Well Gwyn has prompted me into writing something new on my blog, not least because I realised that if anyone was to follow the link from his to this, they would see what appears at first glance to be the belligerent, expletive-peppered rantings of someone less than at ease with life. But that was way back in June, and since then the world has taken on a gay, rosy hue. I've got married, been to a couple of festivals, learnt how to make a new curry, popped in and popped out quite a bit, and generally mellowed over those long three months.
I will remind my self and my loyal follower(s) of some of the highlights of the summer in due course, but for now it seems better simply to say what happens to be in my mind just at this very moment. Being Monday at 9am, it should be 'do some work', which I will in a minute. I've got to put the finishing touches to a paper I've written for a fairly esteemed journal - and which was an invited article so they'll probably have to publish it - ha! - however the touches are probably not finishing enough because I should check some of the numbers and stats and things. Not really the sort of thing you want to be doing on a Monday. Still, I am pleased that the graph goes up like I want it to (Gwyn helped with the aesthetics of it, thanks Gwyn) and I didn't even have to fabricate my data, which is something I would never do in any case. (This can be proven by the fact that I put a lot of time into doing a big piece of research last year and the numbers were all over the place and didn't remotely do what I wanted them to, and I stolidly resisted any temptation to torture the numbers to my own ends, so there, imaginary examiner, I am right and you not only do not exist but are wrong wrong wrong.)
That'll do for now. Not a swear word in sight, only the slightest evidence of an angry persona lurking beneath, and no reference to heavy drinking whatsoever. I am an angel, pure as fresh stationery. And I'm going to check my graphs.
Monday 14 September 2009
Friday 19 June 2009
life of benny
What kind of a person gets up and goes down to their boat at six in the morning and starts drinking and shouting and fishing? The morons opposite our boat, that's who. And three times a day the fecking gym powers up with some bloke shouting "GOING TO 120, TEN SECONDS, WORK IT NOW" over the top of Smack My Bitch Up (so that the fatties for whom the idea of eating less is more frightening than spending their precious free time doing Kaiser Cycle, whatever the fuck that is, can burn off some calories), whilst the local drunks join in outside. Round the corner, most of the year first year students from the nearby multistorey halls of residence revert to a primal state all year long, wordlessly but ear-splittingly howling and grunting and screeching, screaming, yelling and hollering at some unnamed gods or demons deep within them because their tiny minds don't understand what drinking is. Every half hour some booze cruise goes past full of people who think they're the first people ever to think it's a good idea to put on a shit pirate costume and go "WAHEY!" every time they have a swig of their fucking Bacardi Breezer, which is every single minute of their stupid, desperate lives. And I'm tired.
Wedding's getting very close now, two weeks off, eeek, etc. Sat down yesterday to try to write a speech and got nowhere at all, the only thing I have written is what Anne said on the phone which is "All you’ve got to do is do a little 5 minute speech about how great I am", which isn't a bad start. Still, at least I've finally realised, despite much resistance on my part, that my wedding speech isn't frankly the best time to find out that stand-up comedy was not a missed vocation - and that instead I should just be nice and pleasant without being mawkish, and maybe limit the one-liners.
Mark (that's you, Mark! he's one of my followers) came round last weekend to talk about speeches and stuff, but inevitably we just got pissed and laughed at the suggestions in the wedding speeches book, without making much progress. (However we did NOT feel the need at any point to go out into the street, throw back our heads and under a thunderous sky call out HWUUAAAARRRGHH!!! UUUUUURRRRRGHH!!! NNNNNNGGGGG!!)
We got a big curry in from Kathmandu, but regrettably after toilet visits in the morning one or both of my and Mark's Jalfrezi excrement broke the macerator, and we went to a bad place for much of the day. PTSD subsided a little now, but that sort of thing never truly leaves you. Full kudos to Mark for staying the course and bailing his own mess.
On Monday had a long day as I was co-organising a conference snappily titled "'Discussing potentials for inter-disciplinary research on ‘public engagement’ in science, technology and risk': A deliberative conference." Which astonishingly had quite a few people turn up. I tried to chair a speaker and stuff and it didn't go too badly.
Then on Tuesday I was thoroughly hoodwinked. AL from Bath had asked the other week if I could go to Bath and say a couple of things in a meeting about the research we'd been doing. I said I didn't want to, but he twisted my arm and I am a submissive coward and agreed. Then over the last couple of weeks it's emerged it's not a meeting, but a seminar, not a seminar but a series of talks, not just talks but talks at a launch event for the university's new environmental something-or-other centre, and not just that but a fancy thing with catering and such. So I arrive with my not very well-prepared talk and find 70 or 80 chairs, a big screen, a fecking lectern and that the other four speakers are all professors for chrissake. Funnily enough though, because I didn't have time to work myself up into some terrified frenzied state, it went alright. I think. I even said wise-ish things during the plenary. I think. My mate Steve was there, and he said I was very professional.
Went round O&S's last weekend, to see their nice new house and then drank booze in the local pub before coming home and spending hours searching Spotify for wedding music and failing miserably (as a man who honestly if pretentiously describes his musical tastes as Blip Hop I'm not really the person to track down crowd-pleasing music). Chatted to Gwyn for a while (Gwyn! that's you. He's my other follower. Look, Gwyn! You're on the internet!) though was rather far in my cups by then - nevertheless, and at the risk of labouring a point, I still at no point had an urge to go out into the street and scream myself hoarse.
I've managed to get some PhD done the last couple of weeks, though the end-of-year deadline is approaching fast and there's nothing like getting married to distract from the meticulous business of academic stuff.
Oh, and we found a house we want to buy. It's big and nice.
