Wonderful Weekends
Today, my standard Sunday – lazy morning in bed, listening to BH and The Archers omnibus, before rising, reading, husband playing GTA4, drinking freshly filtered coffee, reading the Sunday papers, and the mundane laundry, dishwasher loading, putting out the bins.
Today, made all the better for two wonderful weekends preceding it. Last weekend, spent in Royston at my sister-in-law’s with great company, good food and a spellbinding visit to Ely Cathedral. The building is incredible, particularly its majestic nave and the feat of engineering that forms its centrepiece, the Octagon lantern. We climbed the 165 spiral steps to the roof of the lantern, stared down into the cathedral from its dizzying height and listened to the beautiful, soaring choir practice for evensong.
This weekend bought pleasures of a different kind, but just as great. A lovely couple of days spent with Omar, who writes about it better than I could on his own blog (here). I miss spending time with him. But when he lived nearer, I don’t think I appreciated the things that he writes about.
And yesterday, Chris and I were faced with another, dull day in Worcester and decided to drive to Bristol and spend the rest of the day there instead. We shopped, buying nothing, in Cabot Circus. As shopping centres go, I don’t know if I like it. There are elements that are great, like the domed glass roof, the natural ventilation, the open spaces intended for nothing but sitting and watching the world go by. But I’m not sure that I’d want to shop there regularly, I don’t think it has a great retail offer, if I’m honest. That said, the car park is an awesome example of how it could and should be done (evidence, if you ever need it, that I should get out more).
Anyway, we ate Vietnamese at Tampopo, which is like Wagamama but with slightly more uptight waiting staff (I should clarify that I like how uptight and eager to please they are. The staff in Wagamama are too trendy-verging-on-irritating) and a range of Asian dishes. I can recommend the Pho Xao Bo.
And we saw Up (in 2D, thank you very much) at the Showcase De Lux (nice cinema, absurdly comfortable seats, the fact that there are doormen is awfully pretentious). I didn’t love the film quite as much as this review in the Telegraph did and not nearly as much as I love Wall-E but I did think that the first ten minutes are just wonderful. That an animated film aimed squarely at children can handle loss, grief and regret in a silent montage and move grown adults to tears is astonishing. I’d watch the film again purely for those opening scenes, but also for the witty, creative closing credits.
And the Where the Wild Things Are trailer…oh, so much happiness and brilliance in one, short space of time. I simply can’t wait.
After all that, back to my standard Sunday and the ironing mountain that has been growing whilst I’ve been having such a lovely time.
Nice things
Surprising the intern by decorating his desk with balloons and party poppers for his 21st birthday, even though you’ve only ever passed the time of day with him in the kitchen, just because he’s new and shy and doesn’t really know anyone.
American Office
(This is the first blog from my new MacBook. The plan is, now I have my own laptop and am not sharing my husband’s PC, that this happens more…)
Anyway, Chris and I watched The American Office tonight. It’s on ITV4 now. We’ve seen bits before but not whole episodes.
Some observations:
1. There is not enough background noise. It’s noticeable.
2. Chris kept trying to figure out which American character was which British character.
3. I can’t watch Steve Carrell now without remembering how great he is in Little Miss Sunshine.
4. I need to watch more of it, I think. Didn’t strike me straight away (mainly for the above reasons).
Last chance to see
As a general rule, I am not a fan of wildlife programmes. But I have been thoroughly enjoying Stephen Fry’s retracing of Douglas Adams’s steps in ‘Last Chance to See’. What I enjoy so much is Fry’s apparent lack of suitability for such a task (he hates camping, isn’t very good at getting off boats in one piece and readily admits that he’d prefer the animals to come to him in London – all things I can relate to). And yet he is, without exception, won over by every incredible example of the natural world that he happens to stumble upon. As much as I share in his seeming distaste for exploration, I also share in his awe and delight at the rich diversity of life.
I think all wildlife programmes should be presented by Stephen Fry.
Cheltenham Literature Festival
On Friday, Leigh and I took a well-earned break from the office and spent the day at the Cheltenham Literature Festival. We had a genuinely lovely day. Not necessarily because of the events we paid to attend (although they were all excellent, both entertaining and insightful) but because of the room it gave us to think and to be challenged intellectually. Owen Sheers made me want to rediscover poetry and to seek out his BBC4 programme on iPlayer; the discussion on mad women in literature triggered a desire to discover a few unread classics; and the subject of journalism writing history highlighted global issues I know scarcely enough about to make the kind of judgements I find myself making.
If only I had the time to do all of those things: to read non-fiction, classics, poetry, political diaries; to watch documentaries about subjects that are new to me; to visit places that will stimulate me. I do have that time. I am simply too distracted by day-to-day living but also by the technology in my home, which requires little attention, wastes many hours and allows me to passively absorb information – little of it of any consequence – in bite sized chunks. A case in point: this week I have tried (and failed) to read three different books. This is not the fault of the books. It is my painfully and increasingly short attention span.
I would like our day at the literature festival to change that.
Some other observations from Friday:
1. I was having breakfast (well, coffee) in Starbucks. They’ve started asking for your first name when you order and then proceed to shout, “tall Americano with room for milk for Jenn!” I don’t like it.
2. Leigh phoned whilst I was in Starbucks to say she was lost (she really, really was). I used Google Latitude to find her and it worked a treat.
3. I was impressed by the sheer number of children at the festival and completely bowled over by their delight and enthusiasm as they had books signed by authors such as Anthony Horowitz and Julia Donaldson. I was bowled over in a very different sense by the number of adults queuing to meet Alan Titchmarsh.
