So i start my weeks break with a pilgrimage to the awesome space of St Pancras Station. They still haven’t finished the works there, so its a little difficult to figure out what its going to be like when its done.
Now i’m waiting for the rain to stop before heading onward to bmovie. I hope i remembered the right date.
There’s a creepy scouser in the corner shouting “i hate muslims” into his mobile phone. Some days i love being english. This isn’t one of them.
“hi, i’m an American jerk.” – Tokyo Damage Report is back.
“Let me get this straight… you’re planning a major software release, a hardware upgrade and a minor release for code that hasn’t been written yet in the next three weeks and you don’t think theres any risk in shpping for our customers to hit the shops before christmas?”
Share portfolio
1 Month change: +1.74% FTSE: +1.55%
12 Month change: +19.71% FTSE: +14.76%
12 Month yield: 1.57%
Top performer: nCipher +11%
Worst performer: Evolution -10%
The most exciting thing this month was the announcement of a special dividend by Amstrad – the price fell 12% as it went ex-dividend, but given that the payment is something of the order of 18% (of the pre-dividend price) it seems a little unfair to classify them as the worst performer. Its not paid until December, though.
This is a fairly generic ‘management improvement book’, they all claim they can help you improve the way you do things or the way you think about things. They mostly just contain the same dross wrapped up in different ways. This is no different, it concentrates on problem identification and solution, but theres no new ground here, if you’ve not read a book like this before you’ll probably get quite a lot of useful mental tools from it.
Who should read this book? Probably nobody, there are better places to get this kind of information. No poll for this one.
Saint or sinner? (mp3 player)
First, a big *THANK YOU* to Damian for driving me home last night – I’m so used to the Underworld where doors at seven means ‘kicking out at 10 so we can run another club after’.
I got to Camden early so I could take a proper look around and get lost in the market – I don’t think I’ve been there since I got back from Tokyo – its all gone rather…permanent, hasn’t it? Everywhere seems to have been replaced with glass and pine, its lost some of its sleaze. I’m not quite sure what to think of it, its not what I was expecting, and I suspect something needed to be done. Hmmm, what does everyone else think of it?
Then time to meet Matti and Daymo, and try to remember where the Roundhouse was. We found it, with a huge queue outside – I’m still not quite used to the idea of going to events that require queues. Still, it was fairly quick moving and we were inside where the madness began.
It started with an assault from someone armed with a bubble gun, then a poor girl got lost in a box, and stilts and paper hearts and watching and people ignoring the bubble gun and lets go and find out what that noise is and wow, what a fabulous building and strange cinema. Sometime around here reality moved around 10 degrees to the left.
Last nights post was a picture of a ‘circus composer’, who makes noise from all sorts of things, including taping a microphone to the wrong end of a flute and megaphone harmonica. And where did all that bass come from? I can’t describe his performance, and I’m sure that a recording of it wouldn’t do it justice. I can’t remember his name otherwise I would recommend going to see him. (ETA: Sxip Shirey…with thanks to cherylbird)
There were a few other acts, of variable quality, including some people from the Legendary Pink Dots (soporiphic, good but not right for the moment), a wig juggler (entertaining), a man with lots of hair (odd, but not in a good way), a French girl with a black and white face (sad, but very good), a small dance troupe (undescribable but good) and a fan dancer with a little surprise (unexpected).
And then the Dresden Dolls were on stage. The show was being filmed so they were putting on even more of a show than normal –
with a number of guests on stage during various songs. They started with a stonking version of “Sex changes” – where else could they start? They were in fine form, putting on a show, not just a gig.
Tonight I took a walk up to the hill above Ashtead – to watch the fireworks from the hilltop. Unfortunately most of the path is wooded and you can’t see anything interesting, there is, though, a horse field (which has notices authorising walking but reserving priority for horses) from which the view across the Ashtead valley was wonderful.
My views on fireworks have changed somewhat, I’ve not really liked the noisy ones for a long time, but watching them from an aeroplane and seeing the display over Tokyo harbour have shown me that there is nothing we can do in this country which will ever get anywhere close to what they can be. And while I think they’re quite pretty, I worry that it is environmentally inconsiderate to continue using them.
Its so easy to spook yourself walking a moonlit path, isn’t it? Especially when you can feel the eyes of the works following you, a shadowy figure disappearing into the darkness along their boundary. Still, its quite a view from up here and there’s noone else watching. Everything is distant, so the sound and the light are divorced.
I think my reality just slipped.
Back soon. Maybe.
What a beautiful spring morning? A touch of frost in the air, enough to wake you up but not enough to make you cold. Bright blue sky full of aeroplanes heading to wonderful exciting foreign places. Shame its november, isn’t it?
