Posts filed under 'Travel'
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
Now if memory jogging counted as exercise, I’d be well away…Currently trying to house several years’ worth of photos. There’s a certain amount of memory jogging taking place, as I try to remember what order things happened in, which year we visited whom, and so on.
Inevitably, you get drawn into the subject matter even as you file them away in albums. Looking at ones from our two trips to the States, in 2002 and 2003, it’s easy to step back into that world a little. Buildings, people, views, cafes, that kind of thing. When the kettle boils, or the letter box goes, it’s odd popping back into the ‘real world’.
I certainly couldn’t have related to you what was in the photos until I looked at them again. Some would see that as a reason to junk them - in the way that if you’ve not worn something for six months, it should go out. (As global warming increases, and the seasons feel fairly similar in Scotland, I guess the argument holds even more. It’s not like you’re keeping it for ‘the summer’, after all.)
But there again, some would say they are there all the time anyway. It’s estimated that we do actually retain large amounts of what we see, even if we’re not consciously aware of it. The regular comments of those who face near-death experiences is that images do seem to flash in front of your eyes - your life speeded up, a self-loading picture gallery, a lifetime’s worth of photo albums.
Oliver Sachs, in his book “The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat”, goes further - after some brain malfunctions, it can be as though we relive earlier episodes in real time. One of his chapters deals with someone who, as her illness increases, spends longer and longer in earlier, and happier, parts of her childhood. When she dies, the nurses suggest that she has finally “gone home”, to the country she grew up in.
Enticing though it would be to spend time on the same holidays again (and what a money saver eh? two for the price of one!), it’s also good to be reminded of time edging on in the present day. Who knows - maybe prices would have gone up since you were away? Maybe you would now question the relevance of the particular day trip you’d looked forward to? And would we feel like we were having deja vu, returning to the same experiences?
The real world we blink back into has pots and pans, bills and budgets. But it also has sunsets that occur in real time. Plenty of new material for the memory to work on.
December 1st, 2007
I’m ready for next year.
This doesn’t mean I’m doing away with Christmas (although an interesting T2 article on doing without it, and music (it being annual No Music day today), for a limited period of time, in order to enjoy them more on getting them back).
A few years ago, I started my Useful Notebook option. Up til now, it’s tended to have been bought in Italy on holiday, while Esselunga had their fun covers with different fruit and veg (John Lemon and all that - lemon in JL shades). Today I braved the student union shop at Glasgow Uni, and got my notebook for next year.
Hard to choose. I could have saved rhinos buying one notebook, or used recycled tyres or drinks cartons with another. I’ve ended up with something called a Pukka Pad, which rather sounds like I’m only allowed to use it for comments relating to Jamie Oliver. However, it will do the trick for what I need.
This notebook, it’s a place of Lists. Move over Robert Crampton… I don’t have bike ride stats in (one of his Lists), but it does come in handy for noting what we’ve bought for people’s birthdays and Christmases, measurements of gaps that require furniture or shelves, that kind of thing. I’ve also used it as a place to write a bit of a diary of what we’ve done on holiday, as it’s quite nice to remember where we were when, what we saw/did, etc.
The notebook also started out as an exercise in perspective. I started the first one in 2002, having come out of a difficult six months or so before, with the view that if I thought about life differently, it might well mean I felt differently about it. (Does it ever. Fast forward to the counselling course and all that.)
In the dark days of November, and feeling a little low at the moment, it’s not bad thing to start the new book, with a sense that there will be good things in 2008. In fact, I’m sure of it - it’s one of the Big Birthday seasons that runs in both sides of the family every few years, when there’s various birthdays ending in 5 or even 0, so lots to celebrate. I’ll have been living in Edinburgh for 10 years straight (97-98 being a year teaching abroad), to add to the 4 years before that.
