Further ramblings of a self-made pauper

Following on from my post earlier in the week, my subconscious is at it again!

Last night I had a variation of the classic anxiety dream in which you find yourself woefully unprepared for something you knew was coming. It wasn’t actually as anxiety inducing as they can be, but the message was there.

I already know that I am going to have to pull a couple of late shifts on Monday and Tuesday next week. The tube strikes have really limited my options so they will have to do. There is no point staying late tonight because I shan’t be able to guarantee getting home at a reasonable time (though yesterday’s homeward travel was much less of an ordeal than was coming into the office). I really cannot cope with the hassle of five hours’ strike and other disruption induced commute sandwiching a full day of work.

I don’t care if that makes me a wimp; it’s bad enough losing the usual 2½ to 3 hours.

Anyway: reduced time available because of the strike, tomorrow travelling up to Shropshire to see my poorly Mum and only sporadic support from my lackey who at best is only in the office three days a week, but who has been burning off unexpected days’ leave left right and centre recently (following on from six or seven weeks of sickness leading up to Christmas), I am running to stand still here. And to add insult to injury, I confess to being completely unable to navigate my way around my predecessor’s archive and I haven’t been here long enough to build much of one of my own. There is no doubt that he knew the job inside and out, but his approach to digital record-keeping is… idiosyncratic.

I like to label folders and files so it is a clear as I can make it what they each contain. I keep chancing upon potentially useful information in places I wouldn’t expect to look for it and huge gaps in folders that suggest that they should have the information. It is no use to me to find files labelled ‘e-mail (date)’ especially when you open it and it just says something like ‘thanks for getting back to me so soon’.

I think that last night’s anxiety dream was cutting me some slack by being so low key.

I had a very odd night’s sleep last night.

The inside of my head was a very busy place, with a lot of dreams. I remember having them, though the content has long since faded, all except one – the beginning has gone, but I remember the end as it was very sad and woke me up feeling uncharacteristically down. I have no idea what my brain was processing, but I’d prefer it didn’t do it again, any time soon. It was not a nightmare in the sense that it wasn’t terrifying, or otherwise frightening, just immeasurably sad.

Perhaps it was an unconscious reaction to the fact that today is my birthday and I am now motoring well along on the road to a bus pass – assuming they still do bus passes when I finally hit retirement age (still a few years off). If that is indeed what my brain was doing, all I can say is that there is a fair disconnect between my conscious and subconscious minds. Which might explain many things, now I consider it. I have never had a problem with birthdays, or the concept of getting older. I mean, I would prefer to be a few years younger, or at least feel a few years younger – who wouldn’t – but by and large, provided I feel well and am in good health (and my knees don’t hurt too much), I am pretty sanguine about getting older.

Which is just as well, really, all things considered. I don’t much like the alternative and getting older is rather inevitable, regardless of what the cosmetics industry, unguents, linctus, lotion and surgery arms might say singly or in unison.

I had hoped to take yesterday and today off work, but Furtle couldn’t get the time and anyway, although Mum has got back home from hospital today (and sounds much better), I am going up to see the family at the weekend. That means taking Friday as leave, something I’ve done a fair amount since she was first taken ill, so I am now in the position whereby I am carefully hoarding my leave days so we can actually have a holiday or two and maybe the odd long weekend. The price of that is to come into the office on my Day of Jubilee. We are going for a quiet pint after work, but beyond that, I think any proper celebration will have to wait most of a fortnight until we both have a weekend in London. Of course, by then, it won’t feel anything like my birthday and that will be that. Maybe I’ll have an extra beer tonight to make up for it, though being a school night as it were, I shan’t be going too wild.

Anyway. Happy birthday to me. Fifty-five isn’t so bad so far.

Mum is back in hospital.

She hasn’t really been right since her stroke back in October, but we expected that. She will be 86 in May, so there is only so much you can expect, even from a tough old buzzard like Mum.

It appears that the main problem lies with her heart, or at least one of the valves, which has its own opinion on whether or not to let the correct amount of blood through at any particular time. This means that her blood pressure is alternately too high or too low. So she is either light headed or in danger of another stroke. In theory this can be treated with medication, but they have to find the right mix. We were told that it is early stage heart failure: I rather wish there was a less dramatic sounding name for it, because after the initial horror of what that sounds like, it again, appears to be something that can be managed and people can live a reasonably full and productive life with managed heart failure. It didn’t stop it from scaring the crap out of the family, though.

