A day with Bruce

Most of today was spent cycling with Bruce. (You can read more about the trip here at my PhotoBlog.) Bruce is my (now ex-) Brother-In-Law although I have known him longer than he has known my sister. We were at University together – well, he went up two years after me. He is now living in Tooting, studying medicine as a mature student and working casual shifts for the London Ambulance Service (to help keep him in the style to which he is accustomed.)

Bruce is an interesting character. Now that he’s back in London he seems to be all action. As well as studying medicine and moonlighting for the L.A.S. he’s also taken up Anglo-Saxon martial arts (that would be sword fighting to you and me.) We spent some time discussing how best to disable an opponent with a sword without killing them (which is usually easier and so, if you think about it, a far more efficient way to fight if you are wearing a huge weight of armour.) He showed me the longsword he’s buying.

He also keeps his eye on Sci-Fi fandom. One of the things he pointed out to me today was this spoof trailer for the new Star Wars Film. It is very well made and absolutely hilarious – although be warned: it is 38Mb in size, so only click the link if you have broadband installed and a few minutes to kill.

Cry 'God for Harry! England and Saint George!'

Thought I might do a little flag-waving as it’s St. George’s Day

I have to say though, I’m not sure what else one is supposed to do in honour of England’s patron saint. Slaying a dragon is probably politically incorrect; now that hunting foxes, which are pretty common animals, is against the law, I imagine that killing a creature which, if it isn’t totally extinct should certainly be on the endangered species list, would be considered highly inappropriate.

I don’t have a particular urge to declare war on the French - they may go on strike a lot and can be a bit arsey at times, but they do make a damn fine breakfast. The Spanish Navy has never done me any harm either.

Perhaps I shall just hum the tune to Jerusalem, have a cup of tea while watching the cricket, and keep a stiff upper lip about the whole thing.

Rule Britannia and all that!

[Just in case you were wondering, it's Henry V, Act III, Scene I]

Verizon gets weirder

You may recall I was a bit gobsmacked a few months ago to hear that Verizon had blocked the entire continent of Europe from sending email to its customers, as a way of blocking spam. (My comments here.)

While I was checking to see if there had been any developments in the ensuing law suit, I came across this article which made me smile. The story hasn’t been picked up by any of the major news wires as far as I can see, so maybe the Chief Exec was being quoted out of context to invent a story. Nevertheless, in light of the company’s bizarre stance on Europe, one has to wonder…

Cocktails in Putney

Another good day at work: I got the Terminal Server for Darlington all sorted and even had time to tidy my desk. The one downside of the day was finding out from the AA’s route planner exactly how far away Darlington is! I’d thought it was somewhere in the midlands, when in fact it’s closer to Scotland. It’s roughly a four and half hour drive. I made an executive decision that my trip was going to include an overnight and booked a hotel.

I was giving Rosie a hand moving after work. She is sharing a flat in Putney with a couple of guys. She’s got a sizable bedroom and shares the bathroom, kitchen and decent size lounge/diner with her flatmates. The place has a bit of the air of a bachelor pad about it, but it’s not unpleasant.

After helping unpack suitcases and setting up her music system, we wandered out into the town to see what we could find to eat. Along the way we passed someone eating fish and chips and my decision was made: No cordon-bleu or haute cuisine for me. I wanted fish, chips and mushy peas.

Rosie suggested cocktails afterwards (possibly to redeem the tone of her first real night living here) and after some wandering we eventually found a tapas bar which could provide the goods. I had that Essex Girl staple; a Pina Colada, while Rosie had a Latin American rum and lime-based concoction. She went on to have an orgasm (that would be Kahlua, Baileys & Amaretto and bears no resemblance to Meg Ryan!) but I was going to be driving home so I stuck with a latte – which was beautifully presented nevertheless.

I’m looking forward to a good weekend.

Tennis and Blogs

The highlight of work today was a tennis match. Gaetan, one of the Helpdesk team, had suggested to Jon, one of the software developers, that he was pretty good at tennis and that they ought to book a match at the local leisure centre. Jon had promptly gone off and done just that.

Nothing out of the ordinary there, you might think.

However Gaetan has acquired a bit of a reputation for being all mouth and no trousers… so for the last few days the one aim of the department has been to make sure he had no excuses for not playing and defending his claim of being “pretty good.” Rackets were arranged, balls bought and today I accompanied them both to the court and watched them play for a while. As it turned out Gaetan lost, but they were pretty evenly matched.

I used the opportunity to try a few shots with my new camera-phone. The only one that came out okay was the ‘before’ shot (here.) All of the ‘action’ shots were taken at maximum (digital!) zoom, so of course came out looking very pixelated.

The other incident of note was examining the laptop that had been run over (see here) by a car. Sure enough, it was still in working order, although the screen was detached from the base at one end. Other than that it worked fine (even the problematic USB ports were behaving themselves.) We asked for the details and were assured that, yes, the car had driven squarely across the bag and even left a tire print.

I have to say I was impressed: You can kill the screen on a laptop just by leaving your pen top on the keyboard when you close the lid and yet this one had survived the weight of a laden estate car rolling over it.

In Other News:
Rowan officially moved to London today and tonight I was supposed to be helping her unload and unpack. In the end it turned out that she had it all done before I got home, and wanted to go see her friend Claire who is flying back to the States tomorrow so I got the evening off. I spent it mostly googling for webloggers with whom I shared interests.

I’m considering attending a social event for London bloggers in May and thought I’d investigate my ‘community’ a bit. My totally unscientific research led me to shortlist the following that looked worth keeping an eye on: Stairs of Great Britain, twenty-something blog, Dominic Sayers, Naked Blog and More a Way Of Life - only a couple of whom fulfil the original criteria for the search, but hey, that's what the Internet is all about!

Right, I’m getting tired now and my mind is wandering too much. Blogger seems to be up and down a lot tonight, so I’ll post this now while I can and save enthusing about Curtis’ travel blog for tomorrow.

Yin and Yang

For once I was out of bed at a sensible hour this morning and had time to relax before leaving for work. While I was sitting there, both good karma and bad karma found me. The good karma was noticing how alive the gardens behind our flat look. We overlook some communal green space with several large trees. During the winter the trees are bare of leaves and look quite stark, but over the last few weeks the cherry trees, one pink and one white, have blossomed and the really tall tree is suddenly a massive green canopy again, moving with the wind. There were lots of lovely springtime feelings in that observation.

The bad karma moment was that, browsing through my friends' websites, I saw that Curtis had updated his site with news of his big Australian holiday. In itself that is a good thing – from skimming his holiday blog it looked like he had a great time – the negative thoughts came from realising that the last time I mailed him, he was still looking forward to the holiday. I haven’t mailed him in months. That led me to thinking how long it’s been since I’ve spoken to many of my old friends and a determination to catch up with them now that I have more time to myself.

So, with my Yin and Yang in balance, I headed off into a basically pretty good day. I was on top of all of my work, I downloaded street plans and Metro route planners for our Paris trip in a few weeks and things were generally chilled.

I spoke to Brett this evening, as he’d sent a rather plaintive email out to his family today asking for news. I didn’t have much interesting news to offer him, but it was nice just to talk to him. For all that I am on my own, I am at least at home with plenty of things to fill my time. He is having a somewhat harder time of it in a short-term-let apartment in a foreign country that’s even colder than England.

We had another Chorus rehearsal tonight, this time concentrating on the repertoire for our Paris trip and we did well: The songs are pretty much there, with just polishing to do in the next week. I am looking forward to Paris, both from a Choir point of view and a personal holiday point of view.

