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| Ealing Town Hall: there's nothing crooked about local government |
| I suppose that this week is going to be a test for this blog: am I, with the job that I have, going to be able to maintain interest in this effort much beyond the Bank Holiday. To the right is the sight that greets me every morning as I arrive at work, or something approximating it at least: my office is situated in the Town Hall annexe, an Outer Mongolia in comparison to the hubbub of political intrigue going on in the main building, no doubt. More of Ealing, I fear, later this week. This evening I have been working on my first Internet commission, designing a page to attract sponsorship for Duncan & Lynn's trek arcross Scotland later this month.. Clanger is the main creative driving force behind the project, obviously, which is why our fee for undertaking the work has turned out to be a couple of servings of bue string pudding and a tin of green soup. Still, from tiny acorns... |
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| back to May 1st-3rd |
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| At work the other day I asked someone how old she thought I was. It's a dangerous game, that, and you should never ask the question if you're afraid of hearing the answer. It must have been a particularly trying day as the answer came back as: This is not good news. Evidently I have aged eleven years in the space of the eight weeks I have worked at Ealing. I feel it only fair to save a thorough description of my work until later in the month. Yes, I know you must be desperate to hear everyting about the finer points of local government taxation, but you'll just have to wait, I'm afraid. Just suffice it to say that if I had ever appeared on What's my Line?, my introductory mime would have been me banging my head against an invisible desk. Or taxpayer. It is such a relief to come home to the safety of what an old university friend calls the "odd world that is the web". I have been completing the commission I alluded to yesterday: Duncan, Lynn, and two other friends, Will, and Bridget are walking across Scotland, apparently both for the good of themselves and the Multilple Sclerosis Society. Click on the animated Duncan to access the page, and to sponsor them in this endeavour. I don't really think I've got his gait right, somehow. No-one really walks with just their lower legs moving do they? Never mind... |
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| Imagine if you will, spending seven hours of every day talking about your Council Tax bill. Imagine being locked in a room with thirty other people talking about their Council Tax bills for seven hours every day. Regimes have been toppled for less serious human rights abuses than this. I only have myself to blame, but I am beginning to hate Council Tax more and more with every passing hour. Even having a pointless thirty-minute argument with someone who is clearly in the wrong but can or will never admit to it seems less and less enjoyable these days. |
| Sometimes I almost used to feel a little satisfaction as I would quasi-judicially pore over the evidence in a particular case, before coming to a learned judgement over how the pettifogging regulation should be applied. But no more! Here's to a declared war on Council Tax and an escape therefrom! Oh for the liberty of never having to darken a local authority revenues department again! I sense the need for a cunning plan.... I'm also beginning to hate Ealing, and it's not just the wearisome commute every day- the shock of getting up into the light, before becoming a temporary troglodyte through those dressed-up sewers every day. This statue is in Ealing's shopping centre, although it wouldn't have looked out of place in East Berlin before they vandalised the Wall. I guess it's a view of an idealised family and we just have to decide whether it's better to fulfill the five-year plan of Comrade Lenin or the local branch of Dixon's. Coming tomorrow, in the interests of balance - 10 things to like about Ealing. |
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| I think it was all getting a little fraught, yesterday,wasn't it? Never mind, there's nothing like the imminence of a weekend to perk things up. An Irish guy at work said to me the other day "you know, a weekend is really another week, as there's two days and three nights to it". Well, there's some kind of Hibernian logic to that, I suppose, or else it's just another example of what too much time spent in a Council Tax office does to you. Just to add to any feelings of existential angst I may have been having lately, I went off the see Endgame a week last Saturday at the Alberry Theatre. I obviously needed to listen to some more wisdom from another Irishman. I don't think I have ever sat through an entire play by Samuel Beckett before, although I can remember being completely befuddled by those BBC productions of his plays years ago. I enjoyed this one though, the cast; Michael Gambon, Lee Evans (yes LEE EVANS!), Liz Smith and Geoffrey Hutchings were all great, and yes, while it was a little bleak, there was comedy there too. Smith and Hutchings play the parents of the central character, the blind, wheelchair-bound Hamm, and are consigned to dustbins for the duration of the play, popping up like some surreal version of George and Zippy, taunting Hamm with their very existence. I really quite like Liz Smith and was a little concerned at the thought of her spending an hour-and-a-half in a dustbin every night, but click on her picture to be reassured about her welfare. The feature 10 things to like about Ealing will appear at a later date. Well, it might... |
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| Michael Gambon as Hamm |
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| forward to May 8th |
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