Methinks 'twould be wise to heed the writing on the wall.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
[light blogging] and the case of the disappearing breakfast
Mine is meatierLight blogging this morning, not for any "problematic" reasons but because I have five clients today - work goes on, even if other things don't. :)
Plan to blog later.
Of greater concern is that I lost my breakfast. True. I made it all right - just a sort of soupy thing with mince, buckwheat, cabbage and peppers in a tomato-ey sauce but it's tasty and I didn't want to lose it.
Went to the living room - nope, not there. Not in the kitchen, not in the hallway. Ah, I was absent minded, I thought - it'll be in the loo. Nope, not there.
Hmmm. I'll tell you if I ever find it. Plus the toast just burnt writing this and it's sitting there on the board now, black and fuming. I apologized to it.
Now where is that soupy thing?
Friday, May 16, 2008
[systemic failure] trumps all
There are analogies everywhere.
Captain Blackadder is unprincipled, intelligent, scathing and lives on his ability to get out of scrapes. Just how he ends up in a WW1 trench at the Somme, ready to go over the top on the order from above is largely due to systemic failure and the dislocation of people who might have helped him, being in the wrong place at the wrong time and being maddeningly unaware of the real situation and how little time is left.
No one is specifically down on Blackadder but as he discovers - every avenue he tries, every string he pulls, every favour he calls in - they all come to nothing. For example, having already dismissively discussed the old chestnut of sticking two pencils up his nose, putting underpants on his head and saying 'Wibble', as a means of escaping the front line on the grounds of insanity - he has a much better plan.
The general owes him a favour. This is his very last chance and he manages to get a call put through from the front line where he is. Naturally the general is not impressed and says they're now all square - here's some advice on how to escape - stick two pencils up your nose, put underpants on your head and say 'Wibble'.
With his last chance gone, he resigns himself to his fate.
Similarly with Hillary, whom this blog has mercilessly berated - now today I feel some sympathy for her. Even with a few victories under her belt, including the last triumph, nevertheless the die has been cast and she is being dragged inexorably to the due date of the convention where she just does not have the capacity to reverse the result, barring a miracle, despite substantial support from certain well placed sections of the community.
That was me today. My main support could not move without a report from the man who had promised him that he'd help - this was two weeks ago in a total time frame of four weeks. Still today the report had not come through so MMS phoned him, puzzled. Oh the man hadn't understood he was meant to help - he only thought he was finding things out in general.
Mad scramble, phone calls left, right and centre at the highest echelons - all willing to help but alas, system wise, now too late. Direct line to the one man in the country who really does have the power to help. Away on holidays and had extended them to the end of next week. So powerful people willing to do what they could but the other end of it just not in town.
And even if it does, by some miracle, produce an eleventh hour extension of time past the end of May, which technically it now can't, requiring representations to Moscow which take up to a month - even if that did happen, it would buy another week or two.
Cut to the Higham story. He came over here years ago and unwisely risked all on one throw for one particular lady. Someone in Germany thought it the most romantic story she'd heard [more exciting than the book actually puts it]. Heady days with huge risks, all depending on remaining here and looking as if it would be successful. Life on the edge and intoxicating.
It wasn't successful though but Higham still found himself in a position where he could survive, he increased his business round town and as long as he remained local, there was more than sufficient coming in to have a quite reasonable life, depending entirely on word of mouth connections. Everyone gave him to understand that this was their desire too - that he remain - so foolishly he sold up overseas, no family now alive and consolidated here.
In short, there was absolutely nowhere out there to go but multiple choices within this town. This year, as a result of various setbacks and with his partners all doing stints overseas for a number of reasons, the margins were very fine, coming into the summer. But that hardly mattered as he was in a secure position in an inexpensive country and June/July are the traditional months where the finance rolls in.
This flat for example - his as long as he remains but the moment he goes, all equity gone - nothing leaves the country with him except his pack.
That's why suddenly today he saw the end. Booted out ten days from now, cut off from his local supply lines, no access for legal reasons to his western money, nowhere to go out there, having consolidated everything here, end of this blog, end of these friendships, end of local friendships - a new life on the run. Exciting for a 30 year old except that he's not 30 anymore.
And there it is. One can only laugh and with one overriding nightly theme - that Higham has a date with an airport twelve days from now [eleven days tomorrow] and nowhere beyond that in any sustainable way.