Ironically, Mum’s soft focus consciousness these days means that she doesn’t really appreciate much of this. Other than the fact that she is tired all the time, she appears to be reasonably happy and content and enjoys playing with her great grandchildren. It’s the rest of us who are left to fret.

However it turns out, she is back in hospital after scaring the bejasus out of my sister last night by being very breathless and coughing up brown phlegm. On top of everything else it appears she has a chest infection and may have had another mini stroke, though we’re hoping not, obviously.

The upshot in the immediate term is that my sister and niece didn’t get home until 4.30 this morning and I was on the phone fretting into the early hours. I have my bag packed and under the desk in the event I have to go back to Shropshire at a moment’s notice, but in actual fact, I just want to go home and sleep.

I slumped into bed before (just before) eleven last night and just turned the light out; I couldn’t be bothered to read, I was just too tired.

I dozed for a while in that kind of half sleep, where you actually dream, but also kind of know that you’re lying in bed. At 12.36 (Zero Dark Thirty-six?) I checked my phone for the time, convinced that I’d never get to sleep properly and then suddenly it was 6.35 in the morning. Even then I dozed off again for another 25 minutes.

Today therefore, is rather better than yesterday. It is amazing what a difference a good few hours of sleep can make, though perhaps not as amazing as how easy it is to forget. Yesterday was something special because of the previous night’s insomnia, but even allowing for that, I can waste time by the bucket full when I ought to go to bed and sleep instead.

It shouldn’t be so hard for someone as intrinsically lazy as me to do nothing…

I am having difficulty in readjusting to the werk routine after a fortnight off. My brain is still on holiday time and I spend much of the day fighting off the desire to sleep and at least part of the early hours solidly awake.

I am hoping that this will fade over the next few days. I do not like holiday lag.

At least the trains and tubes are relatively quiet. I assume that a fair number of people have extended their holidays to fit in with school term time. Next Monday will be the killer!

Hello Monday, my old adversary.

Today I have managed to get in to the office late after a night of interrupted sleep. Following on from that, it all went wrong as time evaporated and suddenly there I was, late. I shoved all my stuff into my work bag and managed to get the 8.50, though at Stratford London Underground were clearly running a service inspired by Benny Hill.

After much rooting, I discovered that I’d left my glasses in my other bag, so I nipped into Boots to buy a cheap pair of reading glasses to see me through the day. A tenner is good value for not getting a headache from eye strain when you’re already tired. I got into the office and have now just discovered my spare pair of specs jammed in a previously unsuspected crevice right down in the depths of my bag.

It is going to be one of those days.

Anyway. After some faffing, we got Mum home at the weekend. Nine weeks to the day since her stroke. I suspect she’d have been home rather earlier if the hospital had got it’s act together. I am going to ascribe it to inefficiency rather than incompetence; I’m feeling charitable.

Having got Mum home, Friday saw me getting the best night’s sleep that I’ve had for some time. I don’t think that I’d realised quite how much the background fretting had got to me. I recognise that my sister bears the brunt of it, but…

Saturday saw some doubts return. I’m still hopeful that being back home will give her rather more mental stimulation than staying in hospital would, but her short term memory is shocking.

We drove out to Wem to place a wreath on Dad’s grave – I can’t believe that it will be seven years in March since he died – and then we drove back to Shrewsbury to do some shopping in the Tesco Extra, including buying Mum a Christmas prezzie that she could choose for herself. In the event she chose a nice long red wrap around cardigan/housecoat affair that will keep her warm in the winter months. The downside being that when we got home and while I was making a cup of tea, she went through the bags, pulled it out and remarked how nice it was before asking who’s it was. In half an hour she’d forgotten about it again.

That evening she went to bed about 9.30 completely washed out – not surprising as the couple or so hours out and about was the longest she’d been anywhere in nine weeks. I stayed up to watch a programme about Dusty Springfield on BBC4 and at about 1.30 am as it was finishing, Mum wandered into the living room having woken up and not had any clue as to where she was. I sat her down for a couple of minutes before taking her back to bed, but when I turned in, I didn’t get to sleep for some time as I was listening to every creak and groan of the house in case one of them turned out to be Mum’s bedroom door opening.

