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procrastination
i am of course procrastinating, i'm supposed to be working, i have 4 days left at work before going to spain and i have to cram a lot in so i thought i'd spend sunday staring at my computer and putting things off, the project is going well, we're using 'agile', tga is quite critical of agile, although we don't do xtreme programming really, people still have their own PCs, one of our team went off to work at the guardian because we weren't xtreme enough for her liking, there no one has their own PC, no private work space, everyone programmes in pairs, i think to be creative and collaborate well you also need your private space, watched a jimmy wales talk about wikipedia and wikia on fora.tv earlier, he's cute! with a bit of a contradictory past, makes for an interesting combination |
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discipline was all they had
anita was the eldest, she was the most beautiful and brightest and cheeky, always ready to break the rules, she was 11, rosa was the second eldest, the sensible one, she had my grandmother's stubborness and fruitless pride, she was 9, next was my mother, the joker and sensitive one and the youngest was isabel, the quiet and shy one, she must have been 4 at the time. Anita was tasked with taking the girls to their great aunt, my grandmother refused to go, she had arranged to send them at 5 so as not to impose on their aunt for food, they were given strict instructions not to eat anything, not a morsel, they could have some tea and biscuits but certainly nothing else, she didn't want them appearing at all hungry or in need or that they weren't well looked after, looking at them walk the 45 minutes to their great aunts house nothing betrayed their plight, anita walked at the back to keep an eye on them all and rosa at the front, my mother and the little one held hands in the middle, they were a little excited but apprehensive, in the fuddle of their emerging minds they knew that all was not well between their mother and their aunt of course anita would be well aware of what had happened but the others just caught unstructured snippets of information, nevertheless it was exciting, they were beautifully dressed and they were visiting someone they had never met, a relation who was well off by their standards, what might they expect |
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sweet potato
i've got a sweet potato roasting in the oven, later i will take it out, cut it in half, place a knob of butter on each side, let it melt into the soft, sweet orangey flesh, sprinkle some salt and pepper and eat, i love baked sweet potatoes, my mum also loves them, when my parents moved to london in the 60s my father would search out the then rare indian shops which would sell this wonderful tuber to surprise my mum with a special treat, she would boil rather than roast them but they tasted wonderful all the same, my mother's love of sweet potatoes had been with her all her life, when she was little, perhaps 6 or 7 she went to visit her great aunt who owned a small business making bricks in traditional earth kilns, not a massive enterprise but enough to set her above her peers, she had begged my grandmother to bring over 'the girls' to visit as she had never seen them, my grandmother had blamed her for her father's death, he had fallen on hard times after the death of his wife and had been forced to toil long hours in his sisters business, my grandmother was also very proud and had fallen on hard times herself, but 'the girls' made things bearable, everyone admired her girls, and my mother's great aunt was keen to rekindle the family ties, perhaps she could help them, perhaps she felt guilty but my grandmother was incredibly proud and stubborn, that morning the girls got dressed in their sunday best |
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stuff
i don't have much stuff mainly because i can't be bothered to look after it, i've honed my life down to the basics but those basics i would probably find difficult to live without, i have no idea where most of the little stuff i have comes from, who made it, how it got to the shops where i bought it from, i know nothing about the lives of any of the people involved in the process, i at least see the end result of my efforts at work, although i contribute to something that you can't really hold, soooooo the economy in the west is in deep shit, doesn't affect me yet, they've offered me a new contract at work, i have money in the bank and can afford to put on the heating, for now, though things can always change very quickly, it seems that we've been propping things up for years and we've actually stopped making things, involved in financial management or service economy, we've left the making of stuff to the east in the main, do we need stuff? we need food, that's for sure but we still make that, we need stuff to sit and sleep on, we need clothes, maybe we need to take more of an actve part in the making of our own stuff, or more of an interest in and engagement with the people who make stuff for is, maybe this is how we will end the one sided consumerist alienation that we have descended into |
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aaaaaand then?
another day over, trundled over to marks and spencers foodhall to get dinner, it's literally just round the corner and probably not the most economical place in these credit crunch times, got myself an odd meal but made sure i bought a nice bottle of rioja to go with it, sod the expense! i was at work late i deserve a little luxury, laughed with DT on the phone on my way home on the bus, sharing moments from the last episode of the IT crowd, i can't really call her DT anymore as she's no longer really dysfunctional or a teenager, how times move on, i still hang out with techboy quite a bit, he's moved round the corner and lives in a grand mansion with a group of his mateys, i'll hang out there sometimes to watch a movie or watch techboy and his mates play sack boy with stephen fry's comforting voice over |
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SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEW driver
you know what i mean!! ps |
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