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No, not the English popular beat / ska combo from jolly Camden Town but the amazing news K came home with today.
Still, perhaps, the words of Suggs sum it up best …
Madness, madness, they call it madness
Madness, madness, they call it madness
It’s plain to see
That is what they mean to me
“It’s a bit like how the International Stores used to be”, I said to K, immediately realising that she had probably never heard of them.
It wasn’t until many years after it closed that I realised that there were many International Stores across the country and that Mr and Mrs White who lived up from the road from my Mum and Dad weren’t incredibly rich as a result of owning the largest shop in the town.
After yesterdays trip into London we had decided to stay closer to home doing less exciting things today. The farm shop was certainly a change from those we had seen yesterday in St. James.
After the subtle product placement, lighting and careful displays of Sainsbury’s this store was a refreshing change. Vegetables ran into cheeses which sat next to a mixture of dry goods which flowed into things for the garden and hanging baskets.
No pressure selling, misshapen vegetables and bratwurst from Germany, Mr White would be proud.
“Excuse me Sir, you have a very lucky face”, said the Indian man to me.
“Your face is very lucky, you will have very good fortune for the next few months, you will have to work hard but you will get a lot of money”.
I wasn’t sure why he had chosen me as I was feeling far from lucky. We had come into London to see a photography exhibition but I’d picked a combination of the wrong day and the wrong venue to visit on so that hadn’t worked.
I’d picked somewhere to eat which didn’t live up to it’s promise so we abandoned that idea in favour of one K had visited recently. That turned out to be closed for lunch.
The one around the corner where we did eat was pretentious and rather like eating in an hotel lobby. “Did you see the painting of the woman behind the bar ?”, K asked. I had. It looked rather like a soft porn photography from the 1970s painted in acrylic paint.
Apparently the most notable feature of it wasn’t the silk draped over her eyes but the lack of care and attention to a certain part of her anatomy.
The food was nice but not amazing. Asparagus salad with quail’s eggs and crab salad followed by chicken tortellini and pan fried red mullet on black eyed beans and broad beans. The service was attentive. The problem was there just was no ambiance.
As we left, in a flurry of goodbyes from the staff I had to look. The only problem was the woman serving behind the bar. What if the picture was of her ?
I decided in the end to defer to chivalry and not stop and stare just in case she was the one who was not being attentive there.
After such an eventful day I was surprised to be the only person in Bond Street to have a lucky face. I thanked him before the conversation turned to me sharing some of my current wealth with him to secure the secret of how I could unlock future wealth and we headed home.
The Tube in summer isn’t the best place to be. Not on the Piccadilly line crushed into a carriage with a small woman with a wheely case trying to get onto the remaining few square inches of space on the train while a large Russian man is lifting his case above your head as he pushes himself and the wheely case lady onto the train to the sound of the driver shouting, “STAND CLEAR OF THE DOORS NOW”.
So, I’m taking my lucky face outside this evening to sit and watch some stars, burn some logs and enjoy not being in London for a while.
“Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.”
Bernice Johnson Reagon (American Historian and Musician. b.1942)
I’m not sure if they are helping me discover who I am, they are helping me discover more abut other people, some of which is quite startling….
K “I bought some polenta”.
Me “That’s good, we wanted couscous”
I’m off to look for ways to use a bag of dry polenta.
Update : this strawberry and polenta shortcake recipe may be the answer….
Social networking joins up BT - 03 Apr 2008 - Computing
“It lets us see people’s skills and competencies, allowing us to create communities for addressing specific challenges.”
The internal network has also made it easier to handle the growing need for co-operation across different work disciplines, said Bross.
“As you start to see the formation of ecosystems within the supply chain that can improve your business operation, you often have to move across industries to find the right solution.
“For example, something that worked well in the finance systems could provide benefits to the pharmaceutical sector as well,” he said.
“We have created a massive wiki to help create an understanding between people around the globe, so that everyone is working with the same definition of terms,” said Bross.
I don’t think I will ever be able to turn Sharepoint into something as interesting as Facebook but the more I think of it the more I feel that’s where I’d like to go.
The more I look at the sites we create at work the more I think they fail simply to engage with people. The look more like the static websites people used to throw up in the 80’s with a list of links and an About Me page.
The idea of putting people in charge of micro-sites is a good idea. Not telling them how to make their sites interesting (or even fun), how to attract and keep an audience or how to promote them is a serious failure.
