ganching

On Being Busy

Recently I have been far too busy.   Emails go unanswered, dishes unwashed, the garden wilts and I have long ago lost the battle with the ironing. 

I don't know how people cope with the kind of jobs where they have to work until 8 or 9 o'clock every night. Well, I guess a lot of them have cleaners, wives and/or huge incomes. Recently I have not been getting home until about 8.30 every night and I am not enjoying it.

I am seriously thinking of getting a cleaner despite my previous experience of being an employer - Magda was, after all, only a slightly exaggerated version of a real person.  Of course the very idea of having a cleaner makes me feel horribly guilty.  I first encountered cleaners when I lived in halls of residence. It made me feel very uncomfortable that someone was cleaning up after me.  I used to leave notes telling her not to bother doing anything.  In retrospect I think it was the university's way of checking that all us first years weren't systematically destroying the rooms.

If I had a cleaner it would force me to become much, much tidier and I would know that the flat was really spotless as I wouldn't let the cleaner across the door until I had thoroughly cleaned the place myself.

A few years ago I was ill and had to be taken to hospital by ambulance.  The whole way there, in between worrying that I was about to die, I fretted about what the cleaner would think as I hadn't had time to clean the place before she arrived.

I survived and eventually let the cleaner go although it took me 6 months to do it - at one point I considered leaving the country to get away from her.  On second thoughts maybe getting a cleaner isn't such a good idea after all.

In The Country

English Country House
Originally uploaded by ganchingabz

It's a warm summer's evening here in London and I am fantasising about living in the country as there is a huge amount of noise going on in the street. Caterwauling. Play fighting. Loud telephone conversations. Air guitar playing. I wish it would start raining so they would all scuttle inside and close their windows.

I have had a very glum day at work. At which management school do they teach you that it is appropriate to send one line emails to your staff using the imperative and dispensing with salutations and the words "please" and "thank you"?

Spent all of yesterday afternoon sitting next to someone at a boring meeting who, at the end of the day, told me that she had been off work all of the previous week with swine flu. Real swine flu - swine flu that had been diagnosed and reported in the local paper and led to a school being closed because almost all the teachers had caught it. I have been feeling a bit unwell ever since. At least tomorrow is Friday.

And The Boys From The NYPD......

This time last week I was entertaining The Surly Niece.  The plan was that she would be entertaining me but something went wrong somewhere.

What to say about Limerick?  It has a very good art school.  It rains a lot there.  It has a big river.  The tourist office closes on Sundays.  It is not a good idea to get lost and drive into one of the estates.  You can stay in quite decent hotels for very little money.  There is a lot of Georgian architecture.  There are a lot of uPVC windows in Georgian houses.  There is a Brown Thomas store. In one of the art galleries in the town is the worst exhibition ever staged anywhere ever.

I stayed there for two days and on the third day I failed to go to the Burren due to there being no public transport so instead went to Galway.

The degree show was very good.  All the girls were dressed to the nines and had heels so high that it made me dizzy looking at them.  The parents and families were a mix of cool sophisticates and people who had never been to an exhibition in their lives before.

"Four years in college and this is the best she could do?".

We were all very proud of the Surly Niece.

(One of these pieces is not by the Surly Niece.)

Jelly Fruits

Jelly Fruits
Originally uploaded by ganchingabz

Since moving into the smallest flat in London I have had a stream of visitors. Kerry Sister stayed for almost a fortnight helping me with my diy project and throughout the year a veritable installation of Limerick Art Students have spent nights sleeping on the living room floor.

Kerry Sister had a lovely time in London and, even though I say it myself, I couldn't have done more for her. (I was only having a laugh when I hid her passport and any talk of indentured labour is gross exaggeration)  She had her birthday when she was here and I bought her a lovely gift that cost considerably more than 1'-. I organised a tour for her from  Edmonton to South London via the North Circular Road, Stratford and the Blackwall tunnel.  Granted it was in a van with a couple of men who were delivering some items from Ikea but, by all accounts, they were very good tour guides. We went to Tate Britain twice to see the Richard Long exhibition and we ate in the local Turkish restaurant which is so good I can't tell anyone where it is. All in all it was a very successful project and a credit to my project management skills.

