sick

it's snowing again. it's different though, somehow. the snow seems heavier and wetter; it's falling straight down. there are no merry flurries at corners were two draughts meet, no driving powdered snow. Just mulch, falling out of the sky. I suppose it's monday in heaven, too.

the company won't give me a few extra days off for wedding festivities. it has to be unpaid leave. they don't care about the perfect bong-marathi union and don't grasp how much effort and time that needs. i made yet another job hunt matrix. there are three jobs on it. all three are 20% over my real and on-CV skills ceiling. is there such a thing as a career hunt?

i received my prettiest christmas card yet this year, this morning from Lucy, at my desk. it has santa standing on present boxes on the front, talking to a red bird in the deep blue night with a crescent moon while snow makes an appearance as silver dots everywhere. i've just thanked her by email, though i should have gone to her desk and spoken.

Starbucks today didn't feel right. i bought a coffee even though i didn't want one, and wanted to ask for a size smaller than the tall. the cinammon roll was large and gummy and jammed my mouth, and the lukewarm coffee did nothing to help.

the southeast is at a standstill of sorts, with french tourists and commuters caught on the dull side of the channel. friends in kent are snowed in, and friends in barnsbury are taking advantage of the weather reports on BBC. still, there's a goodnumber of people at work. why do they all come in? why do they care? why don't they just stay curled up at home and read a trashy book? or gamble online, or something.

maybe they feel like work is a part of them! work isn't the enemy, and work gives them a semblance of self, or of responsibility, of a life. who said 'work is worship'? were they KIDDING?

i feel a little off-key today.

Friday 18th December

On my way in to work, there was a strange glow in the white sky, and snowflakes showered down. Snowflakes are not round and soft and heavy, like they appear in archie comics, but sharp and fractalised, very light, they move sideways and even upwards in the flurries. Last night we slept in the living room (because the bedroom is airless and depressing), and i watched big snow flurries around the orange street lamp outside. The bear was in a hopeful sort of mood - maybe all transport would be down in the morning, and he could stay at home to study for his driving theory test tomorrow. he's left it to the last minute and isn't sure of the difference between puffin crossings and pelican ones. alas, in the morning, the last vestiges of the night's shower were fading off the park in front of our row. But, as i've mentioned, on my way into work, the magical snow came back, drifting down like a screen onto the tube tracks at south kensington, while i stood safe on the platform within.

I tried to impress Nim and mum with stories about going into work in a snowstorm, but global news media has diluted these simple joys. They know what the weather's like in London, they're not very bovvered. Then i tried to impress them with the bear-taking-me-on-secret-destination minibreak story, but mum just said hmm. Nim preteneded to be excited, but i think she gets taken to New York on mini breaks, so she must be a bit blase. sigh.

i think i discovered the mini-break destination though - completely by accident! One of the recently visited weather pages on the bear's computer gave it away. i'm trying very hard not to look up the place on google maps with pictures. oooog.

Mary left a christmas card at my desk, gushily american as expected. but still, it's warm, and i won't complain. i think i've got some christmas spirit in me or something. speaking of which, we have secret santa gifts at work today. i like the person i was santa for and got him a gift that was 3 times the 'guideline' price for the office. hope he likes it. also, i hope the person who was my santa is not stingy or callous or forgetful. my warm gooey feelings about christmas will disappear very quickly if so.

Possible courses of study

I believe human geography is the study of why people live where they do, or are found where they are found, on a large sort of scale. As in, not why they go to a particular nightclub in London, but why they settle in London and the South East. In this particular example, economics comes into it. (Economic Development? Political Economy? Economic Migration? Perhaps I’ll follow this errant strand of thought in a different essay.)

The question of why people live where they do is also one of cultural study, especially when the way they live their life comes into it. There’s a certain set of basic questions around the things that influence the way in which we live, which start to define means of living, quality of life, choices – together forming a study of lifestyle and of lifestyle aspirations.

Pursuing human geography (and cultural study) is one way of looking at civilisation from a distance. Is the aim to establish patterns? Are there patterns? Modern life, as in life right now in the 2000s, is seriously complex, and to my mind there’s no way of comparing it to human life in earlier millennia. (Maybe it can be compared to when Neanderthal man turned into Homo Sapiens, but that’s getting into Palaeontology now.) The study of civilisation probably aims to make sense of the world we are in, to find recognisable shapes and colours in the howling wilderness of knowledge about the modern condition. (I always love saying the modern condition, because it makes modernity sound like a disease.)

Human Geography is a particular way of studying civilisation; rather than starting with trends in income, or health, or population, it focuses first on the spatiality of civilisation – the place people are in, and what their actions do to it. As if people were little ants, marching in columns and scattering anthills all over the landscape. Humans are somewhat robbed of their individual properties and abilities, and lumped together, classified by virtue of where they are, or whence they came.

You could look at features of the land as causes of settlement patterns – rivers for example. London’s three early cities were all by the river, but all with different personalities. You could look at man-made structures as causes of subsequent human action, slowly solidified into urban form – the Regent’s Canal for instance. A navigation channel for trade, which led to a second waterfront in London, different from the father Thames experience. The Regent’s Canal spatial story is one of soft whispers and wind in the hushed trees above the quiet waters, bobbing in and out of brick and stone tunnels. Warehouses, most logically, were the dominant land use near it to start with. Once rail took over the trades, dereliction and despair threatened the waterway, but early gentrification saved the day. Someone decided they’d like to live in a tall attic with visible beams and rafters, with great views on to the Canal. Boom – ground rents exploded. But I digress. Now, neighbourhoods bordering the canal are spatially as various as imaginable, from the western stretch to Limehouse Basin in the east. A walk along the canal is like watching a film about the city.

This spatial dimension of an essentially social science is really wonderful; a truly sexy form of framing the human subject in her environment. The study has unending depths - What the human then does or what the environment then becomes or what then happens to the human… und so weiter.

On my way in to work

• I saw crazy guy at Little Ben, near Victoria station. He was shrieking jubilantly at intervals, and doing a sort of jig around a black electric meter box. I wondered if he was doing a theatre exercise, practicing for a play, or something.
• A busker strumming a guitar near the entrance to Peter Jones offices. He had red watery eyes and sang a laidback sort of song without much hope. He could be a druggie.
• I saw starbucks looking warm and festive and fought the urge to go in and further propagate the coffee chain culture explosion. Bar-stucks, I anagrammed cleverly, trying to distract myself from the smell of toffee nut latte.
• I saw how blue the sky looked and broke into a trot, swerving deftly between a couple of toursists and a mum with pushchair approaching from the other direction.
• I saw the O2 shop and thought ruefully about how crap my phone is, and how helplessly i'm tied into my 18 month contract.
• The trot somehow made me decide that i would go to the national gallery / portrait gallery tomorrow. Checked the weather forecast quickly on said phone - it's clear and 8 degrees.

I need to be inspired please, London. Looking to the masters of the art movement to start with.