So, I said I'd put some gaps in this blog - sorry, this POSTING - and you don't 'do' a blog - and also a link or two. I know that I should probably put the links in the text, all like they're almost not there, but I forgot to do so and so this will just have to do instead.
Laters, taters
Wedding's getting very close now, two weeks off, eeek, etc. Sat down yesterday to try to write a speech and got nowhere at all, the only thing I have written is what Anne said on the phone which is "All you’ve got to do is do a little 5 minute speech about how great I am", which isn't a bad start. Still, at least I've finally realised, despite much resistance on my part, that my wedding speech isn't frankly the best time to find out that stand-up comedy was not a missed vocation - and that instead I should just be nice and pleasant without being mawkish, and maybe limit the one-liners.
Mark (that's you, Mark! he's one of my followers) came round last weekend to talk about speeches and stuff, but inevitably we just got pissed and laughed at the suggestions in the wedding speeches book, without making much progress. (However we did NOT feel the need at any point to go out into the street, throw back our heads and under a thunderous sky call out HWUUAAAARRRGHH!!! UUUUUURRRRRGHH!!! NNNNNNGGGGG!!)
We got a big curry in from Kathmandu, but regrettably after toilet visits in the morning one or both of my and Mark's Jalfrezi excrement broke the macerator, and we went to a bad place for much of the day. PTSD subsided a little now, but that sort of thing never truly leaves you. Full kudos to Mark for staying the course and bailing his own mess.
On Monday had a long day as I was co-organising a conference snappily titled "'Discussing potentials for inter-disciplinary research on ‘public engagement’ in science, technology and risk': A deliberative conference." Which astonishingly had quite a few people turn up. I tried to chair a speaker and stuff and it didn't go too badly.
Then on Tuesday I was thoroughly hoodwinked. AL from Bath had asked the other week if I could go to Bath and say a couple of things in a meeting about the research we'd been doing. I said I didn't want to, but he twisted my arm and I am a submissive coward and agreed. Then over the last couple of weeks it's emerged it's not a meeting, but a seminar, not a seminar but a series of talks, not just talks but talks at a launch event for the university's new environmental something-or-other centre, and not just that but a fancy thing with catering and such. So I arrive with my not very well-prepared talk and find 70 or 80 chairs, a big screen, a fecking lectern and that the other four speakers are all professors for chrissake. Funnily enough though, because I didn't have time to work myself up into some terrified frenzied state, it went alright. I think. I even said wise-ish things during the plenary. I think. My mate Steve was there, and he said I was very professional.
Went round O&S's last weekend, to see their nice new house and then drank booze in the local pub before coming home and spending hours searching Spotify for wedding music and failing miserably (as a man who honestly if pretentiously describes his musical tastes as Blip Hop I'm not really the person to track down crowd-pleasing music). Chatted to Gwyn for a while (Gwyn! that's you. He's my other follower. Look, Gwyn! You're on the internet!) though was rather far in my cups by then - nevertheless, and at the risk of labouring a point, I still at no point had an urge to go out into the street and scream myself hoarse.
I've managed to get some PhD done the last couple of weeks, though the end-of-year deadline is approaching fast and there's nothing like getting married to distract from the meticulous business of academic stuff.
Oh, and we found a house we want to buy. It's big and nice.
So, I said I'd put some gaps in this blog - sorry, this POSTING - and you don't 'do' a blog - and also a link or two. I know that I should probably put the links in the text, all like they're almost not there, but I forgot to do so and so this will just have to do instead.
Laters, taters
Saturday 6 June 2009
under the top soil, air
Yet again, time has got the better of me and another fortnight has passed since my last posting. I am particularly sore about this, as in the last weeks the number of people following my blog has increased by a full 100%. I own then that it is nothing less than a dereliction of duty to have lapsed once more, and I am sorry. I do not deserve your patronage.
What paeans of sagacity have I to convey since my last scribblings?
We’ve been fairly busy with socialising, which has all been pretty booze-soaked. Now, I’m no Isaiah Berlin, and so I cannot report wittily upon dinner dance repartie with Coward, Engels, Monroe and Eichmann, however there have been a couple of entertaining outings. First, a dinner out with Anne’s work people and their people, the main entertaining feature of which was the comedy mismatch between G, who after a few drinks effused at great length about his exploits with bikers and all variety of bovine-strength hallucinogens, to the great discomfort of less psychedelic-minded fellow diners. Next, followed a trip out to the pub and back to V and S’s new house, wherein fizzy wine and great quantities of Bristol cigarettes contributed to some hilarity but also the beginnings of that unpleasantness that the youth of today refer to as a ‘whitey’.
During the working week I’ve been trying hard to get something coherent and with solid word count together for my end-of-year piece of work, that will convince an independent professor type that I am not a dullard or dimwit and may be permitted to spend a further year of a PhD in solitude rearranging the words of others and pebble-dashing it with my own dubious insights. Although it hardly seems to be the done thing, I have been trying to contrive some systematicity and sharper focus in my discourse analysis, and have taken to using an approach devised by one political environmentalist, or maybe environmental politicist, called Dryzek, and since taken up by others. So far, so uninteresting. But I have uncovered one or two interesting things about this, that ostensibly shouldn’t happen within the academic process at all. This Dryzek geezer, you see, has developed a fairly detailed approach to doing discourse analysis, which he calls a ‘components analysis’. It basically means looking for particular types of things in the way things are talked about, whether in speech or text, then collating these things into wider over-arching ideas. He has used this approach as the basis of a whole book he’s written. It has been drawn on furthermore by some eminent writers, such as the well-respected natural and social science researcher Hulme, and by thinky-tanky types as the basis of their own discourse analyses. Yet when I decided to dig a bit deeper and see where this approach came from, how it developed, what underlying ideas and rationales there were for its construction and application, my mind-shovel barely scratched the methodological top soil before hitting thin air. He cites only *himself* as a prior reference to the approach. Undeterred, I followed this ten-year-previous reference up, and found a thoroughly obscure paper about something largely unrelated - an earlier version of his ‘components’ approach was indeed described and used, but no reasoning was given for it, or citations provided as to why it was a sensible idea. It was just presented in four bullet points, stark as you like, suspended in space, the unsupported seems-like-a-good-idea of someone. Now, I’m not saying it’s *not* a sensible approach, but it seems very illustrative to me that within the academic process, provided you can chuck a name and a year of something or other published down, you’re pretty much on safe ground. For my part, I didn’t have to dig - I could have just said, this is what I’m doing and I’m allowed to do it intellectually because Dryzek (1997) and some other really important people like Hulme (2008) have done it too. Makes you wonder if those others who used it went into its background, and just how much of this sort of thing goes on.
