Below Belief » Journal

Sicily

tim — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 18:34:13 +0000

So we’re in Sicily and it’s raining. A late summer holiday has become a bit of a washout. But in a funny sort of way it’s actually very relaxing – no pressure to see the sights (though we have) just time to lay in bed and read books. Sicily, with its 1970s retsina feel, is about as far from the real world as I’ve ever felt and that makes for a non-stressful holiday.
Meanwhile back home, Polish builders are knocking seven types of bells out of our house and scaring the neighbours. A new kind of stress!

Delapidation

tim — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 17:24:15 +0000

So I had the fairly unpleasant job of returning to our old offices prior to handing it back to the landlord at the end of it’s lease. I opened up so that some of the staff could loot the remainder of the furniture.
In doing so I found out about a common but thoroughly nasty aspect of corporate leasing: delapidation.
Landlords lease property by square foot. The more space there is, the more rent they can command. They also make money when tenants want to alter the space to suit them – in legal and surveyors fees.
Tenants also like freedom to fit out their offices in whatever way they like.
And in every lease is a clause which allows all of this in the landlord’s favour: that tenants pay to have the office put back to rights.
All of this makes good economic sence – everyone wins. Well the landlord does anyway.
What’s nasty is that it’s wasteful. Fair enough, our company has been in the offices for 7 years and plenty about it needs refitting. But it has useful office partitions with glass walls, cabling, an air conditioned server room, two kitchens with built in appliances fitted only 8 months ago etc etc.
Anyway, the deconstruction process was well underway and having had to break in to said office after we didn’t have all the keys, we were faced with something which didn’t even look like the place I’ve spent 4 years of my life. They’d ripped everything out and made a big pile of rubble in the middle of the floor taller than me.
It’ll cost us £28k to have this done and I’m sure the end result will be a professional looking, very empty space.
But the next tennants will need a kitchen, offices and partitions, cabling. And they’ll pay through the nose for that too.
Maybe it’s weird that I feel personally attached to this old tank factory, but I just can’t stand the waste of money and materials.
New era etc etc.

New camera?

tim — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 07:38:12 +0000

They brought out the new Canon 40D digital SLR. Am now very excited, as I’ve been waiting to upgrade…

Mmmm. Better photos. Bigger lenses. etc etc

Down to V

tim — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 19:24:41 +0000

So we went to the V 2007 Festival in Chelmsford.
For two days, normal life was suspended. The regular decency of weeing in a toilet, replaced by green plastic urinals or plain old bushes, the concept of putting litter in bins replaced with throwing it on the floor to be later collected by a spotty teenager in a high-vis vest.
By the end of Sunday it was like walking on the top of a giant landfill site, gently muddied and wetted by the drizzling rain, sweet smelling the mixture of crushed grass, fried noodles, chicken tikka and cardboard. Somehow a sad and derelict symptom of a lot of people enjoying themselves in a thoroughly unsustainable way.
And all this just the backdrop to a play filled with 80,000 actors from all over the country, by no means the “beautiful people”, united in a desire to see and hear great bands. And in truth the music was good. Slightly spoiled by occasionally poor sound quality (maybe just the wind) but largely spectacular, theatrical displays of musical talent.

My favourites?
Gabrielle and Rodriguez – a fabulous duo of drumming, guitar-wielding Mexicans.
Pink – great fun, white blonde hair
SnowPatrol – my personal favourite and superb as always
Mika – great fun and we got close into the mosh pit for a fun time
The Guillemots
Ross Copperman – great band who had a small crowd, including us, whilst everyone else watched Kasabian.
It was a thoroughly engaging spectacle – in all senses and good music. A good escape from real life.
Thanks to E and R for their hospitality – ensuring none of us had to actually camp in the rain!

