Month: June 2005

Lolworth round trip

The walk

Another scorcher of a day.

Went out this morning, before it got too hot, and went for a walk from Lolworth, through Childerley, Knapwell and Boxworth back to Lolworth. Even at that time the heat was very intense.

This was a beautiful walk, just the right mix of country and village areas, gently undulating paths through enclosed, tree-lined routes and open fields. If I was into ranking things, I’d give it an eight out of ten.

It took about three hours which seems to be my ideal length, I find my hips start hurting quite a lot after that – not sure what that’s all about, it’s one of those things that you’re not quite sure is normal or if there is a genuine medical problem.

The self-analysis

I’ve always had this pain. I remember I used to go for long walks around London and when I was on solo holidays. When I was on my own I didn’t seem to be able to regulate myself, I would just walk, and walk, and walk. And a number of times I would get back in such pain.

I used to have this thing about turning around on a journey – I just couldn’t do it. If I was walking somewhere I’d get really self-conscious about the point at which I’d think “right, that’s enough, time to go back”, I couldn’t just stop and turn around and retrace my steps, I had to find a way to go on a round trip with no overlap. I think I felt that people would think I was odd, just stopping and turning around.

On a related note to the hips thing, I really hurt my ankles one time walking around Padua. I knew I was hurting, but I just wouldn’t stop. I guess I just didn’t feel safe stopping. I didn’t have a map and I’d walked out of the part of the town I knew and into a suburban area on the edge of the town, so I was feeling kind of out of place. I had to just keep walking until I found my way back to an area I recognized.

I still have this problem with turning around, actually, although I’ve now developed a ploy of making a show of stopping, checking my watch or phone or something, to make it look as if I’ve remembered something, or I’ve just got a message, something that would be a good reason to turn around.

That’s insecurity, right? Because I can’t do anything without thinking of what other people would think.

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A very hot day

Indeedy, it was. Apparently I’m working in the hottest room in our building and they’re going to use it as the baseline for regulating the air conditioning. But that won’t happen for two weeks. And how dumb is it that our building, which is very large and sprawling, has an air con system that has only one thermostat? That’s making a pretty big assumption about how even the temperature is throughout the building. Yes, I’m sure the builders knew what they were doing when they designed it.

Another thing I’ve discovered: the union that deals with such things has agreed with the management that there is a temperature BELOW which we should not be made to work. A good and wise decision. Unfortunately they couldn’t agree on a temperature ABOVE which we couldn’t work. So there’s no real incentive to get the air con fixed from an employee health and safety point of view.

browsing: Liked the illustration on the Money and Love T-shirt, it reminds me of some kind of sixties movie intro animations, Saul Bass-like, or Czech posters of the same era. I think I know someone who’d like these.

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Working tonight

We’re somewhat busy at work, so I’ve brought some home. Always a good sign.

Especially since I have next week off, and it looks like I’ll be taking more work home to do over the weekend. There is an implicit understanding that my holiday doesn’t start officially until Monday – which of course technically it doesn’t, as I can only be on holiday on days when I wouldn’t otherwise be at work, so the weekend is just a hiatus between work, not a holiday. So asking me to work this weekend is seen as acceptable.

There’s no point wingeing about it. I could have said “no”. But then there’s a lot of things I could have done:-

  • started work on time at 8.15am (rather than early at 7.45am)
  • stopped working during my lunch break (rather than worked through – not allowable as overtime)
  • left at 4.30pm (rather than stay to 5.30pm – allowable as overtime)

The rules don’t apply to work (or perhaps there are no rules).

It wouldn’t be so bad if it hasn’t been this way or worse for the whole time I’ve been at work (with rare exceptions).

The Work:

I’m putting together a new brochure for a company that produces bathroom stuff – showers, baths, sinks, toilets all that kind of thing. We’ve been through a short design process, and now it’s time to work up the whole brochure, with all their products. It’s got die-cutting and stuff – woohoo! Or at least that’s what I suggested in the designs – come to think of it, I haven’t actually had that confirmed yet. Little dreams that could be dashed at any moment . . .

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GeoTagging 3

Another interesting application of GeoTagging/GeoBlogging. The map it produces is too bulky for me to want use it on my website – very much like that weather avatar that you can get, nice idea but just too idiosyncratic. I also got half-way through setting myself up and then realised that I wasn’t that keen on people knowing exactly where I lived. I’m funny like that.

I had no qualms about finding out who were my nearest bloggers though.

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