Also, I’ve been organising a conference. And we have had the maximum permitted two weeks of summer already.
Anyway, last weekend ended up booze-soaked as well, even though we really didn’t want it to. The Vegan Fayre was in town - woooop! What fun! A Vegan Fayre! Bring it on! I say Vegan, you say Fayre! - which we did want to go to because reggae legends Macka B and Horace Andy were both there. So anyway, we went along in the morning on the Sunday having paid our money and got our hands stamped so that we could go back in again. Then at about 1pm we met T, H, P, F, C and B at the Old Duke ‘just for one pint’. It must have been about four pints later I popped home to change my trousers, and accidentally washed my stamp off. Meanwhile at the pub, worse-for-wear P thought it was funny to lick Anne’s stamp off, and as it turned out we’d lost the original tickets. So instead of seeing any reggae legends that we’d paid for, all this lot came back to the boat, and then yet more people came, and we drank yet more booze in the sunshine and had a bbq, which was all kind of nice, except it meant we drank all day long and ate little more than a burger. P was so far gone he was parading around in his pants having to be stopped from jumping in the harbour. Still at least the following Monday to Thursday I managed to be completely abstemious.
That said, it’s Saturday today…
What paeans of sagacity have I to convey since my last scribblings?
We’ve been fairly busy with socialising, which has all been pretty booze-soaked. Now, I’m no Isaiah Berlin, and so I cannot report wittily upon dinner dance repartie with Coward, Engels, Monroe and Eichmann, however there have been a couple of entertaining outings. First, a dinner out with Anne’s work people and their people, the main entertaining feature of which was the comedy mismatch between G, who after a few drinks effused at great length about his exploits with bikers and all variety of bovine-strength hallucinogens, to the great discomfort of less psychedelic-minded fellow diners. Next, followed a trip out to the pub and back to V and S’s new house, wherein fizzy wine and great quantities of Bristol cigarettes contributed to some hilarity but also the beginnings of that unpleasantness that the youth of today refer to as a ‘whitey’.
During the working week I’ve been trying hard to get something coherent and with solid word count together for my end-of-year piece of work, that will convince an independent professor type that I am not a dullard or dimwit and may be permitted to spend a further year of a PhD in solitude rearranging the words of others and pebble-dashing it with my own dubious insights. Although it hardly seems to be the done thing, I have been trying to contrive some systematicity and sharper focus in my discourse analysis, and have taken to using an approach devised by one political environmentalist, or maybe environmental politicist, called Dryzek, and since taken up by others. So far, so uninteresting. But I have uncovered one or two interesting things about this, that ostensibly shouldn’t happen within the academic process at all. This Dryzek geezer, you see, has developed a fairly detailed approach to doing discourse analysis, which he calls a ‘components analysis’. It basically means looking for particular types of things in the way things are talked about, whether in speech or text, then collating these things into wider over-arching ideas. He has used this approach as the basis of a whole book he’s written. It has been drawn on furthermore by some eminent writers, such as the well-respected natural and social science researcher Hulme, and by thinky-tanky types as the basis of their own discourse analyses. Yet when I decided to dig a bit deeper and see where this approach came from, how it developed, what underlying ideas and rationales there were for its construction and application, my mind-shovel barely scratched the methodological top soil before hitting thin air. He cites only *himself* as a prior reference to the approach. Undeterred, I followed this ten-year-previous reference up, and found a thoroughly obscure paper about something largely unrelated - an earlier version of his ‘components’ approach was indeed described and used, but no reasoning was given for it, or citations provided as to why it was a sensible idea. It was just presented in four bullet points, stark as you like, suspended in space, the unsupported seems-like-a-good-idea of someone. Now, I’m not saying it’s *not* a sensible approach, but it seems very illustrative to me that within the academic process, provided you can chuck a name and a year of something or other published down, you’re pretty much on safe ground. For my part, I didn’t have to dig - I could have just said, this is what I’m doing and I’m allowed to do it intellectually because Dryzek (1997) and some other really important people like Hulme (2008) have done it too. Makes you wonder if those others who used it went into its background, and just how much of this sort of thing goes on.
Also, I’ve been organising a conference. And we have had the maximum permitted two weeks of summer already.
