Catching my breath

Hello - everything is different since last post.

Job

I have a new job that I really enjoy. I only have to work three days a week there. It is a brand agency that suffered a midlife crisis and is now trying to only do good things. I am doing their comms, so it is essentially an in-house role i.e. no dealing with clients. They are all nice people and sometimes a little dog comes to the office and I can play with it. The offices are 5mins away from my flat.

the street where I work

Football

My entire life since January 2 has been consumed by my involvement in a community buyout of the local football club. This has been worthwhile in many respects - I am now friends with an extremely famous British film director, for instance, and will soon get to meet a cult figure in football management at our prospectus launch event - but has clouded out everything else and created an enormous amount of stress, to the point of being physically debilitating, from worrying about the responsibilities. A doctor actually prescribed me beta-blockers to deal with late-night panic attacks - ever taken these? They literally slow down your heart and you can't feel your legs. However I have 'given notice' and will stop working for the bid Tuesday next. At this point I'll have time to really get myself on track.

potential new friend

Not that things are bad now, things are good, just a little bit day-to-day. I like a nice weekly routine and am building towards it. I work three days a week and yet don't seem to get much out of the spare time - haven't made sauerkraut for ages! Once the football thing is over I'll get back to work on the important stuff - sort out the tai chi (not going to the guy in Bristol anymore, it's too far), tapestry, brewing etc. I'll probably do more blogging.

Bath

It's a lovely town really. I've figured out a good circular walk that takes about an hour and half. I used to walk for hours each day in London and I can now scientifically confirm that it was keeping the weight off.

I like being closer to nature. I mean look at this picture. This is Lansdown Crescent, part of my walk. Those are SHEEP in the foreground. We have sheep just wandering around here.

The canal is great for walking as well. We're looking after our friends' houseboat from tomorrow until Thursday, pretty psyched. Then on Thursday we're going to the Royal Bath & West Show, which I predict will be fucking sick.

Cider

Without anyone really encouraging me, without having read about it in the Guardian or on a cool website, I have ended up actually genuinely preferring scrumpy farmhouse cider ('real cider' in CAMRA parlance) to normal cider brands like Thatchers or Stowford Press. The gateway was Honey's Midford Cider, which is made near my mum's house. It had a clean design on the pump clip and had an 'accessible' taste. It also made me feel like I was on drugs - specifically, codeine, which I starting taking in 2010 after getting really bad back pain, and then used the leftover tablets to treat hangovers. It's a warm, fuzzy, "everything is right in the world" feeling. 

Then my mate Rory, who lives in a camper van, came to live in the West Country for a bit. He has no money so we got into a routine of getting into the camper van on a Friday night, driving to a farm shop and buying loads of cider, poured into plastic milk bottles straight from the barrel. We would then park up in some field or another and drink cider, cook farm shop sausages and play charades. I should really do a whole post about Rory and his camper van, it's a thing of beauty. We're camping at Bath & West in it. If you have instagram look up 'seasidechancer' and follow his adventures, I'm in a lot of them.

But anyway the interesting point is that different ciders affect you in different ways. There is a notorious local scrumpy called "Cheddar Valley" that makes people violent. We also found from experience that "Black Rat" cider makes you a bit 'chopsy' as we say here - not violent, but a bit snappy and wired - and then gives you not just a hangover but also a full-blown comedown that can last up to two days. I can however recommend "Black Bat" cider which puts you in a cheerful mood, with little after effects. The hangovers don't tend to be too bad, possibly because of the lack of preservatives. I mean this is folk science here, this entire paragraph is probably bollocks but, you know, 'knowledges' and all that.

I don't know who these people are, this is just a generic shot of the sort of farm shop we go to. You can see the plastic bottles stacked by the barrels. I have actually tried the "Kingston Black" cider on the far right barrel. You can really taste the peel in that one.

I was in the Bell Inn on my own on a Sunday (Jess works on Sundays) and I tried to buy a pint of normal cider. The barmaid looked me up and down and asked me if I liked real cider - they had some in the back. People can actually tell that I like scrumpy just by looking at me.

