...A-Changin' (Illustrated!)
Still here. I can't kick the Livejournal habit. Every minor whimsical incident that slips into the past unrecorded feels like a little loss, to me anyway*, and my f-list loons and lovelies are too compelling a cross-section of the key-tapping classes to be abandoned.
[*There must be a word for the compulsive recording and storing of everyday personal minutiae (for fear that some enlightening aspect of the past will be lost to elderly self or to posterity) but i'm darned if I can think of it. Something-mania. Anal retentiveness. Dunno.]
As my last days as an office functionary drew to a close I spent sweaty hours trying to undo the pitfalls I'd accidentally laid for my successor and uncovered forgotten correspondence and urgent memos to self (from 2005) to call someone or other...yet the world continues to turn. So much for my sinecure at the Lofty Eyrie. So long, executive swivel chair. Bye bye, necktie.
We went to the pub downstairs at the end of my final shift, Bro 2, Lisa, Boab the sparks and I, to be joined by a gratifyingly decent number of others from the building. I was presented with a potentially lethal amount of fine malt whisky. Meanwhile, the pints were draining good-o until a hardcore half-dozen of us decided unwisely not to go for a bowl of linguine or some such but to hit another boozer. I steered us to the State. Maybe I'm out of the pub habit cos the vibe struck me as a bit weird, like all the punters but me were coming up on acid. The brother vanished for a while, Kiwi Rob was being particularly mischievous while the rest of us just got pissed. Bro 2 reappeared and we shared a sentimental moment. In time my head was whirling 'midst the clamour and I took my leave, which was like climbing out of a huge, drunkard-packed tumble-drier.
A few days later Mo drove us to Bro 2's country retreat in Perthshire. I have goaded the brother about maintaining a second home and generally being a fat-cat absentee property owner but i was glad of the offer of somewhere pleasant to stay, well away from the city. I've never been much of a one for the countryside but after a day or so I could feel myself mentally and physically loosening up.
The cottage (or two-storey house to town folk like me) is an old dairyman's home built in 1731, so a carved stone above the door claims. Inside is all comfort and convenience and round the back, the place overlooks fields of grazing sheep and cattle, stands of pine trees in the middle distance and a backdrop of hills about large enough to be called mountains. Oh, it was hell, sated after a meal, smoking a meditative smoke in the near-silent dusk and watching the livestock and the scampering rabbits while crows cawed and swifts performed dazzling aerobatics, with clouds slowly shrouding the distant hilltops, all the while Mo holding a softly gurgling Bean somewhere behind me. It looked a bit like this:
We took a trip to the small city of Perth, where my mother and her sisters were taken to live by their mother after leaving Donegal around 1952. Perth has not been fully homogenised, as some streets still contain evidently thriving businesses owned locally. Their remains a pleasing non-uniformity of architecture, streets of buildings all higgledy-piggledy with steep front staircases and crooked little wynds between. I found the street my Gran and mother and aunties used to live on and I think their old flat now houses a fireplace retail outlet. I tried to establish the door number with a call to the Mammy but she'd had a few and could not supply accurate info.
Down to Irvine later in the week to see oul Gran and present the Bean to Auntie B in Gran's nursing home. I always liked Auntie B, a teacher, latterly headmistress, and lifelong Lefty. She doesn't get on so well with my Mother. Gran didn't have much to say as usual but smiled broadly on seeing the beany baby. All the other codgers totally dug her. Auntie B, her memory in better shape than my Ma's, was able to tell me their old Perth address.
At the end of the week I was obliged to visit my new workplace:
Alas, my new ward is not in this building (a place which prompted William McIlvanney, in one of his Laidlaw novels, to wonder if sickness granted admission to some gothic aristocracy) but in one of the blockish add-ons of zero architectural merit. From the outside they are nothing but big boxes; inside, a multi-tiered labyrinth arranged in no logical order I have yet discerned.
