THE READING/LONDON ROUND-UP, ONE YEAR LATER (Part Two)

Erstwhile housemate Rob found this prime specimen at Jackson's Corner in Reading when returning from London on March 6th.

My pal Parker and I somehow became blood-giving buddies at the beginning of last year, when we realized we had a mutual love for platelet donation and the inevitably subsequent tea and prepackaged cookies. On March 8th, Parker informed me that a blood drive was once again taking place in the Reading SportsPark (i.e. BG Mecca), so I gladly accompanied him. Upon our arrival, however, the blood-people told us that the drive was fully booked, so we walked dejectedly back to the middle of campus... but not before I saw yet another weary soul nearing the end of its pilgrimage.

The next day, Daniel's brother (who'd been in London helping him with his exhibition) came to Reading. I'd been in the library, and I met them outside the Palmer building so we could go to my house together and make a truckload of spaghetti. (Said spaghetti leftovers overstayed their welcome in my fridge after I forgot about them, and even thinking about them now, all slick and turquoise and oily, makes me feel a little queasy.) Outside the union building, they pounced on a glove.

EDIT: I miss this.

I don't seem to have found any more gloves until April 10th, which is odd, but I'll trawl my phone to see if there've been any pictures I forgot about. On the 10th, Daniel and I were at the Reading Homebase trying to find a suitable houseplant. He finally settled on a maidenhair fern that he named Ferris (Ferris died about a month later). The BG and "BG" (it was too fortuitous to pass up) that I found were both right outside, near the Bel and Dragon pub:

EDIT: I miss this too.

Nobody's really going to read this, are they? It's scary and all that I'm about to catapult my angst into cyberspace and onto the screens of whomever might be muddling through this at some point in the far future, but what hasn't been said by a bajillion other people already? Breakups suck. They truly do. It's like making a grilled cheese sandwich and then being forced to peel apart the two pieces of bread that have been so carefully toasted, and then there are crumbs and stringy strands of melted cheddar (or gouda, or feta*, or Muenster or what have you) scattered all over the place and it's just so damned messy and unappetizing.

*I KNOW you'd never make a grilled cheese with feta. I know my cheese. It was just a dumb analogy.

THE READING/LONDON ROUND-UP, ONE YEAR LATER (Part One)

I know.

It's been too long.

I'm going to keep most of these captions as short and sweet as possible so that I can get to the most recent photos from London

(where I live now

because I'm doing that MA that I applied for

and it's blowing my mind a little bit).

Here goes nothing on an empty stomach, as my mom always says (not entirely true. My stomach is full of coffee and crystallized ginger):

I spent four Fridays throughout last February and March doing work experience at Breast Cancer Care, a London-based charity near the Tate Modern. The circumstances under which I obtained this work experience were rather far-fetched: the (now) ex-boyfriend of the sister of a friend of my (now) ex-boyfriend's brother

...here, for those of you who don't know me personally, I suppose I should mention that the (now) ex-boyfriend is the oft-referenced Daniel of previous posts. (It's actually December 19th, but for continuity's sake I'm going to stick this one somewhere in July.) I highly doubt he'll read this, and I'm not really down with Internet etiquette regarding the proper handling of breakups, but I can't think that this slight aside would cause any harm, seeing as it'll explain his sudden disappearance from future captions. Does this have any relevance to black gloves? I guess not, but it's weird to look back on these photos and remember the exact circumstances surrounding the discovery of a glove. In a way, all these photos helped me to form a sort of topographical map of Reading, and so many times I was with him, or going to meet him, or leaving his house or wherever we'd been together - we were constantly walking around discovering nooks and crannies of the town - that even though he wasn't an active participant in the BGP (in fact, I don't think he really understood it), it'll still be odd knowing he won't likely appear in any more of them.

No more sap! Anyway...

...worked in the editorial department there, proofreading pamphlets and newsletters among other tasks. As an English lit graduate himself, he was more than happy to help me out, and I ended up having a blast. If the opportunity arises, I'd love to work in a charity at some point - everyone was ridiculously friendly, and it was great to know that everything was done to help women with breast cancer and their families, not just to make products more appealing and desirable.

I found this pair across the street from Southwark tube station on February 19th. Frost had forced the glove in the foreground to give me a raggedy thumbs-up. I can't help but think that whoever lost them had been rummaging in a bag, maybe searching for an Oyster card, causing them to escape one at a time.

When I returned to Reading that night, I went to Marks & Spencer for a reason I cannot recall. This fingerless glove-sleeve thing (yeah, all right, I'm getting even MORE lax in my requirements) was atop a shelf there:

Two days later, I was with Daniel. I can't remember where we were headed, but we must have hit up Pau Brasil for a toasted cheese, tomato, and oregano sandwich, because he's holding one in one of those little wax bags they used. I do remember his mom called, and he stopped to talk to her while I caught this glove in a parking lot off Whitley:

The same day, probably within a few miles of us, devoted glovehunter Izzy found an especially well-placed one. I should really give this one its own post and entitle it "The Crotch Shot":

On March 5th - I think that was the day that Daniel's exhibition opened - I spotted this one outside Liverpool Street tube station and was nearly trampled trying to get a non-blurry photo of it. Wait, that can't be right, because I know Daniel was there when I took it (he was impatient) and we didn't go to his exhibition together; he was already at the venue. Oh, I don't know. This one gave me a thumbs-up as well.