Haven’t been able to file a report from abroad before. I’m sure it ought to be very exciting, full of drama and tension.
Except I’m in Bonn, the town where it was said, by one of the diplomats in residence at the time, that ‘every day was a little like Sunday’.
It’s certainly felt like it - although I’m told that this is more so because students are still currently on holiday. But this is still a small town, and even though it was the capital for several decades, you could argue it has settled back into its Sunday feel fairly happily.
I have connections with Bonn, so I try not to judge it too harshly. My grandparents were here for several years when it was still the capital, and my last visit here included looking up the house where they’d lived - which I’d also visited as a toddler. Needless to say, it wasn’t recognisable to me, although other family members were able to comment on what had changed.
Not to worry. Bonn’s other main claim to fame - being the home of Haribo sweeties - is secure. And these days, it’s still about the economy, eh?
April 4th, 2008
Same again folks. Back to the Isle of Jura. For all that it’s good to see new places, it’s also great to have ones that stay in your mind - and that you are part of.
We had been away three years. I couldn’t quite believe it was that long, but we added it up. However, Jura has been ‘abandoned’ by me before - but there’s always the opportunity to pick up again.
Jura is now one of two places that I have known and returned to since early childhood. The other is my granny’s house in Edinburgh. As people and places move on, and as I do too, being somewhere that is so familiar can be a great relief. Going there on holiday is continuity - not just with my past, but with my family.
We have family connections with Jura going back several generations. Although it’s about 4 generations back that direct family actually lived there, I become part of the subsequent story - the families who retained the link, who went there in their holiday time, and so on.
When I was a child, there was a lot of effort involved in going there - driving up from whichever part of England or Scotland we were in, breaking the journey with our aunts in Greenock who own the cottage. From there on, every part of the journey is mapped - enough of the excitement is in passing the places along the route that also have their own connections, or maybe just attraction.
As a child, driving up a hill called the Rest and Be Thankful had a huge impact on the imagination. Passing Inverary, where we had had separate visits - and where I could see the remains of a little tower on the hill that Dad had climbed up to. Driving alongside the Crinan Canal, sometimes seeing sailing ships passing along, above the height of the car. Coming into the painted enclosure of the harbour at Tarbert - and remembering the one overnight drive to Jura, where we woke up in Tarbert, and had sandwiches for breakfast, overlooking the pier.
For a child mostly living fairly far inland, access to a beach was a big attraction. But also to ferries - the big one and the small one. To seals. To red deer. To a coastline where each little part had its own name - and a story that, if it didn’t belong to me, belonged to another family member.
There is a point on the big ferry, heading out from Kennacraig, where you pass the opening of the headland, and come out to run alongside the Mull of Kintyre. Behind you is green, fairly flat - and ahead of you, an island - your island! With its distinctive three main hills, the Paps, it is a key moment.
Why take so long to tell all this? Normally I would get to that view and cry. This year, for the first time, it didn’t happen. I had returned to Jura more as an adult - somehow thinking more about others’ responses to the island than my own recollections.
Going on holiday allows you to keep an idealised view of a place. Not everyone gets to go to an island on holiday - even with Britain as it is - and to a cottage that ‘belongs’ to them. This time I saw the life on Jura perhaps more as it really is - hard work at times for the locals, what with rough seas cutting off ferries, pot holes that the council seems to avoid filling, new attempts to fill the main additional ’shop’ with a business venture that will last.
And in this era of being seen to be holidaying in Britain, spending to support the (local) economy, and so on, returning to Jura feels not just a logical choice, but one that contributes to more people’s future than my own.
March 25th, 2008
About time I put another post out there, keen to extol blogging as I am yet not doing much of it just now…
Blame spring cleaning, early summer cleaning, oh there’s another cold snap cleaning and general furniture shifting. But, for a change, blame holiday…where we deliberately kept off-line.
Actually, this gets easier if you go somewhere which doesn’t have internet access. Scottish island, family cottage owned by great aunt (who is also a great-aunt) who isn’t online but keeps very busy in other ways, thankyou. Even though the island has a public access internet point, we managed to keep away.