I had to meet the Sister and pick up my uniforms. It was with nerves a-jangle that I took the first steps back into bedpan world but I'm happy to report the old ways don't fully leave. Waiting to be seen in the day room I struck up chat and kept the peace between two patients, an elderly bearded whippet of a man and a younger guy with the mind and manner of an over-stimulated child, at odds over the choice of tv channel. It doesn't sound like much but on a ward is the one place I seem to become confident in my 'people skills', as the expression has it. Pleasant chat with the Sister and then the best bit - a wander through the maze until I finally found the sewing room at the top of the marvellous old building, where I got to talking with lone seamstress. An well-informed employee for many years, she gave me the hard word on all the many things that are wrong with the hospital, and according to her, there are many, many things wrong. Indeed, terminal decline would appear on the cards. So I plan to start up another LJ in which to record first-hand experience and hearsay concerning such things. It won't be linked to this one though, as whistle-blowers tend to lose their job and i really can't have that. More on this soon. I will cultivate this lady of the threads and mayhap she will be my roof-dwelling info-spider...
Later that day Mo and Bean and I hooked up with Nic, over visiting from Belfast. We had a swift one in the 13th Note and hailed a cab home as rain had come down sudden and heavy. So much so that the view from home looked like this:
Bloody Glasgow. If any city should have figured out its drainage problems by now...bah.
But local flooding didn't stop me putting on a pressed shirt and reprezentin my household at Mr Q's 40th birthday hooley at McSorley's. I wish I'd known this groovy wee city centre boozer when i was still a drunk-about-town: a well-preserved, cosy Victorian public house full of hip but friendly folk. I caught up with a few groovers - my pal Ruth, la belle Lucy, Nicky C, El, Bro Q and Q's daughter, who was also celebrating - 18th in her case. I pulled Mo 'n' baby snaps from my wallet at the drop of a hat and burbled to anyone who'd listen on the joys of fatherhood. The beer goes to my head that much quicker now.
Oh, the social whirl...to the Southside for nephewf's 10th birthday a couple of days later. Mo and Bean are such a hit with the kids and, now that I'm no longer Bro 2's lackey, we seem better able to chat and lark as two guys should. Being a poppa also has me adopting a more worldly manner with my own Da, though, daft as he can be, he's just too charismatic and physically massive to shrink into old age himself. And the auld bastard has thicker hair than me now.
Early next morning I tamped down my fears and began my first morning on the new job. i won't say much about this from now on but it's good to be back, mostly.
Changes everywhere. So long, Mr Blair. A while back Tony's departure and Gordon's arrival through the Prime Ministerial revolving door would have prompted screeds of foaming hatred but right now i can't get too worked up about whatever public face is or is not permitted by the Systems Men to look as if he's in charge. circumlocute puts it succinctly in a recent post. Eeeeeeeeee! Bomp Bom Bomp Bom.
Same goes for the 'terror attacks' on Glasgow Airport, as in terrifyingly inept. No line-up of dark-eyed vigins for those clods. I suppose I'd crack on all angry if the jeep had exploded and killed lots of people but the most diverting aspect of the whole fandango is the tv news reportage. This muppet on this evening's ITN News (ITN News is to BBC News as Tiswas was to Swap Shop) went on about travellers and holiday-makers going about their business "when the unthinkable happened". Hm...Unexpected, sure. Then we had the baggage handler who tackled one of the attempted martyrs, enjoying his 15 minutes. This is Glasgow...Try it, we'll take you down, etc etc. Reporters are still there, probably reduced to interviewing each other. Mucho cops too, I'd say. oddly, I can't remember such a visible public security presence (outside the City of London) whenever the IRA, and not bungling amateurs, were still blowing up people cars and buildings in Britain with much greater success.
Anyhow. Plenty happening. Of greatest importance, a change of username. Maybe a new icon too, woo. I think, as of next entry, I will use James Ellroy's crime novel term for a clean, dull, regular job type - squarejohn - to reflect the more dutiful and responsible outlook which my daughter's birth has brought about in me, I like to think. I mean, look at her, the wee cutie:
Aww.
