Mac, the Life

10Aug07

Weather too hot for working I go for a little cycle into town.

Find myself inescapably drawn to the Mac Store once more. They’ve got the new iMac — looking good at £799. I wonder how many computers one man needs. and decide another one won’t do anyone any harm.

Filed under: Computers, Macs   |  1 Comment

On yer bike!

09Jul07

Great day on saturday watching the tour de france prologue in hyde park. trouble with digital camera is that the time-delay — just a fraction of a second — meant that i ended up with lots of pics of cyclists just exiting frame-right. still, here’s quite a nice one where i got lucky:

and well done london cycling campaign for organizing the rides up there — and getting us a special viewing area out of Ken.

Filed under: cycling, london, tour de france   |  Leave a Comment

Missing the bus

19Jun07

i should learn to be more careful.

On the 185, coming home tonight, the bus suddenly stopped between bus stops just south of oval, and didn’t move for 10 minutes. I went downstairs to see what was going on. Turns out that the driver had called the police because of a rude/aggressive passenger and we were waiting for them to turn up. The man in question was a fat white man in his forties who was loudly telling the bus that he “didn’t give a toss” and he wasn’t getting off even if it meant that everyone else was stuck there.

Now I don’t know, I get really annoyed at this sort of thing and I lost it with the guy, ending up with him offering me out. i was at the point of getting off the bus with him when an older woman sitting next to him gave me a look. It was like an almost indiscernible shake of the head and she mouthed the words, it’s not safe. So instead i walked away, off the bus alone and to the next stop where another bus arrived taking me to Lordship Lane, pride bruised, body intact.

Who knows. Maybe she was my guardian angel in human form. maybe i should have taken him off the bus and — given that the last fight i had was when i was twelve — got myself beaten to a pulp as an act of self-sacrifice. but i didn’t. and i’m here telling the tale.

who knows where he is now, possibly in walworth road police station, if the police ever turned up.

but there’s another possible world where I am a hero.

*i demolish him with my kung fu kicks
*make a pretend phone call to imaginary mafiosi which makes him run away leaving me laughing with the other passengers
*I calm him with my hypnotic deep and soothing voice and he walks off into the night vowing to be a better person.

And then there’s this one. this world @ – and i know that its not the one that I would chose…if i had the option.

Filed under: possible worlds, violence   |  2 Comments

the prey of vain dread

07Jun07

Someblogger called

antarctic househusband has tagged me…or rather has tagged east of dulwich — so now i’ve got to think of 8 interesting facts about him.

this is harder than you might think. ok, i know i can just make the whole thing up just as i made the whole person up. but there’s a real problem with harmony of design – i can’t say something that conflicts with some post that i wrote back in february. and i read so slowly that it would take me for ever to go back over the whole thing. anyway, something to work on when i should be working. something else to focus on as to stop me thinking about tiina.

Meanwhile, the book from pekka arives. It’s ‘the egyptian’ by Mika Waltari. It starts:-

I, Sinuhe, the son of Senmut and of his wife Kipa, write this. I do not write it to the glory of the gods in the land of Kem, for I am weary of gods, nor to the glory of the Pharaohs, for I am weary of their deeds. I write neither from fear nor from any hope of the future but for myself alone. During my life I have seen, known, and lost too much to be the prey of vain dread; and, as for the hope of immortality, I am as weary of that as I am of gods and kings.

what’s that all about?

Filed under: Blogging, books   |  Leave a Comment

Brought to book

05Jun07

Out of the blue comes a new project. Someone who liked East of Dulwich (!) has asked me if I can do a site for his business — a bookshop. Well have to admit i had to tell a couple of porkies. like (1) that i’d read a book once and (2) that i’d enjoyed it.

OK, i read lots of books at school but that doesn’t count really. i really admire people who sit on the train or bus reading — i often wish i could do it. trouble is my attention span is 2 paragraphs max. can just about manage a short news article on a good day but pages of text just leave me, leave me, dazed….I tried an audio book once but that was even worse.

So anyway, the site only has to be very simple and I’m not expected to write the content so should pull it off. I just have to focus.

Filed under: books   |  Leave a Comment

Classic!

03Jun07

I am amazed that among the search term that people have used to find this blog is

“i hate classical music”

A bit of advice. Listen to something else then. Like country and western.

Filed under: Uncategorized   |  Leave a Comment

Rebrand or De-brand?

