Who said the spirit of Christmas is dead? Just look the wonderful tree our district has put on for us:
It’s been like that for weeks now. OK, I appreciate there might not be enough money in the budget to replace it, but surely a tree that looks like it has been given a good kicking is worse?
Having still not found a real reason for one of these but just wanting to own one I finally succumbed yesterday and bought a shiny new netbook. We were in Costco and they were there calling out my name “Stuart, buy me” they were saying, so I did. I am now the proud owner of an Acer Aspire One. As you will see from the time I am posting during working hours (lunch of course) as it is a really teeny tiny computer that is genuinely stuffable into your bag to carry about for the day. So here I am at work, on the free wi-fi, browsing Engadget and updating the blog.
I am a very happy person right now.
I’ve started getting musical hankerings again, which means spending much time in instrument shops playing with all the kit. I was in a place near soho, and spotted this in among the sheet music:
Can you just imagine what this would sound like? Superb.
Big changes with the Silvershed household. All at once we were given a tip off that someone fancied renting out our house, had him come and visit, have him decide that yes, he rather liked the look of it, and could he move in next week, please?
Cue lots of very frenzied rushing around trying to sort everything out. I’m way more familiar with the M6 than I’d like to be, and I’ve missed several really rather good concerts that I wanted to go to. But it’s done. NorthHouse can manage itself for a bit, and for the first time in 18 months I don’t have to worry about which city I need to be in at any one time.
And do you know what? I’m totally lost. I can’t kid myself that I still live there any more. I have to face up to the fact that my life is down here now. And I love it down here, I really do, but sometimes I hugely miss that easy familiarity that comes with places and friends you’ve known for a bit. Even if most of those friends have moved on themselves in the meantime.
Maybe this is a good thing. I can stop living on pause, start working at making this into my city. But right now, I’m just going to feel a little bit sad.
Don’t you hate those really annoying marketing calls you get at home. We’ve signed up for the privacy service with BT but that only stops UK based marketing calls, not the international ones and since getting a phone line back we usually have 2 international calls a day when we get back in from work in the evening.
Last night one of them called in the evening and I enjoy winding them up so I try and always answer them now. There is no point getting annoyed at them, it is much more fun to wind them up. My previous ploy has generally been to answer and then go silent on them, you can hear them thinking WTF is going on.
Anyway, last night they were asking for a Mr Ness and I decided it would be fun to advise we were in mourning after Mr Ness had died earlier that day. This completely threw whatever script the caller was working to and he was almost spluttering down the phone trying to work out what to say. Needless to say at the same time Mim was falling about on the floor trying not to laugh out loud. In the end the guy on the phone apologised for our loss and hung up.
I think everyone should try this on a telemarketer at least once to see what happens, maybe we can get a few to explode in their office.
We’ve just spent a proper weekend at North House for the first time in ages, tidying the garden up and just keeping on top of things. I really like the flat we’ve got down here, and it feels far more like home than the empty, slightly smelly, house we own up north.
But a couple of hours getting rid of the weeds? Oh, I miss it so very much. I can’t wait until this phase of our life is over and I get a garden back.
What shall we give away to promote butter? I know, five potatoes.
To be fair, it’s a nice idea to give you the ingredients for a recipe, just not what I was expecting. I think it wasn’t just me either, loads of dumped bags on the street. Wonder if anyone tried to eat one raw?
but it’ll be cool if it does. This is my desk panda.
Popping out for my lunch today, I saw a woman on her mobile phone, chatting to her friend while absent mindedly staring through the window of a shop. So far so normal, except the shop was a Starbucks, and she was staring directly at someone sitting in the window trying to have a quiet cup of coffee and watch the world go by. I reckon they were about two feet apart, if that.
It’s amazing how uncomfortable a stare can make you, even when you’re not in the same room as the starer. The coffee drinker was shuffling and trying very hard not to look at Phone Girl, in the end settling for a 45degree stare at the ceiling with an added air of indifference. It didn’t work.
If I was younger (and therefore crueller) I would suggest this as sport. You could score based on how many people you got to move (with points being deducted if the staree didn’t notice).
