Nick Jordan

I don’t usually post my New Year’s resolutions, largely because most years I don’t make any, but this year I’m going to dare to be different. In no particular order, they are:

• Make more effort to stay in touch with people
• Make music more often
• Take more opportunities to go out and do things

Simple to the point of dullness I know, but worth attempting, I think.

I’m off work this week, so I’ve been spending some of my time wandering around museums. I attended a very good gallery walk at the British Museum yesterday afternoon called Six Feet Under: Some Thoughts on Burial in Early Britain, which was just great. It was a fairly loosely structured discussion of some of the burial practices of pre- and post-Roman Britain, periods of history in which I’m particularly interested. I highly recommend attending some of these gallery walks if you’re able to. Not only are they very informative, but they’re also free. What more could you ask?

I went to see Stardust yesterday afternoon. Now, I’m a huge Neil Gaiman fan, so I’d already read and enjoyed the book and was a bit worried about whether the film would be able to live up to it. I needn’t have been concerned - it’s an absolute joy. It contains nothing deep, it’s not going to change your life or anything, but it will entertain and amuse you, and that’s just fine. The casting is excellent, the special effects everything you would expect from a modern work, and the film maintains a wonderful sense of magic, of detachment from reality. I’m not going to spoil it for you if you haven’t seen it, so I won’t say much more except that I heartily recommend it and I’ll be buying the DVD when it’s available.

I’ve just seen an advert on TV for a newspaper which is publishing extracts from an autobiography by Lewis Hamilton. The guy’s only 22 years old, for goodness’ sake! Try again in about fifty years, mate.

I don’t normally get terribly excited about sport, even the stuff I’m really interested in, but I find that I’m experiencing a real sense of anticipation as I await the start of the Brazilian Formula One Grand Prix. If Lewis Hamilton can win the championship today I’ll be pleased, and if he can do it in style by winning the race I’ll be very pleased indeed. I wasn’t able to get worked up about the rugby yesterday - it’s not a sport, it’s just a game - but this is exciting stuff.

Update: Bugger.

It’s very odd. For the first three days of my new regime of working from home I listened to music constantly, but on Wednesday evening I was actually glad to switch it off. It felt like my ears were tired. For the last couple of days I haven’t listened to anything, I’ve just enjoyed the peace and quiet.

I went out for a stroll in the pissing rain at lunchtime today and got rather wet, the result of which is that, even now in the evening, I smell faintly like wet dog. Delightful, I know.

I’ve just spent the whole day sitting in an empty office waiting for a laptop to arrive. It didn’t turn up at all. This means I’ve wasted a whole day that I could have used to do something productive while work was piling up in my email inbox. On the plus side, however, I did manage to get a lot of reading done and, as from tomorrow, I work from home (most of the time - I shall be going in to the office once a week or so).

I find myself surprisingly tired, considering that I haven’t really been able to do a lot of actual work today. I don’t have to get up terribly early tomorrow, though, so I’m sure I’ll be fine by the morning.

Yesterday morning I got up early(ish) and made my way to Lambeth Palace, which was allowing visitors in as part of London’s Open Day. There was already a queue when I arrived so, pausing for a quick chat with a friend who’d arrived before me, I joined at the back end. After a few minutes some more friends arrived and came up the queue to chat for a bit, at which point an elderly lady behind us went completely ballistic, accusing them of queue jumping and even making a racist comment. She just wouldn’t stop talking long enough to allow anyone to get a word in so, after giving her a telling off, my friends made their way back to their place.

Anyway, after a while we found out that we were going to have to wait quite a while to get in and the others would have to wait considerably longer, so the decision was made to abandon Lambeth Palace and go and have a bite to eat in a local cafe. This done, the decision was made to wander across the river, visit a couple of shops (the Bead Shop and then Forbidden Planet), have a pub lunch and then pay a visit to the Cartoon Museum, which has a wonderful exhibition of W. Heath Robinson cartoons on and, to my great delight, a working version of one of his amazing contraptions, a device for assisting in the consumption of peas.

After all this, back home I came and collapsed for the rest of the day in a rather undignified heap. It’s surprisingly tiring, all this walking around stuff.

I got back yesterday from a mediaeval re-enactment weekend at Raglan Castle in South Wales, courtesy of the SCA.Basically, it was a couple of days’ worth of dressing up in silly outfits and drinking, and what’s wrong with that? The castle is very beautiful and we had the complete run of the place. I have to say that it looked very fine indeed with a load of pavilions pitched in the grounds and people wandering around in period costume.

I have to confess that I didn’t camp, unlike most people, but stayed in a hotel in the village, which was a nice comfortable way to do things. There’s no substitute for a comfy bed and a proper shower followed by a decent breakfast.

I have today off work so I’m spending it recovering. I’m surprisingly tired. I think that it was a good decision to take an extra day off and I’ll probably do it again next time.

My local council has recently sent out a leaflet to every residence which says that from September 10th we have to recycle a whole shedload of stuff and that there’ll be £1,000 fines for persistent non-compliance. Fair enough, except that the recycling boxes they provide are minute (about a foot wide, a foot high and a foot and a half long) and we now have to put the following items in them: plastic bottles, cardboard, paper, batteries, tin cans, foil, glass bottles and jars, textiles and shoes and engine oil. I just can’t see that a week’s worth of this stuff will fit inside such a small box.

Add to that the fact that the boxes are stolen regularly and I reckon the council are going to have to provide much larger receptacles very soon, probably in the form of green wheelie bins to complement our black ones, or face real difficulties with pissed-off locals. I give it six months at the most.