I’m not so sure why I didn’t sleep so well last night, but I think I shall go out like a light tonight. Unless something else happens.

In the meantime, more coffee.

I am finding it increasingly difficult to maintain any semblance of interest at work and would, all things considered, rather be elsewhere. There’s nothing wrong as such, I just don’t find it particularly engaging and I feel rather isolated sitting at the edge of the wider team, not speaking to anyone for hours at a time.

They are all perfectly pleasant enough, but I don’t feel particularly involved in what they’re up to and I’m finding it increasingly difficult to care. The trouble is, apart from being the new speck, I am sitting at the end of an otherwise unpopulated row of desks – this is the only one I can raise so that I’m not leaning forward all the time and putting my back out. It doesn’t help, of course, that the temperature in this part of the building is several degrees higher than I am comfortable with. And to add insult to injury, unless someone wanders past from time to time, the lights fade out because just sitting at a desk doesn’t constitute enough activity to convince the sensors that there is anyone sitting here.

I spend much of my time bored witless and wishing to sleep. This isn’t helped by the fact that my sleep patterns are ragged at the moment at home. I am often too hot in bed and too cold if I kick the duvet off. And I keep waking up (though I doze off again quickly as a rule). Last night I was on the verge of getting up again after lying in bed staring at the ceiling for over an hour. That’s the point where I finally drifted off, but it means that I feel tired and that’s not a good thing in this soporific environment.

This weekend coming is our annual GASP trip to Norfolk. I’m looking forward to it not least because it will get me out of this place for four whole days. On the other hand, I haven’t seen much of Furtle this past couple of weeks for one reason or another.

Still, I’m hoping for a full fortnight off over Christmas and the New year period. Hopefully that will give me the break I need.

Apparently there is a band meme going around. Years ago, this would have been an LJ thing, but now it’s on glorious FarceBørk. Nonetheless, I have decided to copy it here, too. For your enjoyment. (Ahem)

I feared that I should end up with a pop beat combo that I’d never heard of, but Mr Andrews (the quondam pax_draconis) took pity and gave me King Crimson.

So, do I like them? Yes indeed I do. Very much so in fact, but not unreservedly: King Crimson is, in many ways, not a band, but a concept from the depths of Robert Fripp’s fevered imagination given form on an intermittent basis as a band. Not always the same band. In fact, in the 44 years of their on-off existence, there has only been one constant member - Fripp himself - and one constant idea: experimentation. Few of the line ups have lasted for more than an album and not all of the incarnations of the band have worked. After a six year hiatus, the name sprang back to life to encompass a quartet in 1980 and four three albums (ironically the longest span from one line up), they managed to sound like the Talking Heads listened to through a mirror, darkly. Interesting, but I’d sooner listen to the Heads.

The rest of their sporadic incarnations have placed them variously as the grandfathers of prog, hard jazz-rockers, math rock (slightly more listenable than John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnas, art rock and a fusion of it all. At the same time.

Their best period for me was 1974-75. Already on their 6th line up from 1969, the band slowly became a trio (with returning guest spots from previous members) and this slow contraction brought forth an unofficial trilogy that started with “Larks’ Tongues in Aspic”, moving through “Starless and Bible Black” and culminating in “Red”. This is a band shrinking in size and growing in power, slowly stripping away the whimsy and grasping the harder, louder and grungy edge of rock. There is barely a hint of jazz rock left by the time you hit Red, yet there are echoes of themes all the way through.

In the early 90s the name reappeared for a short period as a six-piece. But not any ordinary six-piece rock band. This was a band that played as two trios on stage at the same time, playing complex music around competing motifs that came together at intervals to combine into something greater before separating again.

It was a grand experiment and it proved too much after a couple of years and a gruelling tour or two. Listen to “Thrak” on headphones. You get one trio in each ear. It’s incredible and it must have been murder to achieve.

