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After a long week of politics it was nice to have a stress free evening.
Well that was the plan, but with Richard and Joanne around, both wanting to enjoy the CBBC site and both demanding time on the laptop it had a few stressy moments. Once we got the Linux laptop out for Richard to play Four in a Row on we were fine. Ok the kitchen looked like a cybercafe but peace reigned.
Two days away from all the hassles and arguments : I can’t wait.
In almost every job I’ve had it’s not the technical issues related to the work, it’s the politics around the work which are the hardest to deal with.
Today has all been politics. From 5:00am when I sat down to work to 6:00pm when I fell off another call it was a series of people protecting themselves, self aggrandisement and arguments.
Watchimg the Channel Four report from Afghanistan by Alex Thompson, filmed by Stuart Webb, I want to change jobs, pack a passport and a camera and go see people in far away lands. Watching their film of nomads and camels I feel an urge to travel. A simple life and fewer worries.
Tonight I was back on track with food. Wild boar and root vegetable stew with stuffed mushrooms and new potatoes.
I’ve eaten well, drunk some nice Chardonnay but the cold, clear night’s calling….
One of the nice things about this country is that you can see several seasons all in one day.
Getting up at 5am at the moment means darkness. But if you hang around and are patient you are rewarded by one of the nicest sunrises that you will ever see. Ok, that may be midway up the M1 but the low, warm light is wonderful to watch.
Driving up the M1 to Derby was really nice. Not too much traffic, clear bright light and wonderful landscape. The last few weeks of trees with leaves.
The meeting was OK. Not as productive as I’d hoped but still nice to meet with the team, share a meal and a joke. By the time we left it was cold, raining and grey. A conference call, a traffic jam and 13 hours later Im home.
No great meal tonight - it’s time to sleep.
Today didn’t start well with the pigeon and from the moment I stepped into the office it got a lot worse.
Politics in the office is an odd thing. Some people like it, some don’t. For me it depends how much politics is going in at any one time. Today it was all politics. It varied from that played out between two internal departments to the company versus the supplier. All day mails went back and forwards as we tried to move around the maze of do’s and don’ts with no escape.
The pigeon had fared a lot better. Clipping the windscreen of the car as I drove up the approach road to the M25 it thudded like a slushy snowball before disappearing into the bushes at the side of the road.
I was really glad to sign out of work tonight and to walk into the town. I needed some things to cook with later and the walk under a clear blue sky with the smell of a coal fire in the cold wind cheered me up no end.
Tonight after beef teriyaki (made with Aberdeen Angus beef from the market) it’s a bottle of Bravara beer, the Linux laptop (now with BloGTK to blog with) and last nights American football to watch.
Tomorrow’s another day and for today the politics are over.
As I said I want to cook some different food and try to eat a little differently this week.
After the meal out last night it was time to make a start today. Most days cooking can be the most productive part of my day. It has a defined start, middle and end and, best of all, you get to enjoy it twice. Once when you cook it and, hopefully, again when you eat it.
I love any seafood and can remember the trips to the “bottom market”; in the town with my Father to eat a plate of cockles on Saturday morning. One of my favorite tastes is crab and I bought a dressed one at the market yesterday. The only time I have ever seen someone buy a whole crab was when my Father got one and proceeded to spend hours with a hammer trying to get into it. Dressed is much the easier option.
This was a simple meal, crab with fettuccine and asparagus but a great start to my week of food, and yes, I did enjoy it twice.
The insistent knocking at the door meant only one thing. We were heading out somewhere.
I’d not been back long from a local Farmer’s Market. After thinking about markets and food the other day I decided I should improve my cooking in the week ahead and try to prepare some different food with new ingredients.
As I pushed crab, wild boar and fresh beef into the fridge I tried to reason with Joanne that if we were going to the seaside it would be a good idea to have her hair tied up and wear a jumper at least. After chasing her down the road to Mum we were all sitting in Martin’s new car and driving off to the sea.
Rather than being calm and sunny, as it was in March when we were last here, today was sunny and stormy. So stormy in fact that the coastguard were busy pulling a ship away from the beach.