Right. I’m off to read about Curtis’ trip down-under before turning-in.

Tough little laptop

One of my tasks at work is managing the IT Helpdesk. Sometimes you get a request where your jaw just drops. Below is an extract of an email exchange with one of my users. It certainly brightened up the morning in our office…

From: [username deleted] To: ITHelpdesk
Subject: Problems with laptop USB ports

I seem to be having some problems with the USB ports on my laptop, [stuff deleted for brevity] I have a feeling it might be something to do with the fact that the computer got run over in a car park about six months ago. It was in a padded computer bag so wasnt too badly damaged and it still works ok but possibly it loosened something around the USB ports that has finally come out/broken?

---

From: [Me] To: [username deleted]
Subject: RE: Problems with laptop USB ports

Yes, it's possible that the car park incident is related to the problems with the USB ports. Company-issue laptop bags are only rated to protect against impacts from vehicles up to Band F. Can you advise the model of the car that ran over it so we can see if it's worth making an insurance claim against the bag's manufacturers?

You should also return the bag to the Helpdesk for replacement, as they should not be used after being involved in an incident of this kind. Also, can you advise how much of your time is spent in car parks? It may be necessary to upgrade your bag's protection factor if you are likely to be around larger cars, HGVs, aircraft or light artillery.

I will have someone from the Helpdesk come and have a look at your USB ports.

---

From: [username deleted] To: [Me]
Subject: RE: Problems with laptop USB ports

I was thinking that it might be worth seeing if HP want to use the computer in an advert to show how tough their laptops are seeing as it got a full squishing by a whacking great Vauxhall Vectra Estate full up with stuff and pretty much survived! To answer the question about whether it looks like its been run over, theres no tyre marks or anything like that. Just one of the hinges for the screen has broken (although at the time it was only slightly cracked, opening and closing over time snapped it off) and there's a slight blemish on the screeen where the screen got pushed into the keyboard. Other than that it looks fine.

I have a replacement laptop bag with full protection up to light artillery shells now but thanks for your concern.

Thanks

Sleep deprived

Brett was off to Stockholm again this morning. His car to the airport was booked for 05:15, so we had an early alarm. I foolishly didn’t get up when he did and drifted off to sleep again after he’d left, only waking up at the time that I should have been on the train to work. After a hurried commute, I eventually breakfasted and showered in the office!

Had lunch with John M and discussed mobile phones, Chorus, movies and suchlike. As he works in the industry he had been able to point me at a few places to get software for my new gadget. I now have a selection of decent freeware games with which to distract myself on dull tube and train journeys.

Felt more productive today at work – or maybe because I was out for lunch I didn’t allow myself time to surf the newswires or my favourite blogs – made progress on sorting out the Terminal Server for our new Project Office but failed to sort out the problem with the mail services in our Adelaide Office. The rest of the day was spent on administrivia.

After work I met up with Ping for dinner. He was feeling rather down after the election yesterday. We had cocktails and a pleasant meal in a restaurant near Covent Garden and managed to while away three or so hours.

Came home after that so I could get an early night – which is where I’m off to now.

Goodnight.

Freshened Up

You may notice a bit of a change in the look of the blog today. It isn’t in its final form yet, but I’ve got rid of the big profile section at the top, tidied up the sidebar a little and added a link to my new photoblog: http://liamsees.blogspot.com

Caring Too Much

I was quite tired at work today having had a late night last night, so I didn’t get much done really. I just kept up with stuff.

During lunch I did notice an amusing post on Wil Wheaton’s Blog which you can find here. It seems that pettiness and factions are wherever there are people who care about something – even a movie franchise.

The Chorus rehearsal was most enjoyable again tonight – we started work on Another Hundred People, from Stephen Sondheim’s Company; yet another song I really like in this repertoire.

There was also the Chorus AGM which went fairly smoothly. Brett was the only candidate standing for Vice-Chairman and was elected. Ping was one of three standing for Chairman but he didn’t succeed, coming third. I fear he will take the defeat to heart and view it as a personal rejection, rather than just a political vote. It would be a shame if the Chorus lost his enthusiasm and energy as a result of it because he has so much of value to offer.

Sunday

Another geeky day on Sunday. I was playing with my phone and photoblog some more while Brett was trying to get some website & blog stuff done for SingOut, the UK association of Gay and Lesbian choirs. He wants to get a SingOut Blog in place ready for when we all head off to the Choral festival in Paris in a few weeks time. Unfortunately the technology has been fighting back and neither he nor I could get Blogger to publish to the site which hosts SingOut – despite being able to get it to work on other sites.

This evening was the big Chorus fundraising event at the V&A Museum in Kensington. Both Brett and I were there to schmooze potential donors. It was a very good evening: It was the inaugural performance of the new Chorus ‘Small Group’ who performed two sets of songs to great acclaim. We were also launching our new Patron’s Scheme to hopefully raise money from prominent supporters. It was a very professionally done event. We had private access to a new exhibition in the museum followed by a champagne & canapé reception all served by excellent staff in a magnificently decorated pair of rooms. First indications are that we’ve raised a substantial amount and been promised a lot more. Even if the event doesn’t directly pay for itself, I think we’ve raised our profile considerably today.

After the gig a few of us went out for a meal at a nearby Italian restaurant. Brett and I had been on our feet all night, smiling and making small-talk, and John & Rich had been on stage performing with the Small Group so it was nice to relax and chat even though the food wasn’t great.

Ended up waiting half-an-hour at Earls Court for a tube to Wimbledon but made it home eventually…

A Geek's Christmas

So far the weekend has been a bit of a geek-fest. During the week, I have been looking at other ways of hosting my blog. Blogger has been rather unreliable of late and I get withdrawal symptoms if I can’t post when I feel the urge. I’d also been looking at redesigning the template to give it a cleaner look. A template redesign would involve me in quite a lot of manual HTML coding and my knowledge and skills in that area are currently quite basic, but I’m picking it up.

As part of all this mulling about redesigns, I’ve been surfing lots of other blogs looking for style ideas and, in the process, was reminded that I’d thought about doing a photoblog. I have a decent digital camera, but it is too bulky to carry around all the time, so I decided the time had come to retire my venerable mobile phone; in the age-old tradition of middle-aged men everywhere, the time had come to replace it with a younger model with fancier features. Brett has been muttering about getting a new phone for a while, so we thought we’d take advantage of Orange’s two-for-one deal on 3G phones and both get video phones.

If only it were that simple.

There were times on Saturday afternoon when I felt we were the confused customers in a TV commercial, scratching our heads and saying ‘So many bundles, so many models, and so many options! How can we decide what’s best for us??’

It took us a while, but we did eventually come to a decision (and heartfelt thanks to the manager of the Wimbledon Orange Shop, who was the only assistant we found who really knew what he was talking about.) I came away with a nice new Nokia 6630, which has a good quality camera built-in. Unfortunately Brett has to wait fourteen days before he can get his because of ill-thought-through conditions on the two-for-one deal, but in the end we will both get fancier phones.

So… back at the ranch, I started testing my photoblogging abilities while Brett read his latest comics. The photoblog is not quite ready for launch yet, but I am now configured to post pictures via email from my mobile phone which is pretty cool.

The new phone is neat. My old phone could, in theory, do almost everything that this one does (except having the 3G bandwidth) however I couldn’t get it to do much with multimedia/Internet stuff without all kinds of contortions. In the time since I bought my old phone, the manufacturers have obviously got their ideas (and their software) better sorted and the new one is fine: Easy to upload all my contacts and generally easy to set up.