4. There was a lovely European market on the Promenade and it was there that I discovered that sweet ginger is delicious when eaten together with sundried tomatoes.
Banksy
On a lighter note, I’ve still not blogged about Banksy. Which is just plain lazy because Omar did it ages ago.
In general, I enjoyed the exhibition, which is a blessing considering I stood in this queue with that black cloud overhead for almost two hours to see it.
Like Omar, I enjoyed the social commentary pieces downstairs the most. Although, I do tend to find that Banksy irritates me by being a little lazy sometimes. Admittedly, the Houses of Parliament, full of apes, was technically more than I could ever achieve but it just feels like sloppy, sixth-form satire. There’s nothing big nor clever about saying that MPs are a bunch of monkeys.
That said, the installation exchanging a nest of fledgling birds for tweeting CCTV cameras made me smile and I enjoyed these exhibits that displayed a sense of humour alongside the scathing social commentary the most.
The exhibition forces you to explore the whole of the museum – a fantastic marketing ploy – and I really like the audacity of the idea that a traditional civic museum can be infiltrated by a graffiti artist. But, in practice, the Banksy exhibition is no more than a stunt (he didn’t break in to the place, the museum is raking in the visitors) and that awareness nagged at me as I browsed the display cabinets for evidence of Banksy’s interference.
But I really enjoyed the fact that, on a couple of occasions, Omar and I couldn’t tell whether or not an exhibit had been put there by Banksy or if it was a genuine exhibit.
Definitely worth a visit – it’s unlikely to come around again any time soon and certainly not as successfully. It’s just not as ground breaking as it thinks it is… But I don’t know that there’s anything wrong with that.
Vocation Theory
It’s nice to think of all the exciting stuff my school friends do for a living these days. In our circle of friends, we have a counsellor, a couple of journalists, a landscape architect, a banker, an accountant, a school secretary, and a couple of musicians. I like the variety of it. And the fact that I can remember little characteristics about them all as teenagers that mean that their current career is no real surprise.
And, of course, there’s me. You understand what all the others do, right? But not what I do. Ho hum.
Here’s a list of other things I’d quite like to do, if I ever got the chance:
1. Be a wedding florist (and make people happy)
2. Teach adult literacy (and make the world a better place)
3. Work in a bookshop (and make myself happy)
4. Do a PhD and be a lecturer (see above).
Also, I did a careers search last night (mainly because I haven’t done one since school and wanted to test my ‘Vocation Theory’ outlined above). When I put in that I’m not motivated by money, it just gave me crap jobs that would be nice and everything but that I couldn’t afford to do without some serious lifestyle changes. So I put in that I am motivated by money and it gave me unbearably ruthless jobs that wouldn’t fit my moral code AT ALL.
Rock and Hard Place.
Thoughts on responsibility
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about capacity. In that my capacity to take on the challenges of my job has recently and bizarrely felt almost physical. My (relatively) tiny frame feels like it’s almost overwhelmed by the seemingly daily office dramas and dilemmas. It’s like the burden is literally on my shoulders.
I suppose I’ve been aware for a long time that I have the mental capacity to handle a great deal. As I was growing up, I faced things that cause a lot of people to crack and I never have, I think because I have some pretty good coping mechanisms as well as wonderful family and friends. This may or may not be a healthy thing, of course. It may be that I just internalise things and I don’t really deal with them. And one day, they’ll all mount up and I’ll experience one big melt down. There’s something to look forward to.
So, for the first time, my physical capacity seems stretched to its very limit (that was the point of this blog entry). And I am, frankly, exhausted by the constant, violent yo-yoing of my confidence in my own abilities and my subsequent enjoyment of the job.
And I’m trying to decide if it’s a result of my relative immaturity in terms of my career or if it will always be like this but I’ll simply develop strategies over time to deal with it.
It’s not enough to want to give up at this stage but it is starting to feel enough to consider it.
Reading in bed
During the long (and, if I recall, hot) summer after I graduated, I mainly lived alone in our Cardiff flat, whilst Chris worked in Gloucester and I looked for jobs in the West Midlands. And during that summer, I spent a great deal of time lying on our lime green sofa with the balcony doors open and I read prolifically. Since then, other things have got in the way and my reading has been limited to a few pages on the bus on the way to work, a few more in bed before I fall asleep and, where possible, some more on a Sunday morning.
But since the wedding and my degree have finished, I’m spending more and more evenings reading for several hours. It’s the nicest thing and I’d forgotten how relaxing it could be. Plus, for the first time in a long time, I’m reading books at a faster rate than I’m buying them. Which is definitely a good thing.
And I’ve read some really good stuff as well. Last week, I finished “The Believers” by Zoe Heller, which was beautifully written, although I barely cared about its middle-class protagonists and their (to me) somewhat insignificant concerns. And now I’m reading “The Other Side of You” by Salley Vickers, which has turned out to be worth the perseverance, even though I struggled with her clunky prose at first. It has loosened up a bit and the story is an essentially good one.
Trying to decide what’s next…
P.S. This blog entry reminds me of this song. Which is also the nicest thing.
This week
This week (so far) I have mostly been:
Dithering about whether or not to get the HTC Magic,
Worrying about a friend and the fact that I’ve been too preoccupied to notice,
Trying to figure out why my flickr account has lost all my photos (because my account expired whilst I was away),
Quite productive at work, less productive at home,
Going to bed really late (I blame FarCry2 and the new TV),
Reading The Kite Runner and crying,
Eating fresh strawberries and raspberries,
Listening to The Captain and the Hourglass and Calm on repeat (you’ll all hate the latter, I know).