This isn’t so hard: holidays are about doing things you don’t get time to do (or don’t get round to): watching films, reading books, eating porridge. Even playing Scrabble and drinking tea from pots (not directly, you understand, mugs were still involved).
It’s also about doing things that you don’t get access to at home: watching red deer from the back window of the cottage, watching storms (and strong moonlight) from the front. Going to the beach when it isn’t really spring yet, and having the place to yourself. Leaning out of the front door (which is conveniently a stable door that you open the top half of), surveying the morning’s activities - of other people.
There was even drama surrounding getting home yesterday - a call before 8am to say that we would need to make a 10.30 ferry if we wanted to get off the island that day. A wait to see if the second ferry would divert to the other side of island 2 because of rough seas, as it had the previous day - which would have meant quick moves to a bus across to the other port. Harder to achieve when you’re foot passengers, and the bus doesn’t go that often.
Thankfully going home by coach, though time-consuming, also meant we avoided having to drive in slushy conditions. Say what you want about Scottish summers, these factors are not part of our more usual visits to this island home from home.
Yes, we missed out on a genuine opportunity to be stranded away from work. It was quite tempting, actually. But we gained a story to tell, and some further kindness from those based on islands, who understand how easily plans, including travel plans, may have to change if the weather does.
This time next week, I’ll be preparing for travel with work. But for now, I’m holding on to the sophistications of cooking my breakfast, looking out of the window…and rejoining our book collection at home.
March 23rd, 2008
On a recent business trip to London I had the chance to sample lots of ways of working and meeting. Not all of them great, but all interesting. I thought I’d share my experiences here. I’m tempted to mark them out of ten, but some of the people involved may read this and think I’m judging their choice of location (or mine).
The fashionable restaurant
One meeting was in a funky Thai restaurant in Soho - all tropical hardwoods, benches and attentive service. On arrival at 1215 there were three other people there. While my back was turned it got noisier and noisier and when I turned around to get up and leave an hour later, there must have been a hundred or so people. There was no space to get the MacBook out to share ideas with the client, but then the meeting was for ‘face time’, not work.
The comfy apartment
The next meeting was in a client’s home. Big chairs, roaring fire, good coffee and chocolate hobnobs. It was good job this was comfortable as we talked about their project for four hours. A huge amount of work was done, but it was also great to get to know them better, particularly having only talked to them on the phone. I left feeling confident of the business relationship that had been established and enthusiastic to get on with the work.
The home office
This was more of a training session - showing someone how to update their website in their own office in their home. It was very relaxed. Classic FM was on in the background and I knew that my presence was appreciated.
The dining room table
Same house, different client. Laptop on the table, set up email, play with big fluffy dogs, discuss blogs (including this one and the prolific blogger) and a bit of inspiring consultancy (two way). More intense this time, mainly due to intellectual curiosity and looking at how it might be to consult at a higher level than I thought possible. Watch this space.
The allegedly wifi-enabled swish cafe
If the chorizo soup and pear juice hadn’t been so good Apostrophe on Lower Regent Street would have been a real let down. Long high beech tables up front and comfy suede chairs at the back should have made working during a lunch a pleasure. Buying lunch in a wifi cafe so that I could get access to emails would have been useful, but it didn’t work.
The Institute of Directors, Pall Mall
Well, talk about seeing how the other half work. I’d never been in a ‘gentleman’s club’ and some would say that I still haven’t. The IOD on Pall Mall has a dress code and I had broken two of them (jeans and trainers) by joining a client for a meeting. Fortunately I was her guest and my offenses weren’t too obvious. The laptop rucksack was perhaps more of an issue, but it was only the reception staff that looked down their noses at me, everyone else was too busy making money.
It wasn’t the most conducive place for a bit of blog training and web discussion and the pot of tea for two cost my client £6.50, but it was impressive. I’m thinking of joining the Scottish Malt Whiskey Society in Edinburgh so that I can use The Vaults in Leith as an escape from the office, but the IOD is a proper business club. Scary. Was I taken there instead of Starbucks to be intimidated? Probably.