It is now pay back time for the Limerick Art Students. Tomorrow I am going to their end of year show and will be expecting the highest level of hospitality from Anching, The Lovely Girl, The Fictional Character and the Surly Niece. I have never been to Limerick before - apparently it is a very damp place and packed with criminals.  I will do a full report when I get back.

(Congratulations to the 'Surly Niece who got her results today.)

 

Magherafelt

We stopped for tea in Magherafelt in a pub that smelt of the night before.  You found it charming that they brought an unasked for plate of biscuits. I called my mother to say we were on our way. “Will I make something for you?…A tart - that’s what I’ll make - I have all the stuff in for a tart.”A first-time visitor you drank it all in –the ‘it is, so it is’ responses,the metal-meshed barracks and the raggedy red, white and blue. We stayed longer than we planned and got lost coming out of town. Me, behind the wheel, shoulders hunched, the wipers on, and rain pelting down from the darkening sky. When we finally arrived my mother was all aflutter, reaching up to kiss me, embarrassed in front of a stranger. My father, in the front room in his chair, seemed more composed but as I bent down towards him, muttered, ‘Youse are very late - they must have moved Magherafelt since I was last there.’

 

 

DIY

New Shelving
Originally uploaded by ganchingabz

I have embarked on a serious diy project. Kerry Sister has come over for a few days to assist me.

We are planning to put up shelving in the kitchen and the living room and to build a cupboard in the hall. Once we have that done we may start ripping out the kitchen.

Good planning, a realistic budget and no fear of hard work is the key to successful diy. KS is already filling and sanding and doing other things while I am sitting up in bed listening to a religious programme on R4 and contemplating.

Sadly I can't take any time off work during this diy project but I am making sure that I pull my weight. On Friday morning we visited a timber yard near to where I used to work. KS and the man in the mill had a long and animated conversation about mdf and offcuts while I had a little wander round.

When we came out KS said:

"I would die of happiness if there was a place like that near where I live!"

"Hmm, we tried to have it closed down when I worked here."

After work we went to Ikea. We arrived at the store at 6.30 p.m. and when we left at 9.15 p.m. I had purchased 12 candles, two light bulbs and one bathroom mirror. KS had worked out how to build a cupboard using an Ikea shelving unit as a carcass.

Yesterday KS did a lot more sawing and measuring and priming. My contribution was going with her to Wickes where she sent me off to various places to find things - she had forgotten her glasses - and made me pay for them. (I think she may have made up the names of some of the things - an auger drill bit?)

When we got home we both went outside as it was a beautiful day and KS painted shelves while I made helpful suggestions and looked at the Guardian.

Unfortunately today I have to go to a tea party so will have to leave her to her own devices.

Is Féidir Linn

I met my friend Kerr's Pink on Saturday morning to go for a walk.  You will recall that Kerr's Pink is my friend who is excessively fond of potatoes and talking.  (It is a mystery to me why all the people I go walking with are so irritating.)   We met at Waterloo Station which was thronged with people as it was the beginning of the Bank Holiday and, very unusually, the sun was shining.

  I prefer going for walks on Sundays and KP prefers Saturdays. It will tell you something about how accommodating and reasonable I am that it was a Saturday when we met. It was actually extremely inconvenient for me because on Saturday night I was due to go to a concert in the Barbican.  For this reason I chose to go for a walk along the Thames as it would take less time to get there.  It is a rule of mine that my walking companions are never allowed to choose where we go and quite often I don't even tell them the destination until we get there.

KP was already at the station when I arrived.

"Right, we're going to Teddington - the walk's 11 miles and I need to be heading back by three so we need to walk quickly and there's to be no talking and especially no talking to strangers!"

"Thanks for asking. Yes, I am well."

