Friday, May 27, 2005

Il fait chaud aujourd'hui, n'est-ce pas?

Eh. I'm hot. All dressed up to go out and can't move.

Rebecca, my dear, 25C is room temperature, how were you cold in that yesterday?

The other thing is, today being my day off, I got dressed and then thought, "Where AM I going today anyhoo?" I had vague plans I suppose, but hadn't settled. Might go off to Covent Garden and join the happy throngs.

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Yesterday, having woken up in a foul mood and out of love with all of humanity, I was shocked when I turned onto Finchley Road to find a mass of it streaming over me in the direction of Lord's. Since I had to have a lot of patience with them because I was the only person going in the other direction, I took it as a sign from above regarding my early-morning remarks on the human race.

N.B. Nobody told me the Cricket season was back!

So I got to work eventually. The Abbey Road studio has prepared the outside wall for the summer's new tourists by repainting it - ready for the next set of Beatles-induced scrawl and scribble. Can't imagine how many layers lie on that surface.

I was filing some of the slides and came across an old pic of Sir Edward Elgar at the Abbey Road Studio, along with [some other major composer], back when it was actually his home.
This week I've been combing through an old postcard collection of composers, marking the ones that are not yet on the website and putting them aside for poor Sara to scan; labelling on the database the ones that are in the drawers, and once again, putting them aside for poor Sara to scan.

This week was a celebration at Lebrecht: they've reached 30,000 images digitised out of 60k total. So Elbie went to a Lebanese place to bring back pitta, hummus, baba ganoush, and spinach triangles. Norman came round with beers for all (yuck, compared to Rebecca's Pimm's) and I declined, so they clinked bottles and my bowl. Hehe! And we stood in the jungly garden outside, in the sunshine, the phones didn't ring...
And an hour later, when no one else was in the room, I gave Elbie my notice. We've reached the point where Lebrecht are the only ones benefitting from this arrangement. Now that I've learned just about everything there, I feel distinctly that it's time to go.

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Some Oscar Wilde for your Friday edification:

At twilight, nature is not without loveliness, though perhaps its chief use is to illustrate quotations from the poets.
(If you read Wilde, you know why he says this.)

It is a very sad thing that nowaday there is so little useless information.
(If only he could see the Internet.)

Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.

I was working on the proofs of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

You gave in your notice? Very brave of you! Have you got something else lined up?

michelle said...

You go girlfriend, have you found something else? I think you are starting to act a bit more like me. We you feel like you've reached the end- time to move on, although I would of took the beer. Its free beer! Of course I would. Then again-I would take free wisky or vodka as well...

and last night I met with a old friend from High school for a walk, coffee and a chat. We are going to do it more often.

And- coming up : Job interviews!

Olivia said...

EB, it was only an internship. They paid a tenner a day and don't have the budget to employ me.
Uh, I applied for an assistant curatorship (yawn) at the Nat. Port. Gall. last night. Probably won't even hear from 'em.

P.S. You sneaked this comment in while I was adding the Wilde quotes.

Olivia said...

Jia Li - I hate beer. If only I could have given it to you.
Buona fortuna with the job interviews. TTYL dearie.

Anonymous said...

Good luck on getting the job. And are you sure about that comma? I've always liked semi colons myself.

Anonymous said...

best regards, nice info
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