We only made it half way down the beach before Joanne’s boots started rubbing her feet and we had to turn around, this time with her bootless and on someone’s shoulders.
After an ice cream and some kite flying we set off to eat. The plan was to surprise Fhai, who normally misses out on trips. We hadn’t counted on Joanne’s memory and as we turned up at the yacht haven she announced that this was “where I had that big poo” and indeed she was right. We’d been here in March and sat out in the early sun.
It was too cold and dark to sit out tonight so instead we sat in the conservatory with fish and chips and beer and coke and watched the boats and planned ice skating trips.
Summer may be ending but I think the Fall will be a good one.
More pictures here.
There’s a danger with something like photography that you get too interested in the equipment rather than the process.
Sitting here this morning with a coffee I was looking around a few photography sites and stumbled across Epson’s digital rangefinder the RD-1 and then a gallery of some pictures taken with it. The camera costs a lot more than I’d want to spend on one at the moment but the attraction is that it’s new and a challenge.
After looking around for a site offering it with slightly fewer zero’s on the price tag I decided to try something new with what I had and dug out the zoneplate I’d bought this year. You get some very odd looks taking pictures with a camera with what appears to be the body cap and no lens attached. It’s also virtually impossible to see what you are taking but at least today there was a lot of sunlight and if you squinted you could just see.
I think I like what I took today, they look a little Monet’s paintings of London have a nice atmospheric feel to them. Check then out here.
After a three hour presentation, a Powepoint slideshow (hastly composed that morning) and some “diagrammes” drawn on the board we bid each other bon voyage and a bientôt and went our separate ways.
I think it’s no sale. Which is a shame as a little time back in Paris would have been nice. The upside of today was the demo was well received and the presentation got circulated around which helps to get my name networked around a little.
At least the system held together. We need to work on making the presentation a little slicker, add in some more graphics and explainations but on the whole it went well.
Shame though, would have been nice to go back …
I find myself today trying to undertake some personal spring cleaning.
Shoes are shined, laptop case polished, suit cleaned and, after exploring the darkest reaches of the cupboard under the sink (who was it the Moomins who lived under the sink ?), I found the silver polish to clean my tie clip.
All this personal care, so late in the season and late is life, is due to the fact that I have to do a presentation of the project we have been working on. Normally standing up and talking to a room full of strangers isn’t a problem to me, nor is the fact that what I’m showing them has an unerring habit of sulking for 50 minutes, refusing to work or even respond despite all our coaxing. It’s the fact that the room will be full of French men.
Almost everywhere I have travelled in Europe I have shuffled along feeling shabby and concious that all those around me look well dressed and confident. From Barcelona to Stockholm, Prague to Paris Europe seems to have style. Clothes fit well, colours co-ordinate and people stride along looking like they walked off a catwalk just around the corner.
If you’re reading this in the UK go look down your local high street. The football shirts, jog pants, shell suits, sandles and socks of the world seem to have been all imported to the UK for people here to wear. In Europe as a whole they simply don’t appear.
Faced with the thought of a room full of well cut suits, stylish shoes and insouciant Gallic shrugging I feel the need to up my own game.
I wonder if I should buy some Gauloise ? C’est la Vie!
I was watching Rick Stein’s latest programme, A French Odyssey, this evening when I was struck by a quotation he read from Elizabeth David’s book “An Omelette and a Glass of Wine”.
She was making the point that most people will spend a Saturday morning in a city’s art galleries or museums to get a sense of the city but that they should also sample the markets of that place as well to get a rounded idea of their environs.
That started me thinking about the markets in this country. Many were started long ago (Borough Market in London started in 1014) but recently have fallen into sad times selling trainers and accessories for mobile phones.
Why can’t we have markets like they do abroad, like the ones I have seen? The hectic bustle of Anjuna Flea Market in Goa which sells everything from food to clothes, snake charming to ear wax removal. Or the open air charm of the Rue Montorgueil in Paris, once the city’s oyster market. The Boqueria food market in Barcelona with it’s Gaudi designed entrance or the Hötorgshallen in Stockholm, hidden beneath the Filmstaden Cinema, packed with it’s fishmongers, chocolatiers, Turkish food shops, cafes and bars.