One thing that brightened my morning today was that, realising it can use MIDI files for its ringtones, I uploaded a selection of old files I’ve had lying around in my filing system since the days when MIDI files were new and exciting. So I now have the options of Chopin’s Minute Waltz, The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba, YMCA and the Loony Tunes theme to choose from. Unfortunately some of the ones I might have used have several seconds of silence at the start, so I have had to pass on the themes from The Godfather and James Bond.

And that was my Saturday: A geek’s Christmas.

Underwear abroad

Being gay isn’t always easy but it does have its good points. For example, even in a fairly liberal society, eyebrows would still be raised if a straight man frequently dressed in his partner’s clothing. As a gay man however, not only is it perfectly acceptable, it’s a positive perk! If you find yourself a partner of a similar height and build to yourself, you are effectively doubling your collective wardrobes. In a culture which so often judges you on how you look, you can see how this would be A Good Thing.

In our relationship, Brett has got the better deal. He is just a little bit too short for me to wear his clothes but my clothes, while somewhat long on him, can be made to serve. Of a weekend you can often see him lounging in one of my sweatshirts with the sleeves rolled up a little.

This morning I had a laundry crisis. Lots of clothes had been washed at the weekend so I knew that everything was clean on Monday. Yet by Wednesday morning I appeared to have run out of undershirts. The only candidates I could find were Brett’s (somewhat worn) t-shirts (which in any case are two narrow across the shoulders and rub constantly.) In the end, I eventually found one and dressing proceeded without further incident.

However, now that I’ve had a chance to check the laundry basket more carefully, and the piles of clothes I haven’t yet gotten around to putting away, and Brett’s drawers and wardrobes, and all the usual clothes-drying locations, I can now positively say that four of my undershirts are missing. Where can they be?

While I can speculate on their location, I cannot say for sure. Yet somehow I imagine that Brett will be spending his Saturday morning visiting Marks & Spencer and purchasing some of St. Michael’s finest. Whereupon I shall be writing initials on the labels with a laundry marker! Harrumph.

I just wanna sing...

It was a rather quiet day at work today which was fortunate as we were understaffed. From a team of seven one is on holiday, one was working from home, one was on a course and one was off sick.

Monday night means a Chorus rehearsal though and tonight’s was good fun: We started work on a song for our July concert which is taken from Jerry Springer, The Opera. It’s called I Just Wanna Dance and contains such immortal lines as ‘I just wanna fuckin’ dance’ and ‘I don’t give a fuck no more, if people think that I’m a whore.’ Yet for all the profanity, I found the song beautiful and moving. It starts off in the tentative, almost plaintive, vein of someone dreaming of escaping their tedious life and progresses towards a proud, angry declaration at the end as the soloist comes out of their dancing ‘closet’. I really enjoyed it.

I felt very down during the second half of the rehearsal though. We had moved on to a different song and all of a sudden I felt Brett’s absence quite keenly. As I don’t have to be up too early tomorrow, I stayed for a drink after the rehearsal had ended and had a pleasant chat with Nick and John.

Nick isn’t a singing member, so I don’t get to see him that often, but he is standing for re-election and had come along to be questioned by the Chorus. Brett’s and my relations with John and Nick have been somewhat strained over the last few months because of the politicking that has gone on on the Steering Committee. So now that this committee’s term is coming to a close I’m hoping we can reconnect, as they are a good couple of guys.

Missing him already

Not a lot to report this weekend. The weather has been nice, but we haven’t really made anything of it. It’s mostly been spent shopping, tidying, paying bills and mundane stuff like that.

Rosie has been down for the weekend and on Friday I went with her to hear her old choir sing in Westminster Abbey. They were very good – in fact the whole experience was enjoyable. The building is so wonderfully quiet without tourists. The organ sounded great and the singing was lovely.

Brett is packing as I write and I’m feeling a bit out of sorts about that. It’s the feeling of impending doom, like going back to school after the holidays. I don’t get the serious pangs when he’s actually gone, just when he’s getting ready to go. During the weeks so far I have managed to either occupy myself with other stuff, or be so worn out that I’m fast asleep as soon as I hit the pillow.

So far they have only been four day weeks but this time he’s away for the fortnight. So it’s now that I’m missing him.

The Child Inside

I have often heard it said that the birth of your first child, or sometimes the realisation that you are going to be a parent, makes you realise suddenly that you are no longer a child yourself. It’s supposed to be a step-change; when you suddenly feel a weight of responsibility settle onto your shoulders. Strangely, I mentioned the likelihood that I would never father a child as a reason for wanting to give back to the community through serving as a Magistrate.

Yet now that I’m over the initial excitement of getting through the first interview, it is beginning to sink in: If I’m successful I will have become a ‘pillar of the community.’ If I get through the selection process I really will be affecting peoples’ lives, directly and sometimes profoundly. It isn’t quite the epiphany of parenthood, but the realisation is beginning to nibble at me: This really is a serious thing I’m doing. I’m not a kid any more.

Bruce sent me a text message saying “For what it’s worth, I think you’ll be VERY good at this. I don’t think I know anyone more honest and upright than you!” It’s reassuring to know that my friends think so highly of me. Even so, if I ever do get to sit on a Bench, I think I will still feel like a nervous child inside. The trick to adulthood, it seems, is just not to let that show.

First Interview

I’m still on the high, so I’ll blog about it now.

The interview went very well. It only lasted twenty minutes but in the end it was pretty much what I expected. Why did I want to be a Magistrate? How did I feel about judging people? What weaknesses did I have that might affect my decisions on the bench? What were my views on the police? There was only one question that stumped me initially: When I was asked how I thought the Magistracy should support the police I couldn’t think of an answer. It was only as I was slowly talking my way through the question that I realised it was a trick question. Magistrates swear to implement the law “without fear or favour, affection or ill-will” so of course the police don’t get any special support. Everyone should be treated equally by the court. Phew!

So when it was all over, the secretary to the committee handed me a couple of DVDs (one for me and one for my employer) and asked me when I could come back for the second interview. That caught me off-guard – I’d been expecting a letter in a few days – but I wasn’t going to complain and arranged a date.

Apparently the next stage will have me looking at a sample case and discussing it; which is something I think I feel more equipped to handle. I’ll also take a few mornings between now and then to sit in on Magistrates’ courts around London to get a feel for the atmospheres and the different kinds of business they do.

I feel good.

Adult to Adult or Parent to Child?

Ping called tonight and we spent quite a while on the phone talking Chorus. He had been sent my ranting blog entry from a few nights back and wanted to know how serious I was about what I’d said in the cold light of day. I think perhaps my declaration of not caring had made him stop and think a bit, since he’s standing for election as Chairman of the Chorus at the AGM in ten days time. I basically stood by everything I said, but pointed out how it arose from a particular combination of circumstances which are unlikely to be duplicated in the new committee when it is elected.

I need a break from the pressures I’ve experienced since taking office – in fact really since I started work on the new policy documents back in the summer. I suspect that given a few months though, I will step back into the scrum. I share with my sister and mother the doom of always stepping forward when we see something that needs doing that no-one else will own.

Ping was surprised, in one of our conversational tangents, that I had a grasp of Transactional Analysis. We agreed that the Chorus spends a lot of its time in parent-child mode and that more adult-adult is definitely needed. It would be nice, but I’m not holding my breath.

Anticipation

I have my Magistrate’s interview tomorrow.

Hopefully it will only be the first interview, followed by a second, followed by appointment but for now I’m just concentrating on tomorrow.