Moving offices

tim — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 19:11:32 +0000

Disgarded offices

We moved office today.
The last four years of my life I’ve worked in Acton. In some ways it has been great – relaxed, out of London, easy to get to (cycling) and a high-ceiling’ed spacious place. But it has also had it’s downsides: no one likes coming to Acton, American’s are annoyed by it’s distance from town, we’ve been burgled twice and the local sewage works is pretty stinky in mid summer. Also, it’s not air conditioned so the heat can be stifling.
Today we left it all behind. We’re moving to new, professional, cool offices in Hammersmith and our life in the “third world” is over.
It was a positive experience but not one without some sad memories – leaving an era behind. The new stuff ahead is exciting.
God the picture makes it look really bad!
I remember now all the things which happened there:
Dogs who ate your sandwiches out of the bins
Arguments between founders, slamming doors
Late nights with pizzas while we made something work
Stress of managing people
False alarms at the weekend when the burglar alarm went off
The time the whole place flooded
Interviews with numerous candidates
My dad building two kitchens
Having the place redecorated over a weekend
My first day there -feeling like the world was my oyster
Being promoted to CTO
Being given a good bonus
Arriving early 7am after a bike crash.
Good times.

Ever feel like this is going to happen?

tim — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 18:54:52 +0000

Question is… is it a real photo?

I know what you mean

tim — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 09:36:07 +0000

Ruffles on a subject which rings true for me too:

About three years ago I started going regularly to the gym. This was in response to a realisation that I was on a weight-gain trajectory that would make me very fat in middle age. Alongside this, I realised that I should stop eating shite like fast food and sweets.
I recently resolved to jump back on the dentistry bandwagon having fallen off it some years ago. I went on Wednesday and it turns out I’ve got away with it, they need a bloody good clean, but against all odds I have a healthy gob.
Once I’ve been scraped to death by the hygienist, I’ll be onto my eyesight. I have pretty good eyesight, but when I’m tired and it’s dark, I know that I’m not focussing as well as I used to.
I should also go to the doctor to see if he can do anything about the stress related ulcers and psoriasis I’ve been getting.
There was a time when I could eat shit, do no exercise, work and play all night without any adverse effect. Its crept up on me, but its dawned on me that I’m spending more and more time doing things just to hold myself together. I was 35 on Thursday and Mother Nature has decided that I’m more valuable as soil nutrient. She’s basically trying kill me.

Full of juice

tim — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 19:20:37 +0000

Bursting full of thoughts right now – don’t know why I feel compelled to write, but despite having spent a day in front of a computer, somehow there is something left in my fingers to spell out these words.
On my way home from work tonight I picked blackberries. Every day I cycle past the same spot and over the last couple of weeks I’ve watched as the blackberries in this particular spot (unromantically by the side of a main road) have gradually ripened. My mouth waters every morning.
So tonight I take the opportunity – which no one else seems to have taken – and stop my bike to pick them into a tupperware lunch container. There’s something nice about it – after a day fixing problems, ordering people around, getting bored with meeting after meeting and talking on teleconferences – to find a small space in my day to return, juicy fingered, to the primate part of me which likes picking fruit. Spiking my fingers on the prickly bushes, getting blackberry juice down my hands, my mouth watering as I savour the prospect of these blackberries in a crumble.
And all the while the traffic passes me – each rushing to their home, and perhaps shopping for blackberries at their local Tescos – oblivious to my feast of blackberries from the land – something sustainable and simple and pleasurable.

Fun at the money pit

tim — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 16:27:50 +0000

So our house comes with some nice things:

and some fairly horrible things:

But we went there this morning to measure up properly and take photos of everything for the “before” pictures. But we found some things we weren’t expecting:
Behind this old battered looking cupboard, full of betamax videos:

we found what, at first, we thought was a postbox with the word Lambeth on it,

but turned out to be the original Victoria (or is it Edwardian?) cast-iron range cooker:

which is one period feature we won’t be keeping in the house, but perhaps someone on ebay might want it.
Amazing.
Also, behind this horrible 70′s electric bar fire,

was another original fireplace, in need of some love:

A great weekend

tim — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 20:39:03 +0000

We had a fab weekend – on the north coast of Norfolk.
We stayed here, the Triumphal Arch at Holkham Hall

(if it looks small, that was my first concern but inside on the right and above the arch was an amazingly well designed and actually quite spacious, self-catering hotel room. Much recommended for a thoroughly relaxing weekend away from it all).
and the view from the window was:

(apparently this is the view that in the 1700s wealthy visitors from London would see on their approach to the hall itself – all designed to impress upon them the wealth and gravitas of the the Earl of Leicester)
and the beach looked amazing: