I’m rather enjoying the office job, not just for the rumuneration, but also the way it connects me with the world, forcing me to be aware of what’s going on outside of my little bohemian bubble, even if it is through the surreal prism of a night shift every other 7 days. I feel I could sit a quiz on the work of the UK Environment Agency (building flood defences, helping the endangered British crayfish and the black poplar tree) to the state-funded projects and start-up enterprises of the East Midlands. I know all about the Curve Theatre in Leicester, and the Quad Cinema in Derby, though I’ve never been to those places in person. New York, Tangier, Stockholm, Paris, yes. Leicester, not yet.
Favourite fact about the Curve: the piazza area in front of the theatre has been christened Orton Square, after the playwright of naughty diary fame.
Favourite Orton tidbit: In Monty Python’s Life of Brian, John Cleese’s centurion arrests Brian with the words ‘You’re f—ing nicked, me old beauty!’ As Mr Cleese says on the DVD commentary, this is a deliberate quote from Orton’s Loot. Richard Attenborough delivers the line in the 60s movie version.
Slept from 9am till 6pm today. Much needed after a few days when sleep deprivation was starting to make me hallucinate around the corners, Fight Club style. So I’m more connected to the world in information terms, yet more out of phase with it physically.
Have gotten up, replied to emails and filled out some work-related paperwork (tax declarations, printing out, reading and signing forms for health and safety and computer usage), and written this entry. And now it’s time to go to work… again. Time just leaks away. I need to get faster… at everything.
