I can't make my mind up about the weather. I used to really love it when it was hot, real sun worshipper me. Indeed, I sort of like it hot in hot countries, which are built for heat, that have floor tiles rather than carpets, beaches rather than buses with idiot-designed breeze-proof windows. I like hot when I can adapt my lifestyle to hot. Wear beachwear, rest in the heat of the day.
I don't like heat in cities, especially not when I'm working. I spent two, maybe three, weeks, really struggling to get through the day. Operating on at least one cylinder less than I ought to. It gets embarrassing. We have flexible working, and, anyway, the nature of the job takes you out of the office - it's not unusual for people to organise meetings on the way home. But it gets depressing when you sense that people are noting when you arrive and leave. Not that they are, not that it's their business, anyway.
But I don't like summer weather to be miserable. I am taking the whole of this week off, just chillaxing at home. At least, that was the plan. I have a problem - namely the man I live with. He doesn't believe in relaxing. He believes in activity. I suggested we went swimming. He countered we'll do this everyday this week. It's alright for him, he gets free bus travel and free admission to the swimming pool. £4.80 a time it will cost me. And he gets free eyetests, too. (And all we did to celebrate this momentous event was going out to the curry house, nice but not epoch making).
I think I'm going to get a bike. I used to bike. It was so simple in those days. All you needed was a bike, a pump and a lock. Now it's helmets, reflective clothing, plan your route...I'd be well petrified to cycle across Vauxhall Bridge. It's not the cars and the lorries and the buses, but have you seen the competitiveness of cyclists at rush hour.
I got phone calls asking why I've not been on the internet. I would like to say I haven't noticed, but I have, sort of. I have millions of pages bookmarked, waiting to be linked or rejected. I have become really obsessed by scanning my entire photo collection onto my PC. It's quite a job. I have done February 1984 to October 96. Only four years to go...It's not just the mechanics of scanning in the photos,which is a rather dull repetitive task. The photos bring up memories, especially of people who were acquaintances. You remember snatches from their lives,thinking there are stories to be told, the oddities you know about acquaintances, or the (sometimes cruel) nicknames they acquire. Seeing how people have changed. I saw a chap today, I haven't really seen him for, I don't know, years. I had scanned a photo of him yesterday, from my housewarming party nearly thirteen years ago. He's aged twenty or twenty-five years in that time. I wonder has he been ill.
I am slowly adding photos to various albums on here, some of them not yet published. Mainly photos of places and me. It would be nice to add photos of people, especially the amusing ones. But photos that are amusing between a small group of friends become intrusive on the internet. I have no right to expose people to ridicule from those who don't know the context the back-story or the actual person. There will be photos of people, but mainly because they're in the picture with me. And only ever first names. So, no chance of being googled by prospective employers.
And there will be blogging, I promise.
