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.

1. Cue P.J. Harvey’s Seagulls track on her Uh Huh Her album.

The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people’s reality, and eventually in one’s own.

- Susan Sontag

My tele lens died. Well – at least I have the feeling it is beyond fixing now. I managed to repair the shutter when it collapsed a while back, but this is more serious. The problem is I can’t check – I haven’t found a way to access the part of the lens that I’d need to look at. Without knowing how it is constructed I’d describe it as it having broken apart – the focus ring at the back no longer moves the front part. Rather – the two have become seperate. But this is no good description and I can’t offer a better one. But I think I got one last good use out of it. All, but one, of the lenses I have have do not have modern features like auto-focus and the like. It became a bit of an extra challenge getting things in focus as the tele was already begining to fail, badly. That is I had to press the lens backwards to get it to focus (ouch, nose), and even that only worked occasionally. I am rather happy with the results, however.

On Saturday a set of free concerts in the Docks started, focusing on African Music. Liverpool-based Zimbabwan ‘Hohodza Band‘, ‘Groupe Lolou’ from Senegal and ‘Oumou Sangaré‘ (Mali). Here some photos in no particular order; more can be found in the gallery:

Also: I have a deadline to move out of the apartment I am in, now. The next tenant needs to be out of his old apartment by the 17th. I agreed to try to find a new place by then, but – given that the landlady has another house in the same street – I could temporarily stay there until the end of August (when my contract for this apartment officially runs out) if necessary. I am fine with that. Not least given I might need my current landlady to provide a “reference” for anything I’d rent through an agency.

I don’t know. I am not motivated – the topic feels superflous. I know the general answers, but will have to fill it out with details and find actual examples & references. The usual scientific drag. And I am still listening to the eels. But I also want to finally work through my backlog of photos. I haven’t really shared any I took in Liverpool these last two and a half years with anyone. I want to pick up my writing again. It’s just … not quite there yet, and I need my blanket more often.

Thursday: A fieldtrip to a waste water plant close-by. As ever so often I am surprised by the contrast between studying Outdoor Education and the leather-seated way too posh coaches we are put in at times. We were booked in for an hour long tour, but ended up spending two hours there.

Saturday: A visit to the tate. This was with Headspace but only K. turned up. Some of William Blake’s paintings and drawings on display. As with anything about him these are focused on christian motives, exploring spirituality and – no matter what you think about these topics – very well crafted. Particularly the way background and foreground work together, his obvious keen sense of human faces and expressions. My favourites, however, are an incredible goofy Cerberus and that fascinating creature in The Six-Footed Serpent Attacking Agnolo Brunelleschi².

Illustrations by William Blake

Walking back home on my own I passed The Olive Tree, one of those general esoteric and spirituality shops that smell of holyness and that everyone (including employees) whispers in. I walked in because they had Moroccan cooking books on sale (and picked one up eventually). A good ethnic cooking book is more than just recipies but also an exploration of a different country – and this one is a particularly nice example. I’d walked in wearing my headphones, smiled briefly at the person on duty, and turned them off just in the (unlikely) case they might leak sound and upset. Not eels. Artery³ Now … if I’d only lose my anxieties about cooking in shared housing. I dislike having people watch, especially when trying new things. Which means I stick to simple, quick and what I know.

1. That is – I’ve looked for some articles yesterday night. Past midnight.
2. Image slightly enlarged. And blurry, thus
3. Bulgarian-Dutch Balkan Underground Folk Metal. Try Rubber Moon, Take it from me, Control and Electricity for the whole width of their sound and please (mostly) ignore the lyrics.

Elsewhere …

I’ve received an extension on my dissertation until March 2nd. It’ll still be tight to finish in time – it’s quite hard to co-ordinate four different people all on a different full-time course. And … well – as dissertations probably always go – it all seems incredibly mundane and not particularly useful while working on it. I’ve also got a transcript of my grades through the mail. It makes for a somewhat interesting read. My mean marks for level one and two where both at around 55%. Level 3 (up to the end of last term) is on a 71% level so far. Given it counts 3/4 for the final mark … I increased my degree classification to 67.1%. I.e. I am on a good path with room for growth. I am not that sure I can keep this up though – the whole dissertation mess up will mean I’ll be pressed for time with other assignments coming up in March. And I’ll not score high on the practicals, as in any of the previous years. Hm … .

I am off to the Lake District from this Saturday on for my Mountain Leadership Training (private arrangment, not part of Uni course), then off for a three day assessment on my Mountaineering skills with uni. Which means I’ll have to work on my dissertation in the evenings.

And meanwhile …

I’ve attended a staff training for my Student Learning Mentor post – “Magic Spelling” – which is basically a NLP approach to assist people in memorizing correct spellings of words. The fun bit … you’ll have to do a bit of “calibrating” by firing of questions and observing the person(s) eye movement for some clues on how their brain works. It’s not unlike the Voigt-Kampff test in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep / Blade Runner.

Also … I love The eels.. The world needs more of them.

there’s a world outside
and i know ’cause i’ve heard talk
in my sweetest dream
i would go out for a walk

but i don’t think i’m ready yet
i’m not feeling up to it now
just not that steady yet
and i don’t need you telling me how

there’s some happiness
and my stone face cracks again
maybe sometime sooner or later

but i don’t think i’m ready yet
i’m not feeling up to it now
just not that steady yet
and i don’t need you telling me how

so if i leave my room
don’t you tell me to lighten up
maybe sometime sooner or later

but i don’t think i’m ready yet
i’m not feeling up to it now
just not that steady yet
and i don’t need you telling me how

And I need to hand in the “open” Mountaineering paper that ate away my time these last few days. And of course I want to yield to my own self-promise of using this journal to get some routine in my life. An entry a day or every other. The Problem: these assignments always take on a life of their own and I end up leaving home at eight in the morning and only return back home a few minutes to midnight.

I am tired of this.

Down the river, saw you drown.

But what keeps me awake now are these:

Sennheiser HD 280 pro

Wanted good headphones since a while – as I have been using the cheap library ones to get rid of of the noisy atmosphere. And well, working on soundrecordings at FACT gave me a lot of time with headphones of decent quality on. These don’t look nice. But that’s fine. They grip tight. The first hour was actually painful. Now that they made friends with my head and lost their initial factory inflexibility …… they be wonderful and comfortable. And they keep the noise out. Meaning lower volume required to listen (around -32 db is good).

Did you know that there’s a small voice track mixed into Propellerhead’s History Repeating? “Can you hear this?”

You know it really is amazing.

I’ve finished the first mandatory part of the World-Of-Work twiddlefaddlemuck at uni. Let’s say I am carefully optimistic that some parts of that may actually prove useful. However. Myers-Briggs. Psychometric Analytics! Onehundredeleven rolleyes.

We could sing the Pope to sleep
(…)
would he take up too much room?
would he hog the blankets, too?

Good night.

Here’s a list of side effects
Practice tested
Covering every malice angle
For example you will sleep forever