Be3G's blog

First of all: a warning that this is going to be a very self-centred post which, unusually for this blog, talks about feelings rather than merely things that happen to me or that I observe. I make no claims about how interesting it’ll be…

With that out of the way, the thing I want to discuss today is Christmas. That joyful time of the year when your head gets filled with countless cheesy Christmas songs and your stomach gets filled with more food than seems humanly possible. When ‘goodwill to all men’ is motto of the day and your week is filled with so much family time you don’t quite know what to do with yourself. I like Christmas. Not the tacky, commercial aspect of it, and I’m not religious either so that side of the festivities doesn’t have any meaning to me personally. But I like the sentiment; the giving, the receiving, the revelling in the sanctum of one’s own family and friends. Read the rest of this entry »

A couple of weeks ago an unassuming little package dropped through my letterbox, adorned with a variety of Royal Mail stamps. It was just a small bubble envelope, whose contents were revealed to be two CDs of choral music. But these, however, were two choral music CDs with a slight bit of ‘specialness’ about them: they were produced by a friend’s music company and… were adorned with some photos I took. Read the rest of this entry »

Today has felt like a long day, it being the day of my grandfather’s funeral. There are several things I could talk about, but there’s one specific thing I feel I’d like to share with anyone who reads…

Something I love, but don’t witness very often, is when music I’m listening to seems to ‘connect’ with the outside world in a set of sometimes spine-tingling coincidences that result in real things happening in time to the music. My favourite, mot memorable example of this is when I was travelling to university as a student for the first time, and the music I was listening to seemed to match when the sun came in and out as my train sped through suburbia at dusk, passing through pockets of shadow and glorious evening-yellow sunlight. And today I feel I witnessed another of those lovely coincidences. Read the rest of this entry »

Grammar and I have a slightly strange relationship. Back at school, my grammar was never particularly impressive; I distinctly recall my A-level geography teacher who would often compliment me highly on the geographical content of my essays, but temper that by pointing out that improvements should be made to my writing style. Perhaps that was what spurred me on to, over the years, absorbing as much information about English grammar as I could. Even now however, I’ll tell you straight that I am not an English or grammar expert; some of the weird and wacky grammar technicalities are still beyond me. But I do seem to know a bit more than the average person about the subject, so if you’re willing to entertain the notion that I might have a bit of useful grammar advice to share, do continue reading. I have no idea if this will become a regular ‘series’ or not – months ago a friend at work suggested it could be although I suspect there wouldn’t be much interest in it! – but here we go anyway. Read the rest of this entry »

(I know it’s not that amazing; hopefully it’ll look better after some post-processing. I just really loved those sun rays…)

I’m normally a very careful, meticulous person who doesn’t make silly mistakes. Normally. Very occasionally however, I do something a bit gormless – like the best of us, I hope – and yesterday was one such occasion. Except, it wasn’t just a little silly mistake; oh no. It was a silly mistake with a potential associated cost of over £1,500! You’ll probably know by now what the mistake was, either by guessing from the title or seeing my tweets yesterday, but if not, this is what I did: I left my camera on a train. Read the rest of this entry »

Normally on a Tuesday morning I’m sat at a desk at work in Somerset House. Three days ago however, I did something rather different: I went to a well known building in London to test out a new iPad-based game-cum-tour they had set up around a preexisting exhibition of theirs. It was designed for schoolchildren, the idea being that the game/tour would get them to look carefully around the exhibition for certain clues in order to solve a riddle and so forth. In essence, it’s designed to make the static exhibition much more interactive.

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A few weeks back, I got in to a little discussion at one of my workplaces about Michael Nyman, and someone who had recently been to a concert featuring some of his music recommended to me a particular piece of which I’d never heard: Musique à Grande Vitesse. It’s a piece which was commissioned to celebrate the opening of a French high-speed rail line, which you may not think is something that corresponds much to music but… having got around to finally seeking it out on Spotify earlier today, I found I really rather liked the piece, although I do generally like Nyman’s style anyway, as someone who is interested in minimalism myself.

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Today was the time for a visit to Potters Bar Community Hospital. I have to go every eight weeks, as I have a medical problem which needs sorting out but whose cause is so far baffling the people who’ve been trying to help with it (its seriousness is as yet unknown). I don’t exactly enjoy the experience of going to hospital, particularly after the last couple of visits where some unusual blood tests have left me feeling temporarily rather… dodgy. However, one thing that does always strike me is how friendly every member of staff is, from the receptionists to the peripatetic doctors to the nurses. It always helps take the edge off the potential unpleasantness of the experience.

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Most of the week, I run only four times a day.

I have only ten stops in total across both directions – the rest of my route is hail-and-ride.

I rarely have more than half a dozen passengers on board; at times there’re none.

My drivers know the passengers so well that when a passenger rings the bell, they stop me right by the passenger’s front door.

My passengers know the drivers so well that they know the drivers’ names, and wave at them when I’m driven off from a bus stop.

My passengers are so friendly that if you happen to encounter another one while waiting for me, not only will they start talking to you, they might even give you their house number and road name so you can drop in and visit them.

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