Not entirely true of course. Certain blogfriends [three of them] have made kind offers and they would be lovely but the operative word is "sustainable" and to return to first person, singular, I can't drop myself on someone else for more than a few days simply because I was foolish enough not to provide myself with an escape route.
Sleep now.
Captain Blackadder is unprincipled, intelligent, scathing and lives on his ability to get out of scrapes. Just how he ends up in a WW1 trench at the Somme, ready to go over the top on the order from above is largely due to systemic failure and the dislocation of people who might have helped him, being in the wrong place at the wrong time and being maddeningly unaware of the real situation and how little time is left.
No one is specifically down on Blackadder but as he discovers - every avenue he tries, every string he pulls, every favour he calls in - they all come to nothing. For example, having already dismissively discussed the old chestnut of sticking two pencils up his nose, putting underpants on his head and saying 'Wibble', as a means of escaping the front line on the grounds of insanity - he has a much better plan.
The general owes him a favour. This is his very last chance and he manages to get a call put through from the front line where he is. Naturally the general is not impressed and says they're now all square - here's some advice on how to escape - stick two pencils up your nose, put underpants on your head and say 'Wibble'.
With his last chance gone, he resigns himself to his fate.
Similarly with Hillary, whom this blog has mercilessly berated - now today I feel some sympathy for her. Even with a few victories under her belt, including the last triumph, nevertheless the die has been cast and she is being dragged inexorably to the due date of the convention where she just does not have the capacity to reverse the result, barring a miracle, despite substantial support from certain well placed sections of the community.
That was me today. My main support could not move without a report from the man who had promised him that he'd help - this was two weeks ago in a total time frame of four weeks. Still today the report had not come through so MMS phoned him, puzzled. Oh the man hadn't understood he was meant to help - he only thought he was finding things out in general.
Mad scramble, phone calls left, right and centre at the highest echelons - all willing to help but alas, system wise, now too late. Direct line to the one man in the country who really does have the power to help. Away on holidays and had extended them to the end of next week. So powerful people willing to do what they could but the other end of it just not in town.
And even if it does, by some miracle, produce an eleventh hour extension of time past the end of May, which technically it now can't, requiring representations to Moscow which take up to a month - even if that did happen, it would buy another week or two.
Cut to the Higham story. He came over here years ago and unwisely risked all on one throw for one particular lady. Someone in Germany thought it the most romantic story she'd heard [more exciting than the book actually puts it]. Heady days with huge risks, all depending on remaining here and looking as if it would be successful. Life on the edge and intoxicating.
It wasn't successful though but Higham still found himself in a position where he could survive, he increased his business round town and as long as he remained local, there was more than sufficient coming in to have a quite reasonable life, depending entirely on word of mouth connections. Everyone gave him to understand that this was their desire too - that he remain - so foolishly he sold up overseas, no family now alive and consolidated here.
In short, there was absolutely nowhere out there to go but multiple choices within this town. This year, as a result of various setbacks and with his partners all doing stints overseas for a number of reasons, the margins were very fine, coming into the summer. But that hardly mattered as he was in a secure position in an inexpensive country and June/July are the traditional months where the finance rolls in.
This flat for example - his as long as he remains but the moment he goes, all equity gone - nothing leaves the country with him except his pack.
That's why suddenly today he saw the end. Booted out ten days from now, cut off from his local supply lines, no access for legal reasons to his western money, nowhere to go out there, having consolidated everything here, end of this blog, end of these friendships, end of local friendships - a new life on the run. Exciting for a 30 year old except that he's not 30 anymore.
And there it is. One can only laugh and with one overriding nightly theme - that Higham has a date with an airport twelve days from now [eleven days tomorrow] and nowhere beyond that in any sustainable way.
Not entirely true of course. Certain blogfriends [three of them] have made kind offers and they would be lovely but the operative word is "sustainable" and to return to first person, singular, I can't drop myself on someone else for more than a few days simply because I was foolish enough not to provide myself with an escape route.
Sleep now.
[church rises] tourism in a drought area
Reuters reports:
Perhaps the most striking image of Spain's drought, so severe it has forced Barcelona to ship in water, has been that of the underwater church which emerged from a drying dam.
For most of the past four decades, all that has been visible of the village of Sant Roma has been the belltower of its stone church, peeping above the water beside forested hills from a valley flooded in the 1960s to provide water for the Catalonia region.
This year, receding waters have exposed the 11th-century church completely, attracting crowds of tourists who stand gazing around it on the dusty bed of the reservoir.
Like it. Like it very much. Might pop over for one of the services. Would they be praying for rain?
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