Oct/080
Winter Arrives
I enjoyed my trip to the UK, catching up with lots of friends and spending some quality time with the folks. I'm glad to be back in Chamonix now though. It seems I'm back just in time for the arrival of winter. It was raining hard when I arrived in Geneva and the temperature dropped quickly while driving up into the Mont Blanc Massive. The clouds remained and yesterday it started to snow in the centre of town.
Waking up this morning, there's a few inches of snow on the ground on the valley floor and plenty more than that up high. It'll melt away of course, but some of the snow up high will stay and form a base layer which will slowly be built on as we get closer to mid-December when the lifts open and the ski season gets underway. It's great to see Chamonix covered in snow. It looks so clean and perfect (for a short while). When it's not winter here, I sometimes have trouble imagining what it's like to have snow.
Oct/080
Will give financial advice for food.
Here's a photoset I've been working on the for the past couple of days. London is going crazy about this financial crisis bullshit, and my Schaden-Freude response has kicked in. I was trying to convince Sarah, who's in New York at the moment to take a similar picture on Wall Street, and I'm thinking of trying to create a flickr group to help people from around the world to contribute to the set too.
Oct/082
Falling off the wagon
I think I must've hit my head when I fell off the wagon last night. That's what it feels like today in any case. But it was Friday night, London and I've had a very good week.
So how was my 2 weeks of sobriety? Horrible at first. I felty crap and didn't know what to do with myself of an evening. But then I started to feel much better. Healthier I mean. I slept better. I dreamt better, I got a lot of work done which I've been struggling with for a while. I even started swimming at the Chamonix pool.
So one night of drinking white wine with an old friend hasn't killed me. Nor has it sent me off on a crazy boozy binge yet, so maybe I'll give it another 2 weeks before drinking again.
Oct/080
West End Final
The Evening Standard headline last night ran:
600 JOBS AXED AT GOLDMANS
Investment bank Goldman Sacks is sacking 600 staff in London beacause of the world financial crisis. I bet that brought a tear to a few eyes. Heads are rolling.
Oct/080
Embankment, London
I'm in London for a few days this week. Not for any particular reason, really - I just thought I'd break up the monotony of the Chamonix inter season with a little trip. Catch up with a few people, eat some Asian food, maybe visit the ski show & then head up to Suffolk to visit the folks for a few days.
I've only been here for a couple of hours, but England is already freaking me out a bit. Everyone is rushing around, yelling into phones and generally looks far better dressed than I do. Added to that I'm making far too much eye contact with people, (which makes me come ac cross as either a hick or a mental) and dammit - I just don't belong here anymore.
It's not a France/England thing. It's a living in a small mountain town/Living in a world capital city thing. The last two and half years have changed me. I'm older, beardier, wierdier and I'd be kidding myself if I though I could ever go back.
Still, it's fun to visit once in a while, and what the hell - I might even go shopping once I've finished my enormous Starbucks coffee. When in Rome.
Oct/080
An interesting SEO thing from the BBC
Radio 4 usually sounds a bit stuffy - the presenters not being known for their youth and tech-savvy. Having said that, the BBC - and in particular the BBC's website - is very cutting edge, with all kinds of blogs, mini-sites and of course an world leading news portal making it a very heavy weight prospect in the world of search.
Usually if the Radio 4 presenters are giving out a web address, it sounds like a struggle. "Double yew, double yew, double yew, dot.... blah blah blah....". But tonight Eddie Mair on the PM program did something different, and very progressive. He was talking about some pictures on the PM blog, and said the following: "Just type 'PM Blog' into any search engine". Now that's the way to do it.
That's what I say to people who ask what my website address is: type 'listingslab' into google.
Oct/080
Welcoming little Tia home
This evening I collected Tia from the family who've been looking after her recently. She's made an amazing recovery from getting run over and breaking her pelvis. Even the vet who fixed her didn't think she was going to make it at the time. But here she is, back in the office. A little wonky perhaps, and certainly not quite as agile as she once was, but she's not in pain anymore and happily covering everything in her white hair. I'll give her a few days to settle in and then let her out into the real world for the first time since the accident.
I'm very happy to have her back. I've missed the little tyke. She's had a turbulent summer - not just getting hit by a car, but also being moved around the valley a lot. She'll stay with me here in the office for the next few weeks and then move with me up to Le Tour, where she'll have some time to establish a bit of territory and settle down again. At some point in the New Year her kitty passport will be valid and it'll be time for her to go back to England, but that's a long way off at the moment.
Oct/086
I'm so done with facebook. Sarah was right , it's a waste of my time. I've deactivated my account, turned off any notifications from the company and took the app off my iPhone. No more facebook for me. I'm switching my allegiance to vimeo. They're launching a premium, paid service (not unlike the flickr pro account). $60 a year sounds like a bargain to me for what's an excellent media hosting platform.I don't think I'll miss facebook.
Oct/080
The Wagon
I've been thinking about alcohol a lot over the past month or so. About the role it has played and might continue to play my life and all of a sudden I'm not happy about it.
I started drinking at around the age of 16 at school. Going to the pub on once a week on Saturdays, drinking pints. It was great. As a child and teenager I was an inhibited kind of person. I didn't mix with people well, and suddenly with the help of a few pints I started to make more friends and feel comfortable around people. Since then, alcohol has remained a big part of my life. It's hard to think of a time where I haven't consistently drunk at least some alcohol nearly every day. And binged on it on a regular basis too.
I always thought I'd never have a problem with booze. I was never a very big drinker. Drinking too fast (downing shots) almost always make me sick, and 3 or 4 pints would send me to sleep. That's no longer true. As I get older (I'm 33) my body seems to be getting better at handling more of it, and there's definitely a mixing effect with the antidepressants I take that is not good. The effect is to enable me to drink more without falling over or falling asleep, meaning that the stage of drunkenness I find myself getting to is much less controlled and probably more harmful - both mentally and physically.
So. Now that this revelation has occurred to me there is a decision to make. Do I want to keep this part of my life as it is? Is it making me happy? Is it helping me, and making life more fun? Has it ever done that? Is it currently a problem that I need to address?
How exactly would my life change if alcohol wasn't a part of it? I'm going to find out. I'm going to try changing my drinking habits, and get an idea of how much I rely on the stuff. And for me, there's only one way to do anything; All or nothing. I'll let you know how it goes :)
I should also say at this point that although this might sound very much like a morning-after-too-much-booze kind of rant, that I actually wrote this blog post several days ago and shelved it, waiting to see if my feelings would change. So it's 4 or 5 days now since I last drank any alcohol. Even going out for dinner for my birthday last night I didn't drink at all (which yielded an interesting social response from my friends). So that's the first test out of the way. I'm serious about trying this, and I want to write a lot about it here on this blog.