01Jun07

So here it is…yawn…the re-brand-new-look-revamped-remodelled-east-of-east-of-dulwich

I’m thinking of doing a similar make-over on the original East of Dulwich but maybe i’ll sort out my sock draw instead.

Had a meeting with Sarah…from the LAD client. Went better than I could have expected. not only did she like what i did but they agreed to pay me the full fee. Even though i was six weeks late. I asked if they might have any other work for me in the future. “Don’t push it,” she said.

I am beginning to wonder if I need a face-lift and a new identity.

Still England’s 1-0 up against Brazil and all’s well with the world.

Filed under: work   |  1 Comment

In France, they kiss on main street

31May07

Well back in good old east (of) dulwich. I look across the gardens from my £750 a month studio and think about paris. Terri cheered up a bit before I left. Last night we ended up in a club (can’t remember the name) and we danced like latin lovers in a disney cartoon.

When we got back to her tiny little flat in the seventeenth, she could barely walk up the stairs — I held her up and she put both arms around my waist which didn’t make our upward progress any easier. when we got in she collapsed on the sofa where I was supposed to be sleeping. i thought for a moment about just getting into her bed but, o i don’t know, i lifted her up and put her in it. I took her boots off — not as easy as i thought and left her to sleep in her clothes. As I left she said in a slurry voice, come here brad. then she said your a good man brad and pulled me towards her…i pulled away although…i don’t know.

In the morning she said nothing about it. I left about ten and she kissed me goodbye, in the Parisienne manor, on both cheeks, no lips necessary. As I got on the train at Gard du Nord, I had this awful feeling I’d left something behind. In her flat.

Filed under: Paris, friendship   |  Leave a Comment

It’s got to be, ee-ee-ee-ee, imperfect

30May07

Terri turns up, tells me where I put the key, in my wallet where i wouldn’t lose it. women notice these things. i offer her dinner to make up for my stupidity. Fantastic three-course meal in [name of Restaurant] washed down with a carafe of Vacqueyras. And then another…

I wake up early as ever. A bit of a krapula (Finnish hangover) but not too bad. Terri sleeps and so I decide to skype Pekka and see if they still want me to any more work. No, he says, what I did is so perfect it can’t be improved on. I wonder if he’s taking the p…

Note to self: when you do a piece of work. Make sure there’s some little thing that’s wrong with it. Something the client can’t blame you for — like a little bug — and won’t mind paying you to put right.

Isn’t that what the Islamic Artists did? The ones who made all those intricate patterns in mosques, always containing one little imperfection so they didn’t imitate the perfection of god.

Filed under: god   |  Leave a Comment

Could this be the right key?

29May07

So i decide the best thing to do is to get out of the country for a couple of days. Actually that’s not quite true, Terri asked me. Terri is a journalist who lives in Paris. I met her years ago when she was going out with a friend of mine. and before you ask, my friend was a woman and so is Terri. So Terri is feeling miserable and lonely and asked me if I would come over for a couple of days. She wrangles me a cheap ticket on the Eurostar, and here I am.

I wouldn’t mind — i’ve got very little else to do since finishing the LAD work and the Finnish stuff ticking over, and you can only revise your CV so many times. something’s gotta turn up.

Terri meets me at Gard du Nord, she’s already on her Nokia 6288…

– god i’m really sorry, i’ve got to go and meet someone. she says

no matter that i’ve only just got here but she puts me on a bus to Place de la cliche telling me that it’s house number 6, punch in code 4027, 5th floor on the right. with my fantastic sense of direction and incredible numerical memory, i find my way, no problem. But only as far as the door. I forgot to ask her for a key.

Or did she give it to me. She’s not picking up. I head out again and find a bar on the Rue des Dames, drawn by the name and the lack of smoke. It’s called Lush and there’s a Mancunian behind the bar. I ask if he has wi-fi and he tells me to sit as close as I can to the window and take my chances. I start with Perrier but as I wait longer and longer the classsic cocktails look more and more lushious. I wonder what a ‘ti puch would taste like…

Then I notice that someone’s left a book on the next table, a Penguin Classic. And guess what? ethics by a certain Benedict de Spinoza. I pick it up and open at random to the line:

The object of the idea constituting the human mind is the body.

Filed under: Alcohol, Paris, Spinoza   |  2 Comments