I had a haircut today and the new shirt is ironed and hanging with the new suit in a carrier; the interview details are already in my bag waiting to go tomorrow morning.

Tonight I have been trying to prepare. My fellow blogger, Bystander, pointed me at some online training resources which are interesting and I’ve been scanning through them. The difficulty in preparing for the interview though, is that the prerequisites are so basic: Essentially not being involved in any other branch of government, not being a criminal and not being bankrupt – it doesn’t even say that you have to be legally sane! (Although I suppose that sanity is implicit in some of the character traits you are expected to show.)

With the lack of any hard experience or qualifications required, I’m expecting lots of soft, ‘touchy-feely’ questions exploring my views on justice and the law, community-issues and so forth. I’ve tried to prepare myself by mentally outlining answers to such questions, along with the other interview staples about why I should have the job and what my ambitions are, etc. but I really have no idea what to expect. I’m hoping that Bystander’s other piece of advice holds true: “It’s Mark One common sense.”

I’ll let you know!

Film Fest

After all the tension of last week and Sunday night, this week seems to be going remarkably well. Work is busy but interesting; I’ve even caught myself whistling some of the latest Chorus tunes while at my desk.

Tonight I am just back from seeing a selection of films at the London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, to which John M had invited me (despite my having inadvertently stood him up for lunch on Monday!) While not 'entertaining' in the Hollywood sense, they were all of them interesting in their own way. The first three were presented under the collective title ‘Fuck Gender’, two of which examined the concepts of butch and femme in lesbianism and what causes people to view you as one or the other. The third in the triplet took you in totally the opposite direction by looking at life as a transgender person who blurs the distinction between male and female identification. After a break for some drinks we went into a second showing of a very short film where a woman interviewed her parents who, although married for many years, both came out as gay in later life. The last film of the evening was an hour-long documentary partly about life in San Francisco and partly about the Golden Gate Bridge’s role as a suicide landmark.

The film contained some interesting statistics – apparently only six percent of people who are prevented from committing suicide go on to try again. John mentioned an Economist article he’d read recently which reported that when selling aspirin in bottles was banned, so you could only get them in blister packs, the suicide rate from aspirin overdose dropped noticeably – presumably because it was more effort to pop fifty pills from their packaging than it was to just chug a bottleful. I had never realised that suicide was quite such an impulsive decision; quite frightening really.

We’re going to watch one more film, this time on Friday night, which is a behind-the-scenes exposé of the Los Angeles Mr Leather competition. I’m meeting my sister to hear her choir sing in Westminster Abbey before the film though, so on the whole Friday will be quite an eclectic night. Best of all, Brett will be home from Stockholm for the weekend. Yeay!

The Freaky Psycho Blogger

Just at the moment, I am reading Just A Geek by Wil Wheaton (who writes one of my linked blogs, see below right.) While the book is about a lot more than his blog, it is still a fairly no-holds-barred review of what was going on in his head as he wrote some of his blog posts. It’s a very revealing and quite personal book that has got me thinking about what I am trying to get out of my own blog.

While nominally an ongoing letter to both my and Brett’s parents to try to make up for how rarely we see them, I am keeping it as much for my own recollection as for anyone else’s. It is my diary if you like. For basically egotistical (and, to be honest, laziness) reasons I have chosen to publish this diary online as I write it.

However, just as Wil found himself doing, I am finding myself often putting the ‘best face’ on events and not really talking about what is going on in my head as they happen. Skating over the ups and downs of life is probably providing rather bland fare for my immediate readers, and negating the long-term reasons for keeping a diary, as it doesn’t really say much about who I am as I write it.

Just by writing about my life on a frequent basis, I’m clear that it isn’t ‘interesting’ on the grand scale of things. Nevertheless I hope, in years to come, to be able to look back through my postings and have my memory jogged about all the little events that make up the fabric of a person’s life. So I guess I owe it to myself not to wash any of the colour out of the telling.

The upshot of all this electronic navel-gazing will be a more emotionally frank blog at times. It may not be to everyone’s taste (in fact I fear the family McHargue could soon be swooping down on Wimbledon to rescue their prodigal son from his freaky, psycho boyfriend!) but hey, that’s life! And, after all, you don’t have to read it if you don’t want to.

I suspect I've already inaugurated this new era with my previous post. Maybe more on that subject at a later date, but for now I'm going to go to bed. Too many late nights and early mornings are catching up with me.

Chorus - The Last Straw

It’s funny how things go. I’m sitting here at 2am in my dressing gown, unable to sleep because I am so wound up. This is despite having a thoroughly relaxed and enjoyable day. Today we had a full-day (well, 11-5) rehearsal where we worked through an R&B medley that we will be performing in Paris. Both the music and the ‘choralography’ are lively and fun to perform. It cheered me up considerably as I’d started the day wishing I could get out of the rehearsal and just have another lazy day.

The good mood evaporated, however, when I came to check my email after dinner.

It’s a really a story of how gay men excel at petty personal-politics. Regular readers will know that I serve on the Steering Committee of the London Gay Men’s Chorus. Last summer, before I joined the committee, there were accusations made against the conduct of one of the committee members by some of the other committee members. The issue was, in my opinion, very badly handled at the time and I said so.

Unfortunately this opinion of mine seems to have tainted the Committee’s perception of me such that, when I came to join the Committee at the start of this year, I was perceived as being out for revenge. While I wondered at the frosty reception my ideas and proposals met, I viewed it simply as the teething problems of a newcomer settling into an established team. It wasn’t until a month or so into the job when this suspicion erupted into a diatribe from a colleague, accusing me of being out to undermine and destabilise everything and everyone that I realised that there was maybe a little bit more to it.

I made a full and frank statement about my intentions and views and made assurances all-round that I wasn’t trying to destabilise anything – after all I enjoy the singing and camaraderie of the Chorus too! Things settled down mostly, although there seemed to be a lingering suspicion from at least one member.

Tonight (well Sunday morning, to be precise, but I only read them this evening) the lingering bad feeling leaked out into a couple of emails which could almost be described as poison-pen letters! One of them picking holes in, and generally criticising, one of my pet projects and another having a go at me in particular and the committee I run in general.

It was all very negative and most of it was unfounded and/or hyperbole which I was able to refute fairly easily and did so. Now I find myself peculiarly numb to the whole thing and yet still unable to sleep. This incident is definitely the straw that has broken the camel’s back. I no longer feel a desire to give anything to the Chorus and am in it now purely for the selfish enjoyment I get out of the singing and performing. I am going to do no more committee work – which will hardly be missed as the AGM is in two weeks – and I have resigned my other role of managing the Chorus’ message groups. The respect I had for the work and achievements of our long-serving chairman has now been totally eroded and I find that I really don’t like the man.

It’s a shame, because the LGMC is such a worthwhile group to be involved with. It is great fun and a great community – for the most part(!). I’ve never been good with politics and have always preferred being straightforward with people. Perhaps that’s where it all went wrong: A naïve assumption that people would take me at face-value – or at least give me the benefit of the doubt until I proved myself one way or the other. Well, I got my fingers burned on that one.

The worst thing about all of the above is that it’s now April 4^th, which is the anniversary of Simon’s death, and I’d planned to spend this evening blogging about our relationship and his life and death but instead it’s been spent fuming and angry about something which I find I no longer care about. I really need to sort my priorities out.

Well, now that I’ve gotten the Chorus issue out of my system (but into my blog,) I can maybe go back to bed and remember happier times as a student in Dundee, spending days on the beach and in the park with my friends and with my surrogate little brother, whom I miss deeply to this day. Especially on this day.

