So I'm back from holiday in the Peak District; it's a nice place, full of hills, sheep, disused lead mines and an interesting interplay between industry and the countryside.
We spent a lot of time walking around the countryside, and I do enjoy walking around the countryside, although I do have a slight fear of walking through fields with cows in because...they're kinda big. What time wasn't spent walking was spent eating chips, or, at least, it felt that way.
I was able to spend a lot of time reading about history, which is a nice change from manga, but I spent my nights dreaming about manga, so it seems that my subconscious didn't feel quite the same about the situation.
I also read "Eats, Shoots and Leaves", which was surprisingly interesting. I like to think that my knowledge of punctuation has improved greatly since reading it. The only part I didn't enjoy was the shocking attack on emoticons near the end, because clearly smileys are the best form of communication ever :D
In fact, I think the world would be a better place if emoticons weren't sidelined to text messages or the internet, but made more mainstream. For example, here are some of today's news headlines (from the BBC) with added smileys:
- Many dead in northern Iraq blasts D:
- Nato hails Afghan mission success \o/
- Pope sorry for offending Muslims ^^;
See? Clearly much better. The author of "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" doesn't know what she's talking about; this is especially obvious when she cites :-) and :-( as examples of emoticons, when, of course, these haven't been used since the 80s. She is clearly not an internets whizz like what I am.
And now for something completely different: some photos of my holiday: