Why does writing Christmas cards seem so hard this year?

I'm trying to get started on the annual Christmas card list, and struggling. Why? I am a bit unwell currently, but even if I were fully fit, I suspect I would find it a bit of a chore. I choose to write bits of news for each person, rather than write a standard newsletter to insert, so immediately it becomes harder, or at least more time-consuming. Outside, the sky is grey, and wintry showers threaten, and here I am, writing to family and friends in sunny climes such as New Zealand, Australia, and California. I find myself feeling wistful for the antipodean summer, or autumn, even. We had such a lovely trip to New Zealand in April, it's inevitable I am wishing I was somewhere else just now. Yorkshire Dales or New Zealand in December? If we had a free choice...

Winter is here...

Winter is here, and today there was a ground frost. It is the first time this winter that I have had to unfreeze the bird bath with hot water. I would rather be somewhere warm, I think, and I don't just mean inside with the central heating on...

My cousin Kezia[Barker]'s Wedding

In mid-September my partner and I attended my cousin Kezia's wedding in London. She and her partner Leo made it legal at Marylebone Register Office, and it was such a success that Paul Macartney booked his latest wedding there, too.

We were deputed to wait at Marylebone Station to pick up three dozen helium filled red balloons, then wait outside the Register Office for everyone to come out, and give them to people to hold for the next stage of celebrations.

Next stage was a walk across Regent's Park to the Grand Union Canal (where Kezia lives in a narrowboat) for champagne and canapés. From there, we boarded a narrow boat (not K's) for a 25 min journey to the Grand Union Pub, which K & L had hired for the afternoon and evening.

There, we gathered in the pub garden by the canal, from which vantage point we could watch Kezia's boat (with the happy couple standing on it) arrive alongside. More drinks and delicious snacks followed, before we tramped upstairs into the pub for a fine meal and good speeches.

Around midnight (maybe earlier?) we left the pub, and looked down onto the canal where people continued to celebrate. I looked wonderful. We took the tube back to Kilburn Park, where we were staying at nephew Alex's flat. It was a highly original event, and a great way to celebrate their "Grand Union".

(My photos of the wedding are on my Facebook account, and my PhotoBox one, too, but both only for friends.)

Social occasions

Social occasions are such great times to share knowledge in enjoyable ways and congenial surroundings. Heather and I went to Farnham in Surrey at the weekend, for my nephew Tom's wedding, and we met and talked with family and friends, and others. On the Sunday we drove and saw Jane Austin's House, about half an hour from our hotel in Farnborough. We went to a post wedding buffet in Camberley before driving back home. Today I put up my photos onto Facebook. They are good in parts...

Could the end of the week be the start?

It is Friday afternoon, on a damp Yorkshire summer day. I have had a flare-up of my chronic back problem, so have struggled to work for any length of time. Some of the day I have spent reading a little of Alan Hollinghurst's new novel "The Stranger's Child", and it is capturing my attention slowly.

At other times I have been searching for resources on evidence-based nursing practice for a small piece of work I am doing for a friend. While doing this, I have come across other interesting items, and enjoyed reading them. Just now I am not sure where these pieces are leading me, but I am struck by a question:

"could the end of the week be the start?"

My iPad and me...

Passing through the Duty Free Stores at Auckland Airport in late April, I bought an iPad2. In some ways it's just an expensive toy. But in other ways it's transformative. I access and use information and resources in a totally different way since getting it. I send and receive much of my email on it now, and download documents to store and read on screen. Sometimes I play with new apps for the fun of it, just to try out and see if they are useful or interesting. The good ones, I keep; others, I delete and look for alternatives. Lack of Flash is a drawback, as is the ability to use browsers besides Safari, but these are small points. The major part of my interface with the world wide web now is mediated by the iPad. Something significant is going on here.

Whatever happened to May?

After my last post, I realised I didn't post at all during May. Whatever happened to May? After we got home from New Zealand, life just seemed to go back to the pre-trip ways. Time now to reassess. Sad to learn tonight of the death of Miriam Karlin.

Summertime ... Living not easy...

Summertime started a few weeks ago, but real summer weather only appeared yesterday and today, up here in Yorkshire, at any rate. I'm doing some literature searches for a colleague, and it's not so easy from outside the world of academia - much less access to academic research databases. However, I completed the first part today, and will do the second part next week. Meanwhile, I shall enjoy the weekend sun, and read Marilyn French's "The Women's Room" for next week's book group.

Visiting New Zealand

Visiting New Zealand in 2011 has been an interesting experience. I sense that our having a more extended stay in the country may be coming closer, so naturally one reflects on the mix of familiar and strange aspects of the place. It is a place where I know how things work, yet even that is at times elusive, in truth, because I have not live in the place for prolonged periods since the mid 1980s.

There could be a role for me as a writer, a researcher, a broker of knowledge. Now, it is my task to find that role and take it up.

Cricket World Cup, Levi-Strauss, and E M Forster...

How are they linked? Through me, of course.

Today, I spent many hours watching the Final of the 2011 Cricket World Cup, India vs Sri Lanka, played in Mumbai. It was a grand occasion, and the Indian team won the game, which is what they wanted. The romantic win would have been Sri Lanka, but it was not to be, today.

Still, slowly, I read the biography of Claude Levi-Strauss, the French structuralist-anthropologist. and continue to love it. It's such a grand life he led, and such an original mind he had.

