July 2014 Review

Hot. And then again, hot. Everyone was arriving at work damp, the Central Line in the afternoon from Liverpool St to Oxford Circus was hot like they had turned the heating on. Most evenings I had an inner voice saying “I wanna go home. Don’t wanna go the gym”. I spent the weekends hiding from the heat.

I started the month on a week off work. Not the most relaxing or refreshing holiday I’d had. I resolved to walk to Holborn from Waterloo each morning while the weather was good, that’s what I did, and very pleasant it’s turning out, except when the humidity hits Calcutta levels. I finally wrote down how much I was spending on food every day and took steps to cut that back. Breakfast biscuits instead of a pastry; a yoghurt with fruit instead of a sandwich. If only the machines at work made even drinkable coffee, but alas. Gym attendance was erratic, not helped by being locked in a basement room one Wednesday on the pretext of an “Away Day”: I get tired sitting in rooms with no daylight. It over-ran, I missed the planned workout and went to meet Sis for supper at Saltyard. Never has food tasted so good and felt so reviving. We spent one Saturday looking for a replacement camera for Sis, and she chose and Olympus from a shop by the British Museum (how do second-hand camera shops make any money at all? Low rent?) After which we went to the exhibition of British comics at the British Library, partly because neither of us have ever been there. There were lots of kids looking at the older comics and saying “cool”. I had moments of nostalgia on seeing the Eagle, Dandy and a couple of others.

I read Anatomies, Categories and Computer Science, Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit, a biography of Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible, Lost Stolen or Shredded about missing works of art, Warren Ellis’ Global Frequency, finished Peter Robb’s A Street Fight in Naples, and The Monuments Men, the book of the film.

I saw Weekend of a Champion, Le Mans, Game of Thromes series 1 on DVD, Begin Again and Chef at Cineworld, Accidental Death of a Cyclist at the ICA, Cold in July at the Curzon Soho, and The Cars That Ate Paris, Berbarian Sound Studio, and Glass: A Portrait of Philip in 12 Parts on Curzon Home Cinema.

I bought the Fitbit, a pulse oximeter, and a Panasonic Lumix T40. Which doesn’t play as nice with iPhoto as it should. And I discovered that iOS 7 sucks at linking by Bluetooth with Macs, which is odd, because, you know, Apple. There was also some fairly serious progress on finalising the never-ending Riemann-Roch essay.

Oh. And I got promoted. Or rather, my role was upgraded. Two months after I passed retirement age. This is a very different world from the one I started out in. In the Bad Old Days, you passed retirement age and they kicked you out the door carriage-clock in hand. Not now. Now they need the skills.