Somewhere in the rush to get to the Industrial Revolution we lost our way with food. We forgot how nice simple fresh produce looks, smells and tastes. We lost the desire to buy, to prepare and to eat good food.
I hope that great markets like the Boqueria and Hötorgshallen stay with us. We all need to be reminded of the simple pleasure of great food.
I’ve been wanting to play around with Linux for a while and, finally, I’ve got around to downloading the latest release of Whitebox Linux, installing it and wondering “How on earth do you do that on here”.
So far I have OpenOffice for general documents and XMMS for music from the Net.
What I need to do next is setup wireless networking, that means going into battle with Ndiswrapper.
I’m sure in the end I’ll get there but this isn’t a total conversion at the moment. I’m too aware that I can easily mess up and as easily be in the position of having to start again. We’ll see.
It’s being called “Apollo on steriods”.
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Nasa plans return to Moon by 2020
The US space agency Nasa has announced plans to return to the Moon by 2020.
Nasa administrator Dr Michael Griffin said four astronauts would be sent in a new space vehicle, in a project that would cost $104bn (£58bn).
“We will return to the Moon no later than 2020 and extend human presence across the Solar System and beyond,” Dr Griffin said on Monday.
After all the fuss of the recent return to space for the Shuttle this seems to be NASA harkening back to more assured days As Griffin admitted :
“We really proved once again how much of it all the Apollo guys got right.”
I wonder if today it will capture the imagination of the general public as it did back then ….
There’s been fairs along the Thames since the Frost Fairs of the 16th and 17th centuries. Today was a lot warmer but just as busy.
The Thames Festval runs alongside the South Bank in London from the old County Hall to Tower Bridge. Packed with music, performers, food and stalls it runs for two days pulling together all sections of the City in a final Autumn celebration.
This year, as overhead a Spitfire and Hurricane fly down to the opening of a new Battle of Britain war memorial, people wandered the river banks, made sandcastles, rode the fun fair and listened to music.
After dancing into the evening in sight of the Houses of Parliament people walked to the other bank to watch the night carnival and the fireworks.
See all the pictures here.
After a summer of goats, show jumping, fine ales and good food today brought the last show of the year.
The County Show always seems to me to be more a final sigh that the countryside has made it through another year. It seems a final farewell to fields of ripened crops and animals brought to the peak of perfection for the show ring.
In keeping with a grand finale it’s too large an undertaking to try to see it all and best tackled by wandering where you will and generally enjoying what you come across.
An added treat this year was meeting Neil, who I worked with at my last job. Free now from the terrors of working in IT (or perhaps from working for me) he seems happy and well.
It’s good to see people get on in life and find out what they want to do. Maybe one day that will be me.
Sometimes I turn on my laptop at work and wonder fun will be lurking in email for me today. Other times I don’t worry. I just know it will be the usual morning rush of spam trying to lure me to one supplier or another; requests for help or information from accross the world and mail from overseas from our American partners on this project.
Today however was a mail from Rachel which stood out, even more as she’d read receipted it.
She’s pregnant and Mike and her will be expecting their first child next May. I’m really pround how far she’s come in all these years. From the time I met her and employed her as a PC support person working her way around the world from NZ to writing her a reference for when she returned home. Partied out and with case full of memories from seeing Europe most weekends.
Even in the darkest times when she got back I had a feeling she would be fine and this mail just proves it.
Congratulations !
Perhaps it’s the recent high activity from the sun disturbing the Earth’s balance making people at work seem so obtuse.
Here’s a sample from one email today :
To me :
” If the C meeting is reoccurring, should I change the time of the O meeting to ensure your participation?”
From me :
“My call with C is daily at 16:00 UK time.”
To me :
“Well, my question is - The C Meeting that occurred this morning is it a standard reoccurring meeting?”
From me, in an exasperated tone :
” Sorry. By daily I meant standard reoccurring meeting.”
