a right balkan

morale. like all vaccines, it needs a booster shot now and then. i feel this may be my legacy in this office, along with the odd bit of paper someone read once. maybe it's the short term of my contract, or maybe the phenomenalogical goodness of biscuits - which i consume in great numbers - but i find it hard to get angry or upset with my job. (I just ate a piece of digestive shaped like Bulgaria.) with my elf and how i do my job, perhaps, but not the job per se.

among my colleagues though there is more frequent grumpiness. from tutting over how the office is run (and it's run pretty well) to feeling out of their depth and brickwalled in the presence of yet another set of skeptical politicians. "Fuck Bosnia, man" is quote of the moment, but it's nothing personal. they just have such a complicated political system, and it's all changing, again. largely it's hiccups in the very mundane bits which cause the bulk of the exasperation, and they're mostly in Slovak, so i am able to avoid being drawn in; sadly, such mundane obstavles infect most interesting jobs nowadays. (in cautioning against going into neurophysiology, my parents pointed out that i'll find more than my share of funding applications and disputes, regulations, interpersonal politics and so on there, which has put me off for another couple of months.) many things could be to blame, but there is a case to be made for blaming agriculture. although entirely Calvinist, the essay is a good read, and for anyone interested in escaping from the handcart to hell of life shared with people who are different, give me a decade and i'll meet you in the countryside to never look back.

to finish today's schizophrenia (i have the attention span i usually have when i'm getting ill), a nice picture of america (which is passing another post-cold war milestone by having its population overtake that of the USSR at its peak):















and as for morale, if i keep the banana cake coming, we will survive. [edit thurs: and today things were taken up a notch. everyone is headless. i am a sea of calm. the council of what now? took over my office][edit fri: tomorrow, everyone will be happy. wish them luck]

homies

word on the street has it that i will be back in england late in the night of the 24th of october, and flying out again on the evening of the 1st of november. that weekend is a family jamboree of some description, and the other days i will be in london. if you're around, more the better.

i'm threatened with immobility, as my calves are threatening to secede after i decided to run in the hills having not run at all for six months or whatever. then salsa parties two nights running. but i must overcome, as the parentals are arriving tomorrow. i also need to charm a day off out of my boss, from all the leave i'm not entitled to...

sorry for driness, this was a newsflash, not an oktoberfest.

hagtatt, and i'll see you at the end of october.

Calling all comrades who live in bumping distance of the Blue Elephant in Camberwell: go to see this: www.demonstrate.org.uk. It's a play, unlike most plays I've seen, and it's fantastic. I don't do reviews so well, so it's enough to say take the chance if you have it. It is a little hypnotising and held my attention somewhere hinting, between clarity and a tease. And the set is superfun. It's also made by someone who once shared a room with me and got kept awake for ages as a song was written.

Several of you know this theatre - we saw Billy Jenkins read the blues there. I'd go if I were in London. Incidentally, I will be in London during the last week of October and beginning of November, dates when I have them.


That's all, except to say ------------------------------








[funky clap]



nope, you missed it. .. i sigh, it's hard to find the staff nowadays... you know why? because everyone gets a glowing, nicely-nicely reference which tells -- but now is not the time for that.

novelty

Just when you thought maybe I had had enough of erratic internet connections, I go and prove you wrong. How naive of you. That said, it doesn't hold a torch to SWAN. But the point is that this one is in the living room in my flat what I'm living at now, which makes me x% happier than before. And having bought food, it only remains to buy bin liners and honey and I'm set. And the small matter of a bed, which I hope to sort out tomorrow...

The weekend I spent in Budapest, with Joe. For those who don't know him, Joe is the lovechild of Carl Jung, Dean Cassidy, Steve Lamacq and Noam Chomsky, which isn't necessarily a compliment. For anyone interested, he's now in Budapest until further notice. His flat is undemanding and he will make you feel at home should you wish to visit. Our weekend was full of talking around and around and walking around and around. I didn't take any photos to speak of as I'm done for now with the tourist game. I do have a photo of the sign at Gyor railway station (the o has diagonal lines over it, like rain coming from the northwest. The reason for this is the cowardly and power-tripping respective natures of two unhinged, pig-feeding gangsters working on the Hungarian railways. I will not forgive them. In my desparation I was unable to write well, so the poem Death in Gyor never got made. This is unlike my good friend and erstwhile fellow traveller Dave, who writes great even when under pressure; it is also unlike the poem Un-animus, what I did write last night. It's kind of for Oli.

