I use memiary.com, a tiny little “5-things I did today” diary that encourages you to write every day. It’s very little effort to use, since it’s only 5 lines; a “micro-diary”, like Twitter is a micro-blog. It’s also private, and I find myself using it more than not. As a result, I can easily see what I’ve been up to for the last couple of months!
The snow has given way to warmer weather and even some sun, naturally interspersed with some grey, rainy and down-right miserable days. Work has been good, although it got a little shaky for a while — the world economy is a bit broken, and that’s nowhere more apparent than in a city like London which relies so heavily on the financial sector. We had some “redundancies” — read: “we can’t afford you” — but I’m still here and my last performance review was glowing so I’m somewhat safe. Well, as safe as anyone in this economy I guess1.
With the weather has come socialism, er, socialising. We have a few friends over here now — finally! — including Chris and Tina, Troy, Ken, Mark and Glenda and now Martin and Helen. (I’d like to include Stuart and Mal but we never seem to see ’em … sad-face). There is also a couple of people at our respective workplaces who are good to catch up with after work: Magda and Max, the Heartless King (grin) … So it’s been way too much time at the local “Old School Yard” — a cocktail bar with a weird, funky edginess to it, couches and lockers and graffiti and grime surrounding a bar of flying glass and steel and funny bartenders.
And the occasional traveller! Kimmy came to London the other weekend and we duly drank cocktails and smoked cigars and played rock and roll and generally made a mischief of ourselves. She’s a hard-core party animal, that’s for damn-sure … after talking (and drinking) all night she was keen to crack open a bottle of vodka!! Meanwhile, it took me days to recover. Days.
Last weekend was fun — we took a speed-boat tour down the Thames to the Thames Barrier! The “London RIB voyage” tour, which is inevitably cemented in my mind as the “London Rib-Eye Tour” since we boarded near the London Eye. Less red-meat, more high-speed jumping and bumping across the wakes of other boats — very much fun. Cold, even with the extra insulated jackets they provided, but well and truly worth it. The barriers themselves are strange; the architecture (engineering?) looks almost Elvish, and they rise above the murky waters like immense robotic guardians. Which, of course, they are!
1 Maybe untrue. I imagine that if your day-job was, say, ironing money for traders and bankers so each note was crisp in their little diamond-studded money-clip, you would do well to update your CV at this point.