At least the flares produce some nice natural effects. Have a look at the Aurora gallery at spaceweather.com.
I can’t beleive how dark it is now in the evenings.
Not that long ago I was sitting out at 8:00 with a book and a cat now it’s dark enough to have lights on inside the house. Soon I’ll have to give in and start closing the front room curtains.
Most drepressing of all was the sight of a row of chocolate Father Christmases in the local super market ….
For local knowledge on places to eat you can’t beat Karen.
We were out tonight to catch up on news and plot and plan and the Shoulder of Mutton was the place we headed to. Well, we got there after turning down venue number one (couldn’t remember the name) and venue number two (got there but the kitchens had no power).
The Shoulder’s been in the same family for over 30 years and inside it reflects a place which the owners have grown into.
Pub names always intrigue me and the Shoulder dates back to the reign of King Charles II who numbered among his many nicknames that of the Mutton King due to his fondness for that type of meat. This caused a number of Inns to be named “Shoulder of Mutton” and these were renowned for their mutton feasts accompanied by mugs or glasses of Sack. [1]
We had less heavy fare and a great time.
Strange thing was the car park was full, there was no one inside the pub and when we left the car park was empty. Spooky.
1 Definition from 1911 Enclyclopedia site A Spanish wine, which was of a strong, rough, dry kind (in Fr. vin sec, whence the name), and therefore usually sweetened and mixed with spice and mulled or burnt. It became a common name for all the stronger white wines of the South.
The summers of our childhoods always seem to be that much better defined.
The days are sunnier and longer. The strawberries sweeter and the memories sharper. I can still recall playing in the garden of my parent’s house and hearing the noise of my father’s shoes on the pavement behind my back. His steady, measured millitary step rapped out with the Blakeys attached to the heel.
In those days we’d eat lunch together before he walked back to work and as the sound of his shoes disappeared I’d be allowed to watch the cricket on the old black and white TV we rented. I’d grown up with cricket, my school having links to a man who would be later called “The Voice of Cricket” and maths lessons were, in the summer, taken at the ground over the round from the school sitting under the neatly pollarded Horse Chestnut trees watching cricket and filling in score cards.
This year has seen and amazing Ashes Test with every aspect of the game played out under these English summer skies and there describing it Richie Benaud, for me one of the greatest commentators of all time who ranks up there with those other voices of sport Dan Maskell, John Arlott and Peter O’Sullevan. A man whose approach to commentary was sumed up in his new book My Spin On Cricket: “Don’t speak unless you can add to the picture.” A man who never let himself get ahead of the importance of the game, and that is how he ended his reign and summed up this Test :
“I carry a lot of music around with me and one of the great ones for me is Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman singing that wonderful duet, Time To Say Goodbye. And that’s what it is, as far as I’m concerned time to say goodbye. And add to that, thank you for having me. It’s been absolutely marvellous for 42 years. I’ve loved every moment of it and it’s been a privilege to go into everyone’s living-room throughout that time. What’s even better, it’s been a great deal of fun. (McGrath then skittles Pietersen.) But not so for the batsman McGrath has picked him off.”
Farewell Richie, it’s been a great deal of fun.
Four years ago America suffered a terrible blow and it responded within seconds. More recently it suffered as bad a fate in the wake of Katrina and, weeks on, people are still suffering.
It’s somewhat ironic that today is Racial Justice Sunday given the number of races who perished in 9/11.
In Grosvenor Square, London at the memorial constructed for the British people lost on that day there lies beneath one of the beams from the World Trade Center donated by the people of New York. A small piece of the Big Apple which serves as a memorial for so many.
This afternoon Martin and I wandered around London together looking at the sites. In the evening we ended up in the Dutch bar De Hems in Macclesfield Street to drink Oranjeboom and Fruli, the fruit beer with a strawberry taste. Sitting in the quiet of the upstairs bar was a nice way to end the day.
In 1861, following the Great Fire of Southwark, Hays (a company which owned wharves and warehouses on the south bank of the River Thames) rebuilt one of it’s wharves as an enclosed dock called Hay’s Wharf.