Benugo, St Pancras International
It wasn’t the plan to go to Benugo, but the food looked so fresh, the staff slightly manic but friendly and everything so spotless and contemporary that it was obviously the place to be. We could have gone to the longest champagne bar in Europe (where’s the longest in the world then?), but we struck lucky with Benugo. Meeting a friend who happens to be a client is a bit different, but this was a special time. We ranged in discussion from world politics to charities and from theology to how cool a MacBook is. I’ll go back. It was special (oh, I said that already).
National Express First Class, Edinburgh to London return
I don’t want to appear snobbish (well, perhaps a bit), but I have to recommend First Class on National Express to you. They’ve taken over the GNER East Coast Mainline franchise and I have to say that they’re fabulous. Not just fab, but fabulous. The whole experience was great. I managed to work all the way down and all the way back, and not just a hassled, baby puke and rowdy football supporters type work-on-the-train, but a sophisticated I-got-lots-done type work. I’m not going to travel standard for work to London again. Forget easyJet. This is the real deal.
So to sum up. Keep the IOD, I want First Class travel to friendly, inspiring meetings with clients in their homes, drink nice coffee and play with their dog / cat / MacBook.
March 1st, 2008
It’s how we’re built. Danger, uncertainty, you name it, humans are driven to one of two choices quickly. We’re familiar with the phrase ‘fight or flight’ to describe how our bodies make these choices very rapidly, even where our brain is not quite tuned into what we’re doing.
When it’s a sabre tooth tiger, fair enough - and a straight forward choice. But what of the colleague at work who sets us on edge, but who we have to keep working with? What about the sudden crisis or the email that demands immediate action? And what happens when, like it or not, we have to stay, for reasons of income, prestige, and so on?
Fight is not an option sanctioned by HR - at least, not the blow to the jaw type. All flint-topped spears to be checked in at reception before proceeding into the main building. While there’s various little fights going on with our environment, whether in our heads, our emails and so on, I suspect that flight is the main alternative for many of us.
And what is flight? I thought to call this post ‘Escape’, and often that’s part of the fantasy, whether through holidays, through weekends away, or even just the late-night gig. I guess I’m interested in thinking about the level to which we’re aware of our flight away from stresses, and the way in which it becomes hidden under other motives.
We have to eat. No quibble there. We have a nice range of foodstuffs available, lots of shops and eateries prepared to cater to us round the clock. But the chocolate bar on the Friday afternoon to keep going, the swift drink on arrival home, how many of these are treats, and how many are little escape mechanisms for us?
Stone-age man had perhaps some difficulties staying in one place - what with needing to seek out food, protect himself from others who might take this from him, and so on. Flight was probably forced on him more, but there were some advantages to it to.
Mortgage holders will know that flight becomes a more limited option when you have a reason to stay put year after year. Marriage, families, all of these are built to benefit from you sticking around. Hopefully, these things also mean you have less reason to flee, or even to fight so much to secure what you need.
But what happens when these responsibilities and different ‘threats’ seem to co-exist? How, equally, do we keep the threats from spilling over into the other areas of our lives?
You can see from the length of this that I’m musing, rather than offering solutions. The more I go on, the more I discover how many little escape hatches I use - and how, in various ways, they seem to become more necessary as life goes on.
Given that the blog offers its own means of escape, at times, I’ll reengage for now…for a bit, at least. Sunday evening TV is all about escape. Perhaps it’s time to do some more research.
February 24th, 2008
I’m a little concerned by health warnings. Always drink responsibly…sounds like you shouldn’t consider stepping out of the door without a bottle in your hand.
The next issue to focus on is gambling, as mentioned by the coin machine shop by my bus stop. Hanging about, waiting for the bus home, I have plenty of time to admire not just their pictures of Elvis on repeat on the screens by the shop window, but also the injunction: “Always gamble responsible”.
This one could of course be a trap by the grammar police - adjective or adverb, punk? - but it could equally be an opportunity for the punctuation secret service. Just one comma, and it becomes the kind of suggestion you expect to come up in an arty film.
The screen flips to show “Always gamble, responsible”. I should take this as my cue to hurl my work badge into the path of an oncoming bus, before diving into a nearby charity shop for a cocktail dress, as the scene shifts to the nearest speakeasy.