Anyway, last weekend ended up booze-soaked as well, even though we really didn’t want it to. The Vegan Fayre was in town - woooop! What fun! A Vegan Fayre! Bring it on! I say Vegan, you say Fayre! - which we did want to go to because reggae legends Macka B and Horace Andy were both there. So anyway, we went along in the morning on the Sunday having paid our money and got our hands stamped so that we could go back in again. Then at about 1pm we met T, H, P, F, C and B at the Old Duke ‘just for one pint’. It must have been about four pints later I popped home to change my trousers, and accidentally washed my stamp off. Meanwhile at the pub, worse-for-wear P thought it was funny to lick Anne’s stamp off, and as it turned out we’d lost the original tickets. So instead of seeing any reggae legends that we’d paid for, all this lot came back to the boat, and then yet more people came, and we drank yet more booze in the sunshine and had a bbq, which was all kind of nice, except it meant we drank all day long and ate little more than a burger. P was so far gone he was parading around in his pants having to be stopped from jumping in the harbour. Still at least the following Monday to Thursday I managed to be completely abstemious.
That said, it’s Saturday today…
Friday 22 May 2009
te zaddi ahey
Capstain’s blog, stardate late May, year of the hamster.
The gap between posts has crept now to eight days, but that’s OK, perhaps I will have more to remark upon than the cost of wine at the COOP.
A civilised and drunk couple of days spent in leafy Woking has been the main event of the past week. Despite – not because of – having spent every day in each other’s company for several months whilst travelling around forrin back in the last millennium , I have hardly seen Yash in the last ten years. A trip to his place a few years ago, when he lived in London, and a couple of festivals is about as much as we’ve managed, and haven’t met his wife Anagha hardly at all either. In the summer of 2007 Yash said we’d definitely have to visit before the end of the year, so come mid-2009 we finally got around to it.
He and Anagha live in what I think the establishment classes refer to as a ‘pile’ - meaning big house – in Woking. Not that most of it is liveable because they’re doing building things to it all, but nevertheless it’s still an impressive place. Anne and I turned up Friday night and as hoped-for had a lovely curry and loads of beer. Stayed up late drinking more beer and whiskey with Yash till 2ish, chewin’ the fat. Saturday, Yash started turning up large gin and tonics at 1pm and it all went from there really. Yash and Anagha’s equally well-heeled pals and cousin Monish came along soon after. Champagne was followed by a dinner so leisurely it lasted until about 8pm or so, when the last piece of fruit pie was finally washed down with whiskey, wine, beer and a big cigar. See, me, I can take my booze, but Yash disappeared for a lie-down after it all got a bit much for him. Not to worry though because Anne and Anagha got him up by hitting him with a pillow. Dragged the poor lamb to the pub where he rather brazenly ordered a shandy, and I learned the Marathi for “she’s so fat” which is “te zaddi ahey”. Doesn’t sound hard, but you have to get your enunciation right. Then we had a kebab. Next day, had a lovely stroll by the river and lunch in a pub. Poor Bert was hoping to come round, but had in-law commitments to attend to, so we didn’t see him unfortunately.
This week I’ve spent mostly with a fecked up neck. I ran 8.5 miles in the gym on the stupid machine, which is a lifetime record for me I think (except perhaps when participating in Wednesday afternoon boot camp with Mr Payne at Taunton School). Not bad – that’s basically a third of a marathon, but as well as ruining my legs I seem to have suffered something the symptoms of which are similar to whiplash. Over the last few days my neck has got stiffer and more painful, and had to cancel various things I was supposed to do Thursday, like a no-doubt riveting seminar. Am involved with AC at Cardiff now with an application for a science engagement project thing to do with climate change and rural Welsh people, which hopefully will be a good experience. I think it will be, and it’s not like the turgid but highly stressful literature review and experimental work I’ve done over the last couple of years as an extra income to supplement my mid-life PhD crisis. Assuming I live to 68 that is.
When I’ve not been downing sleep-making codydramol or sticking a home electrocution kit on my neck to replace muscular pain with nerve-shocking pain, I’ve been trying to get going on the end of year thesis sort of piece of work I have to produce to be allowed into my second year. Familiar problems present of writer’s block, which is less fun than fiction writer’s block because all creativity and individuality is Bad and so the best, ultimate aim is something reference-heavy and desiccated which reads like every other academic article and supposedly makes some miniscule contribution to something, but probably doesn’t. Maybe my neck pain is affecting my enthusiasm.
Yash said his highly regarded law professor tutor from Cambridge forewent a huge city salary to return to academia and had a mental breakdown because it was harder and more pressured. But she was probably just trying too hard. I plan to get a job at a minor university and work from home a lot.
The gap between posts has crept now to eight days, but that’s OK, perhaps I will have more to remark upon than the cost of wine at the COOP.
A civilised and drunk couple of days spent in leafy Woking has been the main event of the past week. Despite – not because of – having spent every day in each other’s company for several months whilst travelling around forrin back in the last millennium , I have hardly seen Yash in the last ten years. A trip to his place a few years ago, when he lived in London, and a couple of festivals is about as much as we’ve managed, and haven’t met his wife Anagha hardly at all either. In the summer of 2007 Yash said we’d definitely have to visit before the end of the year, so come mid-2009 we finally got around to it.
He and Anagha live in what I think the establishment classes refer to as a ‘pile’ - meaning big house – in Woking. Not that most of it is liveable because they’re doing building things to it all, but nevertheless it’s still an impressive place. Anne and I turned up Friday night and as hoped-for had a lovely curry and loads of beer. Stayed up late drinking more beer and whiskey with Yash till 2ish, chewin’ the fat. Saturday, Yash started turning up large gin and tonics at 1pm and it all went from there really. Yash and Anagha’s equally well-heeled pals and cousin Monish came along soon after. Champagne was followed by a dinner so leisurely it lasted until about 8pm or so, when the last piece of fruit pie was finally washed down with whiskey, wine, beer and a big cigar. See, me, I can take my booze, but Yash disappeared for a lie-down after it all got a bit much for him. Not to worry though because Anne and Anagha got him up by hitting him with a pillow. Dragged the poor lamb to the pub where he rather brazenly ordered a shandy, and I learned the Marathi for “she’s so fat” which is “te zaddi ahey”. Doesn’t sound hard, but you have to get your enunciation right. Then we had a kebab. Next day, had a lovely stroll by the river and lunch in a pub. Poor Bert was hoping to come round, but had in-law commitments to attend to, so we didn’t see him unfortunately.
