wave

This recent drastic improvement in the weather seems to have had the unfortunate side effect of putting my brain to sleep. Despite having my three month review and thereby formally completing my probationary period (with flying colours, of course) I've drifted through the last couple of days at work. Afterwards we've gone down to the harbour to sit by the sparkling waters with a pint which of course has only caused me to be even more soporific when I arrive home.

I'm missing my friends more than ever at the moment, too, in that way in which it's all to easy to focus on sadnesses when one feels tired. Though I suppose on the flipside, the sun does help me appreciate my new home. Cycling in along the river in the morning with a sea breeze in my hair and the sun warm on my skin is endlessly more pleasant than the hot fuggy breathless city on a summer's day, and it's wondrous to be able to open the windows in the office and feel the air move.

snippet

1 pint on a fairly empty stomach and I do everything one shouldn't do when faintly tipsy: drive, go to the supermarket, blog...

strange homecomings

Actually written at 15.03 on the train from London back to the West Country

Walking through central London late on a Saturday night, early Sunday morning, and even having been away for only three months I view it suddenly with different eyes, used to quiet streets and green hills.

The people are different. There are more of them; even at 2am the streets are packed, both on and off the pavement, on foot and in cars, there are traffic jams and throngs of all kinds of different folk. Middle aged, young, white, brown, foreign, British, tourists, straight, gay, dressed up to the nines, in leather, in hot pants, in jeans, tattoed, pierced, clean, fresh faced, haggard, slow, impatient, angry, abusive, enthusiastic, full of all the various emotions of life.

It is as though there has been a festival in town, and revellers are lingering and making noise amongst the detritus of the day. Walls are lined with beer bottles, fast food containers, empty cans and cigarette stubs. The amount of rubbish on the streets is incredible. London must have a hidden army of street cleaners out in force in the early hours of a Sunday morning just in order to keep it looking vaguely respectable. It is nothing like a city like Berlin which seems permanently scrubbed and white washed.

London at the moment to me is old and familiar, friendly, trusted, yet I don't quite sit right in it. Like a favourite pair of shoes I haven't worn in a while, it still makes me feel glamorous and exciting but rubs a little in the wrong places.

interminable frustration

Sometimes, you just can't win, and that makes me cross. Why should these huge companies be able to trap us in a cycle of useless call centre staff and unhelpful help? Two I'd like to name and shame:

British Airways, whose website gives you two options: see the really cheap tickets but let it hide the only slightly more expensive ones, or buy the really expensive flexible tickets. Only by going through the multi-city path, even if you're not travelling to multiple cities, can you see all the flights. Even then, when I tried to buy two tickets instead of one, it charged me three times as much and I had to get my friend to log on simultaneously so we could both get the individual lower price. Trying to sort this out through customer services took me via three useless people who accused me of lying, transferred me through to the wrong people, and got me so frustrated that I kept interupting them whereupon this final guy got obsessed with being allowed to finish his sentences. I don't think I should have to be patient with customer service people, frankly, I'm not an unreasonable person, so I do think it's up to them to respond well so that I don't get annoyed, not up to me to continue being polite when their company is being bloody unhelpful.

The other is the National Trust who insist on sending me and my sister our post addressed to just Miss and our surname, so we can't tell letters apart. When I called the membership department they told me it wasn't, it was customer services, and to get membership I had to email them on the generic enquiries email address (well of course, silly me for calling the number given for membership) and then they just put me on their email mailing list and have still failed to take me off it.

It's not so much the errors and the problems which annoy me but the total powerlessness I have to do anything about it, as complaining just gets you into this circle of irritation by the end of which you have 10 complaints instead of just one and it's just all too complicated, so you give up. Grrrrr.

green and yellow and blue

I'm travelling from Leeds back to my little home town, London, and now that the broken window has been fixed, I've moved to a coach with air conditioning, and the wifi has started working, this train ride is quite a pleasant experience. I have a glass of wine and am looking out onto the vibrant colours of the English countryside on a sunny evening; green grass, yellow rape, red brick houses and the bright blue sky. I've seen sheep, cows and even rabbits in the fields and for once the train is relatively peaceful with no one chatting or listening to overly loud music on their headphones.

Last night in my tiny hotel room with its single bed and dirty crockery I felt miserable. Being a long way from home without friends (in my old job I was nearly always travelling in company or met colleagues at my destination) made me realise the fragile nature of my residence in my new city, how it doesn't quite feel like home yet but means that neither does London anymore. Visiting another company who are very established and run a lot of good projects made me realise how much I have to learn. Not yet feeling quite able to text the new man with a sad "this hotel room is lonely" message made me realise how quickly relationships can break down walls without necessarily immediately offering a different kind of solidity in their place.

Yet today... I have a long weekend ahead, I'm seeing friends tomorrow, my mobile is my friend, and I'm feeling a kind of peacefulness through time spent alone.

the train blog returns

Actually (mostly) written at 10.36 on the Cross Country train

My first travel for work in the new job, and it's been a very early morning start for the train to Leeds, so I've dozed most of the way so far. My brain is somewhat occupied at the moment with non-work matters: there is a fledgling romance happening that has gone past the point of withdrawal without hurt for someone, so, I've been treading the paths of that maze cautiously, having many a philosophical thought along the way. I'm not sure whether these deliberations are helpful or not.

It really is a maze, any relationship. You can't see past the next hedge, decisions may well take you to a dead end, you might have to take unlikely routes in order to succeed, and sometimes you get that uncanny feeling of having been this way before. Where the metaphor probably breaks down is that life doesn't have neat little goals: there isn't a fountain and a bench in the middle where you can sit down and rest knowing that your job is done. It's a continual process, so I suppose that means one ought to just try and enjoy where you are as much as possible rather than fretting about another place you're trying to get to.

Easily said.

still ill

The trouble with being home off work is how boring it is. This is why I usually drag myself in, because what's to enjoy about being at home when you're feeling feeble and don't want to do anything? You might as well feel bad at work and have something to take your mind off it.

So yes, anyone reading this is going to have to suffer with me because it doesn't get any more exciting than this; yet more honey and lemon tea, yet more paracetamol; probably yet more bbc iplayer, if my internet decides to ever work for more than 5 seconds at a time.

Oooh, though, I did watch Conversations with Other Women last night and it was really good - recommend it. That may be the only remotely interesting thing I say today.