From that time it became knows as the ‘Larder of London’, taking deliveries from ships from all over the world and offloading tea, frozen meat, spices and butters.
After being renovated in the 1980s it was relaunced as Hay’s Galleria an office, shopping and catering centre which today hosted a large seafood festival.
It’s somewhat ironic that in the 1800’s oysters were the food of the poor with Dicken’s witing in The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (ch. XXII) :
“It’s a wery remarkable circumstance, sir,” said Sam, “that poverty and oysters always seem to go together.”
Today of course they aren’t the cheap streetfood of the Victorian urchin but rather the food of the rich and famous. That said there were load of stalls selling them today along with Guiness and Verve Cliquot champagne to wash them down with. With the cricket on hold due to rain and bad light it was a nice way to spend the afternoon sitting listening to the jazz and watching the drizzle on the Thames.
After eating and drinking I wandered down the South Bank to see the photoography exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. The World’s Most Photographed looks at how Queen Victoria, Ghandi, Hitler, Greta Garbo, Audrey Hepburn, James Dean, JFK, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis and Muhammad Ali chose to supress, forget or allowed to slip from view images of them they would rather we didn’t see. All of these people had their loves played out in front of camera where it recorded their highs, lows and sometimes their deaths. I think most amaving for me were the pictures and story of Hepburn. I hadn’t realised that she was Dutch nor that her slimness was due to the Hongerwinter or Winter of Hunger. At the time of Liberation she was 5’6” and barely six stone.
Getting back late the phone rings and it’s Richard, “Come around and watch Batman with me, it’s the original one”. Cuddled on their sofa eating crisps and watching the caped crusader was a cool way to end the day.
I seem to be in the middle of some Europen music thing at the moment with my tastes ranging from Povo, though 4 to the Bar to Pink Martini.
Perhaps this an attempt to hang onto the last bits of summer or perhaps my musical taste is changing again.
There was a very catious tap at my newly painted door early this morning followed by a loud shout through the letterbox and a pair of young eyes looking for me down the hall.
Opening the door I was amazed. Not one smart pupil but two : Joanne’s first day at school.
In all these years she has never missed an opportunity to pose but today, the centre of eveyone’s attention and proudly shown off by an older brother, she hide from the camera. Well, at least mine. Fhai had the video camera to get those first moments in class but for me behind Richard was as close as I got.
Today I’ve found a liittle time away from all the other projects and work to look at two internal information systems.
One of my formal objectives at work is “to build knowledge based systems”. For a while I’ve been playing around with Sharepoint to do that but lately that’s slipped with all the upgrade fun.
More recently I’ve been looking at Wikis and we now have one setup at work into which we are busily hammering all sorts of information.
What’s interesting is while these two semi-officlal projects are getting more use the corporate knowledge centres are being limited in size to 500 Mb and many are being closed.
Perhaps there’s a chance to start an underculture of knowledge sharing, wikis and blogging…
One of the problems with writing every day is you can get writer’s block.
What should I say about today ? How should I say it ? I guess that’s an issue with any writer and one that a new website called the Imagination Prompt Generator tries to address.
The site is geared to people who write, blog and photography and provides a series of ideas around which you can let your imagination and, hopefully, your creativity run wild.
Push your imagination a little bit further here or get some ideas to write and blog here.
To be able to say that you saved one life is an amazing feat, to have saved over 2,500 is incredible but that’s what Rick Rescorla did.
He was the man who predicted 9/11, who analysed the threats, produced the escape plan and who drilled the staff at Morgan Stanley time and time again that the only thing that mattered was to get up, find the right exit and leave the building no matter what. In doing that, and in remaining in the building until everyone had left, he saved so many and sacrificed himself.
Rick Rescorla started life as a Cornishman. A boy at the time of the Second World War he fell in love with the American army and after a distinguished service in the British Army he volunteered to fight in Vietnam with the American Army where he became a platoon leader in the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division. He fought in the 1965 Battle of Ia Drang described in the book and hit movie “We Were Soldiers Once…And Young”.
