Archive for December, 2007
There’ve been a few longer posts recently, so I’ll keep this one brief.
Off to the work Christmas meal out tonight. Haven’t been to one for a while, and not sure what to expect. Everyone has been asked to bring a baby photo, which we’re then meant to use to identify who each other is…but there’s also a raffle, raising money for Maggie’s Centres, in memory of our colleague who died at the start of the year.
Possibly a strange mixture this evening. There’ve been so many departures of many types this year, and so many new faces will be there. I’m hoping I’ll get to know the names of a few more of my newer colleagues.
However, the meal may well remain short and sweet, given that it’s been a bit of a struggle to fit into what I had in mind to wear…hmmm. Only difficulty with not being a huge party person is that I don’t have a large range of options to wear, so it’s time to suck it in and see.
December 13th, 2007
This should properly be tagged as both home and out and about, since I’m at home, and Dan’s out at the cinema with friends from our church small group.
Arrangements to get together tonight got a bit complicated, and in the end, I stayed put. Have been feeling a little guilty at how much I’ve enjoyed having the flat to myself…A few Christmas cards, a first attempt at some Christmassy music this year, followed by taking myself off to the bath to do some useful preening prior to tomorrow’s work Christmas do.
Back when Dan ran his business from home, I used to joke that the flat was more his than mine…but he was there almost all the time. This week, he probably feels like he’s been here all the time, given further visits from the heating Man (or rather Men - different ones at different times). Fingers crossed that it gets finally fixed tomorrow!
Meanwhile, despite some hiccups with it tonight, managed to get heat (and therefore hot water) on for most of the night, which allowed me to have a nice long bath and catch up on Saturday’s magazine from the Times. Interesting mini article on what they call microtrends. You can evidently get patterns off the Internet to knit your own beard - there are Bee Gee style full pokey out beards. However, this is the opposite of bathroom preening really, although the attempted knitting circle at work might be interested…
Even though the business is now away from home, it’s still fairly rare for me to have the flat to myself. So unlike Macauley Culkin, I am too pleased with a nice hot bath to be worrying about fending off inept house burglars. Perhaps the advent calendar will distract them, should it be needed.
With two days to go, and the prospect of a longer chunk of time off work, slowly realising that I can also have the flat to myself for much of next week, while Dan is still at work. Had a similar set up last year, although I was still writing essays for the counselling course as much as I could…This year is probably more of the Grand Tidy Up, but I think we’ll build in some fun stuff too.
Even though I have the prospect of travelling less, now we have more staff at work on the same activities as me, I’m still the one of the two of us who tends to be away with work. Sometimes just day trips, sometimes overnight. Was away last Friday, stayed on an extra day. Often it’s good for us, Dan and I. We enjoy being together more once we’re back together - without it being of the same epic proportions of months apart when we were engaged and I was working in Poland.
As a result, it is still a treat for me to be at home. I’m sure this annoys some of my friends who are at home all day every day with kids, and would like a quick escape without them now and then, let alone a night away on their own. Maybe I’ll get to this point some time. I wouldn’t quite go the full IKEA, but yes, home is a really important place for me.
And a good dose of it should help me muster up the courage to face a party tomorrow…less familiar territory, but hopefully a good end to the working year.
December 12th, 2007
I sat down last night, and had nothing to say. Not often that happens…
The phrase reminded me of a Beatles line “Nothing to say // but it’s OK” - we happened to be listening to the track last night. In some ways, it’s quite nice to think that there’s lots of times when others are stumped for words too. It’s quite reassuring, not to have to fire on all cylinders all the time.
This song, “Good Morning”, is part of the album Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. 2007 saw the 40th anniversary of that ‘radically different’ album. Beatles tracks are so well known, and, like the best songs, continue to speak to us. But what struck me last night was how some of it is also now dated - not just language, but concepts too.
“Good morning” has a line “It’s time for tea and meet the wife”. How many people would now refer to the ‘wife’, let alone have the mechanism of bringing someone home to meet her? And is she at home now, in any case, to be met?
Another of the lines refers to a “bit of skirt”. There’s no lack of put down terms for women nowadays, despite women’s lib - rap music has added its own collection in recent years. But in the days of women, and, increasingly, men, being more varied in what they wear, and when, this phrase seems to belong to a rather different world. It’s funny - the 60s is billed as this time of great sexual liberation, and the Beatles were seen as part of that whole scene. It’s interesting then to catch a more conservative tone in this, their great experimental album.
The song that struck me the most, for attitudes that have almost vanished, is “When I’m 64″. For starters, increased life expectancy, and expectations of an active life for much longer, mean that the age of 64 has less impact than it did at the time of writing. The throw away line about grandchildren’s names has a different ring - “Vera, Chuck and Dave”, where one of our main politicians likes to be known as Dave, and Vera is sure to be recycled as a name, along with Agnes, Ruby, and various others. (Chuck…? Perhaps its time has not yet come as a name.)
