(no subject)
Well, the world didn't end after all, and the perennially panic-mongering Evening Standard billboards had to make do with the slightly disappointed-sounding declaration "World not Ended", which could do for any day at all. I suspect that if anything had gone wrong, they would have blamed it on Ken Livingstone anyway. Work progressed pleasantly enough - I sanded and polished sixty paint samples (embedded in acrylic resin) while listening to Torchwood on the radio, then discussed possible avenues for research next week. Back to the British Library - hooray!
Work is based in an odd Dickensian covered yard off Gray's Inn Road, containing a series of little offices that seem to house obscure music magazines and bands. Some of them are upstairs and some are underground, down a mysterious flight of steps, so that bursts of music come from odd angles throughout the day. We have a pleasantly shambolic office, containing an accountant, a general manager, a paint analyst, a large sofa and a dog. The two MDs have an office of their own off to the side, and I have a little cubbyhole that used to be a store-room, containing me, a computer, two microscopes and my radio. If more than one person is there with me, one of us has to back out of the door to turn around. I do any work that makes dust or smells in the workshop (surrounded by shelves loaded with a chaos of paint and toxic chemicals) or in a disused office upstairs (completely empty except for a desk, a refrigerator and a pile of old office chairs). The surrounding area is full of little workshops and flats as well as offices, and is pretty much exactly where I always supposed my role model Bernard Black's bookshop was in Black Books.
Tomorrow, I am off to Dublin to catch up with relatives and see a cousin's son married, so I'm madly packing everything I can think of into a suitcase that looked far to big at first and now looks far too small. I just hope I don't have to open it at the airport, as it is full of biscuit tins, baking equipment, sock monkies and books, with only a few clothes.
Oh, and some other good news - the nephew has got a place at art college after all. He didn't get into any of his first choices, and his parents had begun to reconcile themselves to his hanging around aimlessly all next year. He'll be at Byam Shaw, which is just around the corner from my flat. He is a very vague youth, and only managed to get his portfolio ready because his mother and sister stood by him poking him with sticks until he finished it, or at least that's what they told me. Although the interview was only a couple of hundred yards from Archway tube station, on his way home he somehow managed to pass my flat (half a mile away) and the Arsenal stadium (just over a mile) before fetching up at Highbury and Islington tube (nearly three miles and on the wrong tube line). I look forward to his art college career with great interest.
Work is based in an odd Dickensian covered yard off Gray's Inn Road, containing a series of little offices that seem to house obscure music magazines and bands. Some of them are upstairs and some are underground, down a mysterious flight of steps, so that bursts of music come from odd angles throughout the day. We have a pleasantly shambolic office, containing an accountant, a general manager, a paint analyst, a large sofa and a dog. The two MDs have an office of their own off to the side, and I have a little cubbyhole that used to be a store-room, containing me, a computer, two microscopes and my radio. If more than one person is there with me, one of us has to back out of the door to turn around. I do any work that makes dust or smells in the workshop (surrounded by shelves loaded with a chaos of paint and toxic chemicals) or in a disused office upstairs (completely empty except for a desk, a refrigerator and a pile of old office chairs). The surrounding area is full of little workshops and flats as well as offices, and is pretty much exactly where I always supposed my role model Bernard Black's bookshop was in Black Books.
Tomorrow, I am off to Dublin to catch up with relatives and see a cousin's son married, so I'm madly packing everything I can think of into a suitcase that looked far to big at first and now looks far too small. I just hope I don't have to open it at the airport, as it is full of biscuit tins, baking equipment, sock monkies and books, with only a few clothes.
Oh, and some other good news - the nephew has got a place at art college after all. He didn't get into any of his first choices, and his parents had begun to reconcile themselves to his hanging around aimlessly all next year. He'll be at Byam Shaw, which is just around the corner from my flat. He is a very vague youth, and only managed to get his portfolio ready because his mother and sister stood by him poking him with sticks until he finished it, or at least that's what they told me. Although the interview was only a couple of hundred yards from Archway tube station, on his way home he somehow managed to pass my flat (half a mile away) and the Arsenal stadium (just over a mile) before fetching up at Highbury and Islington tube (nearly three miles and on the wrong tube line). I look forward to his art college career with great interest.