E M Forster? On Monday night our book group will discuss 'A Room With A View', so we're reading it. It's a light, very funny story, set in Florence, and an easy read. Does it have much serious intent? I haven't found it yet, though maybe it is for me to discover yet? Not much time for that, but I shall enjoy the attempt.

Reuniting the Rubins

Just seen this film - with Timothy Spall and Honor Blackman - good story about dysfunctional family - low budget - made in 5 weeks. Worth a look when on general release in September.

West is West

Went to the National Media Museum in Bradford this afternoon - a favourite haunt. I'm getting to go there almost in the way I used to go to Nottingham Broadway Media Centre, as a place to hang out.

I went to the 4pm showing of 'West is West', the long-awaited follow up to 'East is East', the first film to speak for young Bradford Asians in the late 1990's. Many attended from the Asian communities, and it's clear they get a real buzz and glow from seeing their lives and world portrayed on the screen. We saw this film at a preview on the afternoon of my 60th birthday party in January.

Coincidentally, a DVD of photos from that party arrived today: John Barker sent me it. It's great, and really brings back the atmosphere of that day Heather worked so hard to organise.

Beware "Tubely"

Beware "Tubely". Don't touch it, just DELETE. Yesterday I received an email purportedly from a friend of mine, inviting me to join Tubely. He's a good friend, a trusted one, so I thought I'd join up. I discovered then it hacked my email contact list and emailed all. So I stopped filling in the sign up process, deleted my membership before I even used it, and, for a precaution, changed my email account password, and sent an apologetic email to my contact list. No guarantee it hasn't reached others, too, but maybe they will delete the invitation anyway.

So, just delete this scam.

Look at another blog on the subject: http://wendysminks.blogspot.com/2009/10/tubely-is-devil.html

Earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown

It seems almost indecent watching TV footage of the effects of the Japanese earthquake, the mesmerising images of the all-engulfing tsunami, and the terrifying nuclear meltdown. Reconstruction in Christchurch looked difficult, but the scale of destruction and displacement in Japan dwarfs that. Yet for all affected in both places, the impact is 100%, comparisons are odious.

Christchurch earthquake

Two weeks ago tomorrow, the nature of Christchurch New Zealand was changed forever. My first knowledge of the earthquake was in a text from my brother, received around 6 a.m., about 6 hours after the event.

A number of people here in the UK have asked me if I have family or friends in the city. I have friends, but have heard from almost all since the earthquake.

It's impossible to imagine how the city will recover, but it will, though perhaps with fewer people, a different configuration of houses and commercial space, new roads and old ones renewed.

We're supposed to go there briefly in April, to pick up a rental car and drive to Dunedin. This may have to change...

Health and Spring

It's springtime and so good to have brighter, longer days, with sunshine. I'm healthy again after Jan-Feb infections, and getting enthusiastic about things again.

We go to New Zealand again in just over a month from now.

Postings - the endless issue

Postings are very sporadic, I know.

It seems to me that maybe the best I can do is write about what books, magazines and articles I'm reading, films I see, whee I'm going, what I'm doing.

Not that anybody ever has noticed this blog :-)

BOOKS: Currently, I'm reading a recent biographical study of the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. It's a very personal and interesting book, by Patrick Wilcken. I heard him talking about it on BBC Radio 4 about a year ago, maybe less, and have wanted to buy it ever since. I couldn't afford it, but used an Amazon voucher from my 60th birthday recently, and got it.

Prior to the Lévi-Strauss, I was reading another biographical book on an anthropologist, "Margaret Mead: an American Icon". It is also one I coveted, and my partner Heather bought me it for my birthday. Fascinating study shows how media savvy Mead was, getting press coverage and media exposure in a way no other social anthropologist managed.

FILM: I've seen the Cohn Brothers remake of "True Grit" twice in about 4 day. I liked it a lot, but Heather barely at all, and two friends we met at the cinema in Bradford hated it. Taste can be so personal.

De-cluttering

De-cluttering my study today - slowly - and it is not lost on me that it is a paradox for a knowledge broker to have a cluttered space. I may be a systems person in my work, but I'm a collector in my space. Well, it's a long-postponed work of archaeology today.

Weather - still under it...

Still 'under the weather' - how tedious it is to have my energy drained away by a low-level sickness, when I am ready to do things, to write, to declutter my study and prepare for spring.

'Under the Weather"

A curious phrase - 'under the weather' - but that is what I am today - a kind of non-specific sick - tired, blocked sinus, lethargic. All I wish is for it to go away, so I can resume proper writing and research.

2011: my year of being 60

It's my year of being 60. A week ago I 'celebrated' my 60th birthday, with a quiet Friday. Heather and I went for lunch at the Angel at Hetton, and I opened some presents and cards. It was on the Saturday 15th that the big event took place, with cousins John & Sandy Barker coming up from London, meeting friends at Pictureville in Bradford, going to a free preview of 'West is West', the follow up of 'East is East' (1999). Then we wandered around the Media Museum, until Heather guided me to the basement, and pointed out a room with tables, balloons, streamers - a surprise venue for my party that she had organised. Lots of friends, Heth's brother Ric, with Denise, from Lincoln, TF and Clare from London, Paul and Sally Austin from Cambridge, and many good friends from here in Yorkshire. We had a lovely evening, and it continued with a Sunday morning brunch of scrambled egg and smoked salmon with Lindauer on the Sunday morning. A week ago tomorrow...