Poster Blues (not Blue Posters)

Yesterday I bought some posters I’ve been meaning to buy from Monocle for some time. Of course there’s the issue of getting them on the wall, something I thought would be pretty simple given they were standard A2 posters. NO ! What a complete shambles on a Saturday trying to get a frame to fit when I got back to Cambridge. What annoys me most is that places quote you 10 days to cut a mount to size – something that I’m sure is about 2 mins work with the right tools.

Particular highlowlights in the experience included:

• Being sent downstairs in a store, only to be told to go upstairs. Then fed some nonsense about being out of stock due to the bad weather !
• Going into a local art store and discovering that they still hadn’t moved over to metric sizes (I thought we had done that in the 70’s). Then noticing that the mounts themselves didn’t actually specify the aperture size !
• I still can’t understand why you can’t just buy mounts ready made for A2 posters – I thought that size was pretty standard

Anyways, my attempts again this morning proved fruitless so I’ve decided to buy online. I thought “there must be a site where you plug sizes in and they custom make”. Of course I wasn’t disappointed.

Back to School Furniture Store

Browsing a new furniture store in the bad shopping area of town (Grafton Centre for those in the know). The area is a bit of a s***hole- always get stopped by people asking for money and half the stores are closed. Only positive benefit that parking wasn’t too much of a problem (how is it that the main parking area of town can be full at 11:17 on a Sunday when the shops have only been open for 17 mins ?). Oh, and Starbucks wasn’t too busy – has anyone noticed how Starbucks serving times seem to have increased recently ? (or more correctly staffing levels have come down).

Walked into the furniture store and was stopped on entry by security and told “be careful with the furniture”. Hang on a minute here, I’m mid 30’s (going on 40’s !) and someone treats me like a 7 year old. It felt like something my grandpa would have said to me (come to think of it, the guy was about his age !). I think this pretty much sums up the contempt and poor service  a certain type of staff provide in Cambridge.

Vulgarity

Here’s our vulgar image of the week, note the beautiful flag of England on the right hand side of the car opposite.

Reminds me of a conversation with a Taxi driver I had this week after he picked me up working late:

Me: “So, having a good night”
Taxi Driver: “Not really”
Me: “Why ?”
Taxi Driver: “I don’t have much business, the operator doesn’t like me because I’m foreigner”
Me: “I’m from Scotland, I know how you feel”