March 2014 Review

Back in the autumn of 2009 I got a new manager, call him X. Under whom, despite a slightly shaky start, I flourished. X recognised what I’m good at, and what I’m not so good at, and once hit me on the arm when I was a little less than tactful with a help desk guy who was being especially obtuse. The fact that I remember it tells you that it was the right thing to do and spoke a lot about our relationship. I enjoyed working with X, as I enjoy working with any manager strong enough to recognise their weaknesses and hire people with those things as strengths.

Now X has gone over to Another Bank. They are looking for a New Guy, and until then, I am reporting to the Director. Which speaks volumes about how I’ve developed, because two years ago, I would have been hidden from the Director by at least one, if not two, layers of intermediaries.

I took a week off after X left. Not the best weather. I only really started to unwind the Thursday and Friday. I stayed at home and went into town for the gym. It was then I decided, for no reason except Why Not, to do six days in the gym for six weeks. Week one was last week: Sunday, chest; Monday, shoulders; Tuesday, weights and spin; Wednesday, chest; Thursday, yoga; Friday, swimming. After the weights bit, there is always a 1km jog on the treadmill, pull-ups + other back, and abs. No all I need is to get the diet bit exactly right.

I saw Sara Baras, Gala Flamenco and Farraquito at Sadlers Wells; Non-Stop and Captain America at the local Cineworld; Under The Skin, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Nymphomaniac I and II at the Curzon Soho; the British Masters series on You Tube; and Mister John and 8 Weeks Idle via Curzon Online. DVDs included Californication S4 and Burn Notice S5, and I finally saw Godard’s British Sounds, Lotte in Italia and Pravda.

I slogged my way through Celine’s Journey to the End of the Night; read Jan Sokol’s Thinking About Ordinary Things; finished Maldoror; read Pedro Ferraria’s history of General Relativity, The Perfect Theory; Mary-Jane Rubenstein’s Worlds Without End; Imogen Edward_Jones’ Hospital Babylon, and an Aerofilms book, A History of Britain From The Air, which is excellent if you have no sense of what this country used to look like even eighty years ago.

The back garden got a spring-clean one Sunday. I had a visit from the kitchen fitters, who measured up and found the plans were 100mm out, so I had a another visit from the planners. All while I was on holiday. Sis and I had supper at Picture - fast becoming my favourite restaurant - for her birthday, and I ate at the bar at Hix, and had lunch at Jamies Italian Trattoria in Richmond (the pizzas are really good).

And I had a minor revelation about complex one-forms, the real meaning of Cauchy’s formula, and why closed curves are more fundamental in complex analysis than points are.

Oh. And prunes. Every day. I say no more.