The trouser Press runs out of steam

Well no, not completely, but I couldn't pass up on another opportunity for such a bad pun.

However, I'm finding that much of my energies are having to be focussed elsewhere at the moment, and the prospect of writing blog posts at the present time is starting to feel like a bit of a chore.

Which clearly signals to me that it's time for a break (though not necessarily from commenting on other blogs), until the old batteries have been recharged and I'm ready to resume with more shining wit, dodgy spoonerisms, breathtaking profundity, or (more likely) absurd irrelevances.










Thanks all, and see you later!

Aftermath

It's been a long, long time since I was heading into work feeling as spaced out and sleep-deprived, and downright vulnerable as I did this morning. Almost a reminder of the bad old days.

Still, it was a worthwhile price to pay for a wonderful few days in which I made some new friends, renewed some old acquaintances and strengthened some existing ones: all within a framework of hard - and sometimes fraught - work, not to mention a bewildering array of fantastic music.

I took this photograph at 1.30 am this morning, an hour after closedown. It was a last tour of all the different parts of the site just to check if anything else needed attending to. I wandered into this space and, for a few short moments, allowed myself to be enveloped by such a powerful sense of stillness and silence. It was simultaneously eerie and soothing.

I'm often not sure whether one loses or finds oneself at such times...perhaps a bit of both.

Quite a stark (but lovely) contrast to the frequently astonishing musical mayhem of the last 60 or so hours. Not to mention volume - often so dense as to be a physical barrier. The absence of such in the space in the photograph, was almost shocking.

Now, this evening at home, there's silence and solitude: it's much-needed, but somehow I've gotten very quickly used to the intensity of hundreds and hundreds of people milling around, and also of working within what very quickly became a very close-knit team of good people.

It was a blast.

No rest

I'm going to be pretty quiet on here for a few days at least: I've had a hectic couple of weeks anyway - though largely in a good way - hence the relative quietness of late.

It'll be interesting to see what state I'm in early next week though. Come Sunday night I'll be doing the last of what promises to be lots of heavy lifting and carrying, possibly til 1 or 2 in the morning. This will be at the close of the music festival I'll be helping out at over the whole weekend (on top of preparatory work tonight and last night also - I've just got home).

Lots of labouring and effort and merely following the instructions of others, which has its own appeal: in contrast to my main job, it's refreshing to do some hard physical work which has a clear beginning, middle and end, and which doesn't exactly require much from me in the way of decision-making and intellect. The other payoff is that I get to see a rather huge amount of weird and wonderful music for free and to mix with some good people.

I'm looking forward to it.

But, Monday morning I'll be shattered: and Monday afternoon I'll be running the art class on my own for the first time, which has the potential to be rather hectic (it's been going well so far though, thankfully). Monday evening, I'll probably collapse in a heap.

In the meantime, hope everyone has a good weekend!

Techno-yoyo

I occasionally go and look at my technorati rating - not because I really give a damn what the rating is, but because by scrolling further down, it's a useful way of seeing if anyone has linked to my site for any reason.

Having said that, I can't help but notice something slightly odd about the rating itself. When I've looked at it in the last couple of months, it's crept down to a lowly 8. Earlier on I had a look and it had gone up to 15.

Curious, I thought. So later I looked again - back to 8.

I just had another look - back to 15.

So the chances are that I'll be checking it more often to see if it continues in the same vein or gets even more random.

I never knew my fortunes could fluctuate so rapidly...

Speed = distance over time

I just worked out the distance of one of my cycling routes using this. The route is one of the medium-length ones I do in terms of time and distance, and works out at nearly 24 miles (taking just over an hour and a half).

Which means, over the last few days, I must have covered about 90 miles - possibly more - on the bike, mainly in the evenings after work.

I'm quite pleased about that, actually.



(I was originally going to call this post velo-gubbed, but wondered if that might be too cheeky)

Location

Drawn (3)

Anyway (he began strangely, as though carrying on directly from where he left off), one of the things I mentioned in the post before last which has been a preoccupation:

I was given the task a couple of months ago, by a very senior person at work, of planning, setting up and carrying out some art sessions in which the various client groups could participate. Now this is something I really wanted to do, haven't done in a very long time, and was excited and daunted by in equal measure. I always get tense when I'm planning things as well.

In short, at the beginning of the week we (I didn't, I have to admit, do the planning and the rest on my own - I would have found that very difficult) ran the first session, and it was a good, positive start. So I'm pleased and relieved in an immediate sense, it's been good to finally get it underway - hence my mention in Monday's post about going out for a couple of well-deserved beers.

I'm also feeling positive about it, should it prove to be a longer-term success (it's very early days at the moment). Up until relatively recently I've been making lots of effort to try and find other, more art-related employment. So for once, it's a nice irony that during that time my own work has, at last, started to become more art-related.

It should hopefully mean that I'm happier there at least for a while. Additionally, should I feel the need to seek out other opportunities at whatever point, then these art sessions won't exactly do any harm to my CV.

I think there's going to be a lot of hard work involved in making this work, but for once it's the kind of hard work that I will relish.