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Apr. 8th, 2005 08:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skyringIt took me a while to get myself organised yesterday. I cut up the scanned and printed images of the Monopoly title deeds, discovering that I’d missed out on Whitechapel Road, and proudly stuck the first onto the cover of “Freedom Road”. A fitting title to set free on Old Kent Road, which is, after all, the first leg of the A2, the main road to Dover.
I showed the result to my room-mates, freshly breakfasted and ready to go out on another day of non-obsessive sightseeing. They were duly impressed, and in return showed me the croissants lifted from the breakfast kitchen which would serve them for lunch.
The included breakfast is rather heavy on fried goods and baked beans, but it’s good for fuelling a day of walking. The machine coffee is likewise free, but overpriced, in my opinion.
I hit Starbucks again to make release notes. I shall be releasing my books hours before I can get back to the Internet, so I make general notes on their release locations. At least with my Monopoly books I know the streets on which I shall leave them, if not the number or street corner. “Somewhere on Old Kent Road” is good enough to be going on with, and I leave a note that there shall be “details later”.
I also make a “pre-release” journal entry to serve as a vehicle for a photograph. My usual practice is to take two photographs of a release, one showing the general area and another to show the book as it sits. I can only attach one photograph to each journal entry, including release notes, so if I want to add in multiple photographs, I must make multiple journal entries.
Another reason to make an extra journal entry is to alert previous owners of the book that it is on the move. If someone makes a journal entry on a book, all previous holders of that book are sent an e-mail message so they can share the experience of their book being caught and appreciated. Or whatever.
But release notes are not likewise passed on. I can release a book into the wild in a significant location and an interesting fashion, complete with a photograph, and nobody knows. An oversight in the system, perhaps.
I’m ready. The very first book “on the board” is “If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O”, a book I selected on the sole basis of the title alone. It was released by markmcg at last year’s Australian Bookcrossing Convention in Sydney. I have kept this book for a special release, and it would be a pity if Mark were unaware of the moment.
The first square on the Monopoly board is, of course, “GO”. Always a welcome sight to the weary traveller hurrying up the high rent stretch of the greens and dark blues, but to the players lined up at the start of the game with a virgin field ahead, it is bright with promise. There are bargains ahead and a heavy purse to snap them up with.
For my real life trip around the board, I choose the modern world’s bank. The autoteller machine, the cashpoint, the hole in the wall. Pretty Peggy-O will grace the shiny metal shelf of the first ATM to catch my eye.
As it happens, this is one of a twin set of NatWest bank autotellers in Jukon House, a faux classic office building curving around the steps of St Pauls. Stand at the screen drawing out your two hundred pounds, and the hidden security camera is rewarded with a view of your cheerful face and that soaring cathedral behind you. Stirring stuff for a bank’s vault of video tapes.
Lacking access to this footage, I fall back on the beefy business-suited security guard at the nearby entrance.
“Uh, could you take a picture of me? With St Pauls behind me? And me holding this book? Fair into the blinding sun?”
He seizes the relief from the boredom of security guardianship, and diligently squints into the glare of the sun and my beaming features. I’m smiling with happiness at beginning my Monopoly trip, and with amusement at the expression on his face as he tries to make out anything at all on the tiny LCD screen on my camera.
“I don’t think it’s very good…” he says glumly as I walk back. I take the camera from him, flick it over to review, and prove him wrong. Not a great shot, but we’re both happy with it.
And so the trip begins. Peggy-O is left on the keypad of the cashpoint and I find a nearby bus stop for the trip out to Old Kent Road.
I showed the result to my room-mates, freshly breakfasted and ready to go out on another day of non-obsessive sightseeing. They were duly impressed, and in return showed me the croissants lifted from the breakfast kitchen which would serve them for lunch.
The included breakfast is rather heavy on fried goods and baked beans, but it’s good for fuelling a day of walking. The machine coffee is likewise free, but overpriced, in my opinion.
I hit Starbucks again to make release notes. I shall be releasing my books hours before I can get back to the Internet, so I make general notes on their release locations. At least with my Monopoly books I know the streets on which I shall leave them, if not the number or street corner. “Somewhere on Old Kent Road” is good enough to be going on with, and I leave a note that there shall be “details later”.
I also make a “pre-release” journal entry to serve as a vehicle for a photograph. My usual practice is to take two photographs of a release, one showing the general area and another to show the book as it sits. I can only attach one photograph to each journal entry, including release notes, so if I want to add in multiple photographs, I must make multiple journal entries.
Another reason to make an extra journal entry is to alert previous owners of the book that it is on the move. If someone makes a journal entry on a book, all previous holders of that book are sent an e-mail message so they can share the experience of their book being caught and appreciated. Or whatever.
But release notes are not likewise passed on. I can release a book into the wild in a significant location and an interesting fashion, complete with a photograph, and nobody knows. An oversight in the system, perhaps.
I’m ready. The very first book “on the board” is “If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O”, a book I selected on the sole basis of the title alone. It was released by markmcg at last year’s Australian Bookcrossing Convention in Sydney. I have kept this book for a special release, and it would be a pity if Mark were unaware of the moment.
The first square on the Monopoly board is, of course, “GO”. Always a welcome sight to the weary traveller hurrying up the high rent stretch of the greens and dark blues, but to the players lined up at the start of the game with a virgin field ahead, it is bright with promise. There are bargains ahead and a heavy purse to snap them up with.
For my real life trip around the board, I choose the modern world’s bank. The autoteller machine, the cashpoint, the hole in the wall. Pretty Peggy-O will grace the shiny metal shelf of the first ATM to catch my eye.
As it happens, this is one of a twin set of NatWest bank autotellers in Jukon House, a faux classic office building curving around the steps of St Pauls. Stand at the screen drawing out your two hundred pounds, and the hidden security camera is rewarded with a view of your cheerful face and that soaring cathedral behind you. Stirring stuff for a bank’s vault of video tapes.
Lacking access to this footage, I fall back on the beefy business-suited security guard at the nearby entrance.
“Uh, could you take a picture of me? With St Pauls behind me? And me holding this book? Fair into the blinding sun?”
He seizes the relief from the boredom of security guardianship, and diligently squints into the glare of the sun and my beaming features. I’m smiling with happiness at beginning my Monopoly trip, and with amusement at the expression on his face as he tries to make out anything at all on the tiny LCD screen on my camera.
“I don’t think it’s very good…” he says glumly as I walk back. I take the camera from him, flick it over to review, and prove him wrong. Not a great shot, but we’re both happy with it.
And so the trip begins. Peggy-O is left on the keypad of the cashpoint and I find a nearby bus stop for the trip out to Old Kent Road.
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no subject
Date: 2005-05-16 04:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-18 05:24 am (UTC)