Stuffed

You know it's not good when:

1.  You finish work on Friday with a troubling e-mail arriving in your inbox.  You know you'll have to deal with it on Monday which means that it hangs over your head all weekend like the executioners axe
2.  You go out on Friday night even though you're barely speaking to each other after a squabble the day before
3.  You spend the weekend walking on eggshells hoping the atmosphere will thaw on Sunday night.  It does.
4.  You realise on Monday morning you can't find your office keys either because they're lost or you left them in the office.  Either way you can't get in until someone else arrives.
5.  Your motorbike won't start on Monday morning even though you spent several hours on Sunday getting it to fire up.  And then the garage says that they can't do anything for a week, and they suggest the same solution that they have done for the last 18 months that (clearly) hasn't worked
6.  You want to cycle to work to keep up the progress of last week only to find it's raining so it's not a sensible option
7. You pick up the wrong keys as you set the alarm on your way out of home, realising only when you're out the front door.  So you have to go back inside un-setting and resetting the alarm.  Twice.
8.  You decide you need a coffee and bun before you go into the office even though you know neither is good for you
9.  You find a virus on your computer which takes half the day to fix.
10.  You're so exhausted by the middle of the afternoon that you're being totally unproductive
11.   You get a county court summons
12.  There's a dozen other things on your plate that are troubling (and you don't think they should be shared in public) and you're not quite sure how they will get sorted

But on the other hand, when all the sh*t comes at the same time, you know there's only one way to go....UP!

Did anyone else watch Jeremy Paxman's pseudo heavyweight history documentary Empire last night?  On the up side it provoked plenty of discussion at home during and afterwards, on the downside it was quite appallingly bad.  I'm not sure whether it was interviewing the equivalent of the 'bloke down the pub' in Egypt and India about whether they thought the Brits having conquered their countries was a good thing, or the lack of context, or the strange way he started in the middle, or whether it was the lack of context or his smug sneer or the simple bittiness of the whole thing that made it so bad, or the complete lack of research beyond anything that I knew from my second year at senior school.  But bad it was.  Next week he looks at how we became rich on the drug and slave trades.  I'll be watching intently to see if there is anything that vaguely resembles historical context there.

I'm troubled by the etiquette of electronic communication.  I know I'm not alone.  Even when I started the business, we wrote letters to people and that was simple.  Dear Mr Smith, or Dear John worked very nicely.  These days it's all e-mails and I'm troubled about how to start the damned things.  Dear Mr Smith is wrong for sure, 'Hi' is crass, 'Hello'...I don't think so...so much time is wasted working out how to  start the things.  Not that the end is any better.  'Yours sincerely'...no way.  'Kind regards'...usually but isn't that a bit formal when the start is so relaxed?  And then there's women...they tend to put a X after their name...when I reply should I also put an X (yes because it's polite, or no because it seems flirtatious)  I just don't know.  I'm going back to letters.  Or telegrams.

Once you go black

We were in Oxford yesterday which made an interesting contrast to our recent trip up to Cambridge.  Though both cities are steeped in academia, Cambridge continues to feel small and rural, whilst Oxford is more bustling and urban.  We had travelled west because The Boy was attending an open day at one of the colleges to find out more about studying German at Oxford University.  Whilst he went off and spent the day in lectures, debates and such like, The Cat's Mother and I explored the city.

It's not a place I am entirely unfamiliar with as I spent three months there during my gap year.  It wasn't a happy time as I worked at a firm of accountants to find out if it was a career I wanted to follow.  It decidedly was not. The lingering legacy of that time is that my bank continues to be based there....and that's not a happy relationship either.

Anyway, we found ourselves in the Ashmolean Museum, which claims to be the oldest in the country.  That doesn't mean it isn't modern... certainly a lot of money has been invested in modernising it.  Most of the building seems brand new.  Bizarrely, who ever designed the thing decided that the best way for visitors to enjoy the contents is to make it as complicated as possible to navigate even with the museum map, and then to further complicate it by not bothering to put up the gallery numbers.  I've never seen so many people asking how to get to a gallery as I did yesterday, which proves, to me at least, that I wasn't being stupid.  Perhaps the powers that be had decided this was the best way to encourage people to explore.  Anyway, we looked at Howard Hodgkins' collection of Mughal art (pretty dull really - sorry) and not much else, as the whole place was a bit dense and difficult to get enthusiastic about.  They did at least have an excellent section on Cyprus, so we studied that at length in readiness for our next trip to see Grandma in Cyprus.

We headed off to Carfax to get a birds' eye view of the city roof tops, and were sold our tickets by a man who really was the spitting image of a ventriloquist's dummy, even down to the rosy cheeks.  He was very happy and friendly, but I didn't see anyone sitting behind him with their hand up his posterior.  The view was fine, and we were able to spot the Bodleian Library, which we didn't go in as visitors are discouraged.  I bet most city libraries would be pleased to be able to do that.  Instead we went in the souvenir shop where I was given a sound ticking off for trying to take a photo out the window.