But just before this line, there’s another that speaks of an era that has almost gone. Renting ”a cottage on the Isle of Wight” may have gone out with the era of cheap flights, though with eco tourism on the up, it’ll maybe gain favour again. But the truly telling part is “We will scrimp and save.” Governments have enough difficulty encouraging people to save, let alone to scrimp…and other experts still will tell you that we have to keep spending in order to keep the economy afloat.
Scrimping. Maybe, like make do and mend, it’ll come back in the eco backlash. Maybe we will long for simpler times. But I do think that our collective spirits have moved a long long way away from scrimping. We are too used to getting our own way, having it now, and having it bigger and better.
Maybe Dave (Cameron) will save us from ourselves, but perhaps we have to look to Chuck and Vera to help us sort ourselves out.
December 11th, 2007
Dan’s mum has got a mobile phone. And I managed to teach her how to use it!
Made me realise how far I’ve come, being able to do so. Only a bit over a year ago, I was still getting my head round texting, remembering to check for messages, that kind of thing. I still jump when my mobile rings, text bound as I tend to be.
But clearly I’ve learned something. What pleased me most was feeling confident enough to check all the options, search for what we needed, as her phone was a bit different to mine. Normally this level of experimentation with technology is not really me. But perhaps a little, now and then, is manageable. Onward and upward.
December 9th, 2007
It’s a quote isn’t it? Can’t remember where from. But Dan was kind enough to lend me his iPod when I had a work trip to London at the end of last week. This meant that I had the option of watching the scenery roll by while listening to whatever I fancied.
Now Dan and I quite like soundtracks to films. Like lots of other music too, but have a soft spot for a soundtrack of a film we’ve enjoyed. Probably the top one on the list would be “Sneakers”, one that Dan got me into, with Wynton Marsalis adding to a sense of excitement and espionage.
The thing about listening to a soundtrack while on the move is that you feel like you are becoming part of the film. Or, perhaps even better, starring in a film of your own. One that uses a soundtrack related to Paris (”Amelie”, since you ask) with a backdrop of London. As I was going to a work meeting relating to languages, this was probably a reasonably good match.
Funny how good a bit of good music can be to help one’s mood. Going to a work meeting in another city, you can be a bit concerned about arriving on time, and something peaceful in the earphones helps in this way. And when a meeting has lasted a bit longer, had a few things you weren’t expecting, and so on, same peaceful music on the way home is also no bad thing…
December 9th, 2007
Who’s heard this one: ‘leave something for Mr Manners’?
Despite my mention of useful Men earlier in the week, this is not he. But I was reminded of this saying at work today, seeing the ‘polite’ remainders that people leave behind.
We’re a very foody office. Although our work has a great Cause, people view it in lots of different ways, and food is one thing that actually draws us together. Add to that people going on work trips/holiday to various interesting places, leftovers from events, and you get a sense of a lot of surveying of food that appears in the office.
Fairly consistently, though, no one seems able to take the final piece of something. This means that you can leave even a large piece of packaging with one tiny bit left, and this excuses you from doing any further tidying up. Today, it reached greater proportions than usual - at one point, the piece left over was half a fruit danish pastry. I ignored it, and had my bowl of soup. When I looked round again, someone had taken the pastry, but left the decorative grape…
I’m aware that in other cultures, if you do finish everything, it suggests you want more, or even that you are not satisfied with something. I’m also aware that we have a small kitchen for c. 60 people, and leaving bits of wrappings about doesn’t leave much space to get your lunch out of the fridge, as well as looking a bit grungy after a while.
So, Mr Manners. I ate your grape. I am the one who throws away your empty packets. But I also put on new pots of coffee, clean worksurfaces and do other socially contributional things. I may upset the food status quo. But I do create space for people to put something new down…and start the whole process again.
December 5th, 2007
Book clubs. Another invention for society that has less reason to get together? Or a great way to encourage people to keep thinking, discussing, and so on?
Your choice. Personally I am fairly happy to have opinions about books without needing to consult others on them. But there is something good about seeing what others think - memories of class discussions in English Lit classes. To be honest, if book clubs had been around when I was in 6th form, that would have saved some of my teenage ‘no one understand what’s important in the world!’ grips. (Or maybe not. Teenagers are fairly robust in their assertion that people don’t understand, even if they do.)
It dawned on me recently that I could write book reviews on the blog as well - a kind of book club of one, if you like. Others write their fairly regular film reviews, or reviews of sermons/tapes etc - why not regular books too?
Facebook of course seeks to capture that discussional interest. You can have virtual bookshelves - and film and music collections too - to show off your favoured artistes. I add a few more books most times I go on - some from ages ago, some that I’ve read more recently, but I quite like seeing pictures of the covers come up, and seeing what others are reading.
