What’s this? An update? Surely not!
Nope, this is actually an update. Really. Sorry I’ve been so lax about this, but the last couple of weeks have been a bit full and exhausting, and, whilst this is still the case, the lack of doing a post is really starting to annoy me.
Work, of course, continues to eat vast swathes of my time, like an ever-expanding music-free blob. I’ve been there ten weeks, and I still have a whole load of trouble getting any work done without music somewhere in the background. This sounds like a great big whinge about a totalitarian office policy, but it isn’t; I can see that having a load of people with headphones on, unable to hear one another and headbanging away to heavy metal, or sitting there moping along to Elbow wouldn’t be conducive to the appearance of productivity. It’s just that after four years when I’ve only worked either when listening to music, or to lectures or simply talking to the people around me, I’m finding it really hard to adjust to working in silence. And that’s me as a Quaker talking here; I can sit in silence on me own or with other people for ages and ages and I don’t really get desperate urges to fill in the gaps just so there isn’t so much quiet (which is one of the reasons why, back in the days when I nominally had counseling sessions, Hillary’s tactic of sitting there in attentive silence did remarkably little in the way of making me feel obliged to say stuff).
But for three or four hours at a stretch? Whilst having to do actual work requiring concentration? that’s really hard.
Still, given that, after ten weeks, that’s the only real complaint I’ve got, except for the perfectly justifiable ban on hot drinks like tea or coffee in the office where they might get spilt on books, or something, I reckon I’m doing fairly well.
I’m still finding the commute thing a bit tiring, but I’m getting back into the swing of it, and it’s not as bad as it was, say, in mid-October. At the moment my chief gripe is that I never really see the sun; we leave the house at 0710h, and go to the bus stop in the pitch dark – dawn usually happens about ten minutes into the bus journey – and then we return at something like 1845h, when it’s been dark for close on three hours, and that’s only if I haven’t got off to a rehearsal of broadly indeterminate length. I’m looking forward to Christmas, if only because I might be able to catch up on a bit of sleep, at some point.
Still, life is good in those spare minutes when I have time to notice it; I’ve discovered, for example, that 1982 port can be really nice (and the fact I never really have any spare time ought to help limit the rapid emptying of the bottles that would otherwise ensue) and Ruth & I now own DS Lites, after some horrible budget-crunching, which at least gives me something to do on the bus besides listening to the iriver.
And, just to show that this post isn’t all about saying how tired I am, but to prove that I can still find time to appear eclectic, here’s a list of the stuff we bought at Waitrose this afternoon:
- 1 x semi-skimmed milk (2 pints)
- 1 x 250 g tub of Lurpak “lighter” brand margerine
- 1 x bag of McCain Spicy Oven Cook Potato Wedges
- 6 x 70 cl bottles of Domaine Fouassier Sancerre (33% off offer)
- 1 x Waitrose brand ready meal Vegetable Curry
- 1 x 500 ml bottle Listerine Mouthwash (Coolmint flavour)
- 2 x Waitrose packs of cinnamon and raisin bagels (5 per pack)
- 2 x 500 ml cartons of orange juice (with bits)
- 1 x Waitrose brand ready meal lamb bhuna (with tiny nan bread and metal dish)
- 3 x boxes Kleenex tissues (ultra soft)
- 1 x 70 cl bottle Stones Green Ginger Wine (estd. 1740)
The girl on the checkout looked so confused. Like I can help it if we’re both inclined towards not cooking and stocking up on several weekend’s worth of mid-posh alcohol…
Have fun!