We'd arrived early so had gone for a coffee in the Randolph Hotel, which we noted was a Macdonald group hotel.  Disappointingly there were no burgers to be had, and we had to twist their arm to let us have breakfast as we'd arrived at 10.05.  Breakfast stops at 10.00.  Burgers or not, there were a couple of very well-spoken and loud gentlemen in the lounge with us.  They were like the arguing professors in Newman and Baddiel...except they weren't arguing, they were just talking extremely loudly in very affected accents.  I recorded some of it on my mobile phone, but I assume publishing it would be illegal.  Shame.  One had bug eyes and a bowler hat, the other was portly and wore slacks, sports jacket and a waistcoat..  You couldn't avoid hearing them; in fact it was hard to hear each other speak such was the volume of their conversation.  Their views were somewhat conservative.  They were clearly men who thought the world had gone rapidly downhill since their youth, and probably bringing back the birch and national Service would solve all our problems.  One of them I suspect was an academic, but without too much up top, and the other it transpired was a priest.  And it was he that was heard to say, "Well as they say once you've had black you never go back".

We spluttered into our coffee cups and left shortly afterwards.

Landscape

I've got a little out of sync with Tara's photogallery which I always used to participate in....not sure why, but it just hasn't happened for a while.  I guess life in general is like that isn't it?  Everything going hunkydory, and then for no apparent reason it doesn't all hang together as it should.

I thought I would make a special effort this week, but then she set the challenge of 'landscape'.  Not a difficult thing in itself, but I have hundreds of landscape pictures, some of them OK, some of them good, but they all have a special meaning to me.  The obvious thing to do would be to post up a picture from the top of the mountain last week, but that seems just a little too obvious and easy.  So instead I chose the following:

This was actually Zermatt last year taken through the cafe window...the words seemed appropriate.  In truth it was a much better holiday than this year.  The Cat's Mother has declared she is hanging up her ski boots.

This was Iceland, the first holiday we took as a family...the poor girls got dragged around this (amazing) barren landscape which we were all somewhat dwarfed by.  Eventually they insisted we abandoned the natural landscape for one that included shops

This was a new year in Hereford with some very dear friends.  I'm heading off to the slopes with them in April, and very much looking forward to it

This is just along the coast from Grandma in Cyprus...in the north of the island.  The Cat's Mother and I are heading there in May to celebrate a very special birthday for her, unfortunately exams will mean neither The Boy nor The Cat can come with us.

Does this count?  A chalk pebble on the beach just down the road from the flat in Brighton

Anyway, do take a trip over to Tara's gallery to see what everyone else is doing

Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief

I am as anyone who knows me, a dedicated Brighton & Hove Albion (The Seagulls) supporter.  But like many a Manchester United fan based in Malaysia or Peru, not a regular attendee at matches.  This despite them having a shiny new stadium this season.  When I cycle to work...yes 17 miles in each direction...I am to be seen wearing the Away Strip - a luminous green and black vertical striped little number which generally terrifies oncoming motorists.  You can I hope appreciate my delight then to be able to say this weekend they scored four times when playing Liverpool in the FA Cup.  The northerners scored only three times, but strange as it may seem they won the match and have gone through to the next round.  6-1.  I'll let you work that one out.

Having got back from our holiday on Friday, we spent most of the weekend doing nothing much, apart from the washing and relaxing.  The Cat's Mother has an advantage over the rest of us, as she ENJOYS washing.  Whilst the rest of us, at any given moment, would gladly just collapse on a sofa, she busies herself loading an unloading the washing machine, loading and unloading the tumble drier.  You may think I make his comment in jest.  I do not.  First thing she does when she when she gets up in the morning is head to the utility room.  First thing she does when returning from a night out at the theatre is head for the utility room.  Even in the middle of a film on the TV she'll up and head for the utility room.  Don't think for one moment I'm not grateful.  I am.  But it does give me a guilty conscience.  Sort of.

We have managed to miss a few films recently that we really wanted to see, so it was good that we finally found somewhere to see George Clooney in The Descendants.  I'd been looking forward to seeing this for months, especially as I'm a great fan.  Have you seen Welcome to Collinwood?  Hilarious.  Have you seen Burn after reading?  Sublime.  So what a massive disappointment this was.  I can't really find anything in its favour.  I poo poo anyone who says that at least it's a great piece of acting from George.  It may be, but completely swamped by mediocrity in every other department.

We consoled ourselves by watching Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy on DVD.  Just as brilliant second time around.

IS this on?

Whilst I'm waiting for our own Steven Spielberg to finish off editing his masterpiece of our antics last week, this provides a useful summary of the conversation from our time in Zermatt last week




Don't forget tomorrow is Shrove Tuesday, so pancakes with sugar and lemon are compulsory for all children under the age of eigty-five

Snow? It's certainly freezing

This morning as I came in to work this morning on the tube (brrrrr, it's far too cold to be on motorbike or cycle) I was listening to Kate Bush's most recent release - 50 Words For Snow.  It seemed appropriate.  It's quite a nice album (my way of saying it didn't really register), soft and gentle, and then I thought it was brilliant when I got to a track called Snowed in at Wheeler Street



I've seen two performances this year where the main character appears to have been rehabilitated.  I mentioned The Iron Lady recently...not a film I enjoyed.  And last night we went to see The Collaborators, a new play which in a surreal fashion examines the relationship between Stalin and the playwright Mikhail Bulgakov.  It stars the always delightful Simon Russell-Beale and Alex Jennings (last seen by me this week in Being Human).   Without giving too much away, whilst JS writes a play, Bulgakov makes decisions that lead to The Great Terror.  What I've taken out of the play is that artists are fools and Stalin wasn't such a bad bloke - practical and very wise.  Next thing we'll all be celebrating what a cheerful chap that Adolf Hitler was.  I've come away somewhat bemused.

