Georgian By Choice

Too cool

I've had a week of contrasting environments. Last Friday I was at a big record label. Laconic, beardy, achingly cool - even with post-Brits seediness. Walls plastered with black and whites of pretty much every big star you could imagine. Floor to ceiling speakers.  Interesting lighting.

Too hot

On Tuesday, I was deep in the labyrinthine warren behind a massive supermarket. Stiflingly hot. No natural light. Endless corridors. Grey linoleum. Swing doors and lockers with stern notices - 'This area is often left in a disgusting state. Clean up after yourself'. Next to the lift, a poster titled 'Smile of the Week' - featuring snapshots of slightly happy staff.

Sort of cool/sort of hot.  Just right

Today I am in a Georgian mansion. Rooms with high ceilings, flooded with lights from huge windows, vast staircases (both wide and shallow). Staircases to glide up and down.  Staircases from which to make a Grand Entrance. If you shut your eyes you can almost hear the rustle of silk taffeta. The house is set in the middle of rolling park land, with old walled gardens (schwing), and a lake and a crumbling stable block.

Last Friday was a sleek showroom - tight and staged, effortful, impressive and slightly intimidating. Tuesday was bleak utility - the ugliness and grind behind the scenes. Today is peace and confidence. Nothing to prove. Nothing to hide. This place KNOWS it's beautiful.

Fallback Position

Ballsack

A crossword puzzle. I am faced with the conundrum of _ ALLBA_ _. My internal lexicon immediately offers up a solution: BALLBAGS. And now I'm seeing BALLBAGS, it's like I'm blind to any other possibility. But is this really likely on the MindGames page of The Times? Let's be rational and search for an alternative. Maybe, just maybe, the B is wrong. Which would leave me with _ ALL _ A _ _.

BALLSACK. This seems more feasible. It's the sort of down-to-earth term that Dr Christian would use on 'Embarrassing Bodies' to put a patient at ease. 'So Lee, I understand you're having problems with your ballsack?' Yes. Perfectly reasonable.

I'm about to ink it in when I realise, sadly, that the answer is FALLBACK. Not BALLBAGS. Not BALLSACK.

Of course, there is nothing to stop me writing the letters I want in those tempting spaces. Occasionally I choose to do this. The only bit I can manage in a cryptic crossword is the cross. They make me disproportionately angry. Like riddles and anything involving a man filling a bath with a dripping tap. But on a busy commuter train there is nothing I enjoy more that filling in a cryptic crossword at breakneck speed. With drivel and rude words. Particularly if I am respectably dressed.

1 Down - Spanish magistrate offers new deal after gangster gets caught (7)  PATATAS
51 Across - Move slowly, being at communion? (4)  ANUS
44  Down - Get very cold outside?  One needs shelter round start of evening. (3, 4) DOG LARD

To any competitive onlookers (and they do exist) I appear to be some kind of autistic savant.  Only those closest know the truth.

My fallback position is ballsack.  Always and forever.

Running In - Please Pass

Imagine with beard + overalls

Last week my car became due for its first proper service.  Not one of the silly intermittent one - which seems to be little more than an oil change and a flannel swiped round the privates.  For these I've been taking it to the dealership, in a scaredy-cat-not-wanting-to-risk-the-warranty's-validity way.  It's now out of warranty, but the dealership contacted me, so I asked for a quote anyway.

When they told me the price, I laughed, and then retched, and then laughed again.  Then I rang the local garage up the road.  I told the chief mechanic what the dealership had quoted me and he laughed drily.  'They would, wouldn't they?' he dead-panned, like a bearded Mandy Rice-Davies.

And with that, I woke from my dealership enchantment, slashed my way out of the forest of complimentary key fobs and showroom Nespresso, and came to my senses.  Back where I belong, in the garage up the road, where nobody raises an eyebrow at the tooth I've lost from my front grille, or the scuffs on my wheel arches.  Was going to get these fixed, but quite frankly they're the only thing that stops my car looking like Noddy's runaround.  Know who you are.  Know where you belong.

Anyway, I'm back.  And the title of this post is not actually about my car, but more about this blog.  I've been SORN for a long time - there's rust on my brake discs, corrosion on my exhaust system and a great deal of bird shit on my bonnet.

Nothing that a road trip and a flannel can't sort.

Good to be back.

