Alasdair Watson

That’s a morning’s work done, then. When I’m done writing this, and blogger publishes that, I’ll run a script, and this will publish to my livejournal in an enitrely automatic manner.

I’m not in the office today. I’ll be in for my last two days tomorrow and Friday, but I’ve got a job interview this afternoon, so I’m staying at home. I’m got nothing dreadfully pressing to do in the office anyway. So far today, I have got up, done a bit of work, done my yoga (I’m going to try and do at least half an hour every day, while I’m unemployed) had a shower and some breakfast (museli with fruit – someone please shoot me) and am sitting down to work. Today’s jobs – the first stage of a PHP script that will convert a blog entry to a LiveJournal post, and some notes toward The Thing With Sean.

If you look to the bottom of my menu bar over there, you’ll find a new “Now Playing” section. This is dynamically updated whenever I click a shortcut on my desktop, with whatever information on which MP3 my copy of Musicmatch Jukebox is playing right now (or the last one it played, if it isn’t running now). No need for me to type or FTP anything. I’ve been meaning to sort something like that out for while. I like the “Now Playing” option on livejournal, but I’m not on LJ, and I’m too lazy to type it by hand, anyway. So I’ve sorted it out for myself, in PHP.

Photos from last week are now available – WEFUK on Saturday, Fiona’s birthday on Thursday, and Huw and Michelle’s do on Friday, along with some shots of London sights (rather more shots of them than people, actually). Here’s the one I like best, just to be going on with:

Coming back from Tenebrae, ranting aout the state of my love life at Marysia. See it’s been bothering me lately, because people have developed a distressing tendency to ask me if I’m seeing anyone, and when I say that I’m not, they say something like “Oh, never mind, I’m sure you’ll meet a nice girl soon.” to which I am always tempted to reply one of three things:

• “Actually, I like to fuck men.” (Untrue, but it’d be worth it to watch some of their reactions.)
• “Why would I want a nice girl?” (Substantially more true, almost as much shock value for some of them.)
• “Piss off, you interfering old bat. I like being single, and your notion that somehow being in a relationship would in some way validate me as human being is as offensive as it is antiquated.” (A bit of a mouthful, really, but accurate.)

I mean, yes, a love life that could be described as something other than “non-existant” would be an interesting and not unwelcome change of pace, but I’ve got used to being single, and I like it. And I get irked when people seem to think that I must be in some way incomplete because I’m single…

It’s been a good day today. The sun has been shining down from a beautiful blue sky. At lunch, I sat in the beer garden of a pub, drank an ice cold lime and soda, and enjoyed the summer. I took a walk in a park this afternoon, and strolled underneath trees, before visiting my family for dinner. As the sun set, and the sky turned an amazing red, shot though with silver clouds, I hopped on a train to see some good friends I haven’t seen in months, visiting from the states.We sat about and laughed and drank gin and tonic and ate great food and we had a wonderful time. It’s been a really good day.

I was laid off this afternoon.

Just read e-mail from Warren Ellis, telling the world that he’s just finished writing TRANSMETROPOLITAN. The final issue is three months away. This means, allowing for two specials and a skip month, that I started reading TRANSMET five years ago this month, in the middle of an Edinburgh summer that was never going to end. It really and genuinely does seem like yesterday. I remember reading that first issue, sitting in the sun with my girlfriend, on the steps down to our basement flat, passing a cigarette back and forth between us. I remember laughing out loud at the opening sequence, and grinning with recognition at the closing page.

And I think about the time that has passed between then and now, and I smile. That comic has been part of my life for half a decade, and while I’m not going to miss it, because it’s a story, and I’ll have it on my shelf for a long while to come. But still – five years, I’ve been buying the book. It’s going to be a little odd, never buying a new issue again.

What’s been with you for the last five years?

Suddenly, I’m homesick for Edinburgh. It feels like someone has just punched me in the gut. I’d got past this. I know I had. I turned down the chance to go back to Edinburgh over a year ago. I opted to play out my hand in London, and OK, so I spent six months in a weird kind of mental hell as a result, but I got through it. London’s my home, now. But then I hit Hugh‘s Livejournal, and then on to the friends page, where I find Lisa and Paul and Sally and I hear them talking about friends I haven’t seen in ages, and places I love to go, and bars I like to drink in, and a whole social scene I used to be a part of and now am not, and god, I want to go back. Or I want them to come to London. Or something.

For the first time since I got engaged, I am wearing a knotwork silver ring on my right little finger. Don’t get me wrong, this is not a momentous thing in the way it sounds – I mean, it’s been three years, now. No big thing, there. But it’s a habit I’d fallen out of, having given away a ring that really meant something to me. (And if I’d been wearing the head I am now, back then, I’d have known the whole affair was doomed when that guy’s backpack destroyed the ring, on the bus…)

This ring is not the one I’m going to wear on a permanent basis, it’s a stopgap. This is a piece of 4 quid tat that fits well enough. When I have the spare cash, I’ll pop along to a jewellers. But it’s got me thinking about habits, and the way we fall into and out of them. Patterns, and how we break them. The need for stability and order. But more importantly, then need to stop and reassess every so often, and the number of things we think are important or significant when they’re only really patterns of thought and unquestioned habit.

Another thought: what is social conditioning, but unquestioned habit? What is the desire to conform, be “normal” but unquestioned habit?

Yeah, it sounds a bit teenage, I know. But I’m not talking about just being different for the sake of it, or breaking a thought pattern so I can sneer at the “herd” and declare myself “better” than them. I know that social conditioning has value and that conformity isn’t a bad thing. But still, it makes me wonder about how may of my habits and thought patterns are useless – what should I jetison? Which leads me on to another point, which I’ll try and get back to later…

Having resolved to get more work done, I started thinking about the ideas I wanted to crank up. A chance remark by Marysia has kicked by brain into high gear on the Dee thing, and I’m looking into 16th century piracy and putting together some thoughts about Raleigh. The whole idea of a fictional Elizabethean England, one foot in history and the other in mad fable and Hollywood action really appeals to me, so I’m just going to keep playing there until I get bored…

Mind you, the Dee thing is now much bigger than I had planned. Might take a while to just get the note-making done…