This week I’ve spent mostly with a fecked up neck. I ran 8.5 miles in the gym on the stupid machine, which is a lifetime record for me I think (except perhaps when participating in Wednesday afternoon boot camp with Mr Payne at Taunton School). Not bad – that’s basically a third of a marathon, but as well as ruining my legs I seem to have suffered something the symptoms of which are similar to whiplash. Over the last few days my neck has got stiffer and more painful, and had to cancel various things I was supposed to do Thursday, like a no-doubt riveting seminar. Am involved with AC at Cardiff now with an application for a science engagement project thing to do with climate change and rural Welsh people, which hopefully will be a good experience. I think it will be, and it’s not like the turgid but highly stressful literature review and experimental work I’ve done over the last couple of years as an extra income to supplement my mid-life PhD crisis. Assuming I live to 68 that is.
When I’ve not been downing sleep-making codydramol or sticking a home electrocution kit on my neck to replace muscular pain with nerve-shocking pain, I’ve been trying to get going on the end of year thesis sort of piece of work I have to produce to be allowed into my second year. Familiar problems present of writer’s block, which is less fun than fiction writer’s block because all creativity and individuality is Bad and so the best, ultimate aim is something reference-heavy and desiccated which reads like every other academic article and supposedly makes some miniscule contribution to something, but probably doesn’t. Maybe my neck pain is affecting my enthusiasm.
Yash said his highly regarded law professor tutor from Cambridge forewent a huge city salary to return to academia and had a mental breakdown because it was harder and more pressured. But she was probably just trying too hard. I plan to get a job at a minor university and work from home a lot.
Thursday 14 May 2009
inner voices
Will Self says that talking to himself is fine, it's just a vocalisation of thought processes. Really, anyone could say that. I could've said that, especially as I'm a sort-of psychologist. Anyway, that is why I'm writing a blog, I reckon. It's like looking in the mirror and going "oh, so that's what I look like" except in internet form. Yeah, I'm convinced.
So anyway, this makes it two blogs in two days. And I've SO much to say. SO much has happened.
Erm...
As it happens, I didn't really leave the house today, except to go up the COOP and buy three bottles of wine. They were previously three for a tenner, but are now back to 3.99 each.
Erm...
So anyway, this makes it two blogs in two days. And I've SO much to say. SO much has happened.
Erm...
As it happens, I didn't really leave the house today, except to go up the COOP and buy three bottles of wine. They were previously three for a tenner, but are now back to 3.99 each.
Erm...
Wednesday 13 May 2009
qualitation
Oh Lordy! I’ve only been doing this blog thing for less than a month, and I’ve already managed to let it slip to over a week’s gap between entries. It’s going the same way as every diary I’ve tried to write, and is a testament to my poor self-discipline and terminal tendency to procrastinate. Oh, woe.
Well, at least I got to it in the end. Another beautiful day in Cardiff – the sky is filled with grey, cloying dampness hovering beneath the burnt malt clouds of the Brains beer factory. I sit in my carriage awaiting departure, gazing out over the splattered heaps of human excrement and toilet paper strewing the tracks that draw away in chthonic perspective towards the AIG insurance building. “Platform dawee avee nah possannid a Llindaw Paddington” says the automatic announcer, a weak-sounding but never bored Welsh robot. I glare at the people as they board the train, hopeful that they will be deterred from sitting opposite me on my table, knowing that if they do it will only be a matter of time before they bring out the misanthrope in me by having half a conversation on their mobile about the team dropping the ball on this one, or Janet not getting back to me yet on that one. And lo, we have departed.
This morning I had an argument with a gypsy woman and won. Well, argument is too strong a word. Altercation. And won is too strong a word. Didn’t lose would be putting it better. At the front of the queue at the station to buy my ticket, and in a ‘queue code red’ situation – wherein one of the ticket windows has a ‘training in progress’ sign over it, the second has a very nice but very slow old couple discussing all available options for travel that fortnight with the helpful young man behind the window, and the third has a very welcome but very confused group of Japanese tourists trying to get to Osaka via Aberdeen – a gypsy (OK, telling someone is a gypsy from first impressions isn’t an exact science, but she was Irish, had bright floral leggings, gold jewellery and was shouting at her five children and station staff and passersby; have I used a wrong term? Well cancel my New Internationalist subscription) started having a go at the window staff to let her buy her ticket and then tried to barge in front of the long commuter queue, saying as a statement rather than a question “I can go in front, yeah?” Well anyway, if there is one holy principle, one non-negotiable piece of etiquette, one reason in the world why being English is Noble and Worthy, then it is because of an appreciation of the sanctity of the queue. So I told her. No you can’t. Look, my train’s in ten minutes, she said. I don’t care, I said, and anyway, mine’s in five. I’m getting my ticket, she said. That’s a NO, I said, very fiercely, as fiercely as Christopher Robin in a very bad mood or Mark Corrigan at a meeting. And I stood my ground, and by god I bought my ticket first. And that was the story of how I didn’t lose an altercation with a sort-of gypsy. Period.