Grump

Brunch had turned into Lunch by the time we got out of bed and made it to Café Rouge. Even so I savoured the meal; fixing the memory against the uncertain future where I might not be able to spend sunny Saturdays eating fine food on the spur of the moment without a care in the world. The sunshine seemed to have brought out meteorological desperation in the denizens of Wimbledon and shorts and t-shirts were very much in evidence, despite it not actually being that warm.

Once home again, I cracked on with reading my book (which Brett is also anxious to read) while he did household and computer stuff. In theory I was supposed to be paying bills and tidying paperwork too, but that never happened. I couldn’t face being organised today. We were expecting Rod & Jess over for dinner tonight, but it seems I got my dates wrong and they were expecting to come next week. That was actually fine as I was quite happy not to have to interact with people tonight.

Chorus email today reminded me that last night was the first session for our Youth Chorus pilot. It also said that it was a failure – an open introduction evening where only one person turned up. Technically I am responsible for it – albeit only in an oversight capacity – but I’d actually forgotten it was happening. The worrying thing is that I don’t think I care. Fortunately the AGM is only a couple of weeks away, so I’ll soon be free of the obligation. We have a six-hour rehearsal tomorrow which I could well do without too!

We watched the second episode of the new Doctor Who series tonight. It’s growing on me, although the one-story-per-episode format doesn’t give much time to really develop a plot.

Payback

The problem with holidays is that you can’t take time off without having to catch up afterwards. If they could really do without you for a week or two then the reality is that your job would have been made redundant years ago. I can’t decide whether that’s a modern thing or whether it’s always been like that. Somehow I suspect, though, that the Victorian pace of life was slower than ours. Either way, you come back from your week off, feeling all refreshed and full of energy and then get it knocked out of you by all the emails in your inbox and calls on your voicemail.

In my case I probably made it worse for myself by having a holiday just before the financial year-end (which is always a frenzied time) and just before releasing a major system. So anyway, you get the drift. I’ve had a lousy week at work. I picked up some kind of a cold midweek too and had blocked sinuses and now a nose that just won’t stop running.

Chorus stuff was just as bad as work. In fact I had more emails relating to Chorus than I had at work – but most of those were just automatic alerts about the new members joining the LGMC Yahoo Groups.

Anyway, it all seems to have settled down now so I’m planning a relaxing weekend to set me up for a good week next week.

Brett took this week off too, so our roles in the morning have been reversed: I’ve been saying goodbye to him while he’s still in bed, where normally he’s leaving early to catch the train to Aldershot while I’m still in bed. For the rest of the day he’s been reading comics and trying to integrate his PC with our TV.

So tonight – while he’s scrabbling around in the corner with SCART leads and S-Video cables – I’m going to do some preparation for my Magistrates interview next week.

Delay after delay

It had all been going so well; we’d had a nice relaxing week in pleasant surroundings. Then, when we arrived at the airport, the rep delivered the news that the plane had gone technical in London and there was a four-hour delay posted. Still, it meant the company paid for our lunch instead of us, so we hung around in the departure lounge reading our books and listening to our music.

About half an hour before the revised boarding time, we were all called together at a gate and told that they hadn’t been able to fix the plane, so the company had arranged for a First Choice aircraft to fly us home instead. The downside of this was that the plane wasn’t due for another three hours, so instead of arriving at Gatwick as planned at about 18:30, we would now be arriving in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

I suppose Las Palmas isn’t a bad airport to be delayed in. Compared to some Spanish resort airports I’ve seen, it is well-endowed with restaurants, cafes and shops. We did end up buying books and puzzle magazines to alleviate the boredom though and Thomas Cook (our tour operator) paid for a second meal for us.

We ran across John M from the Chorus while we were waiting. He and his partner had been out to Gran Canaria for the long Easter weekend.

The plane eventually arrived and we were boarded. The flight home was not much different from the flight out, although my tolerance for the cramped seating was lower. Also the meal was very stodgy and seemed designed to make you thirsty (you had to pay for all the drinks onboard, even the water!) Nevertheless the flight crew were all very pleasant – which can’t have been easy since they had been on standby since 09:00 that morning and had only been called up for the ten-hour return trip about half an hour before they were due to be relieved.

We were on the ground by 01:15 and Rosie was waiting for us at the airport, which made getting home carefree: At that time in the morning, I would not have been a happy bear trying to do it by public transport or even driving myself! Straight to bed when we got home at around 03:00.

Farewell to the Canaries

The trip yesterday was good fun. There were four people-carriers in convoy. We were in the front one with the guide, Jason, who gave his commentary in the other cars via CB radio. It was a full-day trip which more of less took us around the island, sometimes along some very narrow roads in the mountains with spectacular views. We saw the different climates in the north and south of the island, we saw the inhabited volcanic caves and the multicoloured rocks, rich in different minerals.

Today has been another lazy day. There was an overcast today for the first time, so we took advantage of the cover to go down to the lido for lunch and a game of Crazy Golf. Apart from that we just sat and read. Brett has finished all the books he brought and is now watching movies on my laptop while I have started re-reading the books he borrowed from me to bring along.

The night is clear after the cloudy day and the stars are bright now that the hotel’s lights are out. It’s a lovely conclusion to the day and the holiday: the stars, the darkness and the sound of the surf against the rocks down on the beach.

We’re heading home tomorrow, leaving the hotel around 11:15 and back in the UK about eight hours later.

Day Trips

We are up early today because we have a full-day tour booked and need to get into breakfast when it opens at 8am. Yesterday, nothing happened: We got up, ate, sat on the balcony and read, ate, sat on the sofa and read, ate, sat in the chair and read and then went to bed again. I am now finished my series of books and gnashing my teeth because the next in the series isn’t published until later this year, so I’ve taken to re-reading the series that Brett has brought along.

Thursday was a somewhat more interesting day, though. We lazed in the morning, but had booked ourselves on the ‘Crazy Camels’ tour in the afternoon. The camels were, alas, anything but crazy but it was interesting to see them close up (for some reason I always imagined them having some variation of hooves, but it turns out they walk on fleshy pads) and we had some fun. I’d rather hoped that we would see the desert dunes of Maspalomas as part of our trek. In the end though, all the tour amounted to was a ride up and down a nearby canyon; two to a camel, in metal seats slung either side of the camel. Not quite Lawrence of Arabia, but I suppose no less than I should have expected from a high-street package tour.

So anyway, today we have a full-day tour booked. It’s billed as the ‘VIP Tour’ but I think that just means we go in a minibus with a guide rather than a coach. Still I’m hoping there are going to be some good photo opportunities along the way.

Puerto Mogán

Yesterday evening before dinner we headed down to the Playa Taurito ‘centro’ which consists of a small leisure complex and some shops and restaurants in the valley between all the hotels. At the wide end of the valley is the short, black sand of the playa itself and at the other, narrower end is a roundabout where the coastal road intersects all the local hotel access roads.

The leisure complex boasts palm-shaded walks around a decent looking crazy-golf course. Towards the beach end is the lido, which is almost a water-park in its own right, with little waterslides, fountains and waterfalls built into a pool forming a large circle around plenty of sunbathing space in the centre. I think we might spend a morning down here at some point.

Today was more of the same. Brett spent most of the day sunning himself by the pool. I spent the morning on our balcony enjoying the view and reading until the sun crept around to warm it as well, at which point I headed down to the pool and ensconced myself beneath an umbrella to read. Despite all the careful sunshine avoidance, though, it appears I’ve picked up enough reflected sunlight to make me quite pink about the face and arms. I shall definitely be using sunscreen tomorrow – even for sitting in the shade.

