from our country files - extreme shepherding

In case you've missed these sheep antics.

a series of delays

Some emergency shopping on Tuesday evening because of my unexpected extended stay away this week. My moderately priced return ticket was not changeable on day of travel so I had to buy another single back to the UK.

On Sunday I'd left my car in the plastic denting short stay at Heathrow for this originally short visit.

But then during Thursday the meetings overran again and I found myself being negotiated onto the last seat on another flight with a different carrier. At least the previous single ticket was refundable.

I finally arrived at the airport and headed for the noodle bar before catching the plane.

"Ring Ring" said my phone,"Hi", said a voice. "We are just coming through security...Can we meet for a follow up discussion before we head back to Amsterdam?"

...So ten minutes later I was meeting in the Caviar Bar by Pier C Airside. They enjoyed smoked salmon whilst I sipped an orange juice as we continued business meetings.

Finally to the plane, which would take me back to a different terminal a rail journey across the airport from where my car was parked.

Shame that there had been a circuit failure on the Heathrow Express, so I had to wait rather a long time to get from T3 to T5.

And the car parking was surprisingly expensive.

G20 President Obama's Downing Street turn

I'm viewing the G20 events from a distance at the moment, but smiled when I saw the footage of trying to park President Obama's armored limo outside 10 Downing Street.

I'm already a Fluegelmeister on the Alpine Legend Xbox game

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champion angel as a personal soundtrack

Six of us early evening in a restaurant and then late to a harbourside bar with a guitarist playing 70's songs.
Throw up your voice but not your mind
While them agents of change go monopolize
Their colors and their faces are just shades of the same
All lost in the game
Then icy night deserted streets watched by crescent moon
I promise you this promise we are not alone
But why is it I alone that promise this
Deny the forces that would hurry men
If you still can
Pack to go home before morning city centre session then cross town to where all the pieces were thrown in the air.
We come now to a fracture in the road
Here time has taken her toll
The endless freezing and the thawing of the heart
Would eventually divide us apart
So I'm here for a few more days whilst we figure it all out.
What's that you found in the pocket of your coat
Looks like a small sentiment that she wrote
Don't be my personal savior I would not be saved
I chose to walk alone

Among all you angels is a champion angel
Among all you devils there's a free soul
Up from the disenfranchised the engine cries
Up from the circle there's a hole

impressions from a freetown

Sunday late afternoon, I took a taxi from the airport to drop my bag before grabbing a map and heading for the nearby freetown commune to take a cautious look around.

After about half an hour of walking, I found myself in an area initially reminiscent of the western side of the Glastonbury Festival.

The difference is that there's around 600-700 permanent residents in this area which was first established sometime in the early 1970s, with its axis centred upon 'Pusher Street'.

For me, it was a bustling late afternoon and many people were using the various cafes and bars, some of which had a rather improvised kind of look. In the central area, there were various 'no photography' signs, which I respected. My limited snaps are from the periphery of what is a large area.

The little symbol above the restaurant sign is three yellow circles on a red background, which is the flag for this freetown area.

Many homeless have gravitated to the area and now using some of the brick structures of what I believe had once been a military camp along with other improvised timber buildings.

I could hear a band practicing in one area and the sounds of skateboards from another. There had been a road layout but now there were no cars and revised paths intersected the area. There appeared to be the remnants of an old bus terminal.

It was an area of contrasts. As well as the shop keepers running bars and cafes and some sort of nightclub scene, there were many individual people drinking beer from bottles along the edges of the street and others alone smoking prominent rolled-up cigarettes.

Through it all walked groups of what were clearly well dressed tourist 'outsiders'.

The freetown set its own agenda. They have argued with the politicians in order to be able to exist. They have their own rules although the State police also make regular visits. There's an economy of sorts and I believe they also have a special currency.

I didn't stay long enough to get an idea of what people in the area really think. I believe this model was originally described as a way to build a new society, as a social experiment. Their messaging is certainly filled with hope.

But I was not well prepared for this visit which created for me an impression of something that was balancing right on the edge, barely surviving.

catch a falling star

A somewhat compressed weekend with Saturday's sangria laced tapas excursion but then yesterday evening a darkened Earth Hour viewing of the enchanted Stardust movie.

