chestnuts

Winter is officially here. the men are out with their rusty old oil cans roasting Chestnuts for the tourists. huzzah.

public convenience

I've just finished my first week of work in a new job, luckily it was not too taxing. I did get to travel up north to Leicester, requiring a visit to the new St. Pancras International terminal in London. I love the St Pancras building, I think it looks like a farytale castle. I picked my way through the japanese tourists, businessmen and Disneyland bound families, and eventually found the domestic ticket office, tucked shamefully away at the far end of the station. The 'automatic' door didn't work, so I had to squeeze and wrench myself through a small gap to get in and buy my (expensive) ticket. A minor teething problem I thought, especially since parts of the concourse was clearly still under construction, with empty shop units promising all kinds of exotic retail oppourtunities 'very soon'. (although why anyone would want to buy Belgian chocolates at the Eurostar terminal in london is beyond me.. after all, as they keep reminding us, Brussels is only 1 hour and 51 minutes away)

I'll get to the point. The new station was grandly opened only last week by our very own Queen and amid much fanfare and press coverage. Why then, when I went to use the (free) public toilets, was I to find that one of the cubicles was out of order, another had no loo roll, and the next one I tried had a broken lock that didn't actually lock the door, meanwhile of the 2 attendants, one was chatting to a cleaner at the entrance and the other was squeezing her spots in the mirror (YUK!?). frankly I was astonished at the incompetence of the whole service, it just typifies the 'rubbishness' and lack of service that I have sadly come to expect from this country.

first day at work

Heaving myself out of bed this morning was not nice. the crazy thing is, that I usually get up early anyway. There is some psychcological thing about HAVING to get up, and knowing that you need to get out of the house, into the icy cold rainy morning and sit on a commuter train getting hotter and hotter, until you get off, and then jostle through the barriers at a London Terminal, across the concourse, and down into the underground, where you join a queue to go through the barrier to join another queue to get down the escalator onto the platform, gradually getting warmer and warmer in your wool coat, and there you wait for the train to come, and when it does it is too full of people, so you wait for the next one, and then it arrives and you push onto it and stand for 20 minutes with your face in someones chest/arm/back. lurching around and hoping that the sheer squash of bodies will keep you upright, because you can't reach a handrail to hold yourself steady. On arrival at the destination station, and re-emerging outdoors, the relief of fresh air is dampened by the rain and you now have to walk to the office, dodging puddles and praying that you are not sprayed by a curbing taxi or bus, or that you don't step on one of those nasty loose paving slabs that emit a jet of cold grimy water from beneath.

Aaahhhh .... London. I was welcomed back into the working world with the most horrible wet raining morning ever. I am now one of the commuter masses once again. I'm happy about the job bit, but the commuting...not such fun. I guess you can't have it all.

Stuff

I am going through a serious getting rid of 'stuff' phase. It is astounding just how much rubbish we cart around with us in our lives. Of course we don't need it all, but I guess there is a lot of sentiment attached to it, as if our 'stuff' defines us, gives us our identity. Where are we or who are we without it? Do we become lost, without our material identity?

I like my books, and I don't mean novels I just read the one time and then keep on the shelf for ever. I like my reference books, and my travel books. I like those blue japanese bowls that my mum and Dad bought me in Selfriges, and I like the old piggy bank that Dad bought from Sweden. I like the green dragon soft toy that used to belong to my grandmother, and I like all those old handbags I've packed away in boxes ( for design reference - apparently). But do I really NEED them? I could live without them, and my life would not lack comfort. The problem is that they just take up so much space, and there are so many things like that, which can be kind of justified as worth keeping, but are they worth keeping if only to be left in a box in a storage unit?

I'm taking the long term view, one day I'll live in a house, and have some room for all these books and toys and souvenirs. For now I'm content to be aghast at the consumerism around us, and try very hard not to accumilate too much more 'stuff'.

In his book "do androids dream of electric sheep" Philip K. Dick describes the detritus in our lives as 'kipple'. the word has really stuck with me, I like the sound of it, and it's what i call this 'stuff' to myself. I looked it up on Wikipedia:

'Kipple'
popularised by science fiction author Philip K. Dick in the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. It refers to unwanted or useless junk that tends to reproduce itself. Some of Dick's descriptions of it suggest an analogy to entropy. According to two characters from the book, John Isidore stated that the first law of "kipple" is that "kipple" drives out "nonkipple"; Buster Friendly liked to declare, "Earth would die under a layer — not of radioactive dust — but of kipple."
Other forms of the word used in the novel include "kipple-ized", "kipple-factor", and "kippleization". People can turn into "living kipple". An apartment can become "kipple-infested".
"There's the First Law of Kipple," he said. "'Kipple drives out nonkipple.' Like Gresham's law about bad money. And in these apartments there's been nobody there to fight the kipple."

with the news programs constantly reporting on the need for us to produce less domestic waste, and recycle more, in order to save our environment, this description feels quite pertinant. But what can i do? I want to get rid of things, but not create waste, and am constantly accumilating more 'kipple' in my life every day. It's a dilema.

I might turn to the humble car boot sale to sell some things, perhaps this will provide me with a guilt free way to reduce my 'kipple'

excuses excuses

yes, It has been a while since I put anything out here. Last time I saw DH in sausageland, she scolded me for not writing. I must say I was a little surprised, as I find it hard to believe that anybody actually reads this blog. I even forget about it half the time.

So what is my excuse? well firstly, do I need one? actually no, but you're getting one anyway, since it's a way of divulging what I have been up to in the last 6 weeks.

Mr V and I have moved back to London. We are in our own little place now, which is cute, For cute read 'small' it's a world away from the luxury appartment we had in sausageland. Moving in was a total farce, due to the vast amount of furniture and 'stuff' that we have,and we are still negotiating boxes while moving around the flat, even though a large portion of it has been put into storage.

I am today, for the first time in almost 2 years, facing an imminent re-entry to the rat race. Yes, finally I have secured myself a job, and they want me to start on Monday.. typical. I expect they will want the clothes designed yesterday as well. Listen to me! I'm already complaining.

I have only just sorted out the internet connection. We can blame the ever rubbish BT for that one. How can they send the BILL to the correct address, and then give the wrong address to the delivery company for the wirelwss box doo da. numpties. OK, that is a rant waiting to happen.....they only need to slip up one more time, and Smak! they are going to get it from me.

more soon.