I am also looking through all my (on-line) study preparation for the Open University law degree I start in October. It is fairly limited in terms of detail for the actual module, but there is a wealth of information and support for those getting ready to re-enter the world of education. In this respect I am hugely impressed with what I am seeing and reading, although I guess it doesn’t yet equal the support given by face-to-face human interaction. Anyway, that is for the future, when I am full-blown into it and have made friends and study companions and wotnot.

At the moment I am desperate to start. I just want to get on with it. I have been thinking about studying for several years and the impulse has grown stronger over the last few months. Actually signing up for and getting accepted on to the course makes the desire to start all the more intense.

I am worried. I am worried about my dedication (I know I have off-days). I am worried about the amount of study needed (16-18 hours a week) and whether I can live with it. I have made the decision to do it, so in a sense I am ready – although knowing a thing and doing a thing are still two separate, um, things.

Regardless, I am excited and eager to get on with it. Bring on the law. Bring on the study.

Let’s get on with it already.

I haven’t run in ages. The more I think I ought to run the less I want to. I am getting to the point of wishing I never had run, just so I wouldn’t have to think that I need to run and that I should be running.

I am not a writer.

Not strictly true. I am a writer, I am just not a storyteller. I try, and I have tried, and it is not something that comes to me. I can write, I just can’t do anything with it. The frustration is immense. Perhaps I don’t try hard enough for long enough.

I am not a photographer.

I used to be. I used to love it. I hardly take photographs any more, and when I do I rarely do anything with them.

I am not a label.

But I am. We define ourselves through such labels, identify ourselves to fellow communities by such things. They are our markers, our flags, our code of recognition and inclusion. I wear these labels no more, because past glories do not, cannot, undo the present.

I am not me.

I don’t think I have been for a while, not the full-blown, complete me. EF jokes that I am in the midst of a mid-life crisis. Perhaps I am.

At least I think she jokes.

There are a lot of things I used to do that I don’t any longer. Things I used to love; hill-walking, climbing, cycling, camping, travel, going out and about for a bimble. I used to do them. I used to do them a lot. I don’t any longer, and I’m not sure why.

This isn’t the cause or fault of anyone but me. This is me just not being me. Not doing the things I professed to love. Not being what necessarily made me happiest.

Not doing. Not being.

This is a thing I need to work through, a thing I need to understand.

Bah humbug, etcetera, etc.

As some of you may know, her birthday comes the day before mine, and she was exactly thirty years older than me, so she would be 71 on Sunday.

And I am dreading it. I have been going through my paperwork, and hers, and I guess I am not coping with her death as well as I thought I was. There’s important stuff of hers I just haven’t dealt with, and I really, really need to.

But I can’t and I don’t want to. Closing those things down closes her down. It was easy when it was full flow, organising the funeral and services and the death certificate but since then…

Three boxes of hers have been sitting in my living room, filled with her vinyl record collection, her cds, her cookery books, photos and other bits and bobs. And they have been there for six months and I don’t know what to do with them. I don’t know how to incorporate them into my life and belongings.

Her birthday is in a week and I don’t know if I can cope with that absence, with not being able to ring her or go and see her. I’ve missed the constant to-ing and fro-ing on the phone as I try to find out from her what she wants. I miss asking my brother what he got her so I don’t get the same thing. I miss our mutual frustration at not knowing it is she wants. I’ve missed her pleasure when I get it right and her bluntness when I don’t. I miss seeing her.

I will cope, because I have to and because I always do. There is just a part of me, a large part of me, that just doesn’t want to, that wants to wail and cry because I just miss her so much. But I can’t do that, so I won’t.

I’ll cope.

Yesterday I ordered a lovely bespoke Brompton. It is going to be fab. And this is kind of what it will look like, but with the S-type handlebar (straight) and mounted laser guns.

Brompton S6L

Six weeks and counting…

Thanks to Matt for sharing this on Facebook.

My thoughts and best wishes are with all those affected by the events yesterday in Boston.

***

Yesterday EF and I popped out into town to buy her a daysack for cycling and walking. A quick expedition that toured most of the outdoors shops in Broadmead and Cabot Circus… and we found the perfect bag for her in the excellent Oswald Bailey (the chap who helped her was brilliant). I was pretty much wiped out by the end of it

I might have also bought *cough* another bag for myself… which brings me up to… um, twenty-six?

***

One of the things I have very recently gotten addicted to is the superb Kerbal Space Program… it is still in development but is great fun to play with and has potential for a lot silly, mayhemesque experimentation in the journey to set up a space program for the planet Kerbal. The fact you can build rockets, space planes, mun-landers (yes, mun), satellites and space stations is just awesome. Even if getting them off the ground and into space is a little trickier than you’d expect.

Below is the control module for the snappily named jk5e rocket, with Bill Kerman piloting, currently in orbit around Kerbal. That is him, there, in the bottom right hand corner.

Unfortunately, due to a small design flaw on my part… I don’t have a way of getting him back. Yet.

***

My second expedition from the house this week was to the Bespoked Bristol show, which is a custom/hand built/bespoke bike show. This is the third year it has run in Bristol and it seemed as popular as ever. The bikes themselves were glorious in their variety, colour, design and inspiration. Pictures below.

So all good. And hopefully fun, informative and will keep me out of trouble.

***

As I am doing my bits and pieces I am watching Jamie’s American Road Trip. And it is fascinating. And sobering. And humbling. I am currently watching a chap, once an illegal immigrant, who, after a full day’s work cooks for and feeds 80 odd homeless illegal immigrants in New York City. Every single day. Humbling.

The food itself, local or immigrant, is amazing. And supper-clubs? Cool. Want to try one.

***

Of course, one of the things I am getting from this is the urge to travel and eat food and see the sights and meet people and take photographs and…

On which note, I have been following for some time, on Facebook in particular, somebody who gave up corporate life to travel the US (where she’s from) in a van with her dog. Alison Turner’s photographs are truly lovely. You can find her main website here and her travelesque blog here.

***

I’m still watching Jamie and I am wondering why on earth we don’t celebrate food and street-food like most other nations?

Instead… well, not very much. So I’m sitting here, in a cafe, drinking coffee and listening to the couple behind me argue and, well, break up I guess.

I don’t know. It has been one of those weeks. Anyway…

***

I could write about Iain M. Banks and his impending death. I could write about how much I admire him, and how wonderfully he has come across at the various readings and which books of his are my favourites and why. I could, but I won’t.

I am going to miss his mischievous and rambunctious style. I will mourn his passing, and the grief of his friends and family. But most of all, selfishly and as put by my friend H, I will miss ‘another twenty years of brilliant writing’.

I will miss the relentless year-on-year delivery of stories that challenge and entertain and hit the spot just so. I will miss the anticipation of another Culture story, the complex and yet very human intertwining threads and emotions that run through each and every one of them. I will miss his dark take on the ‘mainstream’, the twists and turns of his devilish inventiveness that takes the ordinary and makes it something uniquely different.

A while ago, at a reading/signing in Toppings, someone asked him if he ever envisaged ending the Culture with a ‘bang’. He said he didn’t know, that there were plenty more stories yet to be told. I guess we will never know how the Culture will end, if ever, and we will never know those stories untold.

I’ll miss the stories. And I will miss a man I have only ever fleetingly met, on the other side of a signing table.