Lists, notebooks, they are open to interpretation. You could see it as ‘all that stuff I did’, or ‘all those things I can’t manage, and feel bad about’. I did have a separate task book, more reminders really, and have stopped using that - felt too bad at all the stuff that wasn’t happening at home, when in fact it was fine, and there was loads going on at work. At the moment, there’s a certain amount going on in both camps - for which three cheers.
But as the thirties move on, life blurs a little more, separate years are less distinct in the memory. It’s nice to note a few things, be clear where I’ve been at a certain stage in life. Noting well, and noting the good. Thankfully the memory takes over, and helps shine up the good, down play the bad. The notebook helps us remember how it felt - and how much has happened since.
November 21st, 2007
Everyone likes a good rainbow eh? Double ones good value too and all that.
Coming back from our recent holiday, we had a new sight - a rainbow from above. You are basically talking a stripy donut shape, but it’s still exciting. Even better - we got to see two different ones, about half an hour apart.
Maybe this is God’s view of rainbows? I guess you’d have to be a fairly high flying bird to get that view too often.
I know the thing is meant to be the crock of gold at the end of the rainbow, if you can ever work out which end it’s at. But all the same, the treat was seeing something you are used to, but from a completely different angle.
Admittedly, there’s less time to go through the whole ‘red and yellow and pink and green…’ shtick when you’re flying over. Which is just as well for the other passengers.
But it’s probably a good example of some of what I treasure in life - getting to see, or think about, or hear, something in a completely new way. Second in line is finding out someone else has seen that, heard that, thought that too. More on that next post.
November 19th, 2007
Another title I planned a while ago, and on a much happier note.
I’m no expert, but I’m fond of the odd haystack. Bountiful nature and all that. Going on holiday to the Isle of Jura most summers when I was growing up, a relative there still had a smallholding, and you could see him out in the fields, gathering and forming the stooks by hand.
Later, there were the ‘burnt cupcake’ haystacks of Monet, in shades of pink and blue, as well as more strawy colours. One year I discovered the upstairs floor in the National Gallery in Edinburgh, which has quite a collection of these. Monet got a bit obsessed by these - as he did by waterlilies and a few other things - but it’s amazing the number of different colour combinations he comes with. Much of the time, though, the stacks remain the same shape.
I was going to say you can imagine my delight when… - and it wasn’t really as strong as that - we got to see loads more variants when on holiday in Poland this summer. But really, when you’ve grown up with square bales, roly poly round bales, and perhaps the handgathered wigwam type, I was struck by how many other variants you could come up with, should you have the time, energy, and more importantly, enough straw needing drying.
What was more impressive was how many there were in a relatively small area. We had been staying in Warsaw and came down on the train to Zakopane, the main mountain resort in the south. After Krakow, the train meanders for a while, in and out of foothills, for a couple of hours. In that time, we saw I think seven different variants, including ones with ‘ears’, ones that looked like double axles, etc. A couple of years further back, we saw another variant in Slovenia, where there are covered drying racks in many fields, something that seems to be distinctive to that country.
My question is: who teaches them how to do that? Is it set for the area, or is it up to the farmer’s own choice - and perhaps time? It’s not that the hills are so high in that part of Poland that you are really cut off from other areas, as you could argue you might be elsewhere, as an explanation for why so many types remain.
Perhaps it’s also that in the UK, we’ve been told how mechanised farming has become, how industrialised, effectively. Travelling up to Aberdeenshire in September to meet foreign students, where field after field was full of identifcal cotton reel bales, you had some sense of this. Yes, it was quite pretty, but you also lost sense of how far you’d been travelling after a while. Which is why it was nice to see in contrast such variety, ingenuity - and personality.
Making hay while the sun shines eh? It’s a lifestyle thing.
November 12th, 2007
Having spent a week with 4 children, felt the need to capture a few of this year’s catch phrases from them.
As we now see them (and their parents) about once a year, what they can say and do moves on a lot. We continue to use last year’s phrases, brush them off and bring them out again when we’re there, and then the parents realise that they’ve forgotten all about them saying that.