Talking about Being Human, the fourth series started this week, and if you like humorous stories about a house share involving a ghost a werewolf and a vampire, then this is the programme for you.  Series four is going to be radically different from the previous ones, so I will reserve final opinion until it has developed a lot...but I would certainly recommend the previous outings.



Tomorrow we are off skiing to Zermatt in Switzerland with The Muffins.  There is more snow in Europe than in the entire Antarctic as far as I can tell so we are in for a good week I hope.  The Boy is so hyped, he's been bouncing off the ceiling for weeks.  With his new 'action cam' I fear there will be hours and hours of footage for you to enjoy when we return.  He's also been spending his time trying to decide which songs to use as a soundtrack...it changes everyday, so I am hoping that ROL will come to our rescue and will come up with a 'Top  10 ski video songs".  I know he's just itching to do that.

And so to finish in the only way I know how.  Here is the 'bounce' on an e-mail  I sent this week to someone I know at News International, Rupert 'I don't know anything' Murdoch's little play thing:

"I am currently no longer in the office"

Different lives

It says a lot about the vagaries of life that last night I was swanning around at an event with a man who has just made several £billion by selling some of his company to HP. I gaily went around a room of 250 or more full of confidence and joie de vivre, chatting to so many familiar faces and coming home drunk on the pleasure of the evening.  Today I was  full of aches and pains, covered in dust, cobwebs and twenty years of emotional baggage.

The evening event had been to launch a Foundation which will help bring pupils to The Boy's school who could not otherwise afford to pay the fees.  I was fortunate enough to go there as a grant-aided pupil, and have always been very grateful for that opportunity.  The founder of the school, Francis Bancroft, had bequeathed a legacy and specified that the school should have one hundred scholars from a poorer background.  In recent years as the grant-aided system was closed, the number of pupils who don't come from a monied background has dwindled. So the Foundation has been set up to right this anomaly.  This did set me thinking that I've missed a big chunk of the argument when they talk about kids from public school who go to university rather from state schools.  The Boy's school is not alone amongst public schools in helping the less well off  progress.  So the State School vs Public School debate is more complicated than I had previously really thought.

Today my task was to empty out the basement of The Boy's house.  This is the property left to him and his sister by their mother.  It's been my responsibility to look after because I'm relatively local and property is my business.  After a couple of empty years, it hadbeen me that took the decision to rent it out, and in quite a brutal weekend it had the living quarters emptied of the most (emotionally) valuable things.

It has been rented out for a few years now, but the basement has remained resolutely filled to the ceiling.  Literally.  With new tenants in it had to be emptied.  The easiest thing would have been to get some laboureres in to do it, but there was a feeling  that there may be some precious things down in the dampness.  So I arrived this morning and began the task...it was a bit more monumental than I had anticipated, but I dug in.  I now know what the pit miners felt like - the ceiling is no more than five foot at best, and the ladder down is narrow and steep.  My back was quickly aching as I piled stuff outside the house in readiness for throwing in the Transit I had rented for the day

Like an urban archeologist I waded in uncovering long forgotten secrets.  Some unused kitchen cabinet doors addressed to The Boy's Moother's first husband when they had converted a ramshackle building itno a splendid North London double fronted terraced home.  It must have been very exciting.  So many old clothes from a different age, and hundreds of toys from two childhoods....including a Barbie Doll SUV which I remember building in a panic of Christmas Eve.  The Boy's travelling cot and many books now ruined by damp.  A lot of paperwork from her company which went down in the post-millenium crash.  Some pictures, enough crockery for the finest banquet.....and so on.  There were all sorts of trinkets which I half remembered.  Of our life together the only thing I found were the divorce files.  In another time I'd have looked and seen her side of the story, but really that chapter has closed and I didn't feel it mattered anymore.

Nearing the end and I found the holy grail...a rocking horse which has survived quite intact.  There were lots and lots of soft toys which will head to the charity shop tomorrow, and some badly damaged vinyl albums which probaly can't be revived.

It being Finsbury Park, it was long before the scavengers arrived, and they were welcome to pick.  A couple of hours later and half way through a couple of Romanian guys arrived offering to take the metal and electrical goods...I seized the opportunity and offered them £20 each to help me finish off the task.  An hour later the task was done...there was not a a millimeter to spare...literally. 

I headed off to the municipal tip and an hour later I'd emptied the van all by myself.  I ache from head to toe.  Some of that is the physical exertion, no doubt some of that is emotion of it. 

But it's done.  The past is in the past and the future beckons enticingly.