Meanwhile, however, I have been back to reading in the bath. Despite my recent posts on the joys of magazine articles, it is not as easy to read them in the bath. Newspapers are a bit big, and likely to disintegrate on contact with water. Books it has to be.
So I picked out “Perfume”, a book made into a film earlier this year. As we’d had a holiday in the south of France this year, not so far from the perfume making centre of Grasse, I wanted to remind myself what it was about.
I read “Perfume” in my teens, I think. I was captivated by the description of how perfume was made, how people worked out what scents were in a particular concoction. It also evokes a particular era in France, and brings to life the teeming masses, the public celebrations, the various occupations that are less well known today (tanners, wet nurses, and so on).
So far, so good. But “Perfume” is also subtitled “The story of a murderer”. Less cheerful. The writer, Patrick Suskind, takes two starting points: a man who has a brilliant ‘nose’ for scent of any kind - and the same man who himself has no personal smell.
Other reviewers have called his work Gothic. You could equally say that he takes these ideas, and pushes them to their logical - and even illogical - conclusions. This is where the book gets its power - there is a Greek tragedy at work in the plot, although one where you also get the sense of choice, of the protagonist having the opportunity to turn back or pursue another course at different stages.
Reading it again this time, I was more aware of the morality around the story. The tale starts with adults’ responses to the character as an infant - their fear of him because of his lack of personal smell, their sense that he is somehow in league with the devil. Easy enough to dismiss, in our more tolerant society. But as those around him perish - and in some cases, Suskind shows how they perish decades later, in a setting they have sought to avoid - there is a growing sense of doom for all who work with him; those who show kindness, those who do not. As this continues through the book, it becomes more and more unsettling.
In other ways, this morality holds sway for the main character, Grenouille, too, even though he does not recognise morality, or at least church jurisdiction. Even when he attains what he sets out to do, it does not give him what he hopes, and the result of this impacts back on him, drives him to a particular end. There is perhaps a more ‘natural’ justice coming out of this macabre tale, despite the way this doesn’t seem the case at the start.
Enough thoughts for now. But perhaps these book reviews will also help in the long slow quest to write more of my own stuff, literature or otherwise. The next question is how brave I feel to share my own creative writing with others. Judging by the place where I’m doing most of it - online - I think I have to answer that with “braver than I have been…”
December 5th, 2007
Got home early today - though up scarily early to do a day trip for work.
My noble steed to carry me home was a Lothian Regional Transport bus - nothing special there. But it was one of the old ones, which are becoming quite scarce today.
I’d been reading a magazine on the way back from the worktrip, where a couple had a sign from a London Routemaster bus - when these were decomissioned, parts were sold off to transport enthusiasts (and no doubt the odd mechanic too). I’m not suggesting that I want to keep specific items for an earlier LRT bus - that suggests a little too much devotion.
But it got me to thinking about why I have a soft spot for these older buses. Various features that you can’t quite put above your mantlepiece:
The spiral staircase - the stairs on these buses have a genuine, regular curve. This actually makes getting downstairs easier, even when going round corners, because you can always move down in the same way. Newer buses are of varying models - some have shorter stairs, some longer, but they all tend to pitch you headlong if the bus is going at any speed. And this is even when you are hanging on to both handrails.
The luggage compartment - there is a specific luggage compartment for suitcases etc. This is a real help if you are getting the bus up to the station or the airport bus - there’s a specific place to put your case, which stops you taking up an extra seat or blocking the gangway.
Two sets of doors - now I know some of the newer buses have this too, but it does make life easier letting people out of one door, and new ones in the other door. After all, this feature was meant to speed up time spent waiting at bus stops for passengers to finish moving about. On the other hand, because more of the newer buses require you to walk back past the driver to get off, I hear more people saying thank you before they get off. This is a) polite and b) preferable to yelling ‘thanks driver’ half way back down the bus…
Sitting sideways. You don’t get so much of this on the new buses. I’m not sure that I should be championing this, given that I try to face forwards when travelling, if at all possible. But as a child, sitting on a sideways seat, it feels a little different. Decent sized sideways seats are excellent again for two people, big or small, plus luggage or shopping.
The higher up seats in the middle of the bus. These are really useful if you get on with large items of luggage, or other things to hold onto - you don’t have as far to sit down, and it’s easier to get up again. For fairly similar reasons, they are popular with the elderly. There is however a certain fun in sitting with a friend in the higher seat behind the driver - it’s a bit like having a booth to yourself in a restaurant, because of being self contained.
I understand why the buses have changed. Legislation for disability you need to be able to get wheelchairs on. The same space is a real boon for parents whose tot has just gone off to sleep in the pushchair, and avoids you having to hoick the child out, disgorge shopping etc, just to get on the bus. (I’ve not had to face oneupmanship between parents who think they have rival claims on this space - it only takes one pushchair - or how it feels to hope for a space and find it already full.) The new buses can go lower to make them easier to get on and off - back to support for the elderly.
