A Work In Progress

That sould be the title to my life. Can you have a title? People have their own theme songs, so why not, right?

I finished reading War & Peace Thursday last week. In the begining I was a little detached from the characters and couldn't find any connection with the story line. I was also a lot confused as to what was actually going on and who was who. Bearing in mind how long the book actually is it was still quite early on that I got into it. I cried when Andrey died, does that make me sad or just sweet? Don't answer. In some parts it was very Pride & Prejudice, in others it could have been a history text book on the Napoleonic wars. Overall a good read but you need patience.

Next on my hit list:
House of the Dead
Anna Karenina (spelling??)
The Origin of The Species
Huckleberry Finn
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
The Catcher in the Rye

Downloaded some online piano lessons last week, didn't help too much, was more of a refresher but at least my fingers were speaking the scales not QWERTY.

Builders came Thursday plastered the utility room. They were due back this morning to start ripping out the kitchen so I spent most of yesterday emptying the cupboards out. never realised how much rubbish I keep. I have a pile waist high in the front garden of bin bags and still the dining room is full of crockery and stuff. Thing is when they turned up this morning they said they were here to decorate NOT do the kitchen. I even had to move some of the stuff back into the kitchen so they could work. I sense this should be funny in some way but my sense of humour went on annual leave a few days ago.
We chose the kitchen Friday so now we are just waiting to get agreement that they are happy to pay for it. They were trying to give us a bottom of the range kitchen but ours has solid oak doors at the moment so we had to argue the case. My insurance premium will be going up anyway so might as well make the most of it.

Downloaded the Making April album on the weekend. Love it. It's pretty chilled and kind of reminiscent of the calling but very uplifting.
Also got the Cute is What We Aim For album. Lyrically superb, pretty catchy on a few. It's a sharp critique of the social scene, very funny but totally on the money.

The latest boss has decided to give us a token payment for the last 6 months work. We apparently hit 73% of target. How we did this when we had no target or portfolio is completely beyond my comprehension. You ever get the feeling you aren't the only one that makes things up as they go along when they don't know what to do? I just didn't think multi-national/international companies did it.

Feeling mostly content at the moment. Who would have thought it. Have to go to the office on Wednesday so figure I will have a long lunch when I'm there then I should get back to Norwich for when Tom is ready to go home so we can drive back together.

Speaking of Tom, the evenings seemed empty without him so far but in just a few days I think I have already gotten used to not having him about. There is always something that needs doing or some work I hadn't done during the day. By the time he gets home I have dinner ready, his lunch made for the next day and his laundry ready for work in the morning. I don't think he is enjoying all the extra travelling but he seems to have settled well in every other way.

Piggy

A few years back I read William Golding's Lord of the Flies and it was a vivid account of the self destruction of civilisation. Not too much of a stretch except that these days I don't think anyone could truly be lost on an island. The Earth is a smaller place than it used to be. GPS, satellite imaging, CCTV, planes... we can see or even be anywhere in the world within a day. Last night we went through the list of movies playing on NTL and this was the best we could come up with. The movie was reasonably faithful to the book but with a few minor differences. If you aren't much of a reader it's worth checking out the film, it's about 90 minutes of your life so it isn't too much of a risk right?

Read a little more today, there are some beautiful passages on falling in love as well as the moments before a battle begins. I think they transcend the different era we now live in, but maybe my glasses are rose tinted at the moment.

I got offered a puppy earlier. My friend V was given a puppy for letting her dog Louie act as stud. She doesn't want to keep it so is looking for someone to buy one. I must admit they are cute but with the house looking like a bomb site and Tom taking on the extra work I don't think we would give it the ideal home. Still I can't help but be tempted!

The chemicals in my brain have been telling me to go to bed ever since it got dark, ironic really as if I did I know I wouldn't be able to sleep. I have been sitting at my desk, absent mindedly staring out the window as it got dark then unable to concentrate I tried to read and soon found I had read the same page 3 times without knowing what was happening in the story. Does anyone else have this problem?

Need to go clean up downstairs. Cooked a lovely dinner last night (even if I do say so myself), being as I'm like 23 going on 43. Trouble with cooking is the mess that needs cleaning afterwards. To be honest there is a suspisciously large pile of crockery and pots/pans waiting to be cleaned, especially for just two people. I found out Tom had been leaving plates by his side of the sofa for weeks! I wont describe the mess or the stuff growing on them. I might just bleach them and leave them for a while. Men!

Tom got his promotion. He is now assistant manager for the Norwich office. He starts Monday 13th but has already started to wish he hadn't accepted the job. It will mean a couple of hours travel a day, a lot more in the way of petrol costs and slightly longer hours. The advantages are that in a few months he can start applying for AM jobs closer to home and he will be earning slightly more a month.

The guys from Chemdry have finally collected their dehumidifiers so the house is now blissfully quiet except for the odd wolf whistle from Ollie of course. Now we just have to wait for the builders to start. I have the sneaking suspiscsion that I will wish they hadn't started once they do arrive.

