Frognal Cockfosters

sleepy We’re nearly halfway through our trip to London, and thus far it has exceeded my expectations. Last time I was in London for less than 8 hours, and I knew I wanted to see more. Now that I’m here, the feeling is only stronger – I could live here quite happily (not that I’m planning to move in the near future.)

Things I will remember for a long time:

St. James Park & Trafalgar Square – Epitomes of public space
The tailors on Jermyn Street
Crivelli and Rubens at the National Gallery
The shocking splendour of Westminster
Standing on the spot where 4 centuries of kings and queens have been crowned, with Newton to my left, and Chaucer to my right.

It’s a wonderful city, and through and through extremely civilised in a way that is sort of difficult to describe. Tomorrow is a day of shopping: Oxford Street, Harrod’s, M&S, and maybe back down Jermyn street. With luck, there will be time left over for the Waterstone’s on Piccadilly, Europe’s largest bookstore. The next day we hope to give over entirely to the British museum.

In the meantime, we are absolutely bushed. We’ve walked everywhere thus far, not for cheapness (though London is an expensive city,) but for the sheer proximity of it all. Imagine half your world, half the things you’ve heard about growing up, street names, famous buildings, etc. being within a 15 minute walk.

We’ve taken plenty of pictures, and while I have (evidently) brought my laptop along for the trip you’ll notice, if you pay close attention, that I have left my camera cable at home. Hence no pictures for you, the reader, save this one up top, taken moments ago, which nicely sums things up.

Party Like It’s 2008

Among my alarmingly-stable, astoundingly-long-term and unsurprisingly-incestuous social circle there will be, over the next 18 months or so, a large number of birthdays. This, in itself, is not surprising, or particularly noteworthy. What is noteworthy though, is how many of those birthdays will involve ye olde tens columne rolling over from the youthful and carefree “2” to the urbane, sophisticated and terribly mature “3”. I, for one, welcome fogeydom, or will, I suspect, when the time comes.

To that end, there has been some discussion of late, at the Sousa’s most recently, but in other environs as well, about the idea of having some kind of gargantuan bash to ring in our triumphant ascension in group form. We could, of course, get together and just drink more alcohol than usual, but the impression one gets from these discussions is that more moxy is desired.

Continue reading “Party Like It’s 2008” →

Recklessly Generous

I’m reading If You Want to Write, by Brenda Ueland. It has been recommended to me by several people as the absolute best book written on the act of writing. Not necessarily on the structure of writing, certainly not on issues of grammar, but on the base, creative act. She wrote it in the late 1930s, and so far it is absolutely living up to its reputation. I haven’t finished it, but I already recommend it to anyone who has ever thought about writing, and doubly so to those who still haven’t written yet.

There is a passage on page 25 that I have to relate because when I read it, it caused me to stop and to put the book down on my lap and to smile. It’s actually a footnote to page 25, where she’s talking about the distinction between working to express yourself and the world you see around you, and grinding to make money or notoriety in business. It reads:

They will be uncreative in business as well as in everything else. For of course the creative power is expressed in business as well as in other things. I know a business man whose every sentence has more life, creative vision and generosity in it than those of many artists.

But the trouble with business expressing the creative power freely and prodigally as Art does, you cannot be recklessly generous in business, giving higher and higher wages and all your products freely and lovingly to the public.

There are lots of times in history that I would love to visit. I often think (more often than I should, really) about going back and chatting with Newton, or Darwin, and talking with them about which things panned out and which ones didn’t and where we’ve gotten to since. But there is absolutely no time in which I would rather be living than this moment.

I work for a company that gives its products freely and lovingly to the public, and we’re not the only ones doing so. I wish Brenda were around to see it.