Quick sign of life

Hi there! I am on a borrowed internet connection right now, so I'll keep it short, but all will hopefully be well again Monday week when we get broadband again in Woking. It's a long, sad story so I will spare you it. Our old provider were NTL (now virgin media) and I have not one good word to say about them. How does that old adage go? If you've got nothing good to say.. talk about the weather?

On trawling through my old (windows) laptop..

searching for a copy of my CV (aherm... last updated in 2004..), I came across another word file I had entitled, "The Decade". It was an unfinished attempt at a round robin missive I was going to send to my nearest and dearest before I moved into my thirties to thank them for all the fun and fulfillment of my 20s! I won't bore you with all of it (too long, even in its unfinished state!), but here's the bit I wrote about how my world at 20 compared with how I saw things on the eve of the big "three O"..

3rd October 2004: Speaking of literally putting pen to actual paper, this quaint, old-fashioned practice is one of the many things that has virtually disappeared from my daily existence over the last decade. Add to that, drinking tap water (or for that matter doing anything with it other than washing the dishes, watering the garden or channelling it through the shower, basin or bath), going further than the end of the garden without a mobile phone, 56k modems, thinking that the getting a fifth TV channel is a big deal, or that interactive TV is the stuff of some sort of Star Trek future (this will only mean something to the Brits among you; the rest of the world got excess channel fatigue decades ago..), the sense of moral outrage that would allow us to see that reality TV is in fact not at all amusing or entertaining, but rather tacky, tasteless, demeaning mind-dulling, dragging us back to the dark ages in Western Europe, when people thought watching public executions and people being mauled by lions was all part of a fun day out, the concept that water is vital to humanity’s existence and therefore, the rights to it, if owned by anyone, should be owned by all, and not carved up and sold off to goodness knows whom for a quick buck, the illusion that our public pensions will keep us off the streets when we are old and that our company pensions plans are inviolable, using public payphones, other than to admire the aesthetic qualities of the interior décor (commonly wall-papered with business cards and leaflets heralding the particular mind-boggling USPs of one sex-industry worker or another..), worrying unduly about the cost of international phone calls, let alone the cost of flying (hallelujah!), the Deutschmark, the Franc and the Lira, having only one energy and communication service provider to choose from, government-funded first degrees, the association of the acronym, “PC” with nothing more harmless than a police constable, or for the techno-minded, the personal computer, rather than the attempt by a shallow, lazy world to replace the need to build relationships based on respect, consideration and genuine willingness to understand with a tick-box, catch-all social code of conduct, that creates a “safe harbour” allowing discrimination to continue unabated under the surface without the unwelcome consequence of legal or other redress, the hope of ever meeting my bank manager (I have banked with an Internet bank for the past 4 years), voting LibDem was considered at best a quirky eccentricity that was humoured in friends… and the list of changes, good and bad, goes on and on.

The world is not however completely unrecognisable, as I see it. The Queen is still the Queen and Prince Charles is still patiently (?) waiting in the wings. British Rail is still getting there and the fares are still inversely proportionate to the level of service, but now you need a forensic expert to figure out to whom you should make a complaint! British cuisine is still an oxymoron and our football fans don’t know how to behave abroad. On the broader front, Madonna is still the unrivalled Queen of pop (sorry Britney, but you just don’t cut it, and Kylie, we love the new you, but Madge is still no. 1!), and the talent of the likes of U2 and Sting continue to enthral millions across the globe. Many of the big multinational brands have stayed with us, Coca Cola, Pepsi, MacDonalds, Mars, Nestle, the Malborough Man (more’s the pity) as have the big NGOs like the Red Cross/Crescent, Oxfam, Greenpeace and Amnesty International. Despite all the doomsayers of the past few years, the UN and all its related institutions are also still standing, shaky though they may be...

Forget commercialised schmalz and debates over the relative eco-friendliness of roses from the hothouses of Holland vs. the fields of Kenya..

