autumn is most definitely here! it looks beautiful if you”re in the countryside, still, i”d rather have russet gold leaves masking the wet concrete streets.
the times they are a changing. i have been free of the world of bureaucratic institutions as of friday the 10th october. and i”m feeling that i might just be coming back to life. i have grand plans to launch into the life of a freelancer: i”m hoping to be able to spend my time doing interesting and intelligent things I choose, and being inspired. Some spirit and verve is needed, the creative juices have been flowing, they just need tapping! So self-discipline: that “thing” i have shirked, and feared, and hid from for so long - it”s time to face the demon. It can”t be that bad, can it?
And if i can do it, then so can anyone. I”ll then hopefully be able to join all those successful souls on the self-motivational bandwagon, by explaining how i went about it. so let”s see!
I have just finished reading East of the Sun, by Julia Gregson - a lovely birthday present. i got this last weekend. I”ve just finished it now..such fantasic imagery: i love these kinds of books about india, they make me want to go and soak in the colours and vivid smells myself.
I am currently reading the Gnostic Gospels by Dr. Elaine Pagels. Fascinating. I wishI had been reading this- oh sometime in the last 10 years? Still -better late than never. Sometimes you find you have been so submerged..
and season”s greetings to the world! yes it has been a long time. where does it fly?
its been a month of beautiful colour, the smell of woodsmoke which reminds me of my childhood , halloween and bonfires and of course fireworks. Tomorrow is the 5th of November!
i”ve stumbled across the books below which look like fascinating reading. Recently I”ve been spending quite a bit of time in Whitechapel, getting to know it better, and also - Limehouse. ( I”ve always had a great interest in Limehouse, the only thing i knew about it before were all the stories about the opium dens..the Picture of Dorian Gray paints a vivid portriat of the area) And of course, one of the reasons Whitechapel so intrigues many people ( across the world!) - is thanks to our old friend jack the ripper and the Whitechapel murders, which as some have put it are perhaps the most over-documented series of events in East End history. everyone loves a good juicy unsolved mystery.
I”d like to spend more time writing about the hidden haunts of London that i”ve come across. i”ve been trying to spend more time just walking around, and its interesting how you stumble across so much - hidden squares which turn out to accommodate delightful gardens, old plaques, fountains, headstones..
hiya y’all - yes it’s been a while. where have i been? good question - the time flies doesn’t it. i’ve been meaning to write and reflect but then living life itself takes up time. ah well: here goes..
the last few months have sped past me. i have been busy regenerating london - what a task. a lot”s been happening here there and everywhere and i shall pick up on my “reporting” and let you know what”s been going on in my neck of the woods.
the world out there has been extremely busy too - I”ve a few things up my sleeve I want to be commenting on - will be more on that shortly.
the streets of London for the last oh - i don”t know how long - last month or so? have been flooded with “free” newspapers competing with the “incumbent” free morning paper - the Metro. In the old days you never got a copy of the Metro if you got on a Tube say at 9:35 or so. Now you have the City AM, London Lite and the London paper shoved down your throat. the City AM people are less shovy - and you don”t generally see them in the evening. It seems to be a showdown between London Lite and the London paper - both will have 2 different people standing like 2 cms away from each other - every 2 mins up and down every street - till about 10:30 p.m. at night - trying to offload lots of copies onto you. As anyone could have predicted, there are now a lot of newspapers on the streets. Perhaps we”ll need an increase in paper recycling bins?
anyhow - there are usually some amusing tidbits one can find in these papers - some are funnier than others. this morning”s City A.M. has a couple that made me giggle and I will be sharing them shortly.
I should becomea full-time blogger methinks - so much to write!I have this list of things I want to write that keeps getting pushed to the next day and on and on..I am a procrastinator after all..
Anyways:
There”s a Pickled Politics thread today highlighting how Buddhism is apparently the USA”s fourth largest religion.
Browsing the net I found this on the Namgyal Monastery”s Institute for Buddhist Studies site and felt like reposting it:
The purpose of our life is to live happily and peacefully. We do not go to a store to purchase the idea that we want happiness and do not want suffering. The motivation that makes us willing to seek happiness and avoid suffering is innate. There are many simple things in our lives that indicate that the very purpose of our life is happiness. We are motivated to work for a living in order to ensure that we have happiness in our life. We may rest for two days after five days of a workweek. We take vacations and sometimes move from one place to another in the hope that our lives will be better. Some people are careful with diet and exercise as ways to achieve happiness. Even the little movements we make in order to get more comfortable stem from our innate desire for happiness. The success of our life is measured by our ability to live happily and die joyfully, not by mere accumulation of wealth, fame and possessions.”
now there’s a profession that sounds like fun…It may be interesting to note the following-
trivia - plural of trivium which is -
“The lower division of the seven liberal arts in medieval schools, consisting of grammar, logic, and rhetoric”
“hiding behind bushes” - what a thrill! secret agents and private detectives.. Juliet Motley-Wilcock is featured in today’s Guardian - she’s a life coach turned private investigator. What larks! Are we missing out ? I always did want to be a Mossad agent when i woz little..
does anyone have anything they’d like investigating?
i have just figured something out: the other day i had about a million comments from a bunch of bots - the usual penis enlargement pills crew ( yes they seem to think i really need this service) - and so i thought i’d fiddle around to see if i could stop them.
it seems i managed to stop comments full stop - so if anyone has tried to post any comments and they didn’t get through, i do apologize!
i think i’ve fixed it now - however have had to leave the comment moderation bit intact - so it will take a while for the comments to appear on the site.
Incidentally- a side note - i was at a meeting this afternoon and i had a missed call on my cellphone. i waited till i got back to my office to check out the no. - being rather the sort of person who wants to know who they might be speaking to before they ring. in my rather vague way id imagined it to be a similar no. to one of work colleagues - which is an 0845 no. but this one turned out to be “08700 426 655, and luckily the google search informed me that this is a SCAM phone no. Idea being - you get a missed call on your phone, you ring back and bam -! you’re through to one of those horrid premium no. s which charge you a bomb.
Has anyone else had this? Quite a lot of people seem to have done, judging by the google results.
So anyway, if you see that no. in future, beware…
i’ve just been having a laugh at the wording of this paragraph - an extract from the London Plan -:
“The London Plan recognises that the benefit of growth must be targeted to address the needs of groups who historically have had difficulty in gaining access to them. These groups are people with disabilities, older people, children and young people, women, black and minority ethnic groups, refugees and asylum seekers, gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and trans-people”
that sounds like just about everybody then! lemme see - who have they left out? only non-disabled young straight white men? [if you fall into that category i suggest you start a petition/have a demonstration in front of the GLA or something like that. you might spot my ' and what about the pigeons?' placard.]
do you think next time i have to tick those boxes that classify us homo sapiens into so many categories i can tick “trans-people” - i rather like the sound of that. maybe we could start a trend, mystify the statisticians with the sudden increase in no’s of ‘trans-people’.
( now none of this is a dig at ken and his plan just in case that’s what you were thinking. i like the use of the word ‘historically’ as well - just in case someone thought that being unable to access services easily was something biologically determined..or some nonsense like that..)
p.s. maybe i won’t get away with swiping this pic off the GLA site..i’d better say this is courtesy of the GLA. i just thought it went so well with this posting, i couldn’t resist..
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