bookmark_borderOne step at a time

The flat is slowly taking shape. I’ve a few furniture purchases to make, several bookcases (white, although I may paint the backgrounds) and some bedroom furniture which will include two red bedside tables and a yet to be decided colour of chests of drawers (built-in wardrobes FTW!), a small bookcase/unit for the hall, a TV unit and possibly a low unit or two for under the windows in the living room.

Aside from that I need to buy frames.

I need some frames

I seem to have purchased a few prints/letterpress art and have nothing to put them in. I’m also not sure what will go where yet and don’t really want to decide until I get the bookcases into the living room and shuffle things about. I keep toying with getting some random frames, rather than getting all of them in one style but I don’t think I’m quite ready for that yet, my minimal and simplistic aesthetics probably won’t allow me.

Time will tell.

bookmark_borderHappily lost

The heavy staccato, the ponderous, throbbing heartbeat, pulsating through their every pore, filling them completely. They are beholden to it, quick to relinquish control, released into it, devoured, immersed, completely lost to each pulse, every melody.

All around them the closed eyes of their brothers and sisters cry out, silence roars from deafened mouths as torsos twist in grotesque beauty. The air fills with animal noise, the lust flashes and fades, whilst the gentle sheen of bodies in movement, syncopated in their desires, oblivious to the world, continues to move.

There is no time in this place, no walls or ceiling, the floor rendered in booming sonic waves, the smoke machines billow and bloom, false clouds ripped apart by light after colourful flashing light.

As one they slip and heave this way and that, lost amongst the dimensions, a gyrating, pitching mass. The sounds fade and blossom, spinning through the air, drifting like smoke through hazy arms and swirling legs. They are one, consumed and completed.

They feel it move amongst them, the ebb and flow of an energy and emotion that courses from body to glistening body. It is a raw, ethereal force, tumbling across the floor. It will not be sated but must fed, and willingly they give up their bodies to it, sacrifical and sacrosanct. This night will never end. Every fragment is blurred to the next, the music spins and cartwheels, crescendo after aching crescendo, and all the while the heart, the driving pulse of the beast, continues.

And on they dance.

bookmark_borderStill busy

I know it’s still October (just) but I just wanted to say that I’m looking forward to Christmas this year, largely because it’ll be a holiday.

The sale of the house is complete, debts have been paid off, and all that is left for me is to change the address on my driver’s license, join a gym, and buy a few bookcases and a some bedroom furniture (I have other purchases planned but they’ll be Christmas presents to myself, before the VAT rises).

The past couple of months have been somewhat busy; packing, fretting, phoning, packing, phoning, signing, phoning, fretting, phoning, fretting, phoning, unpacking, unpacking, phoning, fretting, unpacking, phoning, celebrating!, unpacking, buying, paying, phoning, paying, phoning, paying, partying, not to mention working.

November is looking just as busy if not quite for the same reasons; Working, travelling, working, Working, gigging, working, gigging, Working, gigging, Working, working, Working, working. I’m attending three gigs in one week and a wedding in Bristol, I’m making a start on revamping the ISTC website, building a website for someone else, and all the while at Work we are planning ahead to 2011 and all that that entails (plans, spreadsheets, meetings and more plans).

December is a bit calmer but will soon devolve into the usual whirl of nights out, parties, and shopping until it hits Christmas Eve as from then, until the 5th of January, all I’ll have is food, drinks, good company, presents and copious amounts of sleep.

Which, if you ask me, sounds bloody marvellous.

bookmark_borderSOLD

In every walk of life, some people seem to exist just to annoy and piss off everyone else. Today I’d like to talk about lawyers.

Before I say anything negative, I would like to hold up a shining example of a good lawyer. So, if you are in the Lanarkshire area, I can recommend Stretford and Tulips in Hamilton, specifically Louise Johnstone and Linda Dick who provided exemplary service in a professional and friendly manner, keeping us up to speed with progress and making sure we knew what was happening as things progressed.