I spent the weekend just gone in Warwick, which is a very pretty little town with a lot of cool stuff to see. The obvious thing, Warwick Castle, is run by Tussauds and boy does it show. It’s extortionately expensive to get in (£18.95 each for adults) and is full of gift shops and burger bars, with very little in the way of solid information about the place or its past occupants. I didn’t even manage to spot such basic details as when the various bits of it were built, although I can’t believe that sort of stuff isn’t there somewhere. You’d be hard-pressed to learn a lot simply by wandering around and reading signs, and the staff, although dressed up very nicely in various period outfits, weren’t terribly forthcoming, either.

Despite the disappointment of the castle the rest of the town was great, in particular the Collegiate Church of St. Mary, which boasts that it has the finest mediaeval chapel in the country and, having seen it, I’d find it hard to dispute that. Brownie points, too, for the Keep, a very nice little restaurant indeed. Not cheap but a very pleasurable way to finish off a day wandering about in the rain.

Motorway shut after biker murder. This is truly shocking. My heartfelt condolences to his friends and family. A tragic waste of a life.

Last night, after work, I went to the Great British Beer Festival at Earls Court. It was a great deal easier to get into this year; last year I had to join a massive queue but this year there wasn’t one. Anyway, I had a good wander around, tried some very nice beers, including a very pleasant banana beer from somewhere or other, met and chatted with some nice people and left reasonably early because, to be honest, I was very tired and traipsing around made it all too apparent that I wasn’t going to last.

I’m glad I went although I think it would have been better if I hadn’t had a long day at work first. Maybe next year I’ll do the sensible thing and just take the day off.

Last night after work I went with a group of friends to the Museum of London, where we were treated to a tour of the mediaeval section by an extremely knowledgeable and interesting member of staff. I learnt a few cool things and saw some great stuff. One of the things that I noticed was how modern a lot of the jewellery looked. There were rings that you wouldn’t have glanced at twice if you saw them in a shop window today.

Anyway, after the tour we repaired to the pub (of course) and had a few beers, which means that I find myself in a slightly delicate state this morning. Not hung over exactly, not even a headache, but definitely not a hundred percent right either. Still, I shall be fine once I’ve polished off a cuppa or two.

I went to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix this afternoon. I’m not going to go into it all here, except to say that it was a perfectly acceptable couple of hours’ entertainment, darker than the previous films but still nowhere near dark enough for my taste. Still, it’s aimed at kids, so what can you expect?

Anyway, what I wanted to mention here was that, while waiting to buy sweets and drinks (at a truly exorbitant price, I might add) I overheard a woman tell her small child that Diet Coke is good for you. Honestly! What the hell was she thinking? Does she truly believe that simply sticking the word ‘Diet’ in the name and reducing the sugar content a bit turns that crap from incredibly unpleasant and stunningly bad for you to something that’s positively beneficial? Marginally less nasty does not, as far as I’m aware, equate with being actively good. I worry. I really do.

On Friday night I met up with some friends for a visit to the National Portrait Gallery, followed by beer and then kebabs at Leicester Square. It proved to be an extremely good way to finish off a pretty trying week. I love my job but there are times when I could do with a little less stress.

Yesterday I availed myself of Lidl’s regular sale of cheap motorcycle gear and bought myself a new magnetic tank bag for a tenner. It has a useful detachable side pocket and can be unzipped from the magnetic base, which stays on the bike. The act of doing this reveals straps that allow the bag to be worn as a rucksack. All very clever. To be honest, I’m a sucker for anything that has lots of zips and pockets and stuff.

Today I intend to laze around in front of the TV, watching the German Motorcycle Grand Prix and drinking beer, specifically Badger Golden Glory, a lovely summery ale containing extract of peach blossom, which gives it a light, fruity flavour I really enjoy.

Typical. It was beautiful all day, sunny, warm, all that stuff. Then I left the office to come home and the thunder thundered, the lightning lightened and the rain poured down in bucketloads. Then, just to cap it all, there were hailstones all over the bloody place. I thought it had snowed for a moment.

The roads near where I live are prone to a bit of flooding when it rains and I’ve just got used to it, but this evening the water was deep. As I rode the bike through the lakes that covered the road, fearing all the time that it was about to conk out, great clouds of steam rose from the engine, actually managing to obscure my view and fog up the bike’s mirrors. I was really very glad to make it home, sodden but in one piece.

Bloody weather.

Today I bought a new vacuum cleaner to replace the one I had, which died quite some time ago. The flat’s not perfect yet but I’ve already discovered that there’s actually a floor underneath the thick layer of crap. Amazing!

I’m currently having a bit of a play with Google Desktop for Linux, and so far I’m suitably impressed. It installed on my computer without a hitch and is now busily indexing everything.

I tried the Windows version on my work computer when it first came out, way back in the mists it seems now, and the way the Linux version works is pretty similar, although it doesn’t have all the desktop crud like weather reports and news feeds. No loss there, quite honestly, I can live without all that. Besides, I can understand that it’d be hard work to get it to play nicely on KDE, Gnome and all the other desktops that are available for Linux.

Anyway, using it is simplicity itself. Configuration is done via the browser, and then it’s just a question of hitting the Ctrl key twice to summon and dismiss a simple search box, which will pull together results from the web and your local machine. It seems to work very well indeed, although it’d be nice to see it also indexing Google Reader and Google Documents. I suspect that that’ll happen in the future.

If you’re a Linux user and you’re after an application like this, give it a try. I reckon it’s better than Beagle, although these things always come down to personal preference, of course. Some people may have privacy concerns, which is entirely understandable, but I’m happy that my information isn’t going beyond my home PC. Famous last words? I hope not.