- ... a pair of smart black trousers that more-or-less fit me, which was the entire point of the outing and was the very last thing I found in the very last shop I tried.
- a copy of Perfumes: the A-Z guide for the princely sum of £1.99, which I would be delighted to pass on as a gift to anyone who wants it and Doesn't Currently Have One (one of the things I do when I'm feeling sad is dip into it for Snark)
- The Oxford Book of Legal Anecdotes, because
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
me_and expressed interest when I sent him a photo of it (which I thought he would, I just wasn't sure it would be enough interest to override the Too Many Books To Read Already) - Karen Armstrong's memoir
- a lavender-scented suspicious microwave ferret, I don't even know, it is My New Best Friend, what on earth (and in totally failing to find an example online so I wouldn't have to take a decent photo I instead found a suspicious microwave SLOTH HUG HOODIE)
- um
- another pasta machine
- IT'S OKAY I PROMISE
- it was bought on spec for a local Pokemon Go friend who wants it to help her make elaborate fondant icing masterpieces
- it was £7.50 and is bright red and Jamie Oliver and she's very pleased
- I promise I'm not keeping this one too
Nov. 13th, 2017
Spreading the good news about Mx
Nov. 13th, 2017 11:29 pmSo this afternoon I phoned up to pay for some theatre tickets I'd previously reserved pending actually joining the theatre-in-question's access scheme (feminist... witches... modern dance... at Sadler's Wells, suggested by a friend who works there, we're going on Friday), and the staff member was all "... what is this Em Ex, I have never heard of it before, should it be Ms? or Mr?"
Whereupon I, naturally wishing to avoid this conversation, responded something to the tune of "no, Mx is correct" and breezed on to the next bit. My interlocutor, however, was not to be deterred, and a little while later revisited the theme of "I've never heard of it before!"
At this point I was, unsurprisingly, Bracing For A Fight, but I am also (albeit inconsistently) attempting to apply the maxim of Assume Good Faith mostly for the sake of watching people flounder around in being apparently misunderstood. So: I launched into "well, you know how Ms is for people who don't want to say whether they're married or not?"
"Yes!" said my interlocutor, "that's what I always put down."
"Well," I said, "Mx is like that, but for if you're even more, you know, and you don't want to say..."
"— there's a TITLE FOR THAT?"
"... yeah, the NHS and a bunch of banks and a bunch of charities use i--"
"CAN I USE IT."
"... ye-e-es, of course you can...?"
"I ALWAYS FEEL WEIRD PUTTING DOWN MS. YOU HAVE MADE MY DAY."
(I paraphrase slightly -- somewhere in there I made the joke about "you know, if you don't want to join the military or become a priest" -- but this is very much the sense of the thing.)
Whereupon I, naturally wishing to avoid this conversation, responded something to the tune of "no, Mx is correct" and breezed on to the next bit. My interlocutor, however, was not to be deterred, and a little while later revisited the theme of "I've never heard of it before!"
At this point I was, unsurprisingly, Bracing For A Fight, but I am also (albeit inconsistently) attempting to apply the maxim of Assume Good Faith mostly for the sake of watching people flounder around in being apparently misunderstood. So: I launched into "well, you know how Ms is for people who don't want to say whether they're married or not?"
"Yes!" said my interlocutor, "that's what I always put down."
"Well," I said, "Mx is like that, but for if you're even more, you know, and you don't want to say..."
"— there's a TITLE FOR THAT?"
"... yeah, the NHS and a bunch of banks and a bunch of charities use i--"
"CAN I USE IT."
"... ye-e-es, of course you can...?"
"I ALWAYS FEEL WEIRD PUTTING DOWN MS. YOU HAVE MADE MY DAY."
(I paraphrase slightly -- somewhere in there I made the joke about "you know, if you don't want to join the military or become a priest" -- but this is very much the sense of the thing.)