Ridiculously overdue update (as the end of the year is almost with us...)
Since I’m coming to the end of my break from (paid) work (five and a bit days off over the Christmas period is almost triple what I managed last year!), it’s about time for a long-overdue update. The Christmas holiday has been pleasant enough: we spent the day itself at my sister’s place and, after a pause on the Saturday, the Sunday evening at A’s brother’s place. Presents mostly came from my wish-list or were non-controversial sweets, toiletries etc, and I managed not to get into any arguments, even after my sister asked at the dinner table (in apparent innocence) what was so bad about the Daily Mail, anyway…
Going much further back, given how long ago my last update was, my jury service (back in September) was a bit of an eye-opening experience. I ended up sitting on three trials, although only the middle one ran all the way through. In the first, a gang-related violence case originally scheduled to run most of a fortnight, the defendant changed his plea shortly after hearing the prosecution’s opening. In the third, a ABH case, the judge stopped the trial part-way through the prosecution evidence and instructed the jury to find the defendant not guilty because the chief witness was so obviously unreliable: he kept contradicting himself about the events of the day in question and, by the sound of it, had been so drunk when he was attacked that he couldn’t really remember anything about who was with him in his room and was just guessing exactly who it was who had beaten him up. The middle trial was a pretty unpleasant he-says-she-says thing, with allegations of sexual assault, criminal damage and assault by beating (that last assault on a child). We ended up finding the defendant not guilty on two of the three charges (one of those by a majority) and couldn’t reach a verdict on the third. It was very clear that something very bad went down in that house that night, but whether either party was telling the whole truth was much harder to tell. It's bad business when the most apparently reliable witness is a kid in single figures and they didn't see/remember/understand most of the events in question. :(
Work has been pretty crazy ever since then, as I got cover for maybe 15% of the fortnight’s work across the two jobs and have been constantly playing catch-up. I quit moderating TLL when my year’s term was up and I dropped any hope of doing any more translation in the foreseeable future. I’ll be ending the year slightly under on my contracted hours for one job and noticeably over my contracted hours but nonetheless far more than slightly behind on workload for the other. Having raised concerns as far back as October, I have now managed to put together documentary evidence for the latter re how the job can’t be done even *close* to properly in the time allotted. It’s kind of handy to have another job in the same line of work to make comparisons with. I await with interest any genuine action to go with the ‘oh, that’s not good’ murmurings I’ve been getting in response so far. If there’s no progress by the time our re-mortgage goes through, I may well hand in a ‘this is my resignation; I’ll be more than happy to withdraw it if something changes before my end date’ letter and see if that puts enough of a rocket up them. ;)
In between all this, I’ve managed a respectable amount of social/cultural stuff. If tomorrow night goes as planned (maybe, but maybe not, as A has a nasty lurgy he picked up from my niblings at Christmas), I will have actually managed twelve different clubs in twelve months this year and, of the eleven I’ve done so far, there’s only one I wouldn’t go back to: Dark Disco had OK music, but VFD/Vogue Fabrics is really not a good venue. A and I have seen the obvious blockbuster films for the last few months: the latest Bond and Hunger Games films did not disappoint, and The Force Awakens exceeded my (admittedly fairly low) expectations.
I’ve also managed to get to four gigs since the last update. In the usual run of things, the traditional New Model Army gig at the Forum in December would have been my gig of the year, especially as this time they had She Makes War as support, but this year it was pipped at the post by Liqueur (a Cure covers band) at Islington Academy. They did a double set, the first being the entirety of The Head on the Door album, celebrating its (30th?) anniversary, and the second being a mix of hits and more obscure numbers. Since they were very convincing - and the only way I’m likely to see the real thing in a venue that size is with the aid of a time machine - it was just the best fun.
The last quarter of the year has seen four books read (if you count the one I expect to finish today). There was a book of interviews with post-punk musicians etc by Simon Reynolds, which was variable and mostly interesting. There was Lena Dunham’s ‘Not That Kind of Girl’, which I found so irritating I nearly didn’t finish reading it. There was China Mieville’s ‘Embassytown’, which had some really interesting stuff about language (most, but not all, convincing to this linguist) and a pretty decent plot. It reminded me of Iain M Banks in parts, which I don’t remember being the case with anything else I’ve read of his. And I’m currently about three quarters of the way through Lauren Beukes ‘The Shining Girls’, a thriller with a time travel twist, less impressive than the review quotes on the back had led me to hope, but entertaining enough so far.