Update from Laura Place

Hi all, just made some sauerkraut, first batch in my new place, thought I'd give you a quick update, interspersed with videos to maintain your interest.

Tai Chi / Taoism / Scholarship

Tai Chi is going well, really like the teacher. First whitey I've had teach me for any serious length of time, and he's really good - funny, likeable, focuses a lot on basics, not a hippy though. Encourages a lot of class interaction, the 90mins flies by. Good lad. Plenty of space to practice at home as well, that's always an issue. This video is what I'll be learning - believe it or not, I have actually learnt this and forgotten it, I used to do this in Hong Kong all the time after work, getting bitten by mosquitos and shit:

I have a little man bag that I take to and from work. On the way out, I read Taoist texts and contemplate the scenery. On the way back it's dark so I play Mario Kart on my Nintendo DS.

As far as scholarship goes, I've just started reading Latour's We Have Never Been Modern. Enjoying it so far! Will probably take about a year to read his complete works, then I'll start working on a PhD proposal - no rush to start it, but I want to continue acting as though I am an academic even if I don't take my PhD until my 50s or 60s.

Nine-to-Five

Fucking awful, spacesuit couldn't really take it. Terrible cultural fit generally and one manager is particularly toxic. Found out that the last two PR hires left after two months! I expected it to be like Hot Fuzz, i.e. that it would all be very amateur and the work really 'local' and pointless, but that everyone would at least be chilled out and self-aware. Not so much.

Anyway I won't bother with details, but I'm already starting to apply for other stuff - this time, outside of the private sector. It was just getting to me too much, but as soon as I decided to start applying for other stuff, the anxiety lifted and I can face going into work again. I also watch sumo at my desk after the boss leaves for the day. Go to 6:55 for today's best bout:

Tapestry / Brewing / Music / Reading

Tapestry being held up by equipment issue, I need to get a frame off my mum. Bought my brewing kit! Need to just research a little to make sure I don't fuck up the first brew, or at least, don't give away mistakes cheaply. And buy a big pan. Turns out my neighbour is a professional brewer with the Wild Beer company, which could be helpful.

Haven't set up music recording kit yet but have been writing songs in my head - seeing my guitarist on the weekend to talk about what he wants to do, have kind of been waiting for that before pressing forward. Still reading Runaway Horses by Mishima, and also have been watching Civilisation on DVD again.

I started to worry about being behind with various projects but then I thought 'fuck it', I'm basically just rolling along until Christmas, rolling like along the bottom of the sea when a wave knocks you over and the waves that come behind it keep rolling you, underwater but towards the beach... I have two weeks off from Dec 19th to sit up on the shore and shake the saltwater out of my ears, no problem!

We have a new place

It's Laura Place, about 300m down the street from where I first moved to in Bath in 1988:

Haven't actually seen it yet, Jess did the deal, moving in Sunday. Come visit!

Best thing is that it's near the Holburne Museum, which I used to hate as a kid but like now. It's just some colonial dude's collection but there's some fun stuff. Al was writing in his award-winning Yorkshire blog about the appeal of small museums, this is one of those - there are some genuinely terrible paintings where the artist has gone back and changed the head, or added a child to a family portrait, which is interesting from a social history perspective.

They also have some good Imari porcelain - stuff made in Arita, Japan for the European market and exported via the port of Imari, hence the name. There are also really bad renderings of Western paintings onto custom-ordered porcelain plates where the Japanese artists have become flummoxed by different artistic traditions of perspective etc. The V&A would have quite understandably binned them for space reasons, so I wouldn't have learned that fact.

I don't have a complete understanding but there's some interesting stuff about how the fortunes of Imari porcelain rose and fell because of economic and technological factors: first the Chinese got their act together and started trading internationally again, undercutting the Japanese, and then a factory in Meissen figured out the 'hard paste' technique that had been kept secret by the Chinese/Japanese - leading to situations where English porcelain makers were copying Japanese styles that had been 'Westernised' by the Japanese for export in the first place.

So yeah, let us buy some furniture and then come down!

