{"id":15623,"date":"2008-05-03T05:24:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-03T09:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/hameblog\/2008\/05\/03\/the-devil-is-in-the-tea-towels\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T07:49:44","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T10:49:44","slug":"the-devil-is-in-the-tea-towels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/2008\/05\/03\/the-devil-is-in-the-tea-towels\/","title":{"rendered":"The devil is in the tea-towels"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My friend Justin had a flatmate whose accent made the old saying come out like the line above when she was inebriated.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>I just remembered something Natalie Goldberg says in her books on writing: &#8220;For every cosmic statement you make, you have to provide ten specific details.&#8221; So as I witness Prague, I must remember to steer clear of the vagueries and shortcuts and paint the picture.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>So, as I wrote the last post I was drinking a bitter black cafe Americano and eating a slice of lemon cake with gooey, tart icing on top.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>The ceiling of this airport is a cross between a football stadium roof and a repeating bank logo in the sky that lets just enough sun through. This looks like the sort of hangar you&#8217;d hang out in while waiting to be deployed to Landmineistan.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>The woman at the cheapie airline gate told me my flight wasn&#8217;t open, so I should come back at noon. I just did that, and another young woman with a dusty pink-orange face and half-awake London drawl told me my flight wasn&#8217;t open yet, so I should come back at one. I mumbled something about what the last woman said, but I felt like the character in <i>Office Space<\/i> muttering about someone taking his red Swingline stapler with no one listening. I also felt the lava of angry customer indignation rising, but in the same moment saw that I didn&#8217;t have to fall into the default reaction, since a) I&#8217;m on holiday and not actually in a rush (it makes no difference if I wait on this side of the bag, belt, shoes, coat, frisky massage line or the other) and b) it wouldn&#8217;t do a damned bit of good anyway. So I decided not to be bothered.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-content\/uploads\/posts\/1092\/the-devil-is-in-the-tea-towels0.jpg.webp\" alt=\"\"><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My friend Justin had a flatmate whose accent made the old saying come out like the line above when she was inebriated. I just remembered something Natalie Goldberg says in her books on writing: &#8220;For every cosmic statement you make, you have to provide ten specific details.&#8221; So as I witness Prague, I must remember [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15623\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}