Just recently, I have been managing to sort my methodology out a bit. I think. Proper science people are quite right in many of their criticisms of qualitation I believe - qualitative methodology is incredibly slippery and dressed up in so much pseudo-intellectualism that it is very hard to know what is just verbiage and what is sound analysis. Whilst I rather like qualitative approaches in principle, trying to interact with the literature has been a real pain because of this – and such is the bane of my PhD. But I want myself to be sure I am doing something systematic and justifiable and grounded - wise men build their house upon the rocks, or the house comes tumbling down. Surely everyone knows that? Especially with regard to discursive work though, there are a lot of foundations plonked down in some very splodgy swamps, with tin foil facades and plastic chimney pots. And I’m not going to move in there, really I’m not, even at those rates.
Because of this I’ve been trying very hard to find some more concrete approaches. As a result of this, the writings of the political environmentalist (or is that environmental political analyst? Or enviro-political anal mentalist?) Dryzek along with the philosopher Toulmin are my current crutches. Dryzek at least has a method for his discourse analysis, as does Toulmin for his analysis of informal reasoning, and that’s a start.
Away from the world of invented abstractions (there’s a third world, the world of objective contents of thoughts, says Karl Popper – though I learned that from an Orb sample) there’s been bluebells a-plenty carpeting the woods this year. Was pleased to find two nearby RSPB reserves at the weekend where there were lovely tits flitting in and out of their little homes and the echoey thrums of woodpeckers, and sun-dappled cathedrals of green and that sort of thing, and most of all bluebells everywhere. Everywhere, I tell you. Went to Bournemouth too and got wistful about how nice it used to be living by the sea.
Sadly, I continue to be disappointed by curry restaurants. He Was Disappointed By Curry Restaurants shall be my epitaph. I very much like the ambience and bustle of the Raj in the old town, but why can most curry places do little more than put five lumps of chicken in a standard food-blended sauce that they’ve poured from a big tub of sauce (probably) and hope you think it’s a meal? I don’t want to do a Michael Winner here, but (that’s a discursive ‘but’ used to assert that I am not Michael Winner) come on curry restaurants: SORT IT AAT!
The current news story, aside from Pakistan’s continuing collapse into a theocratic nuclear-armed state, but who cares about that, has been the wonderful schadenfreude that is MP’s expenses. These mother fuckers have been getting away with murder: claiming expenses for cleaning out their moats, having pipes put under their swimming pools, getting new hymens installed in their housekeepers, furnishing homes they don’t even live in and then selling them and pocketing the profits. But what’s so great about it all, is that for a government so hell-bent on creating a surveillance society where if-you’ve-done-nothing-wrong-you’ve-nothing-to-worry-about they’re all on the ropes and squirming and writhing and screwed because of their own technically rule-obeying affairs being opened up to vastly uncomfortable scrutiny. Ha! Poetic justice innit.
I made an excellent joke the other day, though the few people who have heard it seem to not appreciate it as much as they should. Q: What do you call the lead singer of the Eurythmics in a fruit bowl… No? … Not sure? A: Annie Lemonx. Brilliant. And no, Annie Lemon is not a close enough answer, it has to have an x on the end.
I’m just writing words for the sake of it now, a reversion to an adolescent texter unable to function without seeing his stream of consciousness reflected back at him without vowels in it. Cheerio world.
Well, at least I got to it in the end. Another beautiful day in Cardiff – the sky is filled with grey, cloying dampness hovering beneath the burnt malt clouds of the Brains beer factory. I sit in my carriage awaiting departure, gazing out over the splattered heaps of human excrement and toilet paper strewing the tracks that draw away in chthonic perspective towards the AIG insurance building. “Platform dawee avee nah possannid a Llindaw Paddington” says the automatic announcer, a weak-sounding but never bored Welsh robot. I glare at the people as they board the train, hopeful that they will be deterred from sitting opposite me on my table, knowing that if they do it will only be a matter of time before they bring out the misanthrope in me by having half a conversation on their mobile about the team dropping the ball on this one, or Janet not getting back to me yet on that one. And lo, we have departed.
This morning I had an argument with a gypsy woman and won. Well, argument is too strong a word. Altercation. And won is too strong a word. Didn’t lose would be putting it better. At the front of the queue at the station to buy my ticket, and in a ‘queue code red’ situation – wherein one of the ticket windows has a ‘training in progress’ sign over it, the second has a very nice but very slow old couple discussing all available options for travel that fortnight with the helpful young man behind the window, and the third has a very welcome but very confused group of Japanese tourists trying to get to Osaka via Aberdeen – a gypsy (OK, telling someone is a gypsy from first impressions isn’t an exact science, but she was Irish, had bright floral leggings, gold jewellery and was shouting at her five children and station staff and passersby; have I used a wrong term? Well cancel my New Internationalist subscription) started having a go at the window staff to let her buy her ticket and then tried to barge in front of the long commuter queue, saying as a statement rather than a question “I can go in front, yeah?” Well anyway, if there is one holy principle, one non-negotiable piece of etiquette, one reason in the world why being English is Noble and Worthy, then it is because of an appreciation of the sanctity of the queue. So I told her. No you can’t. Look, my train’s in ten minutes, she said. I don’t care, I said, and anyway, mine’s in five. I’m getting my ticket, she said. That’s a NO, I said, very fiercely, as fiercely as Christopher Robin in a very bad mood or Mark Corrigan at a meeting. And I stood my ground, and by god I bought my ticket first. And that was the story of how I didn’t lose an altercation with a sort-of gypsy. Period.