Paid To Listen

A job cancelled last minute leaves me in the luxurious position of having a day to myself, on full pay.  I could, as the client suggested, go shopping.  I won't.

This morning, a mild hour of tentative spring.  Shy sun, mallards squabbling, blossom dancing.  All rudely interrupted by the slicing knife of a bitter north wind, that leaves me with aching teeth and a chin so numb it feels like a foreign body.  The Narnian permawinter holds sway still, but there are signs that the daffodils have had enough and are about to mount a coup.  Go, the yellows.  You are the embodiment of optimism.

Back home to defrost my face with coffee.  The house is making small, busy noises.  Heating firing up.  Fridge humming.  Jostling of joists and slate.

I don't have to do anything.  Today I am paid to listen.

Return of Dobbin

Shitoba hung around for three whole days.  And then a shameful display of wanton non-compliance in front of a room full of steely-eyed lawyers.  Another trip to PC World.  Nicky (who's having terrible car trouble at the moment*) and Frank (he is the only person in his department to offer feedback upwards, because he has 'standards'*) are sympathetic messengers of doom.  Apparently a machine has to be returned with the SELF-SAME fault FOUR TIMES before the unit is considered 'faulty' and thoughts turn to refund or replacement.  So, I've got to dance round this particular mulberry bush at least one more time. 

'Please could you watch my wallet?'

Perhaps I could get someone to steal Shitoba.  Like in that terrible Donal MacIntyre documentary, where Donal, desperate to prove levels of crime in a inner city council estate does everything short of handing his expensive laptop to a street-youth and saying 'Can you hold this for a moment, please?'  Eventually the youth obligingly, if reluctantly, trots off with laptop.  Why do I suspect this wouldn't work with Shitoba?

This is the LAST time I will post about this situation.  Please be aware that if I am silent, it is Dobbin/Shitoba-related. 

I suspect that January may see a trip to the Apple store.

* I have spent more time with Nicky and Frank over the last three months than with any of my 'friends'.  This reflects badly on Shitoba.  And me.  We're probably a good fit (uncommitted and frequently absent). 

Return of Shitoba

Finally.  It's taken a whole month for my laptop to be repaired.  Just in time, because my ancient and trusty back-up laptop is giving me notice.  The battery can no longer take a charge - so that means no use if I am any distance from a socket.  When I do have a power source, it's incredibly slow and laboured.  And more and more frequently it decides to peremptorily shut down.  I feel like I am an evil circus owner, forcing an ancient carthorse to dance, when he simply needs to lie down and die.   

So I've been doing as little as possible - hence lack of posts.  Reasoning that if I don't overburden Dobbin, there's more likelihood that he'll see me through the necessary bits.  And to his credit, that has largely been the case.  (Although there was an embarrassing incident in front of eighty people last week.  At least I was prepared.)

The Toshiba is back.  Still got a squeaky keyboard.  But the 'o' seems to have stopped sticking.  Only time will tell if the power situation has been resolved.  This is the third time I've had it repaired in the ten months I've had it.  Every time I take it in to PC World, I am told what a 'good' make and model it is.

'Good'.  In the same way that Victoria Beckham is 'fat'.

Day 372: Emperor Has New Clothes

To the cinema for 'End Of Watch'.  Solid buddy-cops-vs-Mexican-drugs-cartel action.  Having watched 'The Master' a couple of days ago, it is a sweet relief to see a film with understandable characters and a tangible storyline.

Difficult.  Exasperating. 

Film reviewers are throwing stars at "The Master" like confetti.  Don't get it.  Yes, the performances are impressive.  (To my mind, too impressive.  At all times there is a sense that the leads are Doing Very Powerful Acting.)  But that's not enough to make up for everything else - nebulous, opaque and long-winded.   I tried to love it but, despite best efforts, lost heart (along with any narrative thread) somewhere in the middle. 



Eyes,  and and ears, a mouth and a nose

Amongst critics there are some rare voices of dissent - the one that resonates most with me is Roger Ebert, writing for the Chicago Sun:

 'It is fabulously well-acted and crafted, but when I reach for it, my hand closes on air.'

Not so with 'End of Watch'.  Guns.  Blood.  Bodies.  Shouting.  Jake Gyllenhaal with his cartoon-big eyes and mouth.  Simple stuff. 

I think I've found my level (low).