Un-animus (or: An Open Motion)

Proposition: this house believes I want to die
The murmuring audience turns its head to the right, where I'm sat
Opposition: preposterous! mere speculation, and scandalous to boot!
(But you can see he doesn't catch my eye.)
As the judges consider what they've heard
I reach into my pocket and have the last word.

unnecessary plastic objects

so i was in an emotional ditch on Sunday, with everything piling each on top of the last and fossilising under the weight, when i came to second dinner of three, which was Cheerios - with milk - and a cup of tea. puring out my second bowl there came a stop in the flow - had i made the hole too small? were even the cheery little Os against me? - and i looked closer, in my den lit only by luminescent ditch-bugs, and saw it! there, unmistakable as any part of history! in its little plastic packet, a little plastic spoon which is also a car. i forgot that i had lacerated my front upper palate with the first bowl, and greedily went for the second like i had found my calling. pausing only to calculate that my new spoon - a rare permanent possession in my nomadic life - held an average of 9.4 cheerios (n=10...) i finished my bowl without a sound, quite forgetting everything.

i was once told that unnecessary plastic objects had no place in my heart, but our ravenous consumption of oil came through for me in this case.

in other news, i will shortly move into a flat. this is great news. it is both affordable (though i have to furnish the room) and very central - two minutes' walk from the salsa club, for my pains. details to follow ( - i may even get an address) but for now, wish me luck finding a kind person with a car to hellp me ferry the necessaries not from ikea.

we are on a staff retreat downstairs on the first floor. it's great. i'm surrounded by incredibly intelligent, experienced, committed people and i like it.

NSSED

Apparently, Albania has a National strategy for Social and Economic Development. It's referred to all over the place but the document itself (I believe originating from the Albanian Ministry of Finance, but that may be misleading) is very elusive. Christmas presents for anyone who finds it.

To illustrate my point, a couple more pictures of Prague:





­

With a spring in my step

Drunk, Agressive Tourist (American): ...or you could just ignore me

The humble Groll: [with Hana, leaving Lucerna Passage] What?

DATA: 'sthere anything good in here?

ThuG: What's good?

DATA: Aaare there any pubs, clubs ...

ThuG: No, there's absolutely nothing in there except an upside down horse

DATA: [...]

DATA 2: Like, nothing?

ThuG: Only an upside down horse
Exeunt ThuG and Hana, pursued by bear

Everything anyone said about Prague is true: it is incredibly beautiful and full of tourists. Apparently we were lucky and normally you can't move for the crowds, but we also had a guide who could keep us off the least passable paths.

The famous astrological clock

A wise Oli once said that nice buildings look nicer next to other nice buildings, and Prague shows this the best I've seen - the remarkable thing isn't that the buildings (though generally easy on the eye and occasionally breathtaking) are especially unique, but almost the opposite, that they are completely the norm as far as you walk for miles around. This kind of architectural consistency (combined with a concern perhaps for keeping them clean? they all seemed pretty well taken care of, anyway) is a big part of the beauty sum here. Another is the relative lack of garish advertising so rampant most places and especially in former socialist cities, where gangs of philistine extremists on town planning boards (or not) seem to have made it their mission to bring as much of the horrible superficiality of capitalism into their towns as possible (see, oh, Bratislava, for example).

All this said, and while the attractiveness did periodically surprise me all over again, there are many types of urban beauty. I think Sarajevo lovely, with its utterly heterogeneous appearance, for example. The urban thing, the sense of being in a city, is perhaps the key - Sarajevo, Prague, Genoa all have a sense that you are in a city and can more or less sense its edges. From the right vantage point you can squint distance into nothingness, run your fingers around the edges and wrap yourself up; the closest London offers is perhaps Primrose Hill or something, and it's impossible. Size is the main reason, but flatness doesn't help.

I won't insult you by telling you what this is

This is the first cheese on toast I have seen in six weeks. And the first Marmite (parents: bring Marmite). Moreover, it's the first Hana for two years, which was the best thing about Prague by a wide margin.

This was erected in Spring 2004.

In other news, I have lost William to the lures of ABN-AMRO, from where he will change the world. I have until Friday to find a new place to live, but I'm not stressed. Not at all. It's enough to push me into a mortgage and kids, to give me some sort of cement. But yes, I went away and when I came back, William was gone, which is sad since he's the most chilled-out flatmate I have ever had. Knowing you're only going to be somewhere for a month does good things to stress levels, if not to cleanliness.

William managed to beat me at the game he taught me, so I sulked:

~