Just recently, I have been managing to sort my methodology out a bit. I think. Proper science people are quite right in many of their criticisms of qualitation I believe - qualitative methodology is incredibly slippery and dressed up in so much pseudo-intellectualism that it is very hard to know what is just verbiage and what is sound analysis. Whilst I rather like qualitative approaches in principle, trying to interact with the literature has been a real pain because of this – and such is the bane of my PhD. But I want myself to be sure I am doing something systematic and justifiable and grounded - wise men build their house upon the rocks, or the house comes tumbling down. Surely everyone knows that? Especially with regard to discursive work though, there are a lot of foundations plonked down in some very splodgy swamps, with tin foil facades and plastic chimney pots. And I’m not going to move in there, really I’m not, even at those rates.
Because of this I’ve been trying very hard to find some more concrete approaches. As a result of this, the writings of the political environmentalist (or is that environmental political analyst? Or enviro-political anal mentalist?) Dryzek along with the philosopher Toulmin are my current crutches. Dryzek at least has a method for his discourse analysis, as does Toulmin for his analysis of informal reasoning, and that’s a start.
Away from the world of invented abstractions (there’s a third world, the world of objective contents of thoughts, says Karl Popper – though I learned that from an Orb sample) there’s been bluebells a-plenty carpeting the woods this year. Was pleased to find two nearby RSPB reserves at the weekend where there were lovely tits flitting in and out of their little homes and the echoey thrums of woodpeckers, and sun-dappled cathedrals of green and that sort of thing, and most of all bluebells everywhere. Everywhere, I tell you. Went to Bournemouth too and got wistful about how nice it used to be living by the sea.
Sadly, I continue to be disappointed by curry restaurants. He Was Disappointed By Curry Restaurants shall be my epitaph. I very much like the ambience and bustle of the Raj in the old town, but why can most curry places do little more than put five lumps of chicken in a standard food-blended sauce that they’ve poured from a big tub of sauce (probably) and hope you think it’s a meal? I don’t want to do a Michael Winner here, but (that’s a discursive ‘but’ used to assert that I am not Michael Winner) come on curry restaurants: SORT IT AAT!
The current news story, aside from Pakistan’s continuing collapse into a theocratic nuclear-armed state, but who cares about that, has been the wonderful schadenfreude that is MP’s expenses. These mother fuckers have been getting away with murder: claiming expenses for cleaning out their moats, having pipes put under their swimming pools, getting new hymens installed in their housekeepers, furnishing homes they don’t even live in and then selling them and pocketing the profits. But what’s so great about it all, is that for a government so hell-bent on creating a surveillance society where if-you’ve-done-nothing-wrong-you’ve-nothing-to-worry-about they’re all on the ropes and squirming and writhing and screwed because of their own technically rule-obeying affairs being opened up to vastly uncomfortable scrutiny. Ha! Poetic justice innit.
I made an excellent joke the other day, though the few people who have heard it seem to not appreciate it as much as they should. Q: What do you call the lead singer of the Eurythmics in a fruit bowl… No? … Not sure? A: Annie Lemonx. Brilliant. And no, Annie Lemon is not a close enough answer, it has to have an x on the end.
I’m just writing words for the sake of it now, a reversion to an adolescent texter unable to function without seeing his stream of consciousness reflected back at him without vowels in it. Cheerio world.
Tuesday 5 May 2009
cock o'clock
Another blog entry written on a train. Part of a general aim to try to render the amount of time I spend on trains less pointless, such as my tendency to bring onto the train more books and journal articles than I could read in a week, have hours of podcasts ready etc.
On arriving back from Bert’s on Friday my feeble attempt to do a bit of work didn’t bear fruit, and it was Friday afternoon anyway – so that was another two days PhD out the window. Still got to see Bert and Tania, and stand next to SuperHans on a platform so what more do you want?
Friday night we had invited people round the boat for cocktails. I had got enthusiastic about the idea of cocktails since we’d been to Severn Shed where they have very nice ones made by waiters who know what they’re doing. One of the ones I liked best was a mojito, as a result of which I’d bought a tub of growing mint. All I needed was… the other ingredients, which I discovered at six pm on Friday were rum, soda water, crushed ice and sugar. Undeterred I went and found these, and then with Tan, Helen, Simon, Claire and two of Tan’s friends round I proceeded to make perhaps the crappiest mojito cocktails anyone had ever tasted. Oh, and Eddie and his lady friend Ilza or something, and Flo and Vero turned up too. None of them liked my cocktails either.
Went to the Fleece for Tan’s birthday where there was a gobby girl punk band thing showing everyone just how much attitude they had, followed by Pete’s cousin’s band who did a song especially written for Tan called “Cock O’Clock” on account of his dubious expository habits after a certain hour. By this time, even people who hadn’t been round the boat and had my mojitos were coming up to me and saying “so I hear you made shit mojitos” which was a bit much. Then there was another band who most people didn’t like. Was a laugh, like, haven’t been to the Fleece for ages, possibly ever.
Saturday, me and Annie loafed about a bit, she got quite an impressive amount of work done on her assignment, I got none done because instead I kept finding other things to do like put more pictures on flickr and organise the pictures, and read my economist, and go to the gym, and have a bath, and go for a walk etc. etc. In the evening was Sophie’s birthday at the Lanes which are a kind of mini multiplex of 1950’s-themed Americana entertainment complex thing in the centre of town where I used to go to the job centre and be devalidated. Sophie was pressing the fancy dress theme, and though I don’t like fancy dress I thought I should make an effort and so put a quiff in and a thin tie on. Looked like a sort of old-fashioned criminal really, one who’d slice you up with a flick-knife soon as look at you. Well, alright then, I looked like Pudsy. We played bowling and had burgers, and table football, and went on one of those arcade machines in a table where I did best out of everyone. Imagine the genius who first thought of the idea of combining a table and an arcade machine: genius! Simon and Claire and Anne refused to even contemplate going in the karaoke room (I could have stood it for a bit) so we went to Renatos and then back to the boat for nice margaritas (nice as Simon had brought round a mixer thingy).
