRant RRant RRant!Well, let's apply some logic here. Though that seems rather difficult (why's that? Does logic need daylight in order to work? Why should it? And is that why school happens during daylight hours?..): this is obviously grown-up stuff, and therefore luckily none of my business, so whoever this is needs to talk to Dad, and she's already got his number, so all I need to do is_
I'm sorry, Dad's not here. He won't be back 'til_midnight. Oops! And anyway if this happens again tonight I won't get my 8 hours sleep, then I shall be dozy at school and look like an idiot.
_er, 'til the morning.
RRant RRant wutch RRant wrang RRant RRant RRant RRant wurrus RRant RRant RRant Yew RRant RRant!I decided the next best thing, asking if she'd like to leave a message, was probably a bit pointless, said goodbye as politely as it was possible to do when interrupting someone mid-sentence (which I then felt guilty about) and put the phone down.
Now that I was no longer being ranted at, I could think a bit. Supposing I'd made a terrible mistake, and it was distress I'd been hearing, not anger? What if someone somewhere really needed help? Well I could at least find out who it was: in the days long before 1471 was even thought of, but when there was still operators, you could dial 100 and ask for the last call to be traced, as long as the lines had been quiet in the meantime. I picked up the 'phone again_
RRant chuldrren RRant RRant RRant RRant RRant wrang RRant RRant RRant Yew RRantbut of course the connection only finished once both people had hung up. I remember wishing we had one of those machines that took calls automatically and taped the answers, like the detective in San Francisco:
This is Jim Roquefort*, at the tone leave your name and message, I'll get back to you
by the time I got back into bed I noticed that I'd misread the time: it had been five past eleven, Dad would be home by midnight, and I would get my eight hours. Just.
*****
"You wouldn't believe what happened last night", I began over breakfast. "This mad Scottish voice_"
"Oh, so she finally managed to wake you up without waking me, then" interrupted my brother.
"It's Douglas' wife" said Dad "Just ignore it". Like you can ignore a 'phone?? This was the 1970s, when phones were mighty chunks of engineering hardware that made a right royal racket, not the slim little items you get today that discretely slip out of your pocket and get lost in the park, or on the bus. And they were hard-wired in, too, you couldn't even unplug them. Or switch them off. And if you took them off the hook they turned into air-raid sirens. We thought of wrapping the 'phone in a quilt and stuffing it in the Evil Wardrobe, but somehow never got round to doing this every night.
*****
"Right, pay attention" said Mr Square "Who can tell me how to use one word to remember what Inductors and Capacitors do in an electric circuit?.. Lunchista?"
I always sat in the front row in Physics. My enthusiasm, terrible eyesight and the fact that, in the driech summer we were having this year, it was the warmest part of the lab, made it the perfect place as far as I was concerned.
"It's CIVIL, sir. C for Current leads...er..." Hang on, "I" is current. So what was the "C"?.."Sorry sir, I can't remember". This was so unusual that the rest of the class went quiet behind me. It sounded odd. Mr Square asked sympathetically if I was alright. "I...
(suddenly realised that saying in front of the entire class that I'd got woken up in the middle of the night by a mad Scotswoman on the 'phone, would probably not be a good idea) "...didn't get much sleep last night, Sir"
Some wag in the back row helpfully added "She was on the job, Sir", which sent a giggle round the whole class. Including me, because the idea was so utterly incongruous: I must have been the least likely prospect in the room for that kind of thing. Even if you included all the lads. "Get Lunchista on the job" added the class reprobate, in a flat tone that implied that he had tried, but found it completely impossible, to imagine.
*****
Douglas turned out to be an interesting and humourous friend ("A collective noun for people who run Universities? Oooh, how about "A Lack of Principles"?"), and Valerie turned out to be the sort of person you could really confide in. The dreadful dark summer of 1977 seagued into a delightful autumn, and the nightmare calls faded away. My old school reports, which turned up in a recent house-move, show a dip followed by a bounce. And I now have two extra parents.
But to this day I consider "I don't have to answer that bloody phone!!" as the statement of an inalienable human right. And of course, we have an answerphone.
*****
*we apologise for the unwarrented intrusion of cheese into this post. The gentleman's name was in fact Rockford.
Wednesday, 23 February 2011
Smile and say Cheese
Readers may be forgiven for wondering why it seems to have become distinctly overpopulated with dairy comestibles here at Space, but bear with me.
It occurred to us in the early new year that the last time Fille remembered using her camera was on 21st December at 8:15 in the morning. She and I had got up early in the hope of catching the setting, eclipsed moon in the same sky as the rising winter sun: the Selenelion (last seen in these parts in Tudor times, so, a bit special). The camera, too, was a bit special: like the Selenelion it was bright pink, and full of things we would probably never see again in a lifetime.
Its absence started to tell round about the middle of the month. We turned over Fille's room (and in the process filled a rather large Oxfam bag). We moved on to Fils' room, then the two of them decided to tackle the top floor, which is their part of the house, as well as being the venue for the Astronomy mentioned earlier. Two more bulging Oxfam bags, and one cleared floor, later, we concluded there were no cameras anywhere there. The possibility that it had gone for good started to emerge: early in January, friends from overseas had visited. We'd all had a great time, and of course many trips had been made to local tourist attractions: everyone from Dracula to Wallace and Gromet (but not Lunchista) had figured in the ensuing sightseeing-fest.
