Flat Out

Whether it's true or not, there's a commonly held view that among the top five most stressful things in life are changing jobs, changing house, and divorce. Fortunately, my job isn't in jeopardy! But sadly, I have to find another flat! My landlord's new-millennium property mania is wreaking serious financial havoc, and she has to off-load my flat. It's presently under offer, and can be expected to settle in the next four to eight weeks, but maybe longer. In England, property settlement can occur within a week of the actual handover. And there are no guarantees that the sale will go through until the contracts are exchanged, very late in the process. The real problem arises when there is a chain of sales. Person A is selling to Person B who will only buy if they can sell their existing property to Person C, and so on and so on. If there are five parties in this chain of sale, just one of them can encounter difficulties and pull the pin on everyone else. So you can spend weeks or months waiting for a sale to go through, only to have it fall apart on the actual date of settlement. At first, I wasn't too worried about the impending sale, because of the possibility of a chain and months of delay. Unfortunately, the prospective purchaser is an investor! Now I just want to move and re-settle as soon as possible.

With my day off work today, I took the opportunity to look at two flats. The first is in the Seven Dials district of Covent Garden. It's a first floor studio, in need of refurbishment, in a c.1835 building that has a hardware store on the ground floor. The flat is clean, but old, and the asking price of £195/week is reasonable (it scares me that I actually believe that). But the property is just a touch too old to make me happy. For £195/week, I'd like to live somewhere that doesn't have sticky old lino in the kitchen and bathroom, and I prefer to have heating in a spacious, drafty kitchen.

The second flat is in the beautiful art deco complex of Florin Court, which faces on to Charterhouse Square. The building piqued my set-jetting sensibility, as I knew it to be the fictional home of Hercule Poirot in the Poirot television series. There is a basement pool, and sauna, and a beautiful 10th floor rooftop garden with stunning 270° views of the City, St Paul's, the London Eye, the West End, and so on. The only problem is the shoebox apartment. All the studios in this building are embarrassingly small. The futon-style sofa-bed almost completely fills the room, and the less said about the broom-closet kitchen and bathroom, the better. Let's just say that the Poirot producers employ considerable dramatic license.

The NHS and Argos

I took a day off work today to deal with a cold. It's mostly asthma-related, and somewhat self-induced. On my return from Australia, I discovered that my inhaler had run out. At first I thought I'd be fine. But by Tuesday the cold air was taking its toll. That's when the bastardry of the NHS (National Health Service) started to wreak it's usual havoc on a sick person's life. In the UK you can't just rock up to any doctor's surgery like in Australia. You must register at a surgery in the immediate vicinity of where you live, and that is the only surgery you can visit under normal circumstances (ie not travelling around the country). You can't even register at a second surgery near your workplace. To make matters worse, my surgery only has one doctor on staff, as I was rather rudely informed on Tuesday when I called to make an appointment. That meant the earliest I could get in was Friday afternoon, and not anytime sooner. I shouldn't be so harsh on the NHS, after all, it's completely free to see a doctor. (I can almost remember when it used to be like that in Australia). Better yet, the NHS only require a co-payment of £6.50 per script, and that might even give you two months supply. Drugs are cheap in the UK. And once the surgery has issued a script, it's possible to simply request a repeat from the surgery nurse, without enduring the trial of making an appointment.

But none of that was going to help me deal with my asthma. The only solution was a night-time visit to the St Thomas A&E department. In the mythic film world of London, this is the hospital that places the start of the action in 28 Days Later (although only exteriors were filmed here). I thought of that film's dystopic alternate-reality as I wheezed in my present dystopic-reality in the waiting lounge. Apart from giving me the ability to breathe freely once again, the next best-thing about my visit was to see the hospital's uber-cool robotic medicine dispenser. Rather than having to trundle through aisles of medications, the clerk selects the medication by computer, which sends an instruction to the robotic arm to find the right box. The medications are organised in the shelves according to physical size to maximise storage space, rather than by name, category, or manufacturer.

The UK is home to a rather-unique retailer, Argos, that organises their stock in exactly the same way, and for the same reason. Despite having 650 stores, Argos' peculiarity is that they do not have display stock. Customers pore over a catalogue of 1000+ pages, or select items from their website, to find what they're looking for. Each Argos store is the size of an Australian bank branch, with a set of tills where you pay for the item, and a service desk where you wait to collect your purchase. The same process applies regardless of whether you're buying a pack of CD writeables, or an office chair. Apparently, each store has an extensive warehouse where items are stored by box size, a not-so-obvious benefit of not needing display space, as shoppers shop by product category, not box size! And without display stock, stock theft is negligible to that found in normal high-street retailers. The quality of merchandise varies from crap to okay, but Argos' low prices, and the store's novelty-value, can't be ignored. It's easy to understand how it's become a national institution in it's short 33 year life.

The Firm's Atrium

I've previously commented on the exceptional build quality of The Firm's offices and facilities. I snapped this photo of the elevator atrium on Monday. The palm trees are in the basement, just adjacent to where I work.

Minimum Wage

When I was back in Australia, a few different people asked me if I knew the UK minimum wage. I didn't then, but just saw a Sky News ticker announcing an increase. Apparently, the present minimum wage of £5.05/hr is set to rise to £5.35/hr in October. That new minimum wage will correlate almost exactly with what it is in Australia, but still only just cover my rent. It's scary to ponder how poorly paid our poorest workers are, especially here in London with the outrageously high cost of living.

First Weekend Back in London

On Friday night I attended a BBC Concert Orchestra performance, "Nightmare Romance - Bernard Herrmann & Alfred Hitchcock", at the Barbican Centre. The orchestra played selected pieces of Herrman's soundtrack scores, mostly from his collaborations with Hitchcock. Although I'm