Sunday, we went to go to Westonbirt but they had put the prices up to 7 quid an adult – to see some trees – so instead we drove a bit into the countryside around and abouts and found a footpath or two across some fields where I stooped to pick a buttercup. Why people leave buttocks lying around I’ve no idea. Back home I actually managed to get a teensy bit of work done, then watched a great programme about cloud appreciation. I now know my cumulostratus from my cirronimbus, or something.
Monday, I did actually get some work done though again not as much as goody two shoes Anne. Also my main form of distraction/procrastination was going with Claire and Simon to the open studios at Spike Island where lots of artists glue newspaper fragments to a tree trunk or make a sock out of resin and balance it on a duvet, or do a painting of a turd and write ‘loyalty is overrated’ underneath it, and suchlike. Actually, there was some quite good stuff there including some Donnie Darko rabbit-type half-human-half-animal sculptures. There was also some awful shite. Spoke to my old pal Gwyn in the evening (or was that Sunday), who is generally a great fellow and learned and multi-layered sort of individual.
Today that is Tuesday I had a couple of cups of tea with LW at Cardiff who is good to talk to as she did her PhD on similar things to me a few years ago and so should know a thing or two. Felt a bit dim trying to explain my methods which are slippery and unfounded and altogether unconvincing, but was reassured when she was describing the ideas behind her paper she’s writing at the moment which sounded similarly unclear and muddled – she said so herself. Maybe no one anywhere in the whole world really knows what they’re talking about? This is a very strong feeling I have. We're all dumb as.
On arriving back from Bert’s on Friday my feeble attempt to do a bit of work didn’t bear fruit, and it was Friday afternoon anyway – so that was another two days PhD out the window. Still got to see Bert and Tania, and stand next to SuperHans on a platform so what more do you want?
Friday night we had invited people round the boat for cocktails. I had got enthusiastic about the idea of cocktails since we’d been to Severn Shed where they have very nice ones made by waiters who know what they’re doing. One of the ones I liked best was a mojito, as a result of which I’d bought a tub of growing mint. All I needed was… the other ingredients, which I discovered at six pm on Friday were rum, soda water, crushed ice and sugar. Undeterred I went and found these, and then with Tan, Helen, Simon, Claire and two of Tan’s friends round I proceeded to make perhaps the crappiest mojito cocktails anyone had ever tasted. Oh, and Eddie and his lady friend Ilza or something, and Flo and Vero turned up too. None of them liked my cocktails either.
Went to the Fleece for Tan’s birthday where there was a gobby girl punk band thing showing everyone just how much attitude they had, followed by Pete’s cousin’s band who did a song especially written for Tan called “Cock O’Clock” on account of his dubious expository habits after a certain hour. By this time, even people who hadn’t been round the boat and had my mojitos were coming up to me and saying “so I hear you made shit mojitos” which was a bit much. Then there was another band who most people didn’t like. Was a laugh, like, haven’t been to the Fleece for ages, possibly ever.
Saturday, me and Annie loafed about a bit, she got quite an impressive amount of work done on her assignment, I got none done because instead I kept finding other things to do like put more pictures on flickr and organise the pictures, and read my economist, and go to the gym, and have a bath, and go for a walk etc. etc. In the evening was Sophie’s birthday at the Lanes which are a kind of mini multiplex of 1950’s-themed Americana entertainment complex thing in the centre of town where I used to go to the job centre and be devalidated. Sophie was pressing the fancy dress theme, and though I don’t like fancy dress I thought I should make an effort and so put a quiff in and a thin tie on. Looked like a sort of old-fashioned criminal really, one who’d slice you up with a flick-knife soon as look at you. Well, alright then, I looked like Pudsy. We played bowling and had burgers, and table football, and went on one of those arcade machines in a table where I did best out of everyone. Imagine the genius who first thought of the idea of combining a table and an arcade machine: genius! Simon and Claire and Anne refused to even contemplate going in the karaoke room (I could have stood it for a bit) so we went to Renatos and then back to the boat for nice margaritas (nice as Simon had brought round a mixer thingy).
Sunday, we went to go to Westonbirt but they had put the prices up to 7 quid an adult – to see some trees – so instead we drove a bit into the countryside around and abouts and found a footpath or two across some fields where I stooped to pick a buttercup. Why people leave buttocks lying around I’ve no idea. Back home I actually managed to get a teensy bit of work done, then watched a great programme about cloud appreciation. I now know my cumulostratus from my cirronimbus, or something.
Monday, I did actually get some work done though again not as much as goody two shoes Anne. Also my main form of distraction/procrastination was going with Claire and Simon to the open studios at Spike Island where lots of artists glue newspaper fragments to a tree trunk or make a sock out of resin and balance it on a duvet, or do a painting of a turd and write ‘loyalty is overrated’ underneath it, and suchlike. Actually, there was some quite good stuff there including some Donnie Darko rabbit-type half-human-half-animal sculptures. There was also some awful shite. Spoke to my old pal Gwyn in the evening (or was that Sunday), who is generally a great fellow and learned and multi-layered sort of individual.
Today that is Tuesday I had a couple of cups of tea with LW at Cardiff who is good to talk to as she did her PhD on similar things to me a few years ago and so should know a thing or two. Felt a bit dim trying to explain my methods which are slippery and unfounded and altogether unconvincing, but was reassured when she was describing the ideas behind her paper she’s writing at the moment which sounded similarly unclear and muddled – she said so herself. Maybe no one anywhere in the whole world really knows what they’re talking about? This is a very strong feeling I have. We're all dumb as.
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