So, in a round of corporate re-organisation all the people I brought in over the last few months move on elsewhere in the company and new ones appear in their place.
I feel bad that this has happened before we got to know each other and I’ll miss the chance to get to know the organisation and the role with them. In a way I feel we could have grown up a little together and made sense of all this madness.
I guess the best I can hope is that I gave then as good a start as I could.
So, in the space of a few months we have gone from one to three Wikis that I now have a hand in.
I know that sort of breaks the idea of a single repository of information but the fact that we have any at all; that the ones we do have people are enthusiastic about and that they are on a supported product set (albeit Sharepoint which has as much to do with information sharing as I have with Lithuanian) is a great step forward.
I’m sitting running WOS for my own ends and every time I try to do anything other than put simple text into Sharepoint I grimace at the lack of functionality but people are slowly begining to see the value of collaborating and sharing information.
Maybe blogging at work will be next ?
Shanties and Sea Songs - Lyrics
Where it’s wave over wave, sea over bow
I’m as happy a man as the sea will allow
There’s no other life for a sailor like me
But to sail the salt sea, boys, sail the sea
There’s no other life but to sail the salt sea
It was windy enough to set sail for distant shores but all we had on our minds was to enjoy a little sun, wander by the sea and watch the seagulls make comedy landings on the beach…
“It’s wireless, Internet radio”, I explained as Martin unwrapped his present.
It seems a long time since we sat in his front room listening the radio with the green eye that we tried to sell and here we are over a year later with Internet radio.
Today we all met for what was supposed to be a combined summer Solstice party and birthday party for Martin but instead became the marking of another year passed.
Happy Birthday !
So I have an evening in alone.
Do I go for Chinese and wonder what “Husband and wife’s lung slice” is, or if “Chicken without sexual life” is a comment on why I’m alone or do I call Dominos …
Perhaps a DVD and some planning for a summer Solstice party is what I need …
Laters.
A few things which have caught my eye ….
The Sharepoint fun goes on :
There’s a lot to be said for OpenSource systems, one of things being ease of use….
“The sun’s coming up”, said K as we drove home at 4:00 this morning.
If I’d had a camera I may have been tempted to stop and take a picture of the sunrise.
As it was all I wanted was my bed, a few hours sleep and the hope that things had gone well at the hospital….
“To sleep, perchance to dream-
ay, there’s the rub.”
Hamlet (III, i, 65-68)
The Stockholm archipelago is one of the most beautiful places in Europe.
Sadly this weekend it claimed the life of one of the brightest of jazz’s stars.
The Local - Swedish jazz star dies in diving accident
“Esbjörn Svensson was extremely important for jazz in Sweden, and even abroad,” said Bosse Persson, the head of the Stockholm jazz festival, where E.S.T. had been scheduled to perform in mid-July.
“He virtually revitalized jazz and created new audiences and inspired musicians,” Persson told the Svenska Dagbladet daily.
Bengt Säve-Söderbergh, the head of Sweden’s national jazz association, agreed.
“He will be deeply missed. There were so many people who liked his music and those who got to know him liked him as a person. He was a warm human being,” Säve-Söderbergh told Svenska Dagbladet.
A warm day, a drive, Chairman Humph - a Tribute, The King of the Swingers and a lot of laughs.
God bless you Humph.
“I can remember when I used to pick you both up with my arms”, he said to them both as they stood to have their pictures taken.
In that moment all the years dropped away, all the problems disappeared, the awkwardness evaporated and they were again a family.
“He’s the only person who can remind me of what it felt like to be six”, said K as we drove back and we both knew that being there had been the right decision.
Nature seems to be taking over here.
Up above there are seagulls, somewhere down the road is a cockerel and just behind the compost bin is a nesting hedgehog.
Who needs Springwatch ?
“The true way to render ourselves happy is to love our work and find in it our pleasure.”
Francoise De Motteville
She probably had the instruction book though. Today I was mainly guessing and trying to make things work with little idea how to do it or if it could be done.
Oh, remember I was telling you about Jane Brown and her battered old Rolleiflex ? There’s now a digital version : very cute …
I hate it when we don’t all play by the rules.
Terrorists encrypt their data and use languages other than English to hide their dirty deeds from our gallant Security Services. This clearly means we need to be able to hold them for 42 days to sort out just what the blighters are up to.
