Citychosis

London really is a place to be wary of. I'm now minus my motorbike. It was parked in a public motorcycle bay, on a busy road, locked. It's 250Kg of bike, so not small. It wasn't sporty, it wasn't new and shiny, in fact well overdue for a proper wash and polish and heading for a set of new tyres to boot. And yet it vapourised. I'd not suspected a bike could evaporate so completely in full public view and yet it did. Needless to say I reported the evaporation of my vehicle to the police, it seems that this kind of event is pretty frequent, bikes evaporate all the time. Occasionally they even precipitate out in different parts of the country, I suspect this will not be the case with mine, more likely there will be a diffuse spread of motorbike parts over the next few months appearing sporadically in an eBay auction or Gumtree advert. RIP BMW.

More Of The Same

'Tis late at night and any sane individual would have hit the sack by now. Still, no-one has ever accused me of being sane. I'm thinking about earthquakes and deaths and how these are reported. Does it ever seem petty to focus on the few Brits that may have been caught up in this nightmare when several hundreds, if not thousands, of other souls have also perished or been injured? For those that did not die outright there is the subsequent devastation, the loss of family members and friends, houses, schools, offices destroyed, livelihoods lost and treasured belongings buried. And yet it seems our red tops constantly miss the bigger picture either centering their attention on some trivial local banality, or bypassing the greater tragedy to focus on a tiny few. It is these indications of introspective selfishness I find worrying, the Little Britain mentality. Pretending nothing much happened to anyone but a few unfortunate Britons trivialises these major events in the worst possible way.
Sorry, not much humour in this post, but somehow sarcasm seems a little inappropriate just now.

Election Ennui

After a break of some few years I've decided to pick up the keyboard and let my random musings loose on the world once more. Time has moved on since my previous posts and if anything I am more Unsapient now than I ever was. In the midst of the most monumentally boring general election the UK has ever seen, where the frightening likelihood of the SNP being the power broker is too close to reality, shining a cold cold light of cynicism, sarcasm on this dismal process is probably my only relief short of euthanising myself.
Why boring? I hear the screams of the political classes clamouring about how close the polls are, how exciting the counts will be. The teetering of the Swing-o-meter, or whatever they use these days to show the balance of party power, will have you gripping the edge of your seats and grinding your teeth in anticipation. Or, perhaps not. There is not single policy that excites, austerity measures necessarily hold sway and any party that ends up being prime will be stealing from Peter to pay Paul or vice versa. There are no winners, except in the figments of the febrile imaginations of the final occupants of the House of Commons and the press hounds sniffing around their random droppings.
Too bad then that this battle between Cameron, Miliband, Sturgeon, Farage and Clegg has no real meaning. The illusion of having any power over the destiny of this country is no more sane than the delirious ravings of a drunk believing he is dodging the faeries as he staggers down the street. Global industries, global markets, global investment, global poverty, global pollution are what really matter. And, without this global view, any insular attempt to resolve the problems of an economy so dependent upon the rest of the world for any semblance of stability is doomed to fail. It is precisely this global perspective that our candidates and parties appear to be missing. And so, this election is a mere sideshow on a sideshow on the global stage.

Time

This weekend was move the clocks weekend. Well actually, not so much moving the clocks but moving the time on the clocks. Isn't that just ridiculous. This time of year we loose an hour. One instant it's 01:00 in the morning and the next it's 02:00. Where did that hour go? Why did that hour go? These are important questions - For goodness sake that's a whole hour of sleep I lost just then. It wouldn't matter so much except that for me that's actually about 25% of my sleep for a day, on a good day maybe 33%.

I don't really see what relevance this lose an hour here, gain an hour there has any longer. Does it really make any difference to people. Do even the farmers care nowadays? I know that this morning, on the way to work, the streets were deserted - and cynical me thought that perhaps there is a whole population out there that did not remember to move their clocks. They managed to get through Sunday without noticing and woke up on Monday a whole hour later than they should have done.

Can you imagine the scene? Rouses from bed, switches on radio and half hears the time as 08:37. Goes into kitchen, switches on television. Notices, in an absent way that it's the wrong program. Looks at clock in bottom of screen. Not quite what was expected. Looks again more carefully. Goes pale, drops egg down front of shirt. Rushes upstairs puts on clean shirt but buttons it up one button out of sync. Dashes down stairs, switches off the cat and puts the television outside for the day. Runs down road to catch bus. Waits an age and swears a lot. Bus not running to time. Why? Because this is the bus driver and so should have been at the depot over an hour ago to collect bus to arrive at this stop for 08:45.

And so it goes on, a million micro catastrophes and maybe some larger ones, all because we want to play with time. You know what? In engineering we have a saying "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" I think that applies to our amateur efforts to manipulate time too.

Plane Silly

Well, on my transport hobby horse again. I must be getting quite boring. But this time it's air travel. The question is; how to turn a non event into something vaguely interesting. It's Monday, the first day back to work after a few days off. During those few days I got a txt from work saying that I had to be in Livingston for a 10:00am meeting this Monday. "Ah, that's short notice" I exclaim to myself - or something along those lines, during which time the swear box got a couple of pounds richer. A quick web search demonstrates that I will need to be out of bed about 4am if I take plane from Heathrow, or if it's Gatwick I can have a relatively late departure from home of about 6:15. That's feasible - I might manage to wake for that. I check the web again, Hmmm doesn't look too clever, Gatwick are remodelling the North Terminal car park - so no parking there. But, transfer from South Terminal is quick and frequent so ....I ring the wonderful Amelia, our departmental secretary. She does some magic and lo and behold a few hours later electronically booked tickets appear in my e-mail. Thus far so good. And, come Sunday I manage to work my way through BA's eCheckin and pick my seats for outbound and return flights - and its a breeze. I'm feeling happy - I've just saved myself about 30mins of tedious queuing to collect tickets.

