Change of weather, change of direction

One week after a snowbound Easter and I've been cutting the grass in a tee-shirt. It really does feel like Spring and I feel refreshed and ready for my last day as an Aviva employee. I'll be in and out with as much time as it takes to hand over my id pass and the keys to the cupboard where I've stored a collection of kit I've collected from other members of the escape committee.

I know I've made the right decision to leave but I was not looking forward to the last month and Friday afternoon was pretty awful. I didn't think such practical things as logging off the e-mail system for the last time would seem so significant but I was pretty choked while I was doing that and I'm glad there was nobody about looking for a chat as I wasn't in a fit state for the routine "what are you doing this weekend?" conversation, however well meaning.

Tomorrow will be different. I've got a tarte au citron to make, fish to buy and jobs to apply for so with the emotion out of the way I can dash into the building, conclude the formalities and crack on with the rest of my life.

Chilly start to my last week

One more week to go and I have a series of people to take through the exit process. It's a shame it's so cold in the office and I'm writing this wearing a woolly hat. Seriously! Our bonuses were cut by 25% to reflect poor business performance and it looks like they've done the same with the heating.

Like most large organisations we have turned office moves into an art form over the last few years and by amazing coincidence the merry-go-round has put me back at the same location where I started my career over 32 years ago. The building is not the same one I started in as that had been condemned even before I moved in and we had rats in the filing room. It was soon demolished to make way for the one I'm now in and this one is being emptied as it is no longer needed so perhaps that's why there's no heating: they don't realise there are some stragglers still here.

One way or another I'm not having any second thoughts about leaving.

Snow stops Easter Egg Hunt? I don't think so!

It'll take more than a little snow to stop the family scouring the garden for the hidden Easter Eggs. I was happy to stay inside with the camera but the seasoned chocaholics were out there with their usual tenacity.

Ozarks, what have you done?

A long while ago I was into the Ozark Mountain Daredevils. Time passed and I started listening to other music but I still kept the records until last week when I hired a skip and cleared out the garage and the last 32 years of my working life as I prepare for life outside NU. Out went the last remnants of the record collection, including the Ozarks because I thought that it would be easy enough to download the key tracks as I've already done with Russ Ballard etc. But this morning I downloaded "It'll shine when it shines" from the greates hits collection on iTunes and it's not the original version. It's been re-recorded with all the worst aspects of formula country music and it is truly sad. The whole point of that track is summarised in the line "You might think I'm wasting time but I'm just a good old boy that's learned to wait" and it needs an understated, laconic delivery so why the whining harmonica and fairground guitar?

Luckily the original albums have been released on CD so now I have to find them.

Complexity at LSE

I was looking through some old links on IE this morning and found one for ICoSS. It was a complexity research programme that had some funding from NU Life although I could never find anyone to admit to being responsible within NU so I gave up and looked elsewhere. I followed the link again today, for no particular reason, and ended up here.

Plenty of material to get stuck into and the first one I've dipped into is rewarding enough to encurage me to go further.

Parents and kids

Next week my Sister and Brother-in-law, Sally and Raymond, celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary on the same day as their son, Matt, celebrates his 21st birthday. I was chatting about this with a colleague who is married but not yet a father. His reaction was that it was a shame they had to share their big day with another person's celebration. That reaction surprised me because as a parent I think it would be completely marvellous to share such major milestones with your child.

Yet another way in which parenthood completely changes your perspective.

I wonder how Matt feels about sharing his big day with his parents?

First attempt with scanning negatives

I've no idea where I took this photo or who the cats belonged to but you just can't beat a picture of kittens to put a smile on your face. By the look of other pictures on the negative they must be about 30 years old.

The process of scanning and editing the picture was pretty simple and I think I can get a much better quality result if I play with the various settings.

Time to try a few things

It's taken me a long while to start blogging and I had this one set up a couple of months before I started doing anything with it. But now I'm up and running I'm getting lots of ideas about how I can improve the layout, include interesting items, categorise the links and all that sort of thing. This is really going to test my HTML skills, even if I reuse stuff from other people but it'll be fun.

I've noticed that I like blogs with pictures but I've put none here yet. I've just heard that you can get reasonable results by scanning old black and white negatives so I may start my photo publishing with an experiment with one of those. I used to develop and print my own black and white photos so I've got loads and as I stopped about 25 years ago there will be some dodgy material and some I've completely forgotten about. At least I'll be safely behind the camera.

Miliband -v- Hague

The Radio 4 Today programme main feature for this morning was a head to head between David Miliband and William Hague on the subject of the EU treaty referendum (or lack of one). I am normally a big fan of William Hague's performances in these set piece confontations but he came off second best today. You would expect a Tory spokesman to be very well rehearsed on the subject of Euro bashing, they've had so much practice, but Miliband was effective in making the case that this is a revising treaty and not the full constitution that was originally proposed but was rejected by the French and Dutch before the rest of us could have a vote. Shame on them and a very nice Frenchman apologised to me that they hadn't meant to vote against it. They used their referendum to have a go at Chirac and the rejection of the EU constitution was a bit of collateral damage!

Mobile blog test

I thought i'd try out mobile blogging.

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I just don't get it.

I turned up for golf yesterday feeling as well as I have for months, if not years. I felt strong, fit, healthy, mentally alert and put on the most embarassing display of rubbish golf I can remember. Why does that happen? How does that happen? I suppose the search for those answers will keep me amused for a while and I think I need to read Hank Haney again. That will be four times but Hank has come through for me in the past so I'll put my faith in him once more.

PS No images of Les to blame for the poor play.

I can't get you out of my head

We were into the second hour of a meeting with a software supplier about collaboration tools when Mike said that their products were developed by some amazing guys based on Australia's Gold Coast. Not only that but the atmosphere in their office was so relaxed that they wore thongs! NO NO NO! That is not a picture I ever want in my mind but it was too late. Phil, an Aussie, said "you call them flip-flops" but an image of the archetypal Australian male, Sir Les Patterson, wearing far too little down under kept floating into my head. That was two days ago and it is still happening. I am putting a lot of faith in my round of golf tomorrow morning and if my putting is up to it's normal standard I'll have far too much on my mind to worry about Les and his nasties.

What I'll miss the most

We had a meeting of the 1-2-many club yesterday lunchtime and it brought home to me how much I'm going to miss the companionship of my colleagues when I leave at the end of March. I say companionship rarther than friendship because I know we shall remain friends but there will not be the easy familiarity that develops when you work together.