For all that, my favourite track is “Starless” from the Red album. Recorded live but with studio overdubs it is, like the best (and worst) of prog a good nine minutes long. A powerful rhythm section driven by Bill Bruford on percussion and John Wetton on bass. Fripp’s eerie, screaming and complex guitar winding the melody through it all. David Cross, returning as a guest in his own band squeezes an impressive violin between them all. Over it all, at the beginning are Wetton’s vocals. Not the greatest singer in the world, but he fits this and it is amongst his best singing performances. And there is THAT guitar solo. One note but spaced melodically. It shouldn’t work, but it does.

I have more copies of that track, by various incarnations, spin-offs and ex members of the band than any other (and I have a tolerably large collection). I like them all, but this is my favourite. And it’s my favourite rock choon.

Have I seen them live? Sadly not. In earlier incarnations I was too young and in later ones they have concentrated on the Americas, where there is more and wider tolerance of and for rock musicianship than there is in the UK. I have seen the next best thing, though. Not a tribute band, but a band made up exclusively of ex-members of King Crimson playing music from King Crimson’s early catalogue, music they wrote.

And now, after a few years of the continuing ‘ProjeKCts’ (various line ups of portions of the expanding membership of Crimso), Fripp has announced a new core line up.

2014 could be an interesting year.

You know the drill, but I'm not sure I know any bands that you like...

After yesterday’s brouhaha, getting in to the office this morning was a breeze (ho ho), though I understand that not everyone had a simple commute as Greater Anglia still haven’t got their act together on some lines.

I left work early yesterday – I was gone by 16.30 despite being horribly late in the morning. The number of people in the office was very low, so there was not a huge amount going on. At the same time, the same Greater Anglia mentioned above had managed to replace their usual 15-20 or so trains an hour during the rush, with one and hour.

One.

Even with the reduced number of commuters out and about, this was never going to be enough. I know that there are numerous reports of devastation: fallen trees and such, but from what I saw, it was relatively light over all, with the occasional really nasty incident. By and large, it all seemed to be something of an overreaction to the forecast and subsequent storm.

Anyway, Furtle and I made our way home on the Central Line. We took the Victoria to Oxford Circus and then, because the Central is nearly always rammed, we went west for three stops to Lancaster Gate, switched platforms, got a seat and went back east to Gants Hill, where we hopped on a bus. Very civilised and we were back home by 18.00.

In other news, one of the concrete cows from the pub roof outside the office is missing. I would have loved to have seen that flying through the air at the height of the storm.

I am very happy that with the introduction of “Maverick” or OS X as it is also known, by Apple, that the days of paid operating systems seem to be over. If you but a computer, it seems rude to have to buy the bloody operating system without which it will do anything other than eat electricity.

There is enough money to be made in paying for specialist apps, which seems to be the way things are going: you get the basic package as part of what you pay for when you buy the machine and the fancy customisation is what you pay for, a bit at a time as and when you decide you need it. Frankly, on the Mac, with Open Office I have a word processing package that is up to my needs and beyond that all I would really like now is a reasonably priced Mac alternative, or rather equivalent to Paint Shop Pro, or Photo Shop.

I was rather unprepared for just how long it took to download Maverick last night. It is amazing how quickly we forget the horrors of dial up in these days of broadband (I refuse to call it ‘super fast‘ broadband: I still get buffering on iPlayer from time to time, even with what is supposedly Virgin Media’s 20meg service). I mean objectively, 5gB or so of data doesn’t take that long to download, but it felt like it and I ended up just going to bed and letting it come down over night. For all I know it had finished by the time I had turned out the light, but the first 3gB took an annoying amount of time. The ‘annoying’ of 2013 is rather different to the ‘annoying’ of 2003 and I am talking tens of minutes rather than hours.

This morning, I was again caught out by the installation time of the downloaded software. The iMac is only a few months old, so I naively assumed that it would do the job in a few minutes. I should have known better. It took well over 40 minutes to install and restart, followed by a further 15 or so to do the mysterious confirmation of whatever of the installation that the Mac is so fond of.

The result is that I now have Maverick installed and operating on my Mac, but no idea of what’s changed or how clever it is because I had to switch the bloody thing off and race to catch the bust to the station, having left it too late to walk.

I only turned the machine on in the first place to sort out a couple of daily tasks on Warcraft. I didn’t have time for that in the end.

I bet I forget tonight…