[*There must be a word for the compulsive recording and storing of everyday personal minutiae (for fear that some enlightening aspect of the past will be lost to elderly self or to posterity) but i'm darned if I can think of it. Something-mania. Anal retentiveness. Dunno.]
As my last days as an office functionary drew to a close I spent sweaty hours trying to undo the pitfalls I'd accidentally laid for my successor and uncovered forgotten correspondence and urgent memos to self (from 2005) to call someone or other...yet the world continues to turn. So much for my sinecure at the Lofty Eyrie. So long, executive swivel chair. Bye bye, necktie.
We went to the pub downstairs at the end of my final shift, Bro 2, Lisa, Boab the sparks and I, to be joined by a gratifyingly decent number of others from the building. I was presented with a potentially lethal amount of fine malt whisky. Meanwhile, the pints were draining good-o until a hardcore half-dozen of us decided unwisely not to go for a bowl of linguine or some such but to hit another boozer. I steered us to the State. Maybe I'm out of the pub habit cos the vibe struck me as a bit weird, like all the punters but me were coming up on acid. The brother vanished for a while, Kiwi Rob was being particularly mischievous while the rest of us just got pissed. Bro 2 reappeared and we shared a sentimental moment. In time my head was whirling 'midst the clamour and I took my leave, which was like climbing out of a huge, drunkard-packed tumble-drier.
A few days later Mo drove us to Bro 2's country retreat in Perthshire. I have goaded the brother about maintaining a second home and generally being a fat-cat absentee property owner but i was glad of the offer of somewhere pleasant to stay, well away from the city. I've never been much of a one for the countryside but after a day or so I could feel myself mentally and physically loosening up.
The cottage (or two-storey house to town folk like me) is an old dairyman's home built in 1731, so a carved stone above the door claims. Inside is all comfort and convenience and round the back, the place overlooks fields of grazing sheep and cattle, stands of pine trees in the middle distance and a backdrop of hills about large enough to be called mountains. Oh, it was hell, sated after a meal, smoking a meditative smoke in the near-silent dusk and watching the livestock and the scampering rabbits while crows cawed and swifts performed dazzling aerobatics, with clouds slowly shrouding the distant hilltops, all the while Mo holding a softly gurgling Bean somewhere behind me. It looked a bit like this:
We took a trip to the small city of Perth, where my mother and her sisters were taken to live by their mother after leaving Donegal around 1952. Perth has not been fully homogenised, as some streets still contain evidently thriving businesses owned locally. Their remains a pleasing non-uniformity of architecture, streets of buildings all higgledy-piggledy with steep front staircases and crooked little wynds between. I found the street my Gran and mother and aunties used to live on and I think their old flat now houses a fireplace retail outlet. I tried to establish the door number with a call to the Mammy but she'd had a few and could not supply accurate info.
Down to Irvine later in the week to see oul Gran and present the Bean to Auntie B in Gran's nursing home. I always liked Auntie B, a teacher, latterly headmistress, and lifelong Lefty. She doesn't get on so well with my Mother. Gran didn't have much to say as usual but smiled broadly on seeing the beany baby. All the other codgers totally dug her. Auntie B, her memory in better shape than my Ma's, was able to tell me their old Perth address.
At the end of the week I was obliged to visit my new workplace:
Alas, my new ward is not in this building (a place which prompted William McIlvanney, in one of his Laidlaw novels, to wonder if sickness granted admission to some gothic aristocracy) but in one of the blockish add-ons of zero architectural merit. From the outside they are nothing but big boxes; inside, a multi-tiered labyrinth arranged in no logical order I have yet discerned.
