It’s summer in Liverpool. A (close to) pitch perfect one up to this point. Blue skies, close to no rain and my hands have begun to tan. Two-thirds of my hands that is; from the fingers to a bit beyond halfway. The sleeves of the all-weather jacket that’s part of my work uniform are a little too long. I work as a postman, twice a week, for a small local department of a much bigger global company. I deliver mail to one of the two big football clubs in Liverpool and my round is a journey alternating between working and middle class households. These are – as is the case almost anywhere in town – separated by streets, rather than neighbourhoods. It is a journey between those that do well and those that struggle. It is a peaceful job (mostly – there’s children throwing stones now and then and the usual odd-one that needs to verbally abuse someone or the rare aggressive dog) and one of the least stressful working environments I ever encountered.
Contrast that to the experience of being a postman in Germany, which means management far removed from the actual workers and whose “staff training” consists of telling it’s delivery operative that they are nothing more than glorified advertising dispensers, a largely abusive public and having to meet strict averaged delivery times (1 second per letter, 3 seconds per package plus a blanket travelling time added). These are so tight that, in the depot that I worked at for a while, some of the older postmen physically didn’t manage. The rest of their family helped out, unpaid, unofficially, just so that their spouse/parent met the targets set. In Germany the family name of whoever occupies a house is displayed on the outside in addition to the house numbers. The expectation is that postmen must have memorized the first name of who lives where in their district, but also that they know/remember if some member of a family that used to live in a particular house has moved elsewhere. If you don’t remember, but post a letter, there will be complaints. Here in England houses only have numbers and there’s no indication who lives where; that alone makes the job so much more enjoyable. It is a good transitional job. Which is where I am. Stability. I am not quite sure where I’ll go next, yet.
Today is the last week I am on anti-depressants after a two-year period. Over the last three weeks I have stepped down dossage in agreement with my GP. I have graduated from my BsC in Outdoor and Environmental Education degree with a first (but will miss the graduation cermony as I am in Sweden at that time) and am half-way through my MA in Writing. The first feels like the biggest achievement among the three. I’d like something big to happen next, somehow.
What is the purpose of an online journal? I am not really sure. This one turned out to be a form of public diary. I don’t keep any note of the things I don’t want to share though, so these are all the (sporadic) notes on my life I do keep. Keeping a diary is, I guess, a lot about the implied promise of being able to turn back pages somewhere at a non-descript future moment in time looking back and rediscovering what one had forgotten. Excuse me while I sum up some recent and not so recent events. Right now Iceland is shutting down modern transportation for the second time this year, as volcanic ash-clouds endanger fragile air-plane turbines. The biggest recession since the 1930’s has arrived in the UK, but no-one really seems to give a damn; some traditional shops that were part of “British culture died”, but live goes on. There’s been one of the wettest and one of the coldest periods in England since weather records began. Cue this amazing satellite image that made it’s rounds. I am listening to PJ Harvey’s The Whores Hustle and the Hustler’s Whore, not through my headphones for a change, but through the computer speakers that my mother gave me on an extended loan and that are, mainly, usually, in the lounge for our frequent film nights.
We can’t decide on films most of the time. We use a roundabout method instead. There’s a pile of about 30 DVD’s in the lounge, with a tupper-ware style small plastic container on top containing an adequate amount of paper cut into roughly equal squares with numbers written on them then folded over. Our own random-number generator. With smaller decisions (like – do we have Pizza today or not? Who’s first to put up washing?) a simple coin flip is enough. We is P., my flat mate, and me. P.’s an Outdoor Ed. Student, in his last year. And, incidentally, a postman, too. I feel like having some vanilla icecream.
The apartment. I’ve meant to introduce it months ago. We are in the middle of the town. There’s a photo of the view from my desk below. We are living among seagulls1. Quite frequently one of them lands on the windowsill infront of my window. They don’t seem to be overly aware of their surroundings when landing. Only after their landing do they look up, see me, hesitate for a moment startled((These are massive birds. Their wings span extends beyond the width of my window.)) and flying off again. Just as frequently one or the other is (not very happily?) pecking at one of the cut out cardboard fishes we stuck to the lounge window (aka our aquarium). Other notable happenings include another completed headsound project. The first was an exploration of Liverpool through sound, the second a stop-motion animation (this is a rough and incomplete cut) and the third a VJing/DJing performance where we plugged in and used as many devices as we could [two laptops, a portable play station, a wii-mote, a set of digital-turntables, a light-board and a smoke machine]. We weren’t actually allowed to use the smoke-machine within FACT and set off the fire alarm during practise. There’s a fourth project in the plans for this summer.
And the rest, as they say, are photos.
View from my desk
Spraypainting Fishes for a Liverpool Studen Amnesty protest agains Shell
Justin and Julie
Well hello there! (A mannequin in some clothing shop in Liverpool.)
. It's a tie.
