Parries → From DisneyWorld to Watford 

Irit spotted them a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve now seen them for myself: gypsies are cruising Brighton’s Western Road. I became somewhat familiar with them in Rome, where they’ve been a known quantity for decades. They never got anything off me, but gypsies tried to rob me three times in quick succession there. The first was on a commuter train leaving Trastevere Station. I was standing with my suitcase reading a book in the standing area in front of the doors when two women came on—they generally seem to work in pairs—one older, one younger carrying a baby. The older one tried to get my attention while the younger one slipped her hand in my pocket. The trick is that the younger one’s hand seems to be holding her baby, but the little thief-in-training is in fact held in place with a sling, so the mother’s hand is free. I felt her hand in my pocket and started shouting blue murder and she dropped it. Everyone in the train remained impassive. I continued shouting and swearing at them, telling them I need this money more than they did. A stupid thing to say, but it was true: without it I would have no bed to sleep in that night, or effects close to that anyway. The two women backed away off the train—it all happened in seconds—looking at me as if I was crazy.

The next time it was two men. I was sitting outdoors at a cafe on Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, with my wallet and camera out on the table, stupidly. I was perusing the contents of my wallet or something. A fellow asked me for a light. I leaned over to light his cigarette when something made me turn around: his partner’s hand was comically reaching through the leaves of the hedge, trying to grab what was on the table. When they saw I saw, the fellow gingerly withdrew his hand, they made some excuses, and made themselves scarce. Kind of pathetic.

The third attack was the most frightful: again it was two women, this time on Via Mamiani, just outside Termini Station. The two women came up to me and started touching and patting me all over. Again I shouted at them aggressively and shoved one of them away and she staggered. This time at least a passerby or two expressed some disgust.

Anyway, they’re here now in Brighton, begging on the main streets of a Sunday afternoon. Since they can’t speak English they have pieces of paper to convey their tales of woe. My guess is that while you’re reading the note the sidekick divests you of your cellphone or something. I wonder if Britons will be easy or surprisingly tough marks.

There are no gypsies to gyp you in Disneyworld. That’s where James Lileks, master blogger, just went with his wife and daughter, and in a series of entries he’s brought us along!

It’s clean. It’s so clean and perfect you wonder why everything doesn’t look like this. But why is it clean? You see no one picking things up. Maybe the very fact that it’s spotless and pristine makes people hesitate to ruin the perfection. Then again, you placed a small piece of paper on the ground and walked away a few yards, just to see what happened. It vanished in a puff of smoke. So you’re thinking some sort of micro-targeted laser, probably from an orbital platform.

• Day 1
• Day 2

We had our own outing today, being part of the live audience of a BBC recording of Prokofiev’s Symphony #1, “Classical”, for Radio 3. It was at the Watford Colosseum, a venerable venue I’d never been remotely close to before. Tickets for BBC shows are free, you just have to order them and the Beeb sends them in the mail. I love Prokofiev and this was a treat, playing phrases of the piece and discussing them before playing the whole thing through.

We were quite late, so from the back of the hall the rest of the audience, already seated, looked like a huge square box of mussels, what with all their grey heads. Well, it was a rainy Wednesday afternoon in Watford, as the conductor Charles Hazlewood said: seniors only and the odd eccentric. The show airs June 29th.

There’s another free Beeb gig coming up, ‘Friday Night is Music Night’ for Radio 2. Anybody fancy?

As an acolyte of David Allen’s Getting Things Done I’ve got a folder for everything, organized alphabetically. One is entitled “Movies”—it’s for ticket stubs. I just added another, entitled “Theatre,” after considering for a few moments how to spell it. For some words I prefer the American spelling, some the English. Or do I? Does it in fact depend only on the audience? Or are some concepts just more British than American? Theatre would be one, center not. But what about private personal writing, I wonder, things for your own use only. Mix’n’match the spelling conventions?

We’ve got to move soon and I’ve been looking at apartments. Unlike what I recognized as “satisficing” according to Barry Schwartz’s theories on the problems of choice, we’re beginning to be “maximizing”. It’s driving me potty. How important is location? How important is having something outside, a patio or yard? No wonder people whose job it is to decide things get paid so well. And I’m sure they don’t have thin blue carpets.