Let's celebrate Fat Thursday!!! :) I've recently got into to the habit of checking the "On this day" section of wikipedia, where you can find out what national holidays and festivals are going around the world. Well, I was delighted to discover that courtesy of the Germans and the Poles, today we get "a day of gluttony and belly-worship, when people meet in their homes or cafés with their friends and relatives and eat large quantities of sweets, cakes and other meals forbidden during Lent" - or Fat Thursday! Surely this is closer to most people's hearts than the gratuitous rose-culling and empty commercialism of yesterday ? Let's hear it for "belly worship"! Bon appetit :)

For the article on the relative eco-friendliness of Roses from Africa vs. the Netherlands, click here

My first organic veg box

Farmer's choice vegetable box

So my powers of concentration with regard to study are still pretty sketchy, but I'm hoping the new drive to eat my 5 a day will help the grey cells get up from their comfy couch and get to work! To this end, I've signed up with one of these organic vegetable and fruit box suppliers, who will deliver a selection of fruit and veg of your choice, plus any extra items you order, in this case lentils and a tin of chopped tomatoes, as often as once a week. This week, I've decided to go for the Farmer's choice vegetable box, which purports to include only products grown regionally. So far I've sampled the onions and carrots (there were also some mushrooms in there, but they'd already reached the fridge by the time the photo was taken) and they were delicious!

Now I've ticked all the boxes at last..

and successfully logged into the online interactive teaching platform (UELPlus), I can finally begin my studies, and the first shock of the day was to discover that I have a deadline in two weeks time already.. aargh :( I rejoined my local library, and sat down for an hour and a half with my study guides for all three of the modules I am taking this semester, General anatomy, Physiology and Histology, Botany and Phytomedicine and Skills for Herbalists and found concentrating for that long a real struggle. It'll be a painful process getting the old grey cells working again.. :(

On the plus side though, I taught my first (and hopefully not last ;) yoga class yesterday evening, which was very exciting. I had one beginner and another four people whose ability ranged between beginner/intermediate and intermediate. It was quite challenging pitching the class in such a way that the beginner didn't get freaked out and the more advanced people didn't get bored.. but hopefully I succeeded! I'll find out when I go back next week and see if they've come back for more :)

In the meantime I'm trying, not so successfully, to get into a routine of getting up early enough in the morning to fit in a session of meditation and some yoga before I start the rest of the day. the problem is that every time I go into London, for choir etc., I end up getting to bed late, so the whole timetable is thrown off. I wish I knew how to survive on less sleep, like the infamous Iron Lady.. Any ideas?

It's a tough neighbourhood..

squirrel behind bars in West Ham Park

So I finally got my student ID yesterday! This little smart card, with an out-of-focus mugshot of me on it, is essentially my life for the next three years, and will hopefully help dull the financial pain of operating in and around London and dealing with UK pound sterling prices. My first task was to apply for yet another mugshot card, which will get me discounted public transport in London. My next step will be to get a few museum memberships, so that I can start my apprenticeship as a culture vulture (there has to be some advantage to being in a big city!) again.

A cold and frosty morning..

In Wiltshire. It's been a glorious day here from the word go, with views like this across my grandmother's garden and beyond.


birdbath in the morning light

As far as the studies go, I now have only 4 ticks outstanding on that induction checklist (albeit, some pretty important ones like getting my student ID!), and I hope to be a fully paid up student by the end of Tuesday. I now have all my study guides for this semester and they also kindly sent me some chamomile flowers and some Dandelion Root (roasted).. hmm not intended for a cup of tea I suspect!

A propos of nothing, I've been making very full use of skype this week (talking to people via the world wide web), chatting to people in Australia, New York, Fulham, Japan and Mexico, all for free (if you discount the monthly cost to each party of broadband internet) and sometimes with two way video chat. The crowning moment had to be the three-way conference call (sadly no video) with RPC in Fulham and L&RRK in NY. Forget about how we all coped before the invention of the mobile phone! What about life before VOIP and IM? Our grandchildren will stare wide-eyed, when we describe this "old" world to them. "What? Do you mean you weren't able to see the other person when you spoke to them on the phone? How weird?!" Sigh.. I feel old already ;)


pony trek in the lane


Walking off a big Sunday lunch

The sound of Babel

Went to see Babel last night, and the soundtrack is quite brilliant. Very haunting and moving. The Argentine musician Gustavo Santaolalla is the main artist behind it, but Ryuichi Sakamoto's pieces are also wonderful.

A warning though, as the film's title implies, it's not exactly a heart-warming story.. It does what is says on the tin, so don't go along to see it if you want to feel better about the state of mankind!