I had never been to Teddington before although like all normal children we watched Magpie rather then Blue Peter, so the name Teddington is imprinted on my brain....(Magpie, Thames Television, Teddington Lock, Middlesex) and I was pleased to discover it was quite pretty in that kind of I-would-die-if-I-had-to-live-here English sort of way. All the toddlers were blond, all the women were wearing Boden florals  and all the men were in cargo pants and each and every last one of them looked like they could be invited round to Dave and Samantha Cameron's place for drinks any night of the week.

We set off at a brisk pace.

On the way I discovered a new and alarming fault that KP has developed - name-dropping. The previous week she had appeared on television in a documentary film.  (I must say I don't find it particularly impressive to be seen on national television wearing a yellow vest and a hard hat but that's just me.)  KP also informed me that her cousin had met Barack Obama when Brian Cowan was over in the US on St Patrick's Day and it was him who coached Obama how to say "Yes We Can" in Irish.  I was extremely impressed by this but pretended not to be.

"Really, well James Nesbitt came into my cousin's shop half an hour before I was there."

"Who's James Nesbitt?"

We managed to reach Putney just 15 minutes later than intended.

KP was so busy telling me all about her relatives' connections to world leaders that she'd had no time to engage strangers in conversation.  I was getting my A to Z out to check where the station was and KP says, 'why don't we just ask someone?'.  Before I could stop her she had approached a man carrying a can of Special Brew who directed us over the bridge. I spent a further ten minutes consulting the map and then said 'I think we'll just go over the bridge.'

I got home in time to shower and change.  I have decided to walk the entire Thames Path before the end of the summer.

When Dinosaurs Roamed South London

Crystal Palace Dinosaurs
Originally uploaded by ganchingabz

I have been very remiss at keeping this blog up-to-date although  I've noticed quite a few other people have been equally remiss. So what have I been doing that has kept me so busy?

Since last Saturday I have been to the opera to see Peter Grimes, went for two walks, one I started from my front door and ended by watching dinosaurs cavort, the other was a walk from Canary Wharf to home via the Greenwich foot tunnel, had Sunday brunch with some of my family, eaten dinner in an Indian restaurant and in a Turkish restaurant (not on the same night), went to work every day, slept through the police apprehending a criminal in the back garden, watched two really excellent programmes on tv, failed to get as excited by the MP expenses scandal as other people seemed to have done,  shopped in Brigham Ellis and Stanford's Bookshop, talked to one stranger, got cross several times at work and squabbled incessantly with Traybake. In other words a very typical week.

This week I will try very hard to update more often.

White Collar Crime

Nearly finished.  If you could just turn the heating on for a minute to make sure there are no leaks. So, like I was saying, what a bloody shower.

I know! Moats, tennis courts, flat screen televisions!

If it was one of us it would be a different story.  It's fraud isn't it? Nothing else.  Have you got a cloth in case there is a leak?

Scatter cushions, flipping, flipping nerve more like.

That's it - all done.

How much do I owe you?

Forty five quid if you want a receipt?

I was going to pay cash.

Great! Thirty quid and no receipt.

There you go. 

Lovely - so I'll be back to clean out the radiators in a few weeks. See you then.

I See Scotland

I See Scotland
Originally uploaded by ganchingabz

When I was a child I would sometimes hear older girls say to each other, 'I see Scotland'. A girl thus addressed would usually shriek or blush and start tugging at her skirt. Eventually my mother explained to me what it meant.

I first came across "See You Next Tuesday" in a book and spent ages figuring it out. I guess in text language it would be easier -
C U nxt Tsdy.

The first time I heard 'Arsenal are playing at home' I understood immediately what was being referred to as I should have done living within a stone's throw of Highbury .

The use of euphemisms change as certain topics become less or more taboo. It is quite fun sometimes to watch people tie themselves into knots as they try to avoid using certain words.

"He's the tall boy, you know, the one one with black hair, brown eyes, you know, wearing a green shirt......" when the person they are describing is is the only black person in the room.

I don't know what euphemisms teenage girls use today but I'm sure if someone is accidentally showing their knicker there's no mention of Scotland......Brazil maybe, but definitely not Scotland.