Tonight we went out for dinner. After a brief excursion to the unexciting Mogán village (which is about 10km inland of the Puerto Mogán) we headed down to the port for dinner. We chose a fairly smart looking spot with a ten course degustation menu for €50 a head and had a very pleasant, leisurely meal which tantalised our palates.

The only downside to the evening was the forty-minute wait for a taxi back to our hotel; although the temperature was showing as 23° at 23:30, so the waiting at the taxi rank wasn’t unpleasant. We made it back to the hotel before midnight and now just need to drink a fair amount of water before I go to bed to make sure I don’t have a hangover tomorrow.

The three-master in the bay is all lit up tonight. It looks lovely.

Dull Blog

I fear this blog could be a little dull(er) this week. The plan is mostly to sit by the pool and read. There is talk of really striking out and walking down to Taurito Centro (the bottom of the hill) to check out the beach and the lido, but I’m not sure how much will come of it.

We had a very pleasant Mediterranean dinner in the restaurant last night, washed down with a fine red Rioja. The food is good for a buffet presentation – having worked in the industry I know how hard it is to do this successfully: keeping the menu sufficiently varied for all the guests, and hot (or cold) but not over- or under-done, not soggy, not dried-out, not full of streptococci. So anyway, I think they’re doing a good job here.

The bar didn’t prove quite so impressive however. They have a cocktail menu so I ordered a daiquiri and Brett a margharita before dinner, but I ended up having to show the waiter the menu to convince him that I could have it without banana or strawberry and both of the drinks were pretty bland when they arrived. The bar does have a lovely balcony overlooking the beach though, so we intend to go along a bit earlier tonight to watch the sun set before dinner.

We had our obligatory ‘Welcome Meeting’ with the holiday reps today and have signed up for a couple of tours later in the week; a half-day camel riding on Thursday and then a minibus tour around some of the more spectacular and out-of-the-way sights of the island, including its peak Las Nieves.

Apart from that we just spent the day lazing and reading, mostly by the pool: Brett is sunning himself while I’m staying in the shade (I am not a big fan of sunshine and tanning,) both of us reading our books.

There are a couple of three-masted yachts out on the bay.

Gran Canaria arrival

So here we are in Gran Canaria, on the south-west of the island at a tourist development not far from the small fishing village called Puerto Mogán. The hotel block is very pleasant and modern. We have a junior suite, which is two adjoining rooms; one with a sofa bed, chair, coffee table and small kitchenette. The temperature is a warm, but comfortable; 25°C outside and there’s not a cloud in the sky.
We have a good view of the ocean and there is a wonderful feeling as you look out across it: there is nothing but water as far as you can see. Nothing in fact until you hit Antarctica, more than half the world away.
We’ve scoped out the complex as well as two swimming pools (one of them kept children-free) there’s a restaurant, open-air barbeque, pool bar and little supermarket. There’s a regular bus service to the nearby towns, internet access and car hire from the foyer. It promises to be a good week.

Ping's Birthday Treat

Ping took us both out for lunch today, and then on to Dennis Severs’ House in Spitalfields as a birthday present.

Lunch was in a pleasant restaurant called Terminus, although the cuisine turned out to be a little to nouveau (which, to my mind equals ‘small’) so we skipped dessert and went on to the Spitalfields Market where we found cake and coffee to enough satisfy us all.

Dennis Severs’ House is an interesting, if slightly surreal, experience. The concept is a house where each room is faithfully recreated as it may have looked in the period 1724 – 1914. The rooms are laid out as if the occupants have just stepped out for a moment, leaving their tea, or port, or pipe, or whatever on tables and mantels. It feels very realistic, apart from the omnipresent notices from the custodians trying to get you to have some kind of artistic epiphany by virtue of being there amongst all the realism.

There were some obvious mistakes in amongst all the realism too – modern buttons on a printed fabric shirt, fibreglass insulation in the ceiling and modern stamps and franking on some letters. Ping thought it was part of the experience; the implication that someone still lives there, but for me it just made the experience more hollow, rather than knitting it together.

Rosie had arrived by the time we got home. Bruce had come over to help her unpack too, so it was nice to see them both. I had Chorus stuff to get out of the way though, so I was soon immersed in my email. Later it was packing – although that proceeded unusually smoothly. (I detest packing.)

I think we are pretty much sorted now though. The alarm goes off at 04:40 tomorrow, which is roughly five hours before we fly. Whoever said international travel was glamorous hasn’t seen me at that time in the morning when I’ve only had four hours sleep.

Yesterday evening, I discovered I had received an email from Bystander, the guy who writes the Magistrate’s Blog (see the right-hand column,) wishing me luck for my interview. I wrote back to him asking if he had any tips – and he did, which was very decent of him.

The topic of my impending interview came up over lunch today. Ping was quite impressed by my volunteering to become a Magistrate, but he managed to pose some interesting moral dilemmas for me to have a think about before I face the interview panel. Well, at least I’ve got a week ahead of me now when I’ll have time to think…

Misery

Ugh. Way too much Chorus stuff to be done! Wasted the whole of this lovely sunny day indoors on my laptop. Roll-on the AGM!
Brett had a good day though, what with haircuts, comic books and coffee in the Village. Then he came home and cooked my dinner. The man is fantastic!

Tourists in Town

Another year over; a new one just begun. Thirty-six is such a ‘nothing-special’ age to be. I’m feeling underwhelmed again. No different from yesterday, in fact! Still, one feels one ought to do something special on the day, so we did.

We’ve been tourists today. We took a walk along the Thames to Westminster, took photographs of famous buildings and then spent the afternoon touring around Westminster Abbey – which feels less like a religious building and more like an overcrowded display cabinet for memorial statues and plaques. I fear that I bored Brett senseless explaining some of the intricacies of Heraldry, about which he has never expressed the least interest but which litters the tombs of the great and the good. Despite an officious verger managing to be rude to both of us separately, we had a good day and enjoyed the Abbey, which is quite splendid in so many ways – I wish more of the monastic areas had been open, but apparently you have to come back on specific days to see them.

After Westminster, we headed into the West End for dinner at Kettners. I didn’t fancy haute cuisine, just a smart restaurant with comfortable chairs. Then, after hanging around Soho and Leicester Square for a while, we went to see Keanu Reeves in Constantine. (This is another comic-book hero turned into a movie. The last one we saw was League of Extraordinary Gentlemen which was dreadful. This one though was rather good I thought.)

On the whole, it has been a lovely day. The weather was beautiful: sunshine from a clear blue sky and temperatures around 17°C; hopefully the first of many such pleasant days enjoying ourselves this week.

More Exams and Antiques

Well, the exam went extremely well. I scored 896 out of a possible 1000, which is quite respectable. It means that my MCSE is now upgraded to the latest version and, more importantly, I can go on holiday without having to worry about re-sitting anything.

After a brief stop at the office to deliver (and eat) some celebratory/birthday cakes and pick up an Amazon package containing a present from my sister, I went and had a coffee on High Holborn before meeting up with Owen for a burger before the show. Brett, hot off the plane from Sweden, arrived shortly thereafter (wearing a tie!) and we toddled off to the Theatre Royal in Haymarket to meet the others and pick up our tickets for Acorn Antiques – The Musical.