All of these groups are particularly likely to need to use buses, quite beyond equality of access. It doesn’t take much looking at our local paper to see how people have lobbied for more of these buses to start their service in our area, because there are lots of people wanting the benefit of this kind of bus. So three cheers for a decent public transport system, that’s also affordable, on the monthly pass at least.
But still…these were the buses that captured my attention when, as a child, I got to ride them into town while visiting my grandparents on holiday. At least there are a good number of double deckers around still, new bus or old. The delights of sitting at the front upstairs still persist. And with a husband who needs the legroom, surprisingly, it’s often still better at the front than in seats further back.
LRT seem to keep winning awards for their bus service, so something’s going right. Let’s hope they can acknowledge the earlier buses in their hall of fame, as well as their innovations.
December 4th, 2007
Chilly? Just a trifle. Our central heating boiler is playing up. We have a Man coming to fix it (our former landlady had a stream of little Men who came to fix different things…and no, not those kind of little men, and definitely not wearing green either).
I have counted blessings as a way to calm down about it - we have separate gas so we can cook, we still have electricity for other stuff, we still have a shower that runs separately so can ablute, and so on. Feeling rather foolish not to know to do boiler servicing - but there again, the people we bought from didn’t tell us anything about it, parents didn’t mention it, etc. The back of the little on box seems to suggest the boiler was last serviced in November 1999…hmm…
Meanwhile, however, there is always food as a distraction. Today have had a shot at making a different kind of trifle for our small church group meeting on Wednesday. My manager has been on holiday to Switzerland, and came back with Lebkuchen. It was rather sturdy just for eating this afternoon, but with a little liquid soaked in, it should make rather good trifle.
I have started to experiment with different kinds of trifle, mainly relating to variants on the cake part. Today lebkuchen. On one memorable occasion, panettone, with a little rum on top - that one went down VERY well. Occasionally failed chocolate cake, sometimes cheap sponge on offer from the Co-op.
It’s not that I don’t want to spend money feeding guests. But I do like good leftover ideas, and trifle is as much a left-over dish as a create from scratch with wonderful sponge fingers kind of dish. In any case, I think the whole trifle sponge thing is really something you buy - a savoiardi biscuit, or something like that. I suspect macaroons would be good; I think brioche might almost work too.
My other innovation in the trifling department is different ways of soaking the sponge/cake bit - see rum reference above. Sherry - always good option. But was also rather pleased at using the juice from stewed fruit to soak through the sponge - success a few weeks back with brambles as the fruit content, and bramble juice turning the sponge a particularly exciting colour.
You could claim all this is just distraction. You’d be right, certainly tonight. It makes me grateful that we both go out to work, and can rely on someone else paying for heat, somewhere else, during the day. But it’s probably better than too much kicking ourselves, which is always a bit limited after the event. Plus, this way, it entertains people - and perhaps it even entertains you, dear reader, finding out about it, or considering your own cake and fruit creations for the future.
Feeling better? More than a trifle.
December 3rd, 2007
Here’s a good use of winter afternoons - board games. We had lunch with friends today, and, aided by a good stew, a couple of kittens in the background and a nice fire, a little board gaming ensued.
I found myself observing us a couple of times in the afternoon. This is part of what life is for, isn’t it? Good food, good company, comfort, a little entertainment?
It may not be trendy, it may not be cool or even youthful. This is of a piece with buying a shed, having discussions about lawnmowing and other delights of one’s thirties. Some would say that actually we could have got going on the board games earlier in life, though, because clearly our friends are well trained in strategy, distracting each other, explaining instructions and other social and competitive behaviour…
Anyway, this here board game is called Settlers of Catan. Part of the interest in the game is that you set out the map of the board in different ways each time; the commodities that make or break the game change each time. It also shows you how you can get stumped, collecting lots of one thing you can’t use, failing to get anything of what you actually need.
A couple of Christmases ago, we researched board games for family in the States. It’s a big market. I don’t know if you have to have grown up with lots of board game playing to get into it more, but there’s no shortage of people out there inventing more games to play.
Many are board game versions of the kind of thing now done by Sim City and other computer simulation games. Obviously Monopoly has been there long before, but it’s interesting to see that there’s still a lot of interest in making things, selling them, conquering other people, that kind of thing, but happily limited to some pieces of card on a table.
What with Dan and I playing cards on holiday, learning new board games today, perhaps we’re going through a make your own entertainment renaissance. Maybe I’ll even learn to lose gracefully? Who knows? Raise me a few sheep, some iron ore and some bricks, and I’ll let you know…
December 2nd, 2007
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