are the stars out tonight?

getting around this city is getting harder and harder, particularly at the weekend - this morning I took a bus, another bus, a tube (with a change) and then two more buses, for a journey that I could do with one overground and one tube on a weekday (in about half the time).

serves me right for attempting to get to work on a saturday morning, i suppose, but with all the station and line closures around town, it seems almost like a concerted effort to stop people travelling about.

i doubt there's a quango in whitehall scheming up ways to annoy londoners (and tourists), but occasionally it's not that difficult to imagine a bureaucrat, with an office in city hall dedicated to making my life harder.

"yes," he would say, "definitely close shepherd's bush central line station for eight months. excellent. the next matter on the agenda is what to do about the victoria line, she's been taking that a lot recently."

his cowering subordinate offers a suggestion: "what about if we shut it at 10 in the evenings and completely at the weekends?"

"brilliant!" he shrieks with a note of glee in his voice, "let's go to her favourite pub. gather up 30 of your closest colleagues, we're making sure she won't get a drink tonight!"

Labels: ranting, transport, work

feather boa 10:29 am

frankly, i'm pretty surprised that in nearly five years of blogging, i have never mentioned julian of norwich, whose revelation of divine love was the only book i actually vaguely enjoying on my middle english course.

julian (not her real name) was an anchorite at the church of st julian in norwich, she was born in around 1342. during a bad illness, she had visions of God, and wrote them down in her 'revelation'.

actually, that's not what i remember, i've got all of that from wikipedia just now. what i remember is one line: "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well".

regardless of whether you believe what julian did (that she had received this revelation from god), a fantastic optimism just radiates from the statement.

and it makes such a fantastic motto that i have been using it in stressful situations ever since. although julian, perhaps, might have had a different revelation had she too been on a fixed term contract.

Labels: books, julian of norwich, work

feather boa 10:12 am

the trouble with not having a commute to work is that i barely get any reading time anymore. sure i miss out on delayed trains and buses stuck in traffic, but conversely i never get to just sit and read and listen to my ipod (my poor ipod has had very little use since i started this job).

i just updated my media addict del.icio.us account, after seeing the last king of scotland last night. and i realised that i have been reading the same book since the beginning of the year (philip roth's american pastoral). there was a time when i could have finished that book in a day, and it's left me wondering where the time's gone.

of course, working 8/9 hours a day is a big part of it, especially when i'm also occasionally working in the evenings and on a saturday and i've been having 4 hours of driving lessons a week for the last few months. that's still only around 50 hours of a possible 168, though. allowing another 9 hours a day for sleeping (and daily ablutions - washing etc) leaves 55 hours a week of free time - about 7 hours and 50 minutes a day.

wtf? how on earth am i wasting nearly 8 hours of free time a day? my guess is that it's watching television and pissing about on the intarwebs. perhaps, as i haven't given anything up for lent this year (my plan was fizzy drinks but i failed miserably the first time i had a hangover) i should do a week without my laptop in the run up to easter... i'll let you know how that goes.

Labels: commuting, time, work

feather boa 10:16 am

it seems like everyone around me is getting colds at the moment - i haven't been properly poorly since august, which is actually quite unusual. i was expecting to get sick over christmas, when i had three weeks off - i treated every sneeze as a sign of impending mucus overdrive - but it never came. i didn't even have a flu jab this year (which i'm totally entitled to have).

i'm vaguely putting it down to growing up in london - because you're exposed to more germs in cities - viruses come in from foreign climes and you just get over them. the only time i've had the flu - to the best of my knowlege - was october aught three when i caught york fresher's flu just as i was starting at lcp. (incidentally, re-reading that month's posts, i'm struck by the legwarmers on her arms comment, strangely i knitted myself a pair of arm warmers just after christmas (although i'm calling them gauntlets). fashion really has come a long way in two and half years. or maybe i was just sheltered from it, being up in york.

work is, um, winding down in a way that is not terribly encouraging. i have a bad feeling that if i don't put my arse into serious gear i could end up getting dropped like a hot potato from the integrated multimedia content house. not that i don't have plans up my sleeve, but i like it here. le sigh.

Labels: fashion, flu, work, york

feather boa 4:41 pm