Co-incidentally, I'd seen this Neil Gaimann movie once before on Spanish hotel television with a foreign soundtrack which didn't help my general comprehension. I don't think it was the sangria the last time.

The movie reminded me that I carry a fallen star in my luggage. It's a small purple glittery ceramic star about the size of a medium size coin.

It must have originally fallen from some wrapping paper, and I found it on the stairs at home and originally slipped it into my pocket. 'Catch a falling star, put it in your pocket, never let it fade away' as the old song goes.

So I havn't; it may not shimmer as much as Clare Danes in the movie, but it is still sparkles as a symbol of happy times.

is blah the next twitter?

A dilemma with twitter is deciding whether to let it grab blog feed headlines and let them be auto posted.

I've found that I'd think longer about blog headings if I think they will also show up in twitter, which interferes with the 'ten minutes a day' process of the blog.

So, with a few possible exceptions, I shall no longer worry about the twitter side-effect.

town and country day

Momentarily back in the Daily Smoke, and actually able to check into the office on Friday for a couple of meetings.

Something of a fly-by though because in the afternoon I was out beyond the M25 at a huge well-behaved and manicured green-lawned office block campus walking allong narrow twisting paths over wooden bridges from a distant car-park to the site of my appointed meeting.

Yes, their closest car parks were full and I was routed to another one around a kilometre away. I found the gentle Alice twisting walk parallel to the estate roads as a soothing moment to let the signs of Spring into my soul.

bicycle hurdles

It looks like a clear path, but imagine the bikes erratically reversing across the pavement as one moves forward like some kind of fairground ride.

That's like my day today with its seven am breakfast meeting and then a continuously shifting pattern of hurdle meetings. By eight thirty there were also changes affecting the next couple of weeks and my travel plans. I shall need to comprehensively re-map my schedule.

Delayed flight in the evening and then back home until Sunday morning.

UPDATE after comment...

I discover the Temporary Apartment's 1930s modernist styling is officially in the buzzing latin quarter

It turns out that this area I'm staying in is officially the local Latin quarter. I finally got around to reading a guide book, which has actually been laying around in a special box, along with an enormously expensive fashion magazine which seems to be provided as part of the service.

The little grey book, in English, describes all of the nearby cafes with words and phrases like 'funky', 'fusion', 'designer pricing', 'invitingly affordable', 'worth trying the house champagne' and my particular favourite 'Paustian complex'.

Why the interest? I've invited some of the locals for an evening together next week and need to decide on a venue. My UK equivalent code phrase in my Outlook calendar would be 'beer and curry', but somehow around here I don't think that will do it.

I'll have to choose between 'sensual simpicity', 'sophisticatedly rewarding prices' and 'cool velvet verve'.

Maybe it will be the limousine oaked ambience of a whitewashed medieval cellar? or to get-down-diggy on the wild side? I should have asked the orange boiler-suited DJ who was playing Euro-trance at the house party in the Temporary Apartment's Atrium yesterday.

Decisions...

calendar malfunction creates a taxi conversation about phone numbers

I've spent today zig-zagging around this snow stormy town in taxis. Until it all went horribly wrong.

A simple calendar malfunction between two different systems.

My system showed one venue and the other system showed another. We'd both arrived at what was effectively each others' base camp for what was supposed to be a face to face meeting. My colleague and I called a cab to go back to our base for the meeting.

Bizarrely the cab driver was one we'd had much earlier in the day. I was quite surprised but apparently this is less unusual in this city with its short phone numbers.

So we talked about phone numbers whilst we made our way back and said I thought that American numbers were originally designed for big cities to have short rotary numbers (ie like 1s and 2s and 3s rather than 8,9,0).

Of course we couldn't prove my assertion, which I said came from a book I'd once read called Microserfs.

I'd have let it rest. But my colleague decided to look it up.

So later this evening, after I returned from a short visit to The Comforting Pizza Place, I received an email with a copy of a Wikipedia article about American phone numbers. Yes, New York did get 212 and LA did get 213, Chicago 312 and so forth. Vermont was 802 (20 clicks) or something similar.

I then felt compelled to score an online copy of Microserfs to check out my original source. Sure enough a Russian website had an illicit online copy.

It's all there in the conversation with Karla.