The eldest is now reading fluently in English and Italian. However, we were able to teach her ’sausages and chips’ as a game for saying things with a straight face. She’s hugely enjoying jokes at the moment, and we also taught her ‘life is but a melancholy flower’ (try singing it to the tune of Frere Jacques, and you’ll see what we mean). Her favourite knock knock joke is the Irish stew one…yes, you know you remember it.
(What’s scary, or probably reassuring, is how many of the jokes in her joke books I remember from my own childhood, and how they are still funny to her.)
Next in line is now into horses as well as ponies…and is starting to read a bit in English. She is also inventing her own jokes, though these don’t really quite work yet. She is very clear on music, and refers to particular songs as “X’s song” because they are no. 7 on the CD, and that’s the age of her sister! Any queries on Womble themed songs should be addressed here, except when she has the “Womble Tidybag Blues”.
The boy of the troupe is now 3, and is fluent in mechanical machinery. When I suggested one of his toys was a digger, he told me no, it was a snow plough…Another good one was when we all went out for a walk around a hill town an hour away. Seeing woods nearby, his dad asked him if he thought there were wolves nearby. “Oh yes” came the cheerful reply, as he toddled off.
The youngest is only 2 and a half months old, so can’t really be held to much in language. Never the less, there are good amounts of arm waving, and making noises back several times so that it sounds like a conversation. She was also introduced to being read to, by dint of being wedged against me while I read ‘Mr Tickle’ to her brother. We reprised this later with ‘Elmer’ and all 3 older children on the sofa, which seemed to go down well!
As for our own achievements, we have become acquainted with “Dora the Explorer” (We did it! We did it!). It’s not as good as last year’s “Chicken in a school” quote, but I’m sure we’ll remember more from this year as we settle back in to life with fewer small but cheerful distractions.
November 10th, 2007
Back to Edinburgh yesterday, after a couple of weeks’ holiday. The crunch of coming back is not so bad, although the quality of greyness this morning made me realise why some people decamp abroad for the entire winter…Admittedly, we’ve been spoiled, with quite a lot of sunshine and heat in the south of France, followed by sunshine and warmth in the north of Italy.
Decided we’d have the weekend at home, so doing a certain amount of pottering. This has even gone to the lengths of clearing out dead spices from the kitchen cupboards. Not so exciting, but it makes me realise my ‘anticipate exciting food by buying herbs and spices’ habit needs to be checked up on every now and then. Thankfully none of it was crawling out of the cupboards by itself, but our bin will smell of a weird combination of flavours for a little while, no doubt.
I guess that when we’ve been away, it’s nice to get to know one’s home again, and pottering about helps in this. Seeing it all with fresh eyes also helps for clearing out stuff that you’ve been putting off doing before going away (if not for months before, I suspect).
One aspect of taking stock is to think about doing something with the garden again, rather than looking out the window at it, feeling tired, and going off to do something else. Having been inspired by our friends’ veg patch, and having rediscovered a few pots for growing things on window sills, perhaps I’ll start small over the winter, and actually get some gardening done in the spring.
One exciting discovery today was what’s on offer for food digesters. Rather than leaving it to me and Dan to digest everything (ha, we’ll give it a try), you can get bin things for the garden which allow you to get rid of food waste, even bones, fish skin, etc, rather than bin it. This immediately suggests an end to our kitchen bin getting smelly, a surge of interest in cooking roast chicken regularly, and provides a further incentive to create a new bit of the garden in front of our shed, where it gets the most sun. I suspect in practice it will involve prevailing on my mum and Dan’s, who actually know what they’re doing in the garden, but it’s another reason to feel positive about the garden.
