I've been travelling

July is holiday season and we've been travelling about the UK catching up with friends and family, rediscovering the huge variety of urban and rural landscapes in this country.

A couple of days ago we navigated the post-modern wilderness that is Milton Keynes, thankfully with the help of a satnav system. Like Canberra this city is encircled by concentric ring roads punctuated with identical roundabouts. Even the satnav was losing the will to live as she recited "At the roundabout go straight across, second exit" for the ninth time, though she did eventually direct us into a concrete shopping centre the size of a small European country. Yes, I hear your cries of "why ?" and "what were you thinking ?" so let me just say that this was part of a larger story arc concerning new school shoes. Let's not go there.

Beyond MK (going North) is that indistinct area of the country known as The Midlands. Lying somewhere between The North and The South it includes Leicester, where old friends now live and whom we visited overnight and caught up on five years. A fine time.

The drive north cut through Shropshire, the homeland of the speed camera, which seems to be suffering in the recession. Most of the towns and villages we passed through had boarded up pubs, shops or industrial sites with weed-strewn car parks barricaded with concrete blocks. Even wealthy Macclesfield has empty shops, gaps sites and endless sales.

On the upside were two relaxed and pleasant days in London enjoying the Science Museum, a photographic exhibition, The Globe Theatre (we sat in on a rehearsal) and a stroll down the South Bank amidst street performers and living statues. London has an amplified familiarity because of its ubiquity in BBC dramas like Spooks and I thoroughly enjoyed rediscovering its vitality and rich sense of history.

Before this trip I completed the first of two planned drama schools at the local theatre. A group of ten children learned and performed Joe of Arabia, which I'd rewritten for the week. It worked out well and there was favourable comment from the audience of parents and friends. While easy to please at one level I always look for the next level of surprise at the accomplishment of the kids after only a week, as well as enjoyment of the dialogue at an adult level. My spies in the audience reported both reactions, so I was pleased with it.

Next week sees the second of these events; a video, sound and lighting course with a sci-fi theme. Could be fun.

RSS

I'm enjoying RSS feeds. The Mac's Mail programme can subscribe to these via the little orange RSS icon on many websites. Every time the website is updated with new material a descriptive headline (or sometimes the whole article) is downloaded to my RSS reader. I check to see what might be of interest before looking at the website.

Currently I'm subcribed to Curious Read, Lifehacker, Indexed, BBC PM programme, and Zen Habits, amongst others.

You can even subscribe to this blog, and get a note downloaded when I post new stuff. Then again, why would you ?

My, How You've Grown

Bringing the significant changes of the past four years back to old haunts sets the challenge of reinvention. Good old T S Eliot described it in Journey Of The Magi:
"We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,"

The discomfort is in the shifted expectations I have of myself, work, other people. Before we left New Zealand I read some books about repatriation in which a common theme was one of finding a new space to occupy in an old familiar place. Don't get me wrong; it's an exciting and natural process, a confirmation of growth over stagnation, but the four-year gap has had a jarring effect on re-entry. I consciously resist the temptation to say 'my, how you've grown' to friends' children and former students who have doubled in height during our absence, though it is said to me in subtle ways.

My shifted space includes new and interesting friends, changed expectations of old friendships, more enjoyment of the countryside, daily cooking and baking, grappling with procrastination born of autonomy, a stripping back of material things. I wouldn't have predicted some of these.

No snow, no school, no news

All the Borders schools were off today in anticipation of further snow dumps. Dire weather warnings evaporated in the morning, however, along with much of yesterday's snow, leaving a slushy mess of a no-news day. Didn't take long for the media blame industry to get started though, and everyone from Government ministers to spineless teachers are being accused of having no bottom in the face of adversity. It was never like this in the Blitz, in my day we battled miles through forty foot snowdrifts wearing only clogs etc. One Head Teacher got himself on the news boasting of having been at his school at 5.30 this morning clearing the snow so his school could open. It was the only school open in his area and I'll bet those kids were glad as they saw friends from neighbouring schools heading out for a day's sledging. Don't get me started.

Our two braved the cold for the sake of snowball fighting, building a snow fort and heading into town for bought hot chocolate; so much better than homemade.

Meanwhile no news back from my job interview so I've given up hope and am rewriting the experience such that I was too good for them and didn't really want it anyway.

They might phone tomorrow.