Monday morning; 5:30. I wake. I listen - it's raining. Hard! The prospect of a quick ride on the bike looks less than pleasant.Arriving with soaking wet clobber and nowhere to dry it - not a nice prospect. I wake my wife and beg a lift to the station to try and catch 6:14 train (47 minutes to Gatwick - 6:18 train 1hr 30mins; amazing what a difference those 4 minutes can make) credit where credit is due - she is happy to give a lift to the station. Come 6:10 we still haven't left the house, the 6:14 train looks unlikely, but the weather has improved to the extent I won't get soaked. I jump into the biker gear and leap on the bike. 30 minutes later Gatwick. I even find parking for the bike. And I make the transfer from South to North Terminals as planned. It's all going swimmingly.

Security. Ah, security! It's looking a little busy. I join the merry throng. We do a very slow conga through the tapes. Many people wave clear plastic bags full of colourful cosmetics - how festive. We wind down to the booth officials. I have a very dodgy picture taken as I pass through boarding control and on towards the metal/bomb detectors. I divest myself of mostly everything, including my jacket. I pass through, I fail, I get thoroughly patted down and have my belt, watch, cufflinks and motorbike boots examined. Boots cause a raised eyebrow, I explain that I'm not a goth and my bike is parked at the South Terminal - hence, also, the rather heavy jacket. I pass on through. Loads of time left, I stroll rather than rush to the boarding gate. I stroll rather rush onto the plane. I sit down. I relax. I look at my watch - 15 minutes to take off...... 5 minutes to take off .....2 minutes to take off. Announcement from captain - 'Sorry our plane is disintegrating as we sit here I have decided to delay take off until some engineers can be found to stick it back together'. Engineers arrive with parts, ETD is now 9:15 rather than 8:10. ...... I look at my watch 9:00 ...... 9:10. Another announcement from our esteemed captain - another delay, maybe the glue hadn't quite set or the part couldn't quite be hammered into place. Another hour sat here by the terminal. 10:15 - the captain announces we're OK to depart. Ah, only 2 hours late for the meeting then. Another delay, I would have decamped the plane.

Some hours and a meeting later, and now - here I sit in Edinburgh airport. As I type this, ominous announcements over the tannoy declare "Your attention please! The fire alarm has been activated in another area. Please remain where you are and await further announcements." I await the announcement that says "PANIC!!!!" At last boarding is called and we take our allotted seats. After a mere 1 hour extra delay, passenger missing error, we can depart - homeward bound at last!

Full Circle

Well, another month, another entry

Today is the first day back at the new office. Yes it sounds strange, but since I have been with this company, about 7.5 years now. During that time we've moved offices several times. I started in the West End office, this is a mixed blessing. The location - good restaurants, high tech shops and a fair mix of clothes, paper, furniture and other odds and sods means that any purchasing needs are catered for. And the proximity to Soho, the cinemas and theatre land and the nether world means that if you can't find something to occupy yourself for entertainment then your needs are probably beyond the legal norm.

The West End office itself, by way of contrast, is probably some of the worst office space available. Yes, it looks OK, but the aircon doesn't work, it has limited space and the lift has an irritating tendency to deposit visitor at floor 2 and 3/4. Since Harry Potter and his Hogwarts colleagues are sadly missing this means a call to the lift engineer or the firebrigade to get the poor souls out.

Anyway, this was my office home for the first few years. Then we took a lease on some property on the East End - Brick Lane. A disused sweat shop - aka clothing factory. The sort of place that made me feel as if I'd spontaneously flown a few thousand miles south to Bangladesh. 20 minutes on the tube from Charing Cross and it's a whole new world. Same weather, completely different place, new sights, sounds, smells and ambience. This is the cultural centre of the Bangla community in London. Curry houses line the street. A radical change from the leather shops that used to be the mainstay of business there when I lived in Hampstead (as a lodger.I couldn't afford a house there!). So, what with curry houses, beigel shops (a legacy of the Jewish history of Brick Lane), Spitalfields market and Noodle King up the road your culinary tastes are generally well catered for. Let's just hope curry is what you want. Just recently the City has been encroaching. New office blocks around Spitalfields and a whole gentrification of the area. Now 'Meejaa' competes with curry and sari shops for space. The side streets are shifting emphasis from seedy down at heel shops to wide expanses of glass fronted offices which look in on Mac laden desks. And yes, the flat prices are rising to match the new wealth.

Then Easynet had a reverse merger with another company, and for a while my offices were several in Chertsey. The back end of no-where and a nightmare to get to, and once you were there you wondered why you'd bothered. Still the offces were good ......... Yawn, ZZzzzzz.

And so back to Brick Lane, and then back to Whitfield St (9 months - a pregnant pause I suppose) and now back to Brick Lane. Full circle again and again.