Perhaps I should go back to my roots as an English teacher. Does it get any better if I substitute “Occasionally gamble responsible”? Sometimes I know when to fold, but mostly I push the chips forward with the air of a James Bond villain?
However these things get written, I can’t help but think they look more like an encouragement to go ahead with the problem behaviour, rather than to rein it in. Maybe the ad men need some people to lose at gambling, so that they can further increase their earnings on a slogan that doesn’t actually work.
Well then. That’s my “eats shoots” moment done. Next week: stray apostrophes, which I have recently learned are known as the ‘grocer’s apostrophe’. I’m sure there’s a link between fruit, and fruit machines, that I can work on.
February 23rd, 2008
That’s Valentine’s Day to you. I just fancied writing it. “Valentinky” has quite a nice ring to it too.
Why Walentynki? I don’t really subscribe to the common concept of what Valentine’s Day is about in the UK.
As a teenager, you just kind of sulk about it (though there are so many things to sulk about as a teenager, I’m not sure how much others perceive the difference on this occasion).
As a young adult, the pang increases a little. Now people possibly have some money to spend on the day. But as much as anything, it’s just a reminder that others have someone in their lives and you don’t. Which is not always a good thing to dwell on. (At this stage you dwell on things, rather than sulking, possibly because you only have one main room to hang out in, so you can’t exactly run off to your room when it gets too much.)
In this stage of life, I happened to be in Poland during Valentine’s Day. Both times were memorable, for different reasons. The first time, I received a Valentine’s fax from a family friend.
Firstly, receiving a fax made quite an impact in the boarding school/convent where I was staying, and secondly, it reminded me that a world existed beyond the one in Poland I had joined just a week before. (My family didn’t hear from me for a fortnight, the length of time it took to me first to remember and then to work out how to post my first letter from Poland. Life pre-mobile eh?)
The second time, a sudden change in circumstances. I had someone, I hadn’t been together with them the previous Valentine’s Day, and all of a sudden, this year, I was engaged. And he was in a different country. But I learned to be upbeat - particularly aided by seeing the enthusiasm with which Poles had taken to Valentine’s Day.
This was a holiday adopted after the end of Communism. The flashy thing to do was take your true love out to McDonalds. In fact, the drive-through McDonalds round the corner from where I lived had a photo montage of happy couples in McDonalds over Valentine’s Day.
From a UK perspective, it doesn’t seem very romantic. But I liked the enthusiasm, the sense of rising to the occasion. Rather than a slushfest, Valentine’s Day had become fun, cheerful even.
I didn’t take myself out for a McDonald’s that year, you may be pleased to hear. I did buy myself flowers. But I developed a liking for a sense of what a particular day could mean in a new context.
Walentynki. You can’t just buy it in the shops. But it’s what every relationship needs from time to time.
(Footnote: despite telling my colleagues that Dan and I don’t really ‘do’ Valentine’s, I returned home to a little parcel of Italian deli goodies that he had happily selected. There’s another good aspect of Walentynki - having your expectations changed. It’s a wise man that knows that a woman also appreciates the ‘way to one’s heart is through one’s stomach’.)
So, I salute Valentine perspectives with Peroni beer - and will save mention of the outcome of the other ingredients for another day.
February 14th, 2008
The home improvements continue…well, not apace, but at least they continue.
Part of the grand plan is to get more storage inside our wardrobes, and thankfully, the powers that be at IKEA foresaw that people would want to shift things around at different times, and created lots of nice holes to move new shelves into.
I wouldn’t put us as IKEA frequent flyers - it’s more like a once a year military operation, once we have secured someone’s car to make it worth our while. But I do love a good kit to put together. I do obviously let Dan have a go too, but I will even volunteer to put other people’s IKEA units together.
Why the appeal? Kits are good news for those of us who aren’t so hot on drawing, or cutting things terribly accurately, but still want to make things. It’s also quite fun to see things assemble gradually, particularly if they are a) big and b) handy for moving stuff off the floor/bottom of other wardrobes etc.
