shadows of echoes of memories of songs

Forgive me for indulging the pathetic fallacy for a moment here, but I've just spent half the evening in an unheated chapel which reeked of frankincense, watching my fingers gradually turning white from cold and lack of circulation, before cycling home through the dark and the glasses-misting, lung-rotting, half-frozen miasma of leafy autumn wetness, and — to cut a long story short — I'm feeling a little bit sorry for myself. It doesn't help that I've coughed so much that my stomach hurts, and my tonsils seem to have swollen to the size of golf balls. I'm not sure how that would translate into weather; hailstones the size of tonsils, maybe. Let's hope the weather isn't listening.

The unheated chapel was Hertford Orchestra's fault, or rather the fault of the other orchestra which had stolen their usual rehearsal room; actually, I think they were trying to heat it (occasional smells of burning competing with the incense suggested a fan-heater somewhere in a corner), but the attempt at heating was almost as hopeless as the attempt at lighting (a couple of desk-lamps trying to provide enough light for about 10 string players), and the overwhelming impression was of a group of survivors of some nameless horror, huddled around their last candle, trying to play loud music to keep the wild beasts at bay before resorting to burning their instruments to keep warm (sadly there were no violas there tonight so we'd have had to start with 'cellos). The fact that the music was Mussorgsky's "Night on a Bare Mountain" probably helped to complete the picture.

( orchestral manoeuvres )

"I try not to go through red lights but I'm not the Pope," says one of the ninety-three cyclists caught jumping red lights in three hours in central Oxford.

I've often seen cars and buses creeping slowly through a red light, as if they were cyclists who couldn't take their feet off the pedals, but I've cynically assumed that they were just intent on being a yard or two further ahead of the car behind them when the lights change (or that they didn't know how to brake). Perhaps I misjudged them: perhaps they're actually grappling with their conscience.

I wonder if the cars I photograph parking on double yellow lines and in cycle lanes are also trying really hard not to park illegally. I'm trying really hard not to photograph them, but they just keep slipping into the viewfinder. Imagine how hard it would be to avoid it if I had a camera strapped to my head.

Too much screengazing over the weekend for various reasons gave me a screaming headache, which has (unsurprisingly) resurfaced at work and is proving resistant to paracetamol. Even the badger on top of my monitor is failing to cheer me up.

( Headaches and hyphens )

Okay, look, it's not that I don't like snow. I like the look of it, I don't mind the cold (I wore my big thick fur coat today, though in retrospect something more waterproof might have been sensible), I'm not even going to attempt to drive in it, and I'm lucky enough to live in an area where the buses are still running (and to have the use of my legs).

However -- and this is where you get to call me a killjoy -- I do not want snowballs thrown at me. It is not "fun"; it is cold, soggy, occasionally painful, and generally quite unpleasant. Yes, I probably didn't mind it so much when I was a small child, when school was cancelled and I could prance about in the snow all morning and then go inside and have a big mug of hot ribena. But I'm not a small child now, I'm a grouchy adult who does not relish the thought of having to sit in work all afternoon wearing clothes which have been soaked with icy water. Also, they don't sell splashsuits in adult sizes. Or if they do, I guess I just don't go to those kind of shops...

So instead I've devised a warmer form of entertainment for other fun-haters. It has the same element of hit-or-miss about it, and all the fun of targetting people who aren't actually playing the game, but none of the cold-and-wet-ness, unless you sit in the freezer and play it, in which case frankly that's not my problem. Fellow curmudgeons, I bring you: ( snow bingo )

I don't like being tickled, either. I mean, I know everybody says that, because they secretly actually want to be tickled, but I really really don't like it, not in a "don't throw me in that there briar patch" way, but in a "quite likely to punch you, actually" way. Just sayin'.

"On televisions, for example, we would like to see labels saying 'if you watch it, it will cost x pence per hour, if you leave it on standby, it will cost y pence'. Then you can present the environmental cost in monetary terms"

But that's not actually presenting the environmental cost at all, really, is it? Unless you add "WHICH MEANS that when you sink into drooling oblivion in front of the flickering forms of minor celebrities bonking in a bath of baked beans you are not only wasting the product of several thousand years of human evolution but also SYSTEMATICALLY RAPING THE PLANET and leaving it an UNINHABITABLE WASTE LAND, you selfish cretin." Really. Is it. I mean.

That's before we get to the question of how in the name of -- well, frankly, anything you care to name -- an electric toothbrush can be regarded as "essential".

I think I'm just in a bad mood today.

But seriously, how am I supposed to develop a future-proof, forward-thinking*, dynamic and synergistic user communications strategy if I don't have access to the latest web browsing technology?

* Interestingly, our house style eschews hyphens. Given the jargon of the sector, this sometimes makes for a less user friendly unreadably technology rich adjectivally overloaded word pile up.

Every time I put an audio CD in my PC's CD drive, I get the following message:



It has taken me several months of annoyance -- firmly selecting the sensible option and ticking the "Always do the selected action" tickybox, and then next time being irritated all over again by the reappearance of the message -- to come to the conclusion that what it means when it says "Windows can perform the same action every time..." is that it can display this dialog box every time, regardless of whether or not I have ticked the tickybox.

Awful dreams last night, hidden behind a cut for the vivid of imagining, ( which you can read at your own risk... ) There was a soundtrack of non-stop bloodcurdling screaming, and eventually I woke up and realised that there really was non-stop screaming from the wailing wean next door. It's clearly got a healthy pair of lungs on it, but I can only wonder what (if anything) is going on in its head -- not to mention the heads of its parents.

By the time I had to get up I could barely move for tiredness; cycling in felt like trying to swim through treacle, and I still can't shake the ache from behind my eyes. I'm supposed to be going up to my parents' on Friday night so we can visit my grandad (who's been ill recently) on Saturday, and at the moment I'm just dreaming of sleeping on the train to Loughborough, and then sleeping in my old bedroom, not really mine any more but still a comfortable bed in a dark, quiet room.

Even this office seems quite peaceful by comparison with the screaming room; even with the constant huffing, thumping, sighing, throwing-things-around, and clicking of executive desk-toys from the chap at the desk behind me. He probably finds me just as annoying, mind you. Yesterday I had an argument with him over a word -- a single word! -- in a consultant's report. ( Meaning and meanness... )

Why hasn't the screaming in my head stopped yet?

Further thoughts, following on from the previous post:

The human condition could, perhaps, be summed up with one phrase: they all die in the end. It's about knowing that it ends, knowing how it ends, and being forced to watch it anyway; no, not even being allowed to merely watch it, but being forced to take centre stage, untutored in acting, unsure of our lines, without a prompt or props, improvising for our lives with little hope of a good reception from a largely indifferent audience.

Given this, I can't decide whether providing spoiler warnings for Beckett's plays is a deliciously dark irony, or simply bloody stupid.

Or whether it matters.