Oh dear.
We turned the car over. Twice. Not forgetting every pocket, bag and rucksack (including those left in the garage, and then the rest of the garage for good measure), but still drew a blank.
A forensic listing of every venue, with dates, began to be drawn up. After failing to get a result with the first phonecall, I decided we needed some help with the list, and got back in touch with our "tourists" (email subject: "A long shot"). They were diamonds: having come all that way they could remember every single stop, with people, dates, and even whether or not the camera had featured in the mix. Between us all, we managed to track its last known movements back to a cafe in the Dales. No-one could remember its name, but that's what Google StreetView is for.
When I rang the cafe, it turned out that not only had the owners kept the camera, safe in its own little space in the cupboard behind the counter, they also remembered this particular posse of overseas visitors because of taking the time to chat about everything from bilingual families to buying flutes. How often do you come across people in business who make time, or indeed space, for their most eccentric punters?
It occurred to us in the early new year that the last time Fille remembered using her camera was on 21st December at 8:15 in the morning. She and I had got up early in the hope of catching the setting, eclipsed moon in the same sky as the rising winter sun: the Selenelion (last seen in these parts in Tudor times, so, a bit special). The camera, too, was a bit special: like the Selenelion it was bright pink, and full of things we would probably never see again in a lifetime.
Its absence started to tell round about the middle of the month. We turned over Fille's room (and in the process filled a rather large Oxfam bag). We moved on to Fils' room, then the two of them decided to tackle the top floor, which is their part of the house, as well as being the venue for the Astronomy mentioned earlier. Two more bulging Oxfam bags, and one cleared floor, later, we concluded there were no cameras anywhere there. The possibility that it had gone for good started to emerge: early in January, friends from overseas had visited. We'd all had a great time, and of course many trips had been made to local tourist attractions: everyone from Dracula to Wallace and Gromet (but not Lunchista) had figured in the ensuing sightseeing-fest.
Oh dear.
We turned the car over. Twice. Not forgetting every pocket, bag and rucksack (including those left in the garage, and then the rest of the garage for good measure), but still drew a blank.
A forensic listing of every venue, with dates, began to be drawn up. After failing to get a result with the first phonecall, I decided we needed some help with the list, and got back in touch with our "tourists" (email subject: "A long shot"). They were diamonds: having come all that way they could remember every single stop, with people, dates, and even whether or not the camera had featured in the mix. Between us all, we managed to track its last known movements back to a cafe in the Dales. No-one could remember its name, but that's what Google StreetView is for.
When I rang the cafe, it turned out that not only had the owners kept the camera, safe in its own little space in the cupboard behind the counter, they also remembered this particular posse of overseas visitors because of taking the time to chat about everything from bilingual families to buying flutes. How often do you come across people in business who make time, or indeed space, for their most eccentric punters?
Thursday, 10 February 2011
Jukebox jury
This may be an urban myth, but here goes.
In the days of pub juke-boxes, when it was the drinkers themselves who got to choose the music to accompany their drinking, rather than have the bar's owners foist upon them some landfill-type noise which, market research had shown, resulted in people buying more drinks, there existed in one particular pub a juke-box with a twist. You could put in your money and buy three minutes of silence.
For all I know it may have been not just any old silence either, but that famous one by John Cage whose length in seconds is deliberately the same as the number, in degrees below zero, of the coldest temperature physically possible (and no I can't resist the urge to say, how cool is that?). Somewhat longer than three minutes, the piece should, apparently, be played in three movements. Which in turn begs the question, what should the intervals between the movements sound like?
If the said pub ever really existed, I wonder, how often people availed themselves of this unique choice? Did the bar-staff occasionally wander on over and select the silence as a break in the evening's racket? Did people rush to buy their drinks in the short interlude in which they knew they'd be heard? Did people, as a result, end up buying more drinks?
Or did the idea die because people just felt awkward, thinking they had to make conversation because there was nothing to listen to all of a sudden?
In the days of pub juke-boxes, when it was the drinkers themselves who got to choose the music to accompany their drinking, rather than have the bar's owners foist upon them some landfill-type noise which, market research had shown, resulted in people buying more drinks, there existed in one particular pub a juke-box with a twist. You could put in your money and buy three minutes of silence.
For all I know it may have been not just any old silence either, but that famous one by John Cage whose length in seconds is deliberately the same as the number, in degrees below zero, of the coldest temperature physically possible (and no I can't resist the urge to say, how cool is that?). Somewhat longer than three minutes, the piece should, apparently, be played in three movements. Which in turn begs the question, what should the intervals between the movements sound like?
If the said pub ever really existed, I wonder, how often people availed themselves of this unique choice? Did the bar-staff occasionally wander on over and select the silence as a break in the evening's racket? Did people rush to buy their drinks in the short interlude in which they knew they'd be heard? Did people, as a result, end up buying more drinks?
Or did the idea die because people just felt awkward, thinking they had to make conversation because there was nothing to listen to all of a sudden?
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