1st June 2004, mid-afternoon | Comments (33)
Sir,
I met you only briefly last weekend, but in that short time I ascertained that you are a dedicated follower of the mantra ‘prepare early’. There is no doubt that such a philosophy has its place in many aspects of life; any good tennis coach, for instance, will encourage his or her charges to “get the racquet back early and prepare”; and Domestic Goddess Nigella Lawson is always speaking of the need to prep things ahead of time. It’s common sense, and I applaud you for your dedication to this way of thinking.
However, all ideals have their social boundaries beyond which they lose credibility, and you, Sir, had the misfortune to stumble over such a boundary last Saturday at a winery in Napa Valley, California.
To what do I refer? Well, I am not a tennis coach, nor am I a domestic goddess, but I am a man, and as such I feel qualified to tell you that it’s considered bad form to have your penis out and ready while waiting in line to use the urinals — especially when the wait exceeds five minutes.
You might argue that if everyone prepared in this manner it would help hurry things along, and the queue would be a shorter one, but sometimes social niceties overrule common sense, and this is one such occasion.
Put it away, Sir.
Thank you.
Jump up to the start of the post ↑
The image displayed above is a 1600 pixel-wide panoramic view from the top of my parents’ house in Dorset, England. The system uses an XML weather feed from their local airbase to provide an up-to-the-minute graphical representation of the current weather, moon, and daylight conditions at their house. It's pretty cool, really.
You can read more about the panorama, and how it was created, in the Colophon; or you can select an option from below and view detailed weather information for Dorset, or for San Francisco (where I currently live).