On September 11th he supervised the evacuation of Morgan Stanley’s 2,800 employees on 20 floors of World Trade Center Tower 2, and 1,000 employees in WTC 5. Having made it to safety he re-entered the towers to help those trapped. He was last seen on the 10th floor. His remains were never recovered.
I heard his story in the aftermarth of 9/11 but never realised the amazing life this man had. What more fitting tribute to him than to award him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Sign the petition here.
A day at home has been a rare thing recently but I had a long list of chores to sort and with the promise of a sunny day I wanted to spend a little time around here.
After fighting to rediscover the garden for a few hours, taking all the stuff I’d cut down and pulled out to the dump, potting up some new climbers and then cleaning I made a start on the front door.
For years and years it’s been this brown, woodstained door and I wanted a new look. Today I made a start and two coats of undercoat later I set off to Homebase to get the paint of my dreams in a smart gloss finish.
Checking the can as I stirred the contents I read the label, “use grey undercoat 32145”. Opps.
Oddly I’d never been to this county show, despite it being almost on my doorstep. Stranger, at least for this summer, I went alone as, now mobile, Martin and the tribe had duties and chores both near and far to keep them busy.
There are two things you notice about this showground. Firstly, it has in the middle a full sized (and today in use) cricket pitch and secondly if you pay enough you can bring your car right in to park along side the main arena. This leads to an odd parasoled village of spectators resting on teak patio furniture, hauled to the site in the back of Range Rovers and BMW Z5s, drinking champagne and forming a Prada encrusted shell to the main showground.
At the top of the field was the public seating area. Smart, functional plastic seats mounted in tiers in some lorry trailer with an awning. Plain, but nice enough to sit in the sun with a pint of beer and a venison burger and watch the horse jumping. Most shows have the same elements. Show jumping, farm machinery, vegetables tended for months to be at the peak of perfection on the day, cakes and cattle. Oddly it’s the same mix of things which you get at the American State fair, although I can’t imagine a game of baseball happening in the middle of one of those.
This show had much more of a community feeling from the large County show in a couple of weeks. Friends old and new stood at the cattle judging rings laughing at the Youngest Handler awards and checking on how well their neighbours bull had done.
Watching the closing events (now with a duck burger and more beer), with the late summer sun filling the arena with a golden light you had a real feeling that this was the end of a season. With the ban on hunting I wondered if this was the end of a lifestyle.
See the pictures here.
One of the many advantages of the telephone is the fact that people can’t see the effect their words have on you.
Twice today that came to my aide. Once, on call to someone who I’d just met. What should have been easy, happy call with an expectant air of something starting turned into one of those conversations we can all remember from our teens. The sudden conversational stop and then a moment of awkwardness before you pick yourself up, gather up what’s left of one’s dignity and attempt a graceful exit.
The other time was on one of many conference calls to the States. Out of seemingly simple adgenda appeared a curved ball. “I hear you told “I” that we can’t move ahead as it doesn’t support Oracle”, said “B”. Both “I” and “B” are much higher up the food chain at work than me and I could already hear shockwaves rippling out from the phone calls and mails already doing the rounds. I explained that I’d mentioned we’d had some stability issues which had prevented us even getting close to Oracle but by then it was too late and the adgenda was lost in favour of endless picking over where we were and what was happening. I flicked on the mute button and decided a few more strategically placed emails may stop this from becoming a snowball of fuss.
Luckily the next time the phone rang it was H telling me about her latest trips and the state of the European confectionary market. It’s a hard life drinking champagne and watching chocolate being made.
The day ended with Richard, hyper from the first day at school and a new clutch of games on the CBBC site, singing “I love you baby” loudly over 4 to the Bar on the CD player and Martin and I exploring the boxes of CDs in the front room, unearthing YoYo Ma playing Bach’s six suites for unaccompanied cello in the front room.
I guess one good call out of three isn’t bad.
There’s a disconnect between what I want to do and what I’m doing.
Sitting here with Freemind and the list of goals I have for this year it makes depressing reading. Just what have I been doing and why haven’t I been doing this lot ?
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| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
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