I tend to think that liking kits is also part of learned behaviour. Dad was very into model making when I was little, and I graduated to this myself in various forms: plaster of Paris moulds for various things you could then paint, peg dolls, soft toys.
Best of all was a model theatre - first you made the theatre from card, then you had a full opera and ballet with backdrops, bits to move on from the sides, fiddly characters to cut round, the works. I even learned the story of ’La Boheme’ from the synopsis they included with the kit, which comes in handy for watching ‘Moonstruck’ in later life.
Recently, makers of kits have been staging a comeback. Makers of Airfix kits - model aeroplanes and so on - decided to run an ‘experiment’ where one group of kids got to make a model, and the others got to play on their Playstations, or something similar. At the end of the time, those making models were asked if they would do it again, and if they liked it more than their usual computer game type hobbies.
I’m never too sure with tests like this how representative the findings are, but evidently a good number of the kids said yes, they’d give it another go. Besides, there are still kit cars you can make (and get a Q at the start of your number plate - a definite incentive), and even kit houses for those who want to build their own but fancy a bit of help. Onwards and upwards, see.
February 12th, 2008
Honest, ossifer, not even once. But I couldn’t resist the title.
Little by little, the Frydman decorating project moves on, and the next stage is to get some rooms replastered. This gives us the opportunity to move furniture from room to room in order to clear the rooms that need plastered…Thank goodness for a spare room at the moment, otherwise we would be struggling a bit to find space to put things into.
So far, it’s mostly the bookcases that are getting moved. I’m quite pleased to see that the study walls stay up without their usual counterweight of books. With the annual bookfair in Peebles next month, it’s also a good time to do our usual book cull, and decide what can be donated for the fair.
The biggest excitement will be getting the kitchen replastered, which should mean we can finally paint it white, and banish the last trace of terracotta paint. (Apologies if you are of a burnt umber persuasion. It’s nice and warm, sure, but in small dark spaces lit by a still pretty dark Scottish winter, the desire for more light is going to win out.) But it seemed like a good opportunity to tidy up the sitting room and the study at the same time, so we’re hoping to get all three done around the same time.
But the final aim is an even better one - get the plaster and paint done, then finally replace the carpet. If terracotta walls get me down, don’t get me started on the sitting room carpet. Hopefully we can now get something we’d like. It was good enough getting Mum to make us curtains of our choice - carpet as well will be tremendous. (You’ll be pleased to hear we aren’t forcing Mum to make the carpets as well. Talk about nose to the grindstone.)
Is it all needed? Less than the leaky bathroom project. But learning from the enjoyment we have of a bathroom that we actually chose, I think it’s well worth it, particularly for the sitting room which we spend a lot of time in.
You never know. I may even learn to upload some photos, finally, to show off the finished product. A few more bookcases to move first, though.
February 11th, 2008
The music collection is building up. Rather later than much of the rest of the population, I have also now tried acquiring some more songs via iTunes.
Recently I read a music journalist talking about converting his prized collection into digital format. Having it all neatly amassed, and no longer vinyl, or CD, to hold in his hands, he suddenly felt like the process of collecting was no longer what it had been.
What happens when it’s suddenly easy to find the items you want - even the obscure ones? Does the thrill of the chase diminish? What does it mean to collect when you just find and pay for tracks in a bundle, separated from their original ‘packaging’ as part of an album?
Others have written about the loss of the homemade tape as an initial sign of intent from a boy to a girl. We may not put together a ‘mix’ in our own way, but on the other hand, we can keep mixing and remixing our sets of favoured songs. And we can avoid buying the whole album for the sake of the one track we’re actually bothered about.
Another shift is removal of the need to do your own cataloguing. A feature of my childhood was my dad’s homemade logs of music, films and so on - the indication of careful collecting. Now the programmes for buying and assembling collections do that for you.
It does save the writings and transcribings, the noting down of tracks and times and even dates you made the recording. Perhaps some of the ’romance’ is lost, setting out and staking down your own musical territory. But the gains of arranging and rearranging playlists, and above all, listening again to treasures that were forgotten, seem to outweigh the changes.
February 7th, 2008
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