Listened to the latest Seabear on the plane back from Joburg. They bumped me up, I really don’t know why, so thank-you BA, I’m still just a regular blue card holder but I did appreciate the extra wiggle room and the lovely cheese.
A few days away from Cape Town and the contrasts are as stark as the air is thin.
It’s not a city that resonates with me, I’m not talking it down, it’s just not my kinda town.
I do though like the Rosebank Crowne Hotel, it’s got something going for it, obviously someone went through the Virgin Lounge in Heathrow and said that’s the baseline for what we want to do – making Business Travel cool.
We have a selection of the Westcliff or the Crowne, I always insist on the Crowne even if it’s not nearly as plush, I feel it suits my personality a little better.
That’s where I stayed for three days and it reminded me of my stay at the Great Eastern in Liverpool Street, where I got such great service, where the SA was confused with Saudia Arabia but which is also modern in it’s ambition and look and feel.
Still I’m glad to be back, the flat feels a little alien, I can’t put my finger on it exactly but my day-to-day lifestyle is a bit out of sync and I’ve run out of Danish butter and soon too will the non alcoholic beer run dry. The little things feel randomised and my mind needs to bring an order to these variables. The hotel room was so lovely and predictable. You make a proper filter coffee in the morning, have your biscotti with it and in the evening the stock is replaced, the bed is made the shampoo you thought about stealing but just used instead is filled and there is an order. The flat has its order I just need to get back into the swing of things – manana is good enough for me and Peggy Lee.
And yes I shall revisit this in the next few days it’s just a placeholder for my thoughts but I will paint you a proper picture soon.
I can feel the days shortening and the nights emotively intensifying, the world begins to have a different dimension and I begin to do the same things but it’s a new cycle.
People whose lives are more cyclical, people like farmers or baseball players or school teachers grow accustomed to these times of renewal but when you work in an office it escapes you, you realise obvious things, like when your sandals become your boots, or when your inertia is suddenly contemplative and not boundless in its extravagance.
Its different but it’s the same and things get renewed in the background, the oxygen still becomes CO2 with every inhale and exhale but the internal cycle does change.
I’m ambivalent to this process, I just accept it, and the transformation it brings. I never try to set to specific targets but my life isn’t aimless although it drifts, it flows like a trickling body of water at the mercy of the elements but on a set course.
However I do think that my renewal is different this time, in so far as that part of me is searching for something, lets just call it a clearer purpose for this phase of my life and I think that once it is found I will certainly be able to establish things new and who knows even prosper in different and unusual directions.
When I think about this the imagery at the back of my mind is of a field which transforms itself going from green to brown, from lush to barren and then suddenly somebody comes along and changes the purpose for which it is being used and still it changes but its renewal is different, something flowers, something nests, something is pruned, something stands proudly against these seasonal elements.
Now the renewal feels different and the seeds that have been sowed a little while back are taking root, you can’t see it yet but then some things are simply felt (the important things mostly and it doesn’t matter what gets said there is a chilling honesty in emotion) and I feel that these roots are strong and that they will eventually anchor a different type of renewal. Yet I’m unsure of the bloom, I know it comes in its own time but I’m thinking about it even as the roots go further and deeper down spreading themselves out and touching new nutritious territories.
I have a few more thoughts on the subject but as luck would have it, these reside on a different laptop so maybe tomorrow, I’ll explore those because I think they are slightly more tangible; part two on its way soon.
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As I lay on my bed with my back towards the ocean and my face blindly looking at my cupboard, cushion between my knees and another in a comfortable embrace, I can hear the ocean mumbling and I can feel the world turning, it turns for me.
Almost six in the morning and there is no sunlight, the days are getting shorter, my dreams are supposedly getting longer, this was a 90 minute movie now it’s becoming a 120 minute director’s cut.
Since I seldom can remember my dreams, it doesn’t much matter and I’m not a morning person so the subtle change suits my demeanor.