Talking to Dan’s mum on the phone today, aware that I have less of a sense than usual of what will be waiting for me when I get back to work, now that there are new colleagues to return, potential to give away a further chunk of work when I’ve tied it up, and some new activities in investigating staff learning for the wider team I’m part of. Maybe it will mean I genuinely can have a bit more time at home too, plan for things, rather than work always dictating what’s possible in my home life.
Taking stock. Moving on to making stock tomorrow.
November 10th, 2007
So, after the mad frantic excitment of having a laptop, I have to leave it for a while, as we are ready for some holiday! We’re about to go to the south of France (between Nice and Monaco), followed by a week with our good friends Rachel and David, who live near Milan.
Even though life has been quieter at work, I still managed to leave at 7…Dan is not yet home, hence some blogging, while I decide whether or not to start cooking, or wait for him to come back first.
Somehow it’s always a fight to leave work, get things tamped down, and head off on holiday. For Dan, it’s even harder, given that it’s his own company, and he’s the main one doing liaison with customers.
This time, I was able to leave my manager with our two new members of staff to fill the gap. There’ll be limits to what they can do, given they’ve only been in for a week, but it’s a start.
More of the picture for work is emerging, which means I will get some HR type stuff to do, or rather learning and development. Given that I enjoy both of these things for myself, it’ll be nice to have a more officialised role for encouraging others to do this. And as so many staff are new, it’s a particular moment to sense what people know, do lots of training that doesn’t cost much but shares around people’s experience, etc.
I had a bit of a pang yesterday, when looking at our weekly bulletin, which goes out around the whole organisation. Lots of people mentioned for our office, and almost everyone was either new or on promotion…and I still remain at the same level as I’ve been for the last 5 or more years.
The minute I note this, though, I know full well that I wasn’t interested in the jobs that were available at the grade above - the type of thing they were covering wasn’t for me. No point moving unless it’s to something I want to do. And maybe, sometime, they will actually create the job they’ve talked of, with lots of communications work in education, which is I guess what I’ve been building up to for the last year in particular.
Yesterday hit us quite hard: loss of a family friend, news of further ill health for Dan’s granny, a ‘no’ from a possible designer for Dan’s company (or more accurately, yes to freelance, but also yes to someone else’s company for most of the time). There’s a need to draw breath from all that. We’re OK in ourselves, and with each other, but yes, we need some space.
I’d read on someone else’s blog of them taking time during a holiday to talk to their wife, take stock, work out where they wanted life to go in the future, or perhaps, what they wanted it to be about. I’m not sure that’s what we will be doing this time - the realisation that as life goes on, we have less and less control over some stuff. My work situation is better than a month ago, yes, but there’s still a lot where I don’t know where it’s going. In comparison to the past, I’m less keen on volunteering to do things, on having big plans for work - unfortunately, it can be a recipe for being taken advantage of.
So, yes to big plans for free time, for family time…and even just for some looking on at life, breathing more calmly.
October 26th, 2007
So, it’s that time of year again; heading off to somewhere sunny and/or friendly for my birthday. How I’ve managed to escape having a 30-something birthday party is mainly down to getting out of the country. Perhaps I’ll stick around for number 35 (Oct 31st 2008 - will take bookings online), and we can celebrate then.
As we’re due to be in the South of France from next weekend for a week, Alison suggested that we head to Monte Carlo - the seat of the principality of Monaco - for my birthday. Top idea and somewhere that I’ve wanted to visit since I was 12 and heard all about it from my best friend at school.
He had lived there from 7-11 while his dad worked for Barclays. The enduring image was that his school playground was on the roof of a fifteen storey building and I’m going to try and seek it out. Google Earth may be useful too.
At the age of 12 my over-active, unrealistic expectation would have had me relaxing on a motor yacht in the harbour and living it up by my mid-30s. Life is harder than that, though a picnic on the side quayside is fine. The challenge will be finding a baguette that doesn’t break the bank.
This time next week, we’ll be looking out over the Med. If that doesn’t keep me going this week, I don’t know what will.
October 20th, 2007
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