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Saturday, March 31, 2001
13:10 
I followed this link I found on the Blogger home page to an article about blogs in general. The author notes that many of the more personal journal type blogs tend to start off publishing a lot of material, but then tend to drop off. The article talks about Jill Walker, an academic who has looked into the blog phenomenon, and says
"The personal online diaries actually attract a lot of readers, Walker says, but she's observed that they often trail off, seemingly under the pressure of exposure and a sense of obligation to entertain hundreds of readers. "
I realised that my blog has also tailed off somewhat since I started it, but I certainly don't feel it's because of any pressure to publish. I wonder why Walker thinks that? Mine has tailed off because ...well, basically because often I'm just too busy to take the time to post anything like the sort of material I used to post. Also, some of the material I used to post is no longer the sort of thing that goes on in my head with quite that frequency. I wouldn't say it was pressure of having lots of people reading it, but I would admit to feeling wary considering that there are some people who might read whom I do not wish to read about certain aspects of my life.
Blogging can be pretty sporadic at the best of times, and will become more so as the weather improves and people want to spend more time enjoying it rather than sitting in front of a computer whinging to the anonymous reader. Sometimes I do wonder how many people read the blogs. I occasionally get some very odd emails sparked by them, from very strange people in very far away places. But most of the time I don't really care. Blogging ultimately is a very selfish pastime.
12:50
After not bothering to record the dreams I've been having recently (I mean, are you really interested in one that involved me lying face down on the floor in a bicycle shop, taped up with white insulating tape, while a couple of guys did repairs to me but pretended to be working on a bicycle headset?) I had a real doozy last night.
Of course, having spent all morning on email, I've now forgotten most of the salient details.
Let me just do one of my little memory-jogging lists.
Red areas
White areas
Yellow areas
Curtains
Steps and slopes
Peter Gabriel
Algae
Seawater
Pebbles
OK. No, really, that's how I do this. I remember a few salient features and if I can remember those quite well, I can recover the rest of it, generally. It's a cross between writing things down immediately and free association. Of course, the free association has to be in context. It's quite a good way of remembering what you get up to in the middle of the night. I find it works for me, anyway.
I have a couple of notations from several years back that I never got around to turning into a narrative, and I can still remember bits of the dream based on the list. Not much though, not as much as if I had got to it while it was still fresh.
Anyway. I'm with one other person. Not sure who right now. Male, bigger than me. More experience of the specific task we are there to do. I'm in as consultant. So, if you can imagine calling in an environmental consultant who knows more about environmental requirements, but your man on the ground knows far more about how that particular installation works, you'll see what I'm getting at. The consultant is there to help, and the guy on the ground has to accept that, but equally the consultant has to be fully aware that the guy on the ground knows far more about the installation and that particular situation. He reminds me of someone this guy. He's big, strong, powerful. Looks like a successful farmer. He has both that sense of being able to pay for the things he wants to have, but the earthiness of someone who knows what it is like not to have that wealth, and who still enjoys the work that made him that wealth in the first place.
I'm trying hard to find a way to describe the place we go into. It's basically a bit like a hotel. There are numerous floors, and it is filled with the local equivalent of freemasons, but the general visitors, and even some of the freemasons, don't know exactly what is going on. Because there are in between spaces. White, I am told, is safe. Red isn't. Yellow definitely isn't. I don't understand at first, but then I get separated from this man and suddenly I do because I get lost. These in between spaces are reached by going through walls. Tiny gaps suddenly aren't so tiny. Curtains that look as though they are simply covering a bad piece of panelling suddenly become shades for entrances to whole other spaces that couldn't possibly fit where they apparently fit. These spaces are split into sections by heavy curtains.
In the white areas there are white curtains, pearlescent walls, lots of windows that look out over the shore to the shingled beach and the sea beyond. The carpets are oatmeal or soft white. People make eye contact but don't care if they don't recognise you. They smile. In the red areas the curtains are plush, heavy, red velvet, the colour of blood. The walls are beige, or have wallpaper in bland colours. The carpets are beige or chocolate or some other colour. The atmosphere is oppressive. There are no windows. People try not to make eye contact.
I see yellow areas, when trying to make my way back to the white ones. They have yellow curtains, and I know the people in there would make eye contact and be hostile because they didn't recognise me.
