¦ Dialling in from workstation ¦
08:45 hrs, Monday 17th December, 2007. Grey skies outside the window, and ancient buildings of Bath clasped in jagged fingers of frost. Gods teeth, I'm feeling slightly wrecked... many sessions out since I got back from New York, much alcohol and euphoria and late nights. Thursday last week was particularly major: the office Christmas Party, but this was all 1,000 or so staff, in a vast and splendid hall decked out like Las Vegas...there were long legged woman wearing sequins, feather plumes and not much else, a vast dodgems circuit (can you imagine how much fun it is to have drunk people on these)...gambling tables, a Tom Jones performer...a free bar...a free shots bar... and a wonderful mix of lovely people. I'd never been to an "office party" like this before. Saturday swung round, and I was more-or-less recovered from my intoxications... I picked up the guys from Simon's house, with a detour to grab Hagen (who had only just woken up when he should have been at Simon's)... then to mine, RV with Simon and Tony... we played the final segment of Red Desire ¦ Cold Murder, a scenario I wrote a few weeks ago, and a story i would definately like to expand into a novel at some time. Great session. Great fun. Tony was able to stay late, which was a treat. The guys left, I chilled out for a while, planned a pint and a curry with Simon, which was then scuppered by yet more irksome relationship-politics, so grabbed some miso soup and toast then drove back to Hagen's and met up with Eivind and his crowd across the road from H's place... a brisk walk through freezing night to a local pub, drinking Leffe and chatting with good people, smiling and laughing... back to Eivinds and onto the whisky and coke until it reached a point where the room started spinning...so across the road to Hagens and collapsing blissfully on his sofa.
Wake up feeling slightly bleary but feeling satisfied... said cheerio to Hagen and stepped out into cold grey light. Drove home, parked, stepped inside and felt a wonderful sense of..."ahhh I'm home." It was still morning. I had food in the house. Coffee. And two sacks of wood for the fire. I turned on ambient lighting and got cosy; packed up all the Yellow Dawn stuff, took it back upstairs with my laptop and got to work on revising Red Desire - Cold Murder, and then continuing with writing up editorial changes of Yellow Dawn rules ... (2 months and counting!!!!)
About 6pm I came downstairs, built up the fire so that it had deep orange and bright yellow cores of heat radiating out... I went out, bought wine, chocolate, came back, lit candles, tuned the TV in KISStory, club classics from the 80's and 90's... and sat in the ambient light reading through S-O-Az, the next major campaign for the guys in Yellow Dawn.
Jo got back home around 7. Excellent night by the fire.
So I'm here at work, and I've had an email from my cousin Kenn-Ole in Norway. He came over for Dad's funeral around this time last year, which I deeply thankful for. He took some video footage, which he'd compressed and attached to the Email. It was surreal and yet delightful to watch it... much of it were random moments of preparation on the day of the funeral, the after party, and then the scattering of ashes a few days later... there was lots of really good "context" but there were also some vivid and poigniant moments which I hadn't expected... a long lingering shot of the coffin.... the moment when Dad's ashes are being scattered... small clouds of fine ash carried away by the breeze, and the heavier particles staying firm on the grass. How strange to be able to view these moments again...
...so, here I am at the start of the week. Several interesting things planned for evenings, and then Friday, driving up to Newcastle with Kelvin and Jo... Christmas in Kosekroken... ahh blisto. I'm looking forward to seeing Pete, and Rosie, and the kids... I'm looking forward to grabbing a pint and a curry.... of walking the desolate stretches of North East coastline in howling wind, sleet and rain, supping strong black coffee from a thermos and smiling at the anticipation of a hot shower later to come... I'm looking forward to seeing Ciaran, and connecting with him again, and of spending time in Kitsch'n cafe, seeing Mike, St John and Sam.
Djr