I had to meet the Sister and pick up my uniforms. It was with nerves a-jangle that I took the first steps back into bedpan world but I'm happy to report the old ways don't fully leave. Waiting to be seen in the day room I struck up chat and kept the peace between two patients, an elderly bearded whippet of a man and a younger guy with the mind and manner of an over-stimulated child, at odds over the choice of tv channel. It doesn't sound like much but on a ward is the one place I seem to become confident in my 'people skills', as the expression has it. Pleasant chat with the Sister and then the best bit - a wander through the maze until I finally found the sewing room at the top of the marvellous old building, where I got to talking with lone seamstress. An well-informed employee for many years, she gave me the hard word on all the many things that are wrong with the hospital, and according to her, there are many, many things wrong. Indeed, terminal decline would appear on the cards. So I plan to start up another LJ in which to record first-hand experience and hearsay concerning such things. It won't be linked to this one though, as whistle-blowers tend to lose their job and i really can't have that. More on this soon. I will cultivate this lady of the threads and mayhap she will be my roof-dwelling info-spider...
Later that day Mo and Bean and I hooked up with Nic, over visiting from Belfast. We had a swift one in the 13th Note and hailed a cab home as rain had come down sudden and heavy. So much so that the view from home looked like this:
Bloody Glasgow. If any city should have figured out its drainage problems by now...bah.
But local flooding didn't stop me putting on a pressed shirt and reprezentin my household at Mr Q's 40th birthday hooley at McSorley's. I wish I'd known this groovy wee city centre boozer when i was still a drunk-about-town: a well-preserved, cosy Victorian public house full of hip but friendly folk. I caught up with a few groovers - my pal Ruth, la belle Lucy, Nicky C, El, Bro Q and Q's daughter, who was also celebrating - 18th in her case. I pulled Mo 'n' baby snaps from my wallet at the drop of a hat and burbled to anyone who'd listen on the joys of fatherhood. The beer goes to my head that much quicker now.
Oh, the social whirl...to the Southside for nephewf's 10th birthday a couple of days later. Mo and Bean are such a hit with the kids and, now that I'm no longer Bro 2's lackey, we seem better able to chat and lark as two guys should. Being a poppa also has me adopting a more worldly manner with my own Da, though, daft as he can be, he's just too charismatic and physically massive to shrink into old age himself. And the auld bastard has thicker hair than me now.
Early next morning I tamped down my fears and began my first morning on the new job. i won't say much about this from now on but it's good to be back, mostly.
Changes everywhere. So long, Mr Blair. A while back Tony's departure and Gordon's arrival through the Prime Ministerial revolving door would have prompted screeds of foaming hatred but right now i can't get too worked up about whatever public face is or is not permitted by the Systems Men to look as if he's in charge. circumlocute puts it succinctly in a recent post. Eeeeeeeeee! Bomp Bom Bomp Bom.
Same goes for the 'terror attacks' on Glasgow Airport, as in terrifyingly inept. No line-up of dark-eyed vigins for those clods. I suppose I'd crack on all angry if the jeep had exploded and killed lots of people but the most diverting aspect of the whole fandango is the tv news reportage. This muppet on this evening's ITN News (ITN News is to BBC News as Tiswas was to Swap Shop) went on about travellers and holiday-makers going about their business "when the unthinkable happened". Hm...Unexpected, sure. Then we had the baggage handler who tackled one of the attempted martyrs, enjoying his 15 minutes. This is Glasgow...Try it, we'll take you down, etc etc. Reporters are still there, probably reduced to interviewing each other. Mucho cops too, I'd say. oddly, I can't remember such a visible public security presence (outside the City of London) whenever the IRA, and not bungling amateurs, were still blowing up people cars and buildings in Britain with much greater success.
Anyhow. Plenty happening. Of greatest importance, a change of username. Maybe a new icon too, woo. I think, as of next entry, I will use James Ellroy's crime novel term for a clean, dull, regular job type - squarejohn - to reflect the more dutiful and responsible outlook which my daughter's birth has brought about in me, I like to think. I mean, look at her, the wee cutie:
Aww.