Every time I turn a corner, or pull a curtain aside, I am disorientated. I take deep breaths to calm myself, finding myself in a neutral zone surrounded by swathes of red, and try to figure out where the white area I had come from was in relation to all the red areas I had been through. Rather than trying to retrace my hopelessly confused steps, I try to map out where the area was and go directly to it. I keep getting turned around. Finding my way seems impossible. It is getting pretty scary. I find myself having to go up and down floors, using both slopes suitable for wheelchairs and conventional steps. Everywhere I have to duck under heavy drapes. It is becoming apparent that if I continue like this I am going to be discovered, we'll never find out what is going on, and I will be in more trouble than I have been for a good few days.
Finally a woman walks up behind me, fast. I think this is it, I have finally been caught, but she claps her hand firmly on my right shoulder, still looking straight ahead, hisses "Keep walking" and marches me through a maze of ups and downs and curtains until I am back out in the hotel proper, staring out of a window at the sea. There is a trolley to my left carrying a coffee flask, biscuits, cups and saucers. The sort of thing that gets wheeled in to meetings when things are dragging on. On my right there are some of those square, padded chairs you occasionally get in hospital waiting rooms. Four of them, their backs just lower than the window, pushed back against the wall below the window in a row. The window is large and long, and there is cold coming off the glass because the weather has cooled.
I catch my reflection in the glass and I look like I have seen a ghost. I smile somewhat wanly at the maid who is watching me with some surprise from next to her trolley. The cups on the trolley are clean, the biscuits neat, she's waiting for the lift.
I turn round and lean against the window, and realise that I have just been brought out from a tiny gap between the two lift shafts in the wall. It looks like a line where two strips of wallpaper meet. That makes me feel quite sick. The maid seems completely unperturbed and I realise that she really didn't see me come out. She thinks I have been standing looking out the window for some time. I wonder if I was actually in there at all, or whether it was some weird internal trip.
I lose the thread a bit there, so I'm not sure what happens. Next thing I know I am involved in a different aspect of the same thing, further across the bay. It's dark. If I look up I can see the lights of the hotel across the water, tiny pinpricks of light. There is a navigation buoy in the water, of the cage type, with a green light on top. It's about 400m away from me. Not too far away I can hear the gush of water from a pipe, splattering onto the water's surface from a short height. There is a musty smell. The water is still as a millpond, with only slight glints of light from occasional ripples caused by cat's paws. The shingle is cold and damp under me. I am wearing black. I am once again somewhere I shouldn't be.
I am running a laptop computer. For some reason, on this computer is a promotional video for some form of offworld project. It has been produced by a company looking for investors. It seems to have a Peter Gabriel soundtrack. The company that made this video are responsible for all the red white and yellow stuff in the in-between spaces in the hotel, they are the company that organised the conference that is taking place at the hotel, and they are also responsible for the pipeline. Because the water splashing out of the pipeline is waste from the extraction of a particular sort of algae from the water surface, called theila or thelia algae, which they need for this offworld thing they are doing. But the entire process is illegal, because the algae is not exactly overabundant, the ecosystems they are extracting it from (this bay is not the only one) are too fragile to support the extraction, and the use they are putting it to has quite a few risks as well, not least of which is toxic by-products that they certainly are not mentioning in their promotional video. The traces of algae not extracted from the water but damaged into lysis by the process were the source of the musty smell.
I am in communication with other people. The man from earlier is one of them, the woman isn't. There is a group up on the ridge behind the hotel and further round the bay a little to my left as I look across the bay. They are waiting for someone from the company to arrive (by boat, I think) so they can intercept them. I am also in contact with someone else, who is standing by to inform local authorities that they can go in and arrest certain important people in this company once we have the relevant evidence. Timing is critical, or else said important people will escape offworld and we'll never get them. I am on scene to get samples and witness both the illegal extraction and illegal discharge, which I am monitoring using the computer while I check through the promotional video for further clues that they may have left in. They have a habit of leaving in tidbits of information for investors who know a bit more about their practises than most.
Our timing is a little off. Just as the net begins to close and I realise that the other group has failed to nab all of the incoming people and I'm in trouble again, I get a message through on the computer, with video feed, showing the important people getting away and some of our lot scrambling after them. At that point I'm scrambling to make myself scarce and get to high ground so that I can get out.
And that's about as much of that as I remember, and I'm sure I've left relevant details out, like conversations and things, but I can't remember them adequately.
Thursday, March 29, 2001
14:33
Fed up with doctors. I'm at the stage now where I'm thinking I shouldn't go back, it's pointless. If you don't want to throw chemicals at a problem you are "difficult", it would seem.