The show was a little bit strange. The first half was pretty dreadful actually – a play within a play about some modernist producer wanting to revive the popular show but give a dark, edgy, fatalistic feel. The best bit was where it parodied Les Miserables by (amongst others take-offs) the set tilting to form a barricade out of antiques.

The second half was more enjoyable, after Mrs Overall had won the lottery and put on a ‘proper’ Acorn Antiques – The Musical in the West End. This was more of an extended version of the TV sketches done with musical interludes and was pleasantly entertaining – and included a bit of a homage to Chorus Line too. Not something I would rush back to see though.

As the bows were being taken, Brett turned to me and said, ‘You British are a strange lot!’ and, for once, I didn’t feel inclined to disagree. On the way out I decided that I must really fall into the camp that ‘doesn’t get it.’ Several of our companions were raving about how fantastic it had been. Compared to them, I felt distinctly underwhelmed.

Oh well, tomorrow is another day. More importantly tomorrow is my birthday. Wehay!!

Exams and Antiques

The slog towards the weekend continues: I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours studying. I hold a Microsoft certification which I am currently updating. This means I have to sit exams which, in turn, means I have to study for exams. No fun.

Well, okay, admittedly it isn’t as bad as it could be. The exams I am sitting are ‘upgrade’ exams so they only cover the material that has changed between the Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 systems. I work with these systems every day, so most of it is second-nature – but there are a few areas where I am as clueless as Joe User would be and getting my head around all the detail involved in those bits is painful.

I had the first exam (there are two) today and I managed a 70% result which was barely a pass! I am expecting tomorrow’s exam to be harder, but strangely I am performing better on the preparation exams than I did for the first one. Go figure.

Hopefully it will all be over by this time tomorrow. Either way (at this time tomorrow) I’ll be sitting in a theatre watching Acorn Antiques – The Musical! Now, for my American readers I should perhaps explain… Acorn Antiques was a series of short sketches on a comedy show fifteen or more years ago which parodied the low production values of a popular soap-opera of the day. It became a bit of a cult hit and, like most ‘Cult Hits’, either you get it or you don’t. (Owen brought the DVD over on Sunday. He loves it, I enjoyed it but Brett slept through most of it – well, we had just had lunch. Even so, he is flying home especially early to see the show with me tomorrow night. What a hero!)

Anyway, they’ve made a musical of it and, to be honest, I’m curious to see what they’ve done. The show is certainly a sell-out hit and the tickets aren’t cheap either (!) so I’m assuming they’ve got some new angle to attract the people who don’t remember the wobbly sets and dreadful continuity of the original soap, around which it is all based, and which have a rather short shelf-life as a joke.

In theory my holiday starts tomorrow. When I walk out of the exam I am not back in work until the Tuesday after Easter. In practice though, I’ve got lots of Chorus stuff to do to get the newbies all sorted before we go away, plus we’ve got to get the spare room ready for Rosie to live in again! (At the moment the wardrobe is full of Christmas decorations that need to find a home until next December.) Hmmm…

Fatigue

Tonight I feel guilty. It’s been a self-indulgent day: Lying-in until late, then watching TV, then going out for lunch, then watching more TV, then reading and doing some Chorus email and then watching yet more TV. There was no shopping done, no laundry done and no washing up done. I feel like I need the holiday now, not in the future. I am not motivated to do anything – which is not a good thing, because there is so much that needs doing. Apart from all the housework, I have an exam on Wednesday and another on Thursday that I need to be studying for.

My mum called today and we had a good long chat about what’s happening in both our lives. I filled her in on the holiday, the Magistrate’s interview in April and Paris in May and she updated me on what’s happening with the bee business and where they’d been walking recently and what is going on at the Bowls Club (Their local social centre.) We talked about Rosie’s job and how she’s coming down to London for a week to unwind a little after organising her move – and also to house-sit for us while we’re away.

I so need a holiday though. I have the ‘worn-down’ feeling that I sometimes get which gives it away. It’s time to disappear for a while to somewhere where nothing has to be organised or planned and I can do everything on the spare of the moment; Time to get out from under the pressure of living and working in London and having an active social life – where even the things you enjoy have to be carefully timetabled; Time to turn off the phone and avoid the Internet for a week – apart from occasional blog/travelog posting, maybe.

Suits and Holidays

So Friday came and went and now it’s Saturday! Work is trolling along as ever. It was one of the team’s birthday today, so he brought in several scrummy cakes yesterday afternoon. A lot of my day was spent working on our new print charging system and trying to get video conferencing working between here and Santiago in Chile via the Internet. The videoconferencing problem is very annoying – we almost have it working: We can call each other and seem to make the connection, but neither of us gets any audio or video and we can’t see why. Maybe letting my subconscious work on it over the weekend will help.

Last night I was rushing home to catch up on all the Chorus work that had accumulated this week. With feeling ill, Wednesday (my only free night this week) had been spent lying on the sofa watching TV before getting an early night, so Friday night I had to buckle down to answering emails and trying to grease the machine that is 'Chorus Administration.'

Brett arrived home around 10pm to find me more or less worn out by the email, so we snuggled on the sofa and watched Desperate Housewives before heading off to bed.

Today felt like the start of a manic weekend, but now seems to be a bit more under control: We both needed to go clothes shopping and this was the best opportunity to book our cheap winter-sun break. So we went out to Wimbledon and spent prodigious amounts of money on a suit, shirt, tie and cufflinks for my Magistrate’s interview next month, several pairs of new work trousers for Brett, a week in Gran Canaria and some toothpaste.

Having the holiday actually booked now is great – it’s on the horizon and we can start counting down the days. We’ve booked a hotel called the Mogan Princess on Playa Taurito (the southwest of the island.) The resort sounds fairly quiet and we have a suite with a good sea view (allegedly!) all for a very reasonable price. Just what you need for a bit of rest and relaxation!

Rod and Jess were meant to be coming over tonight for dinner but when I rang to confirm, Jess had a headache which wasn’t going away, so it seemed wisest to postpone. Tonight is now going to be spent with just the two of us alternating between Chorus stuff and TV which actually sounds like a lovely evening.

Eating Out

Think I got something dodgy in my tuna niçoise sandwich yesterday as I spent the afternoon and evening feeling pretty rotten. Been a bit iffy today, but seem to have recovered pretty much now.

Today was mundane at work; however I ended up eating out for two meals out of three. Rowan was down for her second interview and she got the job. She was thrilled and we went out for lunch with Bruce to celebrate. This evening I met up with Rob Smith, my erstwhile colleague at my previous employer. Whenever he is up in London on a course we try to meet up for drinks and dinner to catch up – although usually most of the catching up is him regaling me with stories of the latest bizarreness at work while I sit there with my jaw hanging, absolutely speechless.

There is usually some comparing of technologies and strategies in the way that tech-geeks often do, but I rarely have any stories to match the short-sightedness that he seems to have to put up with on a daily basis. I am glad I am no longer a part of that. I somewhat smugly showed him the Sunday Times award we received for being voted one of the best companies to work for in the country. (They publish a list every year and this year we entered and came in the top twenty! We now have a nice little marble trophy on our reception desk to prove it.) Despite all the silliness though, do miss a number of the people I used to work with: I don’t keep up enough with Emma, even though we are still in touch, and I never managed to keep up with Paul, the networking guy, or Ben from Operations.

I’m also missing Brett right now. He called me last night before he went to bed, but I haven’t called him tonight and now it’s too late to. Still, I suppose this time tomorrow he’ll be back.

