You can never give, the finger to the blind

It's been over a week now since I returned from Rome. Outside the rain mists the windows, and rustles like tissue paper on my roof.

DSpace meetings are made all the more enjoyable by the unusually high availability of good people to talk to. And the locations so far haven't hurt: Cambridge, Bergen, San Antonio, Rome (I'll reserve judgement for next year' s Southampton meeting...). They're the kinds of meetings where you'll meet someone who goes out on tequila nights with your colleagues and who was at the same University as you at the same time, even at some of the same gigs. As Steven Wright once said: it's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it. They also fill me with renewed enthusiasm for what I do until I return to my desk with the crashing realisation that reality is exactly that, and not some terrible dream I've yet to wake from.

I liked Rome very much. It has a vibrant madness to it that somehow complements the space and landscape littered with ancient monuments and ruins. I think most of all I enjoyed being away for a few days. I took some pictures.

There's been so much movement this year. Pat's now working in China, Neil moved to Winchester, Evil walked ("behind me"), Jules went home to Australia, Hazel's the other side of town, Grace and Jono are missed at the office and sister no 1 is off to Washington soon for 3 years.
I made myself a Halloween jack o' lantern yesterday.



Listening to: The Best of Luna

'It'll be all right,'

Julia's gentleness makes it worse, 'in the end, Jace.'
'It doesn't feel very all right.'
'That's because it's not the end.'

Reading: David Mitchell - Black Swan Green

I'm A Cactus Trying To Be A Canoe

Scribbled on the way home from Rome, Friday 19th October 2007:

According to the drop-down screen above me, I'm currently 142km from London and it's -40 degrees outside. Somewhere to my left the English coast is frosted with an orange glow, like some bad cocktail in an even worse cocktail bar. There are people I know, or at least used to know down there in the haze. This is as close as I get to wondering what they're up to. The moon has become one of those orange jellied fruit segments that occasionally accompanied a guest to one of Mum and Dad's dinner parties, giving me a taste for over-priced fruit pastilles.

The flight skips straight up to Heathrow past Gatwick. I do wonder if Annie might have glanced up at some distant lights in the sky, that from the ground represent my and my fellow passenger's existence at this moment in time.

My first words off the plane are: "Bollocks, it's cold." I suppose I'm in Terminal 2 but I'm not 100% sure. For the second time this year a customs officer tells me off for standing in the wrong place at passport control. Note to self: front of desk, not side. I just want out now so I can search for a non-existent working beverage dispensing unit. I have a craving for a well known brand of sugary carbonated caffeine drink. No luck.

Back in baggage reclaim there's a no photography sign immediately above an upturned blue suitcase lying dormant on a dead conveyor. It would have made a great photograph. But I suspect that even this late there are too many eyes watching even the deadest of spaces. That's probably what'll be left after whatever apocalypse claims us. A lone suitcase in an airport and yet still the unwatched blinking red eye of a thousand CCTV cameras, just waiting till the tape finally runs out.

Some prick spends 5 minutes holding up the bus as he struggles to find his pockets, let alone the change that isn't in them. I can smell the rancid booze he oozes from the back of the bus. Apparently it's not just the illegal drugs that are bad for us now. I turn to catch a Dolce and Gabbana poster at the stop. I last saw it 8 hours ago overlooking the Trevi Fountain.

Suddenly I don't think I'm ready to be home just yet.


Listening: R.E.M. - Live
Watching: Californication