Lost my voice this week, was bringing up blood (sorry to put you off your food) and just generally felt crappy. Had a doctors appointment for 9:10am Wednesday morning, booked it that day as well. Sat in the reception area until half nine when they advised the doctor hadn't shown up but if I waited five minutes a nurse would see me and then get another doctor to write the presciption if I needed it. another 20 minutes and still nothing. In the end I went over the road to the pharmacy. Pharmacists are being given increasing to diagnose and provide medication so I figured this was a good idea. The pharmacist listened intently to my problem (he had to concentrate seeing as I was barely whispering) and then he said if there was blood I needed a doctor. Haha! Went home, an hour late for work and no better off. In the end I dug out some of my old antibiotics and have just tried them. The bleeding has gone down quite a bit and my voice is now back although not quite normal yet. Tom is disappointed now I'm not quiet anymore. Charming!

My new boss ( who is also the boss I had before my last one) has spent the week sending emails explaining that certain administrative tasks are urgent, then sending further emails questioning reduced productivity on calls/sales. In addition to this the management have been trying to avoid paying out on the bonus they owe for the last six months. The five of us are owed about 5 thousand each which is quite a lot to us but not much in the scheme of things for a world leading company. It's ridiculous the sort of tactics that are being used, when words like target hike are being banded about at the same time.

Went opticians yesterday. tried the new contact lenses, the ones where they are set at the wrong angle so they correct themselves when I blink. Only this time she tells my the left lense wasn't moving at all. I tried to explain I could see really well, but she asked me to go away for another hour in them and see if it corrected itself. Found another couple of books I want to read. Went to a second hand book stall to look in the classics section to find that the only author in the category was Ben Elton!? I guess the owner is a fan.
After wandering aimlessly for an hour the optician checked the lenses again and said my left eye was getting blurry vision as the lense still hadn't shifted. I did try to explain I could see fine and had been reading but she wasn't convinced. Not until she did an eye test that is. My eye sight even with the lense at the supposed wrong angle was as good if not slightly better than with my glasses on. She was rather confused but impressed. Have to go back Wednesday afternoon to learn how to put them in and all that sort of thing then I test them for a few weeks.

Got two tickets to see My Chemical Romance at Wembly in March 2007. Jo and I are going to go after work so I can get the company to pay my travel expenses. Not that I'm cheap or anything!

Went to a charity fireworks display at the Caister Life boat station last night. Was freezing down on the beach, the tide was coming in fast with large waves crashing just feet from the cordoned off area but everyone was in good spirits. It was a dry cool night. Even in the time we were there the car developed a layer of frost. The fireworks were great; I'm like a little kid when it comes to lights and fireworks. I can't help but be drawn to them even though I know they aren't really supposed to be anything special. It's funny to think that while every year we are planning bonfire night the rest of the world doesn't. I guess every country has their special events not celebrated elsewhere.

Listening to: everything. I have my ipod on shuffle. Although I have this inexplicable urge to listen to Christmas music :s
Reading: War & Peace by Leo Tolstoy. Not bad so far, although every time I get used to a character the story shifts. This is one book I wont be finishing in a day. I've been reading it for a week and I am only on page 143. There are over 1350 pages.

Through the Eyes of a Stranger

Or someone stranger than you anyways.

I have lived here for just over two years and when I look around I realise that this is still not home. Home is where the heart is and I misplaced that a while ago. When you're a kid the place you grew up was magical all the best and worst things happened there, demons and wizards and all that kind of thing. Accepting somewhere as home is all in the mind, quite literally. Home is somewhere you are at ease, somewhere you feel welcome and want to be, somewhere where dreams and nightmares can come true but it's ok either way cos the people you love are with you through it no matter what. Home is where the memories are made and kept. All and none of this makes my current abode something other than home.

When I drive through town, or walk to the shops this is the town I see, I don't know if my town is any less real or skewed by prejudice than what is physically and geographically here but visit this place and your own mind will decide.

The dreams of hopeless children fly like litter caught in the autumn breeze, alays just out of reach but glinting and fluttering enough to catch the wandering eye one last time.
Even in the sunshine the town is masked in a haze of dust, it adds an almost old or nostalgic quality to the light; like an old movie of the world seen through the Cyclops' eye of the projector in a disused cinema. The dirt touches everything, living or otherwise, it seeps from the very pores of the grimy buildings slowing the ships as they crawl into the quayside. No wonder they leave so soon.

The town is dying, propped up by some vague malformed distant hope of a ferry port to the continent. Business comes and goes like the ships but regeneration plans continue to be made. Foolishly. Travel to the continent by flight is far cheaper & quicker so how will the new port change the fate of this sinking town.

It's a hotspot for unemployment, immigration, violent crime, teenage pregnancy; come to think of it the only thing this town isnt a hotspot for is good weather. Still, the domestic residencies of this place continue to increase like an infestation as heavy in numbers it causes it's own downfall. The roads are clogged and slow like congested arteries in a fat cat corporate lawyer. Waiting to give up the ghost completely. The council budget is over stretched like the incomes of the poverty line families that reside here. Even the electrical grid and water/sewage systems struggle to cope. Frequent power dips and blackouts blight the locals whilst flooding is on the rise (excuse the pun).

Yet this semi-derelict, industrial waste site is home to over 70,000 people. Most as hopeless and apathetic as the town. Hell is what you make of it. But I think even Satan couldn't do as a good a job as the elected council and MP.