The Crumb-y Morning

Zoe does illustration under the name mmmbiscuits (she doesn't update her website that often, but all four of you can check out some of her stuff here - Zoe, if you're reading this, I hope you don't mind) so, naturally, she calls her five-year-old son Crumb. When I left their house post-babysitting, he was watching me, completely befuddled, out of his living room window a few houses away, which I didn't realize until after I'd taken this picture and looked up. Fearing he'd tell his mom I was some kind of freak, I went back and held my phone up to the window, yelling, "I found a glove!" He chortled. 

The Trek to Zoe's

It can hardly be considered a trek, as my friend Zoe lives about five minutes from me - downhill, at that - but I was going to babysit her fabulous five-year-old overnight and was lugging my laptop bag full of dissertation crap, a plastic bag containing my pajamas, toothbrush, etc. (because I'm one of those freaks who has to brush their teeth EVERY NIGHT, regardless of where I am- the horror!), and a tinfoil-covered plate of six chocolate cupcakes I'd just baked. Extracting my phone from my purse was quite a maneuver, as well as evading the puzzled glances of a passing Chinese* couple... but I managed. This was near the entrance to "After the Accident" on Wokingham Road.

*They may not have been actually Chinese. 

THE POINT AT WHICH I REALIZE I AM SLOWLY GOING INSANE!!!!!

I found two gloves within twenty feet outside of the Palmer building and took a video of them. I do not know why I felt compelled to do this. My voice in the video sounds extremely nervous and neurotic; I am giggling like a mofo; I made Becky walk next to me so I didn't appear to be filming the ground and chattering to myself. Is this an addiction? Somehow I don't think there's a chapter of Black Glovers Anonymous in the Reading area.

I also got a still shot of each glove for maximum analysis:

1.

2.

The Eugenie Danglars

Oh, my goodness, I want to reread The Count of Monte Cristo so ridiculously badly right now. This is the world's stupidest name (because the glove's dangling, get it?) but it's also the world's worst picture, so I'm hoping they'll cancel each other out for the most part. It's been hanging outside HumSS for at least a week now. Maybe people are afraid to disturb it, considering it to be some form of conceptual art.

The One That "Made Us Late"

I don't know how to convince my pal Becky that this project isn't pretentious. She can't understand it, and I think her distaste was cemented as she stood beside me, hopping with impatience, as I unearthed my phone from my bag to take this photo early on a Wednesday morning. 

"We're already running late for our seminar!" she yelped. "When you put this on your blog or whatever, you'd better call it 'The One that Made Us Late!'"

Oh, Becky, it's the least I can do. I'm hoping you'll experience some sort of revelation, as right now you equate the BGP with clapping your hands if you believe in fairies.

(Also: this is navy blue and a mitten. My fervency is making me increasingly lax in my regulations. Very early on the following Sunday, as my housemates and I were walking back from a party, I ran ahead of them, tore it from its precarious post, hid behind some bushes and threw it at them. Ever since then, I keep seeing it in different spots in the vicinity of Wessex Hall.)

The Song About Black Gloves

Daniel would bludgeon me with a frozen pizza if he knew I was getting all sappy and mentioning this, but he introduced me to the Icelandic band Seabear* on the day we met (and I went home and listened to them and knew he was Kwality with a kapital K)... AND ONE OF THEIR SONGS FEATURES A PAIR OF LOST (kind of) BLACK GLOVES. 

0:24 here.

Also, the girl in the shawl= TOTALLY me when I was her age, only I would dance around with Harry Bears, my baby blanket. 

*I hasten to admit that (at least for me) they're tolerated only in relatively small doses, as the topics of their songs fall mostly into three categories: birds, scarecrows, and being outside (AND CONSEQUENTLY SEEING BIRDS AND SCARECROWS ARGH)

The Man on the Moon

Norwegian Correspondent Janne came across this bedraggled glove in a park in Oslo.

The Repeat Offenders

Remember our friends from the inside of HUMMS all the way back from last year? Maybe, if you're a ridiculous diehard. If not, suffice it to say that the ledge of the window inside the English-wing entrance of HUMMS is another vortex for black gloves. 

The Walk to Daniel's House

Sunday, January 17:

I'm at the library working on my dissertation. Nobody cares, I know, but listening to the Beach Boys, drinking tea (with milk and 1 brown sugar), and annotating endless poems by e.e. cummings is the closest thing to Nirvana I've experienced in a long time - not that I'd really know what Nirvana feels like. 

Anyway.

Walking to Daniel's house along the usual route (through campus and past the SportsPark area) led me right past three beauties:

WHY THE HECK IS THIS FONT BLUE

I do not care enough to change it

...

okay, actually I do.

Honestly, this parking lot has harvested more black gloves for me than any other area on the university campus, let alone the rest of the world. It's like some sort of Mecca (don't really know what's going on with all the religious references) to which the gloves, crawling like the Thing from the Addams Family, make a ritual pilgrimage. This one was sweetly and considerately shoved onto a stake. I was listening to "Avant La Bagarre" by France Gall when I took the picture, and now it and the song are inextricably linked in my mind.

Walking along again, I run into a friend who's on his way to the library. Unbeknownst to him, it shuts in five minutes, and I have to deliver the bad news. He rockets off. I then do something kind of disgusting that I hope all four of you readers won't judge me for: I see a perfectly intact white mug beneath a bush, a little muddy and leafy but none the worse for wear, and snatch it up like a hobo. Somebody would've undoubtedly thrown it away were it not for me. Gingerly clutching this talisman

THIS IS TURNING INTO A BAD NOVEL!!!!

, I look down and see, lo and behold, another glove.

It hasn't even been three minutes since I found the last one. This one must have been making its way toward the Bermuda Triangle of that parking lot.

I turn onto Christchurch and walk for about ten minutes, maybe a bit less. The mug's starting to numb my hand by this point, as I'm ironically not wearing any gloves. Right before I turn onto Daniel's road, I see a black blob on some sort of drainpipe in the street. Thinking I'm going crazy, I stop and squint and almost don't take a picture, but it's another glove; no contest.

Oh, great, now the font's black again. Black on here, anyway; I'm assuming it'll show up white on the blog page. WHAT?

Thus, I was diverted many a time on my journey. Very Brothers Grimm, I suppose. Sorry for the horrible quality of these pictures; it was getting pretty dark by that point. 

SPECIAL HOLIDAY EDITION: The Downtown Reading Round-Up (Part Two)

This was lying by the riverside immediately after we emerged from the cinema (still December 13th.)

I got off the Heathrow-Reading bus on January 9th after my customary 8-hour flight, plus 2 or so hours of extra waiting because of the snow, and immediately saw this, closely followed by Daniel (he walked up from behind me- it wasn't like my eyes immediately honed in on the glove!)

JANUARY 15TH SUPER-BLOWOUT:

Outside Sainsbury's yet again. 
Pimpin' on Kings Road.

A furry beauty next to a potted fern across from the station... and some sort of phone card Rob felt was necessary to the photo.