Mocking Taunton

Yesterday I was in Taunton, at a seminar relating to technical aspects of a particular library software system. (Yes, yes, when I'm not writing I work in a library. A sixth form college library, no less. I'm so very sorry that I conform to a cultural stereotype.)

Taunton is a medium-sized town in the reasonably close vicinity of two cities, Bristol (very large) and Exeter (not large, but larger than Taunton). It baffles me why it should be the library training capital of South-West England, but every single training event I've been to has been held there, and not even at the same centre. I managed to piss off some of the local attendees by suggesting that it might make sense to hold such events in Bristol occasionally, given that it has two mainline stations, and a motorway coming into the city, and more than one taxi and so on, but they were of the opinion that this would be absurd given that there are so many centres for library training in Taunton. Which is a position with a certain integrity to it, I suppose.

The lunch was remarkably stingy (and barbarically coffee-less), one man was kind enough to imply I looked old enough to have been at university twenty years ago, and when I left I had to walk back to the train station because (the receptionist informed me) the taxi would be busy picking up schoolchildren -- but all the same it was a rather good session. I'd say more about it, but then I'd be a librarian talking about his work and anyone who's reading this would never speak to me again.

Is anyone reading this, incidentally? Let me know.

To anyone who is:
1. Hi, and
2. You may be pleased to know that my website ought to be going live sometime in the next few days. I won't announce the domain name here until I've actually purchased it, as I have a vaguely paranoid worry that scammers may pre-emptively buy it up and charge me extra for it. The announcement will be made here, though.

"Buy previously" is actually the root meaning of "pre-empt". Isn't that interesting?

My brain has clearly gone into freefall, so I shall stop now.