Being Mr. Kenny

Sorry about the no posts, I have been in lovely Devon for the whole week, sunning myself and also being around my excellent friends from Sheffield and having a wonderful time. It was so wonderful, in fact, that it almost constituted a religious experience. At any rate, I can no longer look at milk without wanting to sing “Milsch, milsch, milsch, I’m looking for a good time!”

In-jokes!

Most of my time in Devon was spent concocting blatant lies to make myself sound clever, and then laughing at their ridiculousness and giving the game away. But I also dealt out many useful factoids, such as did you know that Newton once poked a large needle behind his eye, just to see what would happen? Neither did I until I read it in A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. Available in all good bookstores, or just Amazon, because frankly who can be bothered with actual shops these days?

Anyway, it was a truly formidable time, I got to sing Happy Birthday in Icelandic, and they let me put two enormous candles on the fire, which burnt so cheerfully it almost brought tears to my eyes. (By the way, in related typo news, I just tried to type “ears” just then, which I think is quite funny.)

We also left the longest entry in the guestbook, out of everybody who had stayed in the cottage! The guestbook was full of really great stuff like phrases such as “thanks for the weather” and misplaced apostrophes. My favourite was the comment that stopped abruptly. It read “Great cottage, but it didn’t have” and someone had written, underneath, “What!? What didn’t it have?”

I, however, would like to propose the idea that the author of the comment was trying to change the way we use the word “have”. From now on, I am going to say that things that are disappointing don’t “have”. As in, “Yeah, it was alright, but it just didn’t have, you know?” Hooray for making transitive verbs intransitive!

Phil wrote the comment in the visitor’s book, and my contribution was, “We are sorry for the things we broke, and the things we burnt,” since I felt a little guilty about burning two perfectly good candles. But they burnt really hotly, and shed loads of light, which in my mind justifies quite a lot of things.

It was a great trip, and it has completely confirmed my idea that moving back to Sheffield this summer is the right thing to do. Photos to follow soon!