Wouldn’t it be so much easier if they played the game by our rules and left all their secrets in nice easy to open envelope amongst commuters hearing to the stock broker belt.
Luckily our government has secured a deal involving a woman who once said, ““I do not think of the prison population in terms of an ideal number. We will not be constrained by some artificial level.”, a softer line on Cuba and some money to a miner’s benevolent fund.
Farewell Magna Carta …
1 A verruca, just when did I get that ? I haven’t been swimming in ages and can’t see myself going until the Government make it free.
2 A kitchen cupboard door to be re-hung after it “just came off” in K’s hand.
So, sadly we have met the day when the one hundredth British service person has been killed in Afghanistan with the deaths yesterday of Privates Nathan Cuthbertson, 19, Charles David Murray, 19, and Daniel Gamble, 22.
They aren’t much older than Shakirullah Yasin Ali, a 14 year old boy who was prepared to carry out a suicide attack.
The 14-year-old Afghan suicide bomber - Asia, World - The Independent
a small, frail boy, just 14 years old, arrested as he prepared to carry out a suicide bombing against British and American targets. “If I had succeeded, I would be dead now, I realise that,” he said in a soft, nervous voice.
“But those who were instructing me said that if I believed in serving God it was my duty to fight against the foreigners. They said God would protect me when the time came.”
It was a suicide bomber like Shakirullah who, on Sunday, claimed the lives of three more British soldiers in Helmand, bringing the total number of UK fatalities in Afghanistan to 100.
Sadly it seems we have learnt little since the First World War. The young on both sides are still dying.
A still, quiet night after a long, hot day.
What an amazing sunset…
I’m beginning to think my new camera is cursed.
I left home today in bright sun with the new G9 and my LC-A but, by the time I got into London, the cloud had appeared and the chance to take some interesting pictures seemed to have gone with the sun.
I’d hoped to get to see an exhibition of pictures by the American photographer Saul Leiter but the gallery isn’t open at the weekend.
So, to cheer myself up I bought a collection of photographs by Jane Brown who managed to do more with a beaten up Rolliflex than I can ever manage with buckets of megapixels and, because I often get into London and wonder just where to go, a Moleskin City notebook for London to write down all those great locations, restaurants and exhibitions (and just when they are open).
It’s been a while since we went out for a meal a few months since we met up with Jo and Dan so tonight was a good excuse for a celebration, drinks in the garden, a meal at the Italian and a party that went on and on and on …
Asda launches 2p ‘credit crunch’ sausages - Telegraph
Asda has seen sales of its own ranges of sausages rise by 25 per cent since last year.
Jenny Liggat, the firm’s sausage buyer, said: “Families are feeling the impact of the credit crunch in their pockets. Food prices have increased but Asda is committed to continually offering customers great value products at an everyday low price.”
‘Bangers and mash’ are thought to have first appeared on pub menus shortly after the First World War.
I really do despair…
So, the problems with the dreaded error 500 continue.
To add to the fun I logged in here over the weekend to find my blog had disappeared, then reappeared somewhere else.
Then any dynamic content couldn’t be rendered.
Luckily Acenet have technical people online 24×7. It turned out that they had been planning to move the server in order to upgrade the hardware and the issues with the dynamic content were down to an incorrect setting for the quota of disk my site has.
After a few mails I found out that they even have a blog which would have told me all about the proposed move.
So that got me thinking. We have the same issue at work. A lot of information (and a half reasonable place in which to put some more) but we don’t publicise where it is.
If we did then, perhaps, some of the day to day questions would disappear and I’d get a little more time after work to find out just what is causing the 500 error…
Quote of the day :
K : “What does the letters ORR mean after her name ?”
Me : “That’s her name, Catherine James Orr”
Our slow procession around formal royal palaces continued today with Hampton Court.
Originally taken over by Thomas Wolsey, who wanted to create a Renaissance cardinal’s palace in the style of the Italian architects, he was forced to hand it over to Henry VIII as he fell out of favour with the King.
It is the site of the last medieval Great Hall built for the English monarchy and also the place in which James I met with the English Puritans, a meeting which led to James’s commissioning of the King James Version of the Bible.
“He gave his honors to the world again, His blessèd part to heaven, and slept in peace.”
Henry VIII Act 4, Scene 2
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