First tapestry completed

TAPESTRY

Got this starter kit for my birthday just to learn the ropes - finished it over the weekend. It's as relaxing and enjoyable as I expected:

The next one is a "proper" one designed by Kaffe Fassett and manufactured by the Ehrman people.

SAUERKRAUT

Made way too much sauerkraut - it's going a bit dry in the fridge, two cabbages' worth. Using a smaller jar now. I tend to drain a completed sauerkraut batch and keep the brine for the next batch, if that makes sense - I don't eat it right from the fermenting jar.  Might need to rethink that if it goes dry. One good thing was, I used one white cabbage and one sweetheart cabbage, interesting flavour. I told my grandmother I was making a batch and she advised adding a few whole peppercorns.

LIVING

Living at home is pretty good although I can't get a moment's peace. Just about managed to get through 20 pages of The Pasteurisation of France by Bruno Latour before my concentration was ruined for good and I decided to have a little blog instead. I read somewhere recently about silence being the most jealously guarded commodity of the rich, or something. Not anyone's fault, just thin walls and doors. I'm being very well looked after though, Jess is cooking every night and getting up at the same time as me (around 7.15am) to make me an egg on toast.

Jess is really enjoying her job at the Little Theatre in Bath so we've decided to find a flat here rather than Bristol - my office is right next to Bristol Temple Meads station so it's no problem - the commute in is actually really beautiful. 

Bath Spa to Bristol Temple Meads

The issue was really the money, it's £1500/yr (although we get 3% cashback with our new joint Santander account) but it's worth it for Jess' peace of mind - she's been juggling studying with all kinds of crazy jobs for three years now, when you get a good one that pays OK and doesn't take it out of you too much mentally, you have to keep it. 

They're all really nice there, it's a Picturehouse cinema but it's only part-owned and everyone there from the manager down hates the Picturehouse - Jess has been told off for trying to sell memberships, they genuinely thought she might be a spy from head office when she started there! So far I've seen Two Days and One Night, Pride and A Most Wanted Man and can recommend them all, especially Pride, which could have been terrible in a BBC/Richard Curtis/Guardian way but is actually very sensitively done.

PENDING

Tai Chi starts tomorrow. Scoping out rehearsal studios in Bath to spend a few hours working on some songs - no hope of getting anything done here. Will buy basic brewing kit with first paycheck in October. Probably playing a little bit too much Minecraft. Drinking levels still too high but trending downwards. Spacesuit intact. More later.

Embracing change, uncertainty and dynamism

This is a canapé of an argument.

The people who tell you to see a "fast-paced, changing, uncertain, dynamic, global, unpredictable world" as a good thing - and seek to create change and dynamism where there was staid certainty - are usually the ones getting rich from the changes and the collapse of old certainties. This is obvious. 

By getting rich, though, they are in fact reducing change and uncertainty for themselves and their families. So they don't really believe that change, uncertainty, dynamism and unpredictability are good things. Like most people, they crave stability. And they will take yours away to get more for themselves and their kids.

Next time they start bullshitting about the virtues of change, uncertainty and dynamism, shove this canapé in their greedy mouths.

(Further reading - Ulrich Beck on the "Risk Society". Inequality is not just about distribution of resources, it's about distribution of risks.)

Excerpts from "Personal Brand" brainstorm

Things to talk about with colleagues and clients:

Trends in PR

Football, inc. non-league

Design, Copywriting

Things happening in Bristol

Bristol business

Homebrew & Craft Beer

PR experience inc travel, in moderation

Nice things about SW

Things not to talk about:

Sumo

Socialism

Opinions about pubs

The Arts

My life, 2013-2014

Tai Chi

Cynicism about PR

Cynicism about digital / online / social media things

Dislike of Apple

Anti-materialism

Japanese literature

Home fermenting

Needlepoint

Exercise

Oxford

Travel

Preference for going out in London compared to Bristol

My band, past or present

Music in general

Other points:

Dress carefully.

Don’t eat anything too weird for lunch.

Get a new sticker for the laptop!

What are your expectations, salary-wise?