It’s a time for renewal, not to be confused with ‘new-all’ a distant cousin. Lent signals renewal for me, a time of renewed commitment, as the seasons are on verge of changing so too does my little life. It changes as simple as that, not for the better not for the worse, just as a precursor to seasons change.
January was hard, let me not kid you, it was for a host of reasons all 31 days.
But I tried to change things, made a concerted effort in certain areas; I ran for instance and not away from things but towards a something new, it was more than I’ve run before, in January I ran 174km. It felt like serious running, and I tried to be serious about a few things and I succeeded here and there. It’s not a heavy seriousness but rather a concerted effort, a focus.
Now the pendulum has started to reach its apex and is coming back in my favour. This is why I need to renew my focus which is far too easily lost as things transition.
March will have a work focus which is most unfortunate, I’m not the kind of person that likes for work to be at the fulcrum of my life but as the ocean ebbs in a new season this is my reality. The balance is going to be harder to maintain but I need to strive for it.
One area that does bring balance to the load is reading and I have made some changes to my reading patterns, there is a race on, I’m on three books completed and she’s on four, I’ve started another two and I’m into one so it looks like the gap could be closed. The race to 20 books for the year is on, last year I think I did about 16 and she did 24 but this year I want for it to be a bit of a scrap, so I’m reading more which is good.
This renewal is both external ( I have my vanity and reputation) and internal (a softening mental approach, a greater understanding and kindness of way) and admittedly I don’t know where else the rest of my life goes specifically during this period, it doesn’t really matter that much because in Lent, I like for my world to be insular-ish and small. I’ve got my little targets, this was always going to be a hard year, I can’t explain it I just knew it from the outset. The even years don’t do me any favours it’s the odd years that I like, they favour me. An odd thing to say but then the odd people will know what I’m talking about.
The 17th creeps ever closer and that’ll be the night that I give up champagne. Though tonight I’m thinking about someone who would have enjoyed Gigi and a little champagne.
Gigi: The night they invented champagne
It’s plain as it can be
They thought of you and me
The night they invented champagne
They absolutely knew
that all we’d want to do
Is fly to the sky on champagne
And shout to everyone in sight
That since the world began
no woman or a man
has ever been as happy as we are tonight!
Gaston: The night they invented champagne (pop)
G & G: It’s plain as it can be
They thought of you and me
The night they invented champagne
They absolutely knew
that all we’d want to do
Is fly to the sky on champagne
And shout to everyone in sight (pop)
That since the world began
no woman or a man
has ever been as happy as we are tonight! (pop)
THE NIGHT THEY INVENTED CHAMPAGNE
From “Gigi” (1958)
Lyrics : Alan Jay Lerner / Music : Frederick Loewe
The music drifts…in and out of my head and everything feels so transient. I’m in a nomadic moment, one part tiredness, one part statistic, three parts wasabi peas. Not quite a cocktail recipe for modern living but this is what it has become, mid month, mid novel, mid second novel, mid enthusiasm and everybody knows it’s gonna happen quietly connects the dots and completes the picture.
Busy, busy, busy, the ‘Define Phase’ of projects are the hardest for me, half the money is spent and the only thing that you’ve got to show for it is a series of documents, the blue prints of sort but nothing concrete. I like to get to that ‘sandbox’ or the model which is a little more tangiable and easier to show off, you can only do so much with Powerpoint before all interest dwindles.
Still a few more months of this unfortunately; of hoping against hope that something, the right thing, pops out at the end of the process.
Thankfully you can always find some kind of perspective in music, I have been listening to a strange selection tunes from Smog who is wonderful and has some of the most intoxicating lyrics, this snippet is from a track entitled, ‘The Well’ which I will upload when I get a chance:
Well they say black is all colours at once
So I gave it my red rage my yellow streak
The greenest parts of me
And my blues I knew just what I had to do
And on the more placid side the spectrum the good ol’ Style Council, Paul Weller was probably one of the coolest men of the 80ties and with songs like ‘My Ever Changing Moods’ can there be any doubt. It’s been my anthem this week.
