Shot to the moon

I don’t hate work anymore but it’s not an easy place to love either. After a slow and restful weekend indoors (pleasantly pre-empted by champagne and pancakes, then pints at the Pit Bar on Friday), I was even more reluctant to come up against the long faces and nervous energy of colleagues.

This morning the sales guy was irrationally smug about the recent dismissal of a different sales person who has been with us for much, much longer – at least until it came out that the dismissal had to do with not meeting targets. Ahem.

Anyway, it’s lunch and he’s sat across from me with his two bags of crisps and sandwich dripping with mayonnaise and I’m trying like the dickens to ignore him. Try try try.

My banjo lesson is in three days and I’ve practiced far less than I thought I would. Partly because Amy was here and we all know that houseguests trump responsibilities of all sorts, and then a string broke and those things are not at all easy to replace unless you really know what you’re doing (we do now).

I can play the intro bit of Duelling Banjos now, though it’s not strictly homework and probably won’t make up for the fact that I didn’t manage to sort out my fingering. I find it difficult not to lean my fingers against the surrounding strings when I make a C chord, thereby causing my strum to sound a bit muted and out of tune.

But Duelling Banjos!

Instead, I’ve been reading a lot of fictional non-fiction novels and informational weblogs, just to escape the solipsistic vacuum that is my own hellish head, and have developed a theory about the television series Big Brother as allegory for dictatorships and corrupt governments like in Animal Farm except minus the socialism. Um, that’s the theory so far.

I also have a bit of a platonic crush on Richard Dawkins (requires sound), who confronts people with destructive and uninformed opinions about things and then basically messes with their heads. He’s the UK’s answer to Michael Moore, except with a bit of class (and education, methinks) thrown in for good measure. I fully intend to finally sit down and read The God Delusion and love every faith-crushing, afterlife-hopeless moment of it.

Here lies an atheist/ All dressed up/ And no place to go. A harrowing thought, but true* nevertheless.

This photo I took of Bruce at Hampstead Heath was displayed at the Tate Britain for a short while. Ask me how!

Better yet, ask me why!

I’ll tell you how it was received another time maybe (I won’t quit my day job just yet).

Isn’t he pretty though?

*Yes it is.