Oh, and we managed to get away for a couple of days before Christmas, to York. We more or less did a re-run of my birthday trip, staying in a different apartment in the same place and eating at two of the same restaurants. The main change was that we did less touristy stuff and more shopping, although we did fit in a look around the art gallery. It’s weird to think that right now, not even a fortnight later, much of the city is underwater…
I’m aiming to do the year meme and a bit of a summary of the year as a whole tomorrow, so will leave this here. :)
Going much further back, given how long ago my last update was, my jury service (back in September) was a bit of an eye-opening experience. I ended up sitting on three trials, although only the middle one ran all the way through. In the first, a gang-related violence case originally scheduled to run most of a fortnight, the defendant changed his plea shortly after hearing the prosecution’s opening. In the third, a ABH case, the judge stopped the trial part-way through the prosecution evidence and instructed the jury to find the defendant not guilty because the chief witness was so obviously unreliable: he kept contradicting himself about the events of the day in question and, by the sound of it, had been so drunk when he was attacked that he couldn’t really remember anything about who was with him in his room and was just guessing exactly who it was who had beaten him up. The middle trial was a pretty unpleasant he-says-she-says thing, with allegations of sexual assault, criminal damage and assault by beating (that last assault on a child). We ended up finding the defendant not guilty on two of the three charges (one of those by a majority) and couldn’t reach a verdict on the third. It was very clear that something very bad went down in that house that night, but whether either party was telling the whole truth was much harder to tell. It's bad business when the most apparently reliable witness is a kid in single figures and they didn't see/remember/understand most of the events in question. :(
Work has been pretty crazy ever since then, as I got cover for maybe 15% of the fortnight’s work across the two jobs and have been constantly playing catch-up. I quit moderating TLL when my year’s term was up and I dropped any hope of doing any more translation in the foreseeable future. I’ll be ending the year slightly under on my contracted hours for one job and noticeably over my contracted hours but nonetheless far more than slightly behind on workload for the other. Having raised concerns as far back as October, I have now managed to put together documentary evidence for the latter re how the job can’t be done even *close* to properly in the time allotted. It’s kind of handy to have another job in the same line of work to make comparisons with. I await with interest any genuine action to go with the ‘oh, that’s not good’ murmurings I’ve been getting in response so far. If there’s no progress by the time our re-mortgage goes through, I may well hand in a ‘this is my resignation; I’ll be more than happy to withdraw it if something changes before my end date’ letter and see if that puts enough of a rocket up them. ;)
In between all this, I’ve managed a respectable amount of social/cultural stuff. If tomorrow night goes as planned (maybe, but maybe not, as A has a nasty lurgy he picked up from my niblings at Christmas), I will have actually managed twelve different clubs in twelve months this year and, of the eleven I’ve done so far, there’s only one I wouldn’t go back to: Dark Disco had OK music, but VFD/Vogue Fabrics is really not a good venue. A and I have seen the obvious blockbuster films for the last few months: the latest Bond and Hunger Games films did not disappoint, and The Force Awakens exceeded my (admittedly fairly low) expectations.
I’ve also managed to get to four gigs since the last update. In the usual run of things, the traditional New Model Army gig at the Forum in December would have been my gig of the year, especially as this time they had She Makes War as support, but this year it was pipped at the post by Liqueur (a Cure covers band) at Islington Academy. They did a double set, the first being the entirety of The Head on the Door album, celebrating its (30th?) anniversary, and the second being a mix of hits and more obscure numbers. Since they were very convincing - and the only way I’m likely to see the real thing in a venue that size is with the aid of a time machine - it was just the best fun.
The last quarter of the year has seen four books read (if you count the one I expect to finish today). There was a book of interviews with post-punk musicians etc by Simon Reynolds, which was variable and mostly interesting. There was Lena Dunham’s ‘Not That Kind of Girl’, which I found so irritating I nearly didn’t finish reading it. There was China Mieville’s ‘Embassytown’, which had some really interesting stuff about language (most, but not all, convincing to this linguist) and a pretty decent plot. It reminded me of Iain M Banks in parts, which I don’t remember being the case with anything else I’ve read of his. And I’m currently about three quarters of the way through Lauren Beukes ‘The Shining Girls’, a thriller with a time travel twist, less impressive than the review quotes on the back had led me to hope, but entertaining enough so far.
Oh, and we managed to get away for a couple of days before Christmas, to York. We more or less did a re-run of my birthday trip, staying in a different apartment in the same place and eating at two of the same restaurants. The main change was that we did less touristy stuff and more shopping, although we did fit in a look around the art gallery. It’s weird to think that right now, not even a fortnight later, much of the city is underwater…
I’m aiming to do the year meme and a bit of a summary of the year as a whole tomorrow, so will leave this here. :)