The lawyer on the purchasing side however, not so good. In fact he turned out to be the most pedantic, nitpicky and frustrating, nay unprofessional person (taking a day off on the day we hoped to finally, belatedly, complete the sale is a little ‘off’, wouldn’t you say?).

However, that is all in the past as, midway through last week, only five days after the agreed date, we finally concluded the sale of our house!

All it took was an extra inspection (from the Council Buildings department which took all of two minutes and cost £265) on top of the previous two inspections, one completed for the home report, one completed by the mortgage provider for the buyers, an indemnity policy to cover the appearance of any sink holes as per the terms of the Title Deeds (or in case anyone wanted to, you know, open a mine in the middle of a housing estate in Hamilton), and the issuing of a threat of breach of contract to hurry things along.

It’s all done and dusted now though with the final monies due to land into my account in the next couple of days.

WOOOOOOO and indeed YAAYYYYYYYY!!!

bookmark_borderMechanics Weekly

You’ve heard of coincidences, right? Well sometimes when those coincidences are a little too unbelievable, our family (OK, mostly Mumsy) says they are “spooky”. So it’s safe to say that when I found out the name of our solicitor was Louise, that was just a coincidence, but when her legal assistant is called Linda (my Mum’s name is Lynda), well then, that’s just “spooky”. With me?

Look, this is my mother’s thing, I’m just relaying it.

That said, now and again there are some genuinely weird coincidences that can, and should, be correctly labelled as “spooky” or as I may have uttered on this occasion, “Ohhhhhh spoooooooooky!”.

This is a story of one such occasion.

A couple of weekends ago my family came over to help me move some boxes into my new flat. My Mum and Dad helped a lot but unfortunately my sister was taken very ill that morning but, bless her, she struggled from her sick bed to offer some moral support (and some vomit, which was nice).

Now, it would be unfair of me to suggest that her illness had any relation to the amount of alcohol she had imbibed the night before but I suspect that, and I’ll let the irony of this linger a moment, … it was just coincidence.

I digress.

Frequently.

See, I’m doing it again.

Now, where was I? Ohh yes…

Once we reached the flat and had unloaded both cars we decided to head to Byres Road for lunch. I noted that my sister perked up considerably after a large chicken burger but decided it best not to mention this. As it was a nice afternoon, if a bit brisk of wind, we took a post-prandial, and ended up stopping in on a junk shop I’ve mentioned here before. I bought a mirror, and my Dad, after much huffing and puffing about the place picked up an old car magazine (I think it was printed around 1967).

We departed the junk shop and wandering back to the car I asked my Dad about his purchase. He said it was a little bit of reminiscing on his part and also that he knew a mechanic that would appreciate it and anyway, it was only £2 for a wee trip down memory lane.

As he was telling me this he turned the magazine over to show me the price label and there, written in pencil along the top of the front cover was a name. I presume the magazine had been delivered when first published, or perhaps picked up in the local newsagent by the man who had ordered it, hence why it had a surname written on it.

I do hope that “Mr. McLean” enjoyed reading the magazine when he first received it all those years ago.

Say it with me now, ohhhhhh spoooooooooky!

bookmark_borderHow do you learn?

I was recently asked for some advice for people new to technical communications and I found myself reminded of the Curse of Knowledge: “when we know something, it becomes hard for us to imagine not knowing it. As a result, we become lousy communicators”.

I struggle to remember not only what I didn’t know when I first started out in this profession, but how I learned things on the way. Memory suggests it was a mix of trial and error, good advice and lots of reading of other documentation to see how other people did it.

I won’t give away the advice I passed on, it’ll be published next week, but it did cause me to ponder my own career progression and how I pass on the knowledge I have to the rest of the team.

Passing on a mish-mash of learned knowledge is always tricky and can be dangerous. A recent discussion about improving the quality of our indexing reminds me that the way I learned to do it was based on thinking that is ten years old and may, or may not, have been superseded by better researched methods.

So the best thing you can teach anyone is surely the ability to learn for themselves, give them space to make mistakes (everyone does, it’s an essential part of learning), and help them understand what questions to ask and when best to ask them.