Kicking Our Way Through a Golden Gown

As I start to write this it is 6:30 am. I looking out on a morning that certainly looks very autumnal, and conducting an experiment into how much coffee it is going to take to wake me up. The "one-cup hypothesis" has failed but I have high hopes on the two.

This has been the first normal - five day working week for a while with a couple of late work ones thrown in. Plus a couple of late non-work ones. OK, it would be easier to say I haven't got to bed at a sensible hour since Sunday.

I've changed my morning routine a little. As anyone who goes anywhere in the morning will be aware, kids are back to school. And most of them seem to be getting my train. I've tended to get the same train for about the last 3 and a half years. At the beginning there were maybe four or five kids getting the train to the private schools out South of Croydon. Now it is maybe 30 from Balham, with another 30 or so already on the train from the stops before.

This shows something about the area - it's one that is impossible for normal people to buy a house in (if you can afford £18k per year out of taxed income for each of your kids to go to school - which is a salary cost of nearly £70k just on education if you are going to send both Oliver and Sophia, then you are not "normal people"). But this isn't (today) a moan about the increased bankerisation of Balham. It's simply a comment that I've changed to a slower train where I have my choice of seats, and a pleasant-enough ten minute to the office at the end of it.

And it looks like another busy week ahead. I'm doing the Verdi Requiem with Crouch End Festival Chorus and the gig is Saturday 13th. So a rehearsal for that first thing tomorrow. Ukulele to restore the balance Sunday, and then I am off to Guernsey (working) for a couple of days next week, back to host a work drinks party - deep joy - Thursday and then two days of Verdi before the gig. So I think tonight and Monday is it in terms of free time for a while. And obviously I need to go to the gym on those to counter the excesses of all the other things. It's good to be busy but right now (at 6:47am) with coffee number 2 failing to make much of an inroad yet) I'm thinking maybe not this busy.

It has all felt rather easy in the nice summer weather. Easy to get out and about, just looking out the window makes you smile. I normally really like autumn, but I do wonder how that is going to be, when it gets cold and dark by the time I am home from work. Maybe I'm a little anxious about that right now.
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Right - two hours on, in the office and just posting this I saw the following story.

And in sad closing news, the BBC reported that the space sex geckos have died. I'm sure all our hearts go out to the plucky little fellows. I hope that, following their inevitable dissection and prodding about, that they will be given the send-off so deserved by such pioneers.

Back to Life, Back to Reality

I’m sure many of you had a similar experience this morning when the alarm went off at 6:30 or similar. Can it really be this dark/cold and windy? Oh yes.

I was pleased that my train was only a couple of minutes late, and reasonably quiet – the posh schools either had an inset or a late start.

Today is apparently Blue Monday - the most miserable of the year (copyright all newspapers) as people face up to the never-ending bleakness of January and being skint etc. I was actually quite looking forward to today – my first in work since 20^th December, so I've had the same holiday as most school kids. And I feel much refreshed for it, but did feel that I was starting to drift. Yes I was making it to the gym etc, but I probably got to diminishing returns by about New Years Day. So this morning (I write this in a snatched early lunch-break) has been about trying to figure out what is urgent and what is important, and how I should be spending my time over the next couple of weeks. I have that horrible feeling that there is something really urgent that I should be doing but haven’t remembered.

Oh well, it will probably occur to me this afternoon.

Elsewhere, I rather enjoyed Sherlock last night – my only criticism after last week’s trains farce being that I wish Benedict could have mimed playing the violin a bit better – using perhaps two strings and a little hand movement. But a nice episode that wandered seemingly aimlessly, before coalescing around a rather nifty plot. The programme was called “The Sign of Three”. There is a Holmes short called “The Sign of Four” which I haven’t read for years, but the name Sholto and killing at a (temporal) distance rang a bell – not sure much else did, but correct me if I am wrong. (I have tried to write this obscurely enough to avoid spoilers.)

And today is my first day of 5:2 dieting – after so many friends and work colleagues have extolled it. I am skeptical (of course) – as much of my willpower as anything else. I eat healthily anyway, but like Goldie the Blue Peter dog, do not know when to stop.

I won’t be writing a blow-by-blow diet blog but will let you know how it is (and I am) shaping up as we progress.