Picked up the new Terry
Picked up the new Terry Pratchett book, Thief of Time at the weekend - IMHO, inevitably, on the left.
Knackered - early night, I think.
I need to calm down.
I need to calm down. This will come as a startling revelation to precisely no one who knows me. I get stressed and pressured over things that don't need it; I have a habit of passing on this stress to those around me, usually when they're particularly calm and unstressed; I speak too quickly, react too quickly, and have probably done irreparable damage to my system by dint of it constantly being flooded with adrenaline. And I'm *asthmatic*, for goodness' sake - this can't possibly be good for me.
With a view to providing some calm and focus, I bought a book a while ago on meditation - I never finished it......
I really must get back into it and try to shift myself into a calmer and less damaging state in an ongoing way.
Typical – I’ve battled shocking
Typical - I've battled shocking delays on the tube and being jammed against a scarily smelly man to be in the office to meet someone at 8 o'clock, only to receive a message that they won't be here 'til after 9.
Bah!
Lest there be any confusion,
Lest there be any confusion, by the way, in referring to the Nelly Furtado track, I wasnít suggesting that I donít know where my home is ñ Iím feeling fairly secure on that front these days ñ it just seemed apposite.
Also, in a completely different way than those I was writing about yesterday, it occurred to me that Middlesbrough has indeed changed; purely physically that is. Itís actually a classic illustration of the effect that out of town shopping complexes have on town centres, because Middlesbrough doesnít have out of town competition, and as a town centre itís thriving ñ new shopping areas, new eating places, the works. As I say ñ classic - in a 'proving it negatively' kind of way..
I’ve been into Middlesbrough today,
I've been into Middlesbrough today, for the first time in a few years, and it was an interesting experience. I used to be there at least once a fortnight when I was growing up, and certainly once I was a teenager, and in certain ways, it feels exactly the same as it used to: The people seem the same, the atmosphere seems just as I remember it, and a bunch of the shops seem to be stuck in a mid-80s time warp. It's both a bit reassuring and at the same time rather disquieting. I mean, this was a place that I knew intimately half my lifetime ago, and in its heart, it doesn't seem to have changed or evolved at all. Why not? I know I have, but if the spirit of a place is its people, and I don't see how it can be anything else, then those people are still the same as they were. Okay, so I've been away, and I've had different experiences, but that's all they are - different. It's not like time stopped in Middlesbrough and experience stopped with it. And it's even weirder that just up the road is a town called Guisborough, which is where I actually grew up, and I go back there and I feel like I never knew it, it feels so different. I'm not explaining this very well, because I don't really have the words to explain the feeling, and the harder I try, the more if feels like it's slipping away, so I just wanted to get this particular moment of feeling recorded.
With beautiful elegance, by the way, I'm listening to Nelly Furtado as I'm typing, and I'm Like A Bird started as I was ending that last paragraph: "I don't know where my soul is. I don't know where my home is."
Cheers, Nelly.
SoÖI offer up a dilemma
So...I offer up a dilemma for anyone who's interested:
This morning I went to a cashpoint (to get some cash, just to complete the picture). Just before I got to it, a group of five lads (I use the term advisedly) got there and put a card in. The subsequent conversation I heard as I stood behind them made me better than 99% certain that the card they were using was stolen: "See if you can get £500. All right, well try less. Are you *sure* you've got the right number, etc", and on top of this, as they left, one of them said "Right, let's try it in a phone box." Which, I was told by the bank's security person I spoke to when a card of mine was stolen last year, is a classic way of checking whether a card's been blocked, because you don't have an actual person to have to interact with.
So here's the dilemma: What should I have done? There were no handy police officers strolling by (shock, horror), and the kids were across the road and out of sight before I could so much as finish looking around for one anyway. There were five of them and one of me, so I'm sorry to say I wasn't going to tackle them. It was before the bank in question was open, so I couldn't go in and say "I think that the transaction before mine was dodgy - can you look into it?", and I have no idea whether I'd have been taken seriously or not anyway. So I'm left not knowing if there was something I should have done to stop them. And that's presupposing that the less than 1% uncertainty I had didn't actually reflect the truth of the situation.
Anyone like to share their wisdom? Mail me with any inspiration you have, and let me know if you'd rather I didn't post your response here. Not that I'm planning on opening a forum, or anything, but if anyone has anything they'd particularly like to share, I'm happy to provide a channel.
Written last night but posted
Written last night but posted today because of connection problems.
Gosh, it's a while since I've been up North - and yet it feels like five minutes. I'm not exactly back in my old stomping ground - my mother's moved since I left home - but it's close enough. And you know one unmistakable way of telling that you're in the North? You can get a bag of chips with *scraps*....
I had a dreadfully boring man sitting next to me on the train - he wanted to know if I was an academic, because apparently I've got a look of one, and when I said that I wasn't, he proceeded to tell me all about various academics he'd known, all of whom seem to be dead. I forbore to suggest that he may have bored them into early graves while sitting next to them on trains.
I need to get better
I need to get better at not letting other stuff get in the way of my logging at least once a day - that way lies the disaster that is every other diary I've ever tried to keep. Yesterday, between travelling to Hampshire and travelling back, I could easily have written something that I could then have posted, but I didn't even think about it. Work is very challenging at the moment, in ways that I'm unfortunately not allowed to talk about, and it's occupying a lot of my mental space just now, so I suppose that's my excuse, but I must try harder not to overlook this log. Given that I said earlier that I need things to do that aren't work/eat/sleep, I need to make sure that having started something else, I keep on at it.
I'm off up North this evening, to visit my mother - she's going into hospital for some tests tomorrow, so I'm being the dutiful son and driving her there and back. I must get something to read on the train.
Oh well, back to work.
Met Dave for a couple
Met Dave for a couple of pints last night, then went home and did some serious catching up on my correspondance, so I feel all virtuous that I've almost caught up with my emails.
Today and tomorrow I'm in Hampshire - today rather unexpectedly, which is a bit of a git, because I'm probably going to miss catching up with Gerard this evening.
One of my beloved former clients, Sari from Wild Apple Graphics sent me a link that I think is very cool, and which I offer for your entertainment.
I’m finally reading Stephen Fry’s
I'm finally reading Stephen Fry's autobiography, Moab Is My Washpot. I bought it as a gift last year sometime, meaning to borrow it and read it at some point, and the time has finally arrived. I'm about a third of the way through, and will probably IMHO it when I'm done, but I have to admit I'm finding it hard going. I'll bow to no one in my admiration for his wit, erudition and general style and presence, but my word he's an aggravating autobiographer. I mean, I'm hardly the world's least-digressing person myself, but even I find myself getting more and more annoyed by his ongoing strayings from the point and more especially his habit of referencing things that will happen years ahead of the point the narrative has reached, not once or twice, but over and over again. I very, very, rarely give up on books mid-read, but this one could join that select group if things don't improve soon.