Deadpan cobblers

Rooftops of Cheltenham, view from Regent's Arcade car park

I went Christmas shopping yesterday. Dad was going shopping himself because they were cutting off the electricity for the morning (to do some maintenance, I think) so it seemed like a sensible time to be out doing that, and he offered me a lift. I had things I needed to do in town, so I was happy to seize this opportunity.

One of those things was getting my shoes re-heeled. Yes, those shoes I got not so many weeks ago, and which I've been alternating with another pair to ease the strain, have already worn down to the internal plastic in a couple of places. I suppose they weren't really meant to be worn every day. The man at the re-heeling place said "It'll be £50, is that all right? But don't worry," he added with a wink, "that includes our tip". I wasn't really happy about paying so much- it was certainly more than I expected and I could have bought the same pair of shoes again for that, besides the strain on the old student budget. But they were unlikely to still be in stock and I didn't fancy another epic struggle to find a pair I liked so I said fine, and hoped that the re-heeling job would be done with tougher stuff than had been on them in the first place, so I wouldn't have to fork out again.

When I came back to collect them, I was charged £6.99. Evidently they had a great line in deadpan humour. But as Dad pointed out when I was telling him later, they must lose quite a few customers that way- unless they turn round and tell anyone who says 'Erm, actually, perhaps I won't get my shoes re-heeled after all', 'Lighten up, darling, we were only joking' or similar.

In fact, I didn't get round to handing the shoes over for re-heeling in the first place till about 11- I had assumed they'd need a few days to do it and was pleasantly surprised to find it'd only take half an hour (in contrast to the not so pleasant surprise of the advertised price), so I thought it didn't really matter when I took them in. Luckily there was in fact exactly half an hour till I was supposed to be meeting Dad so I was able to pop back for them just after we met up. Before all that, I took a leisurely wander round, got a few Christmas presents, including Lolita for my brother- I'm not sure he'll like it, it's not the kind of thing he usually reads (he likes Clive Cussler), but he's studying creative writing so I thought it couldn't hurt to be taking in something well written, in what is hopefully a not too hard to swallow form. And I can't think of anyone in the whole history of English literature with more of a way with words than Nabokov- no-one I've read anyway. I also got Brokeback Mountain for Ginger- it was only £7.99 so affordable, and I believe she liked it, I just hope no-one's already given it to her. Given her great dislike of Christmas films and what else was on offer, I'll be able to make a joke (inside the gift tag: "I wasn't going to get you a DVD but then I saw Jingle all the Way for £5.99..."; on a post it note on the DVD itself: "...so I got you Brokeback Mountain") which I consider worth the risk she already has it- it's not that great, I know, but I think she'll laugh. And I think she'll really believe I got her Jingle all the Way for long enough for her to open the present and find the next note, even though of course if I had I wouldn't have written it on the gift tag. We always open our Christmas presents to each other when we give them rather than taking them home and saving them for Christmas, so it doesn't have to survive days of speculation.

I wandered around a couple of healthfood stores in the Regent Arcade, picking up a not-so-healthy box of chocolate coated ginger for Mum, and some rice crackers for myself, and looking at all the interesting substitute products like vegetarian bacon and vegan cheese and thinking that it would be interesting to try them, but only if one had a back-up meal ready in case they turned out not to be finishable (not necessarily due to being disgusting- in the case of meat substitutes just being too realistic would be enough to do it for me). I had a vague memory of there being important things I was going to do that had meant I was so happy to have the opportunity of a lift into town. After a bit of mental searching, I decided that they'd simply consisted of getting the shoes re-heeled, and getting a few Christmas presents. It was some time after we got home (after lunch in Bella Pasta) that I recalled I'd been going to pay in a cheque from Mum that I've had for a few weeks, pay a £100 penalty to Inland Revenue that I've also had for a week or two (long story that I shall go into some other time; it's mostly my fault but a tiny bit theirs, and it's due to disorganisation and fear on my part rather than my having set out with the intention not to pay my tax if at all possible, not that that really makes it a whole lot better. I am a very bad person), and get an optical mouse as a Christmas present for my brother on behalf of my mother, since I have more time than her and probably know more what I'm talking about when it comes to computers. So I will now need to take another trip into town in the near future.

The electricity still wasn't on when we got back. Instead of going downstairs to sit in front of the Aga, which would have been the sensible option, for some reason I sat reading in my room with my very warm coat on and a fleece top spread over my knees. Some time after it came back on I managed to get up the motivation to go and do some work. Having also done a tiny bit today (less than an hour; in spite of good intentions and in spite of having been in bed so long that my side hurt and I was having annoying dreams, I didn't get up till about 3pm today), I am now in the position of having transferred my first few variables of data from the internet. (At this point it might be worth my mentioning, in case I haven't already, that my project involves studying, across all the local authorities in England*, that is getting one number for each of these variables for each local authority, the percentage of waste recycled by households and seeing how it's related to the percentage composted, the weight produced per household, the percentage of the population within 1 km of a recycling centre or having a doorstop collection service, the age composition for the authority, the social class structure or income (not quite sure how I'm going to be measuring that one yet), the voting pattern at the last local election, and the rurality/ urbanity** of the local authority). I still have to do a few more variables, from other websites and also some more that I can get from the same one, the hardest of which is going to be rurality as that is only measured for smaller areas than I am using, so I have to identify which small areas make up my big areas (not too hard- I believe that information was included in the same table) and then devise a way of combining the measures of each little area into some sensible measure of rurality for the big area, probably also involving the population of each little area (not, I believe, in the same table). This is pretty hard as I am not a social scientist and have never studied any social sciences, so the potential for my coming up with something daft and meaningless is pretty high. My most likely candidate at the moment is looking like 'Percentage of the population living in areas classed as X or higher' where X is one of the categories; I can't remember what they were exactly but they included things like semi-urban and so on, I believe. Even if I go with that, I have to decide what X is, of course, which isn't just a matter of picking a category that sounds right: I have to choose one that will give a good range for this measure (I assume): otherwise it will be hard to see what effect it has on my main variable. So I will be pressing on with all of that in the days to come, and then I can actually get down to making some findings!

Meanwhile, I've been eating far more of those chocolate mini bites than is good for me, even when I promise myself that I won't have any more the same day.

*I really do mean England, before I get any angry Scots or Welsh shouting at me :-) - and that's nothing to do with choice, it's just where the data I found happened to be for

**[Warning: terrible joke coming up] No, that's not how suave or sophisticated it is