Anyway. Enough of that. I have just composed and printed off a letter to my doctor telling him exactly what I think. That circumvents the problem of lack of time in an appointment slot. Then we can tackle the problem of getting my letter saying I can go back to my PhD. I haven't heard back from Peter Leeds-Harrison yet. Of course, he could be off gallivanting somewhere again looking at buffer zones. Sean Tyrrel is back on Monday. I'm sure he'll get around to responding. I hope so. I have a job interview on Tuesday, and I really, really want that job. It's awkward, really wanting a job at the same time as trying not to get too dead set on getting it in case the competition is too fierce. I don't want to leave myself open to dreadful disappointment. But this isn't just a job, for me, it's my ideal job, it's what I've spent masses of time and money and effort getting myself trained to do.
At this stage in my PhD I'd be more confident of being able to complete it in my spare time, having a job to keep money coming in, than trying to scrape by on what little money is left (owing the university more than a grand, as I do) doing it full time. I discussed returning to the PhD part time when I took the break.
I really want this job.
More fuckwitry afoot. K got an email in this morning from some New Zealand guy saying that last August they buried a stone at the base of one of the Rollright Stones and it's a sacred stone of New Zealand, and please could they have it back. K asked the management list if anyone had found it. I've been using it as a paperweight since I carefully extracted it (making my fingers bleed in the process because my fingers will heal and the standing stone wouldn't if it got damaged) about a week later, by my reckoning. Doesn't look very sacred. Makes a good paper weight. They guy said they had a good look for it but were aware that they might piss of the site guardians by such actions, and were also aware that we removed shit like that, so did we have it?
Yes, we do have it. I have it. I generally find stuff left behind, no matter how well you hide it. I guess now they expect me to give it back.
Heh. It is a good paperweight.
Well, after my job interview next week I can "raise my head above the parapet" as Andy Burnham put it, and start tackling the other major conservation issue at the moment.
Oh, and for those interested, I think Andy and I have settled on Cruinthi (prononounced croo-EEN-ya) as an alternative to the still-tempting Feine. It's a good, pre-Celtic name, and obscure enough that it probably won't cause people to think we are solely concerned with Pictish symbol stones.
Tuesday, March 27, 2001
13:24
OK. Last night Frood kindly pointed out to me that it might not be wise to call our new group "Feine" because there are plenty of stupid people out there who might get the wrong idea and think that we were some sort of Irish militant group. I am more disappointed by this than I am making out, to be honest. It's terribly distressing that I can't use that name because of some political disagreement between people of a religion that has nothing to do with me, in a different country, who chose to take their name from a similar myth. The fact that Feine comes from the Scots and Fenians and Sinn Fein from the Irish has nothing to do with it. It almost feels to me like pollution of the very myths, to have the Followers of the Red Branch associated with the IRA. It makes me feel quite sick.
This is probably why I am not a political animal.
Now we are left looking for another name, but my disappointment is so profound I just can't think about it right now. Even though it has been brought to my attention that there is a Scottish site under threat that could probably use the support of a group like the one we are creating.
It's difficult. I want something that at least harks back to pre-Roman times - and I don't really want to go hunting for British Iron Age tribe names, because they are generally in Latin, like the Icenii. The Gaelic myths give the impression, at least, of being at least a bit older than that. Most of what we will be doing is with regards to prehistoric and Iron Age stuff. Having said that, I suppose it's more about the Land than anything else.
I don't think "Pooka" sits quite right.
On the FMS front I have got my masochistically determined streak back. So what I'm going to do is sit down and put my "Coping with FMS" section together, synthesise all that I have learned so far, give my doctor an earful this afternoon, and see where I can go from there. After all, I go to the gym 2-3 times a week, I cycle a lot, I'm actually looking pretty good right now physically, although I could do with some cardio improvement and I'm a tad concerned by my resting heart rate (although, according to this chart, Im not off the top of the scale or anything, so I'm not going to get too stressed about it). I'm physically stronger than some of the men in the gym, and there are no other women lifting as much as me. I've also been losing a little bit of weight and I've noticed that at least one of my pairs of trousers that shrunk in the wash and became uncomfortable is now fitting again, so something is changing.
I think that dropping the weights to split upper and lower body, once each a week, and adding in a couple of days of pure cardio, might be the way forward from here. And not getting frustrated on the bad days when I can only manage short cardio and a short session. Everyone has bad days, and mine generally come the week leading up to my period (yesterday was a bad day). I haven't put on my customary 5 pounds of water retention this month, though, which has got to be good. The stiffness could well be because I ran out of CalMag a couple of days ago. My coccyx is still aggravating me, but I shall have words with Dr Gancz about that today and see what we can do about it. The skin is annoying, but hardly life threatening. I'm still getting on with stuff, not in a wheelchair, still doing a hell of a lot more than a lot of people whose only problem is one of couch potato-itis.
So there.
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