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say it with llamas!

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winnipeg

notes from winnipeg:

jetlag bites. i am now a morning person. blech. the other side of this is that it is currently 830 pm and all i want to do is go to bed. must - stay awake - must - stay awake...

in canada, everything works the first time. doors, tills, toilets, stoves - everything.

it is impossible to connect from an international flight to a domestic flight in toronto in an hour.

big sky. big big sky. vertigo-inducing sky. and all buildings only one story high so you can't miss the effect.

ok - i'm going to have to go run on the spot or something to stay awake -

ps i finished the socks

it is now official. if your feet are longer than 25 centimetres and you would like me to knit you socks, you will have to resort to bribery.

wow - you really do laugh later

we are sitting at our table, eating a really lovely bean soup that n has made. (aside: this version is with tinned white beans as n has burned the living daylights out of the soaked batch - a fact which a: i could identify walking up the path to the house by smell alone and b: made me laugh rather unsympathetically as i have done the same thing more times than you could count). it is still light, and we have been admiring the sun on the trees - in that particular luminescent spring light that you get at this time of year. suddenly the windows rattle and two cars pull into the rec ground parking lot on the other side of our fence, booming bass and blasting a hip-hop-grime monstrosity. we roll our eyes and make droll comments about others' music tastes.

we then get to reminiscing about other loud near-the-house music atrocities. the winner by a long way, is the couple last summer in the same parking lot. i assume they were a couple. all i know for sure is that at 430 one summer morning, we were flung into a horrible confusing awakeness by the incredibly loud playing of whitney houston's bodyguard soundtrack (i think that was what it was, anyways). it took us a good 5 minutes to figure out why we were even awake, and other 2 or 3 to locate the thousand decibel warble of "and i-i-i--i-i---ii--will always love youuuuuuuuuuu". i think they were making out to this. the mind shudders, really.

i had forgotten about this, and at the time, we were actually considering intervention (it's amazing what seems logical at such an hour, an many circumstances). but it did make us laugh, finally.

obviously!

emailed to me from a friend at work:

Speaking of translations, a translation story, told to me by Greg Doran of the RSC on Friday, dating from the time he was in Japan:

LOCAL DIRECTOR: We hope you will enjoy our Midsummer Night's Dream, though you will understand that we have had to translate the play into terms our audience will understand.

DORAN: How interesting -- what changes have you had to make, beyond translating the words?

LOCAL DIRECTOR: In Japan there is no real forest and no tradition of forests meaning anything special. So our Midsummer Night's Dream takes place on the seashore.

DORAN: I see.

LOCAL DIRECTOR: And in Japanese culture there is no tradition of little magic flying creatures, no fairies. There is no Japanese equivalent word for 'fairy'. So our Midsummer Night's Dream has no fairies.

DORAN: But what about the fairy characters, Puck, Oberon, Titania and all? Have you simply cut them entirely?

LOCAL DIRECTOR: Certainly not. In our version, obviously, they are tuna fish.

spring*

*with apologies to my fellow canadians, to whom spring is still just a vicious unconfirmed rumor...

spring has descended with a vengeance on the uk. the evidence is incontrovertible.

fact: every teenager in faversham is wearing short-shorts and proudly bearing sunburnt décolletage even though they really still need a light weight cardigan.

fact: tesco's is selling half easter eggs, half charcoal (not together - that would be one hell of mixed message probably more suited to christmas)

fact: we've had two bbq's in two days.

fact: birds, bees, and leaves on the trees.

english spring is a beautiful thing, and a "mini-heatwave" (bbc - a high of 22 - unfortunately they very well may be correct) needs to be inhaled and used up as there have been entire summers that never got this hot or this sunny.

so i am sitting outside in our garden, beside a fire and the remains of a bbq. i am still wearing a fleece but i am sockless, which feels like a sliver of freedom. we have spent the afternoon in the elephant's beer garden, and i needed a hat and sunscreen. i can hear random people singing - can't tell if it's football related or the group of (probably now quite drunk) teenagers hanging out in the park. i am full of lamb kofta and wine. katie is leaning out of her upstairs oast window watching her cat being taunted by two magpies. humph is watching developments with interest. the leaves on the trees around the oast are just-out - bright lime zest green and glowing in the late afternoon sunshine.

welcome spring - i missed you. don't forget to ring your friend summer, eh?

another gig,

another set of the butterflies.

you'd think it was me playing.

this is ridiculous.

and another thing

knitting socks for loved ones with size 10 feet is unending. they go on and on and on and on. if n gets a pair he'll be lucky. i haven't even finished the first one yet.

note to single knitters - pick small partners. it will save time and yarn. these things matter.

welcome to crazy town - population you

life has gone nuts. some good, some bad, all nuts. i mean honestly, do i bloody look like a squirrel? apparently, i can't even spell squirrel. thank god for spell checkers. (ha ha - you don't even want to know how i tried to spell that!!) i can spell, actually, mostly. i just have momentary lapses. you know, the last company i worked for used lotus notes for their email, and it always used to bug me in a particularly pedantic way that the lotus notes spell checker couldn't recognise the word email. after gritting my teeth for the millionth time i finally decided it was probably some techie's idea of a joke.

anyways.

work is crazy. officially. it has been veering in that direction for some time but it has, without a doubt, hit the tipping point. the local gov't council that i work for is trying to undertake major cost saving exercises, several major directorate-wide restructures which include redundancies, a new revamped customer services programme, at year end. what could possibly go wrong? it's like working inside a manual of how not to do things.

i am only in the periphery, thank heavens, but it's amazing how much crazy drifts out from the centre. it is making it almost impossible to deliver the moves i need to do this weekend, and on top of this i am supposed to be trying to write one directorate's property strategy which, in this climate, is a farce. strategy is not even an option right now.

i am still waiting to hear if i am going to be taken away from all this into a new kind of crazy. dream job interview went ok - i think - it's hard to tell. it was scary. and difficult. and i had to answer questions like "what, in your opinion, would be the most important lease issues to consider for a twenty-person regional office in Kazakhstan?" (take that spell checker!) but i did my best and i did like the director a lot, which is good. either way, it's ok.

other things are crazy too - i fly out to winnipeg on the 21st. that is a different kind of crazy all together. more rabid squirrel than garden-variety nuts.(nope - still can't spell squirrel).

well as my mom always says, this too shall pass. my days are certainly flying by and i have to admit - i'm not even a teensy bit bored. exhausted, knackered, frustrated, and maybe slightly manic - but not bored.

look what n found!!!!

look what n found!! it's an old workhorse - a singer 239 - made in italy, so heavy he had to set it down several times getting it home. works like a dream. yay!

i've wanted one for ages but didn't want to pay too much as i wasn't 100% sure i'd actually use it. this sweet pea cost a whopping £25. not bad. sewing up humph's duvets* will have it paying for itself in about 2 months.

*humph is a nester. he can destroy a dog bed in minutes. he now sleeps on (very cheap) duvets which he shreds in a matter of months. they will now be sewn up :)