A Big Empty Bed

Lots of Chorus stuff keeping me busy at the moment. Sunday was the final CD recording session. It was an all day affair but, after six, long months, Christmas is finally over! Yesterday was an intake evening for new members and, as Chairman of the Membership Committee, this meant lots of work for me. There was a good turn-out of volunteers too, which meant the whole evening went smoothly.

Tonight was a meeting of the Membership Committee itself and we had plenty to discuss, but it went quite smoothly and was a productive meeting. Hopefully we’ve managed to damp down the hornets’ nest we stirred up by some bad wording in the last set of minutes. I have to find time to write up this latest set of minutes at some point though.

Yesterday I had to perform one of the sadder tasks that you get in IT Support. In this job, a bit like being in the clergy, you get to see people in all walks of life in all kinds of situations. Yesterday I had to break the bad news to one of our consultants that the file containing his expenses data for the last three months had in fact been irretrievably lost. It was a simple misunderstanding on his part about how the synchronisation worked between his PC and his PDA, but it could conceivably leave him several thousand pounds out of pocket. The moral of this story: look at how you use your IT in your day to day life and think through what might happen if it suddenly wasn’t there – then take steps to guard yourself against those consequences. It’s the constant mantra of IT support staff to users – and there’s a reason why we keep saying it.

Anyway, now I’m home and getting ready for bed, the realisation is dawning that Brett is away and won’t be back for a while. This isn’t a long Chorus meeting he’s at, where he’ll be home a bit late and climb into bed shortly. He’s gone until at least Friday. The bed seems awfully big without him.

A Long Lunch

Why does my life involve so many Saturday mornings when I have to get up early?? Today was another Chorus recording session and the call time was 9:30am. Ugh! Still, it was a short session. We were at the Cadogan Hall, off Sloane Square, but we only had it until 1pm as another group had it booked this afternoon.

The recording all went well but towards the end it was quite comical: We were finishing up with a beautifully atmospheric piece called ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ which gets quieter with each verse until the last one is sung almost sotto voce. However by then we were all getting rather hungry and I’m sure that there will be at least five different people’s stomach growls on the final few takes.

After the recording, Brett and I were invited back to Mark G’s for lunch with a few of the other choristers. We stopped off at a Sainsbury’s on the way for provisions and then headed on to the small, but beautifully decorated, top floor flat he shares with his partner Chris in Pimlico. There we dined on charcuterie, cheese, fish and humous accompanied by a variety of fresh breads and pink champagne with strawberries. It turned out that this was the unofficial housewarming party, as they had only moved in three weeks ago. It was a most enjoyable afternoon – and reminded us that we need to get our entertaining organised a bit better. But then that probably goes for most of the rest of our lives too. Ho hum.

After a long leisurely lunch and engaging conversation we made our excuses and departed. Brett headed off to Putney to collect his comics while I went home via Waterstones, in the hope of finding the second book of the series I am reading at the moment. They didn’t have the book, so I came home and ordered it from Amazon (and the two books that follow it!) as I want to make sure I have plenty to read when we finally do go on holiday!

One pleasant surprise when I got home was a neatly typed envelope, stamped ‘Private and Confidential’ and addressed to me. It was an invitation to an interview for appointment as a Magistrate for the London Courts. It’s only taken eighteen months to arrive, but now it’s finally here I need to prepare for it. Need to buy a new suit too. I haven't needed to wear one in a couple of years and the ones I have are pretty threadbare anyway. Time to splash out I suppose – and hope I do well at interview so I actually get to wear it some more!

Stockholm, eh?

Brett called from work this afternoon. That’s an unusual occurrence so I was kind of expecting something dramatic to be behind it. Sure enough he got told today he’s leaving on Tuesday to work in Sweden for the next three months. Hmph. It isn’t a total surprise – the possibility had been mentioned a few days ago – but having to leave on Tuesday is a bit sudden.
I know I’ll miss Brett, but what can I say? I can’t begrudge him the trip – I know I would love to get the chance to live and work in a new country for a few months every now and then. And he certainly needs new challenges at work. Stockholm isn’t really that far away anyway, I can spend some weekends out there and enjoy it with him.
It looks like Rosie will be moving back in for a while too. She’s the only one who’s been called back for a second interview with the Mental Health Foundation, so she’s fairly certain she’s got the job unless she makes a serious mistake at the next interview. Bizarrely her office will be within spitting distance of mine, so I imagine that we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other. It will be good to have her down here some more though. I think her life definitely improved when she was down here on her sabbatical, so I’m glad she gets to carry it on.
Thanks to John W for flagging up the problem with the blog layout. It seemed to only affect Internet Explorer and, since I use Firefox, I hadn’t noticed it. Turns out it was the graphic in the list of referrers bolt-on that was too wide for the column. For some reason IE shifted the whole column of text left rather than let the graphic overhand the right border. I’ve removed the bolt-on now as only about five people seem to read my blog and I know who they all are!
While I was fiddling with the template though, I also updated the Blogs I Read section as Dan is no longer in India and I’ve also been reading Jonny B’s Private Secret Diary which is quite amusing. Enjoy.

Highland Fling

I don’t think it’s the actual ‘getting up’ in the morning that I have the problem with; I think it is the having to get up that makes me rebel and huddle under the covers until I am late for work. I didn’t have to get up this morning. (We finished all of our labs yesterday, so today was going to be exam preparation – which I can do just as well from home without the cattle-truck nightmare that is the rush-hour tube spoiling my morning.) So, not having to get up, after Brett had kissed me goodbye and headed off for the train, I rolled over and felt good and had my lie-in and yet still was out of bed about an hour later.

So today is being spent doing test MCSE exams and doing all the housework I’ve not had time to do so far this week.

The ballet last night was very enjoyable. I don’t think I’ve been to see a ballet since my junior school took us to see Coppelia when I was about nine and it’s not normally something I would consider for an evening’s entertainment. Nevertheless both Brett and I were rapt as we watched the story unfold. I really wish we’d been able to see Swan Lake now. Unfortunately, according to the website, we need to head to Japan or Korea to catch a show anytime this year. Maybe we'll have to try something non-Matthew Bourne and see if more classical interpretations still hold the attention.

Fast Forward

So it's Thursday already and I haven't blogged. Too much going on really. I'm on a course this week and, as expected commuting on the tube is a living nightmare for the first hour of every day: Rush Hour tube trains are worse than cattle trucks. You are crammed in with literally no space to move. On Monday I had the hair of the woman in front of me catching in my beard as the train moved. Today I was breathing in the garlic emanating from the man whose head was in my armpit as I hung on to the rail. If we were cows, at least there would be animal rights protesters lobbying parliament and flour-bombing MPs!
The course itself isn't too bad. Quite hands on and with good equipment. It's probably worth a blog in its own right as IT training courses are such a microcosm. It's easy to see where the geeky stereotypes originate; we are all very technical and just a little bit socially awkward. The only downside is (believe it or not) that it finishes early every day. Since I have something on in London every night this week, this means a lot of hanging around and eating fast food. On the upside I am making good progress on my book (A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin) and, for the first time this week, Brett and I get to spend an evening together as we go to see Matthew Bourne's Highland Fling.
The Big Chorus Issue reared its ugly head again on Tuesday night and, after getting in from a Chorus meeting, I spent a further three hours replying to Chorus email. A lot of that time was spent editing the anger out of an email reply to the Chorus Chairman. I really am losing my patience with the whole thing. Roll on April, with the AGM, so I can get away from all this and go back to having a life and the Chorus as a hobby!
Anyway, got to go eat now. Need to keep my strength up as, betwen Chorus bitching, long daily studying sessions and late nights I'm feeling pretty weary.