Apr 20, 2011 | Legs!
Boston Common
And I’m back. Actually I was back a couple of days ago but it has taken me a while to get some thoughts together – and even then I wouldn’t go expecting any profundity tonight. Not that regular readers would make that mistake of course.
My first few days in my new job were interesting insofar as I had forgotten quite what it feels like to be the new guy in a very different environment. I am prepared for the fact that it will be a while before I get fully up to speed on a number of things but the good part is that my new colleagues have been welcoming.
As I never blog about details of work I will say immediately that it was nice to be back in Boston again, even though it is only 6 months since I was last there. The Common in springtime was uncommonly lovely despite the odd April shower. My camera was clicking away and I hope to sort out some photos for here – I usually do a wee bit of processing on them to reduce their size and tweak them accordingly. I quite like the one to the right though which has been processed to try and capture a particular feeling – click on it to enlarge it and see what you think.
Alas, since I was there to work I didn’t get a huge amount of time to visit familiar haunts but no doubt that will come on future visits.
Working from home
The flight home was fine as flights go although the food was execrable in ways that I thought airlines had long ago abandoned. As I didn’t get any sleep and as I had a couple of things to do when I got home, I was awake for around 28 hours by the time I finally got to bed.
Tuesday being nice though I enjoyed the benefits of working from home (see left) as I begin the process of reading myself into things. I also went out for a wee jog last night and again tonight as I try to halt the process of turning into a blimp. I reckon that if I can get out regularly and barring accidents, I can regain at least 5k fitness relatively quickly which keeps me on track for my New Year resolution of getting back to 10k fitness by summer.
Anyway, enough for now before I begin to bore even myself!
Apr 10, 2011 | Uncategorized
back of the house
A pint for anyone who gets the reference in the title of this post without Googling!
My bags are pretty much packed and I’m ready to go – off to Boston early Tuesday morning where a new job awaits. It has been a pleasant few weeks of relaxing but I’m ready to start doing something again.
The weather has been nice as well so I’ve been able to sit out the back quite a lot. We had the decking and pergola sorted before Christmas and we’ve just relaid some turf and had a couple of new apple trees put in in front of the kitchen window. So that area of the garden is looking good – and hopefully will be better once I have sorted out some perennials to climb around the pergola. The other new addition is the bench table which we picked up in a sale a couple of weeks ago and which has become something of a second home for me.
out back
Whenever the weather permits I try and take my breakfast out here or at the very least work my way through a newspaper and a pot of tea. It has a certain minimalist charm at the moment but, in addition to the climbing hydrangea which is slowly colonising the wall of the house, i’m thinking of adding a Winter Jasmine and some Wisteria to fill in some of the gaps.
Although the new apples (Katy and Kidd’s Orange Red) are just in they are budding and will shortly blossom I think although I don’t expect to be eating any fruit from them for a year. I am looking forward to the first bite though!
When we were over in Cambridge last Octover I picked up some apples which I ate when I got home – some heritage Ashmead-Kernels. I have the pips which, once I pop them into the freezer for a couple of weeks, might just germinate. We’ll see: I have no idea if they come from old stock in a dedicated orchard or from grafts onto rootstock so if they do germinate I have no idea what will appear!
In the meantime I’m Tapping my feet on main street Counting the stars in the sky Stretching my arms and inspecting my palms And I’m waiting, waiting …
Apr 2, 2011 | Uncategorized
keeping busy
Since my last post, which drew but a single comment, I have been busy doing lots of things, some of which would count as work in some circumstances but didn’t feel like work.
Some was in the form of sorting out some shelves for the many books in the attic, mostly put together from some chipboard I’ve had lurking around the house for a while. It is hardly cabinet making but it does the job and was fun.
I met up with a chum of the Big Canadian, a professor who is over here on sabbatical. It had the potential to be an awkward search for light conversation but actually we got on famously and supped some pints of the excellent An Teallach Brewery‘s Crofter’s Pale Ale in the process. Topics covered witchcraft in Scotland, guitars, the roots of Scots Law, the state of academia and other things besides. This led me to dig out some notes from research that I did nearly twenty years ago for an article which never got written. Looking over that research again didn’t feel like work either.
Peter Hammill
I got to looking at the manuscript draft of a book I started writing on eProcurement and that certainly didn’t feel like work.
I went to see Van der Graaf Generator in Glasgow last Friday and thoroughly enjoyed it although it wasn’t quite so viscerally thrilling as the gig in 2005 on their reunion tour. Then they were thoroughly on fire towards the end of a tour whereas this time they were still warming up at the beginning of the tour. Bloody good though!
They were touring a new album, A Grounding in Numbers, and the new material is not yet ingrained in my head with the familiarity of the old – although the old was well represented by Lemmings, Meurglys III and Childlike Faith in Childhood’s End with a blast of Nutter Alert for an encore.
Van der Graaf are not to everyone’s taste and never have been. When their contemporaries were getting lost in Topographic Oceans, VdGG were exploring isolation and despair and making a heck of a racket at the same time. They were a progressive band but not a Prog Rock band in the sense now used. And they are still out there touring new material which is edgy, experimental and uncompromising in their sixties – and long may it continue.
Still standing on the highest hilltop
And finally, some new cds have appeared in the house. I’m not going to attempt a review of them, at least for now, but I thought I’d mention them. It is fair to say that none of them will trouble the commercial end of popular culture but I like them all. They are:
The last of these is something of a successor to the Yellow Shark material which the Ensemble Modern did with Frank Zappa and includes material from his last, synclavier dominated material, which has been transcribed or otherwise orchestrated by the Ensemble. I’ve only listened to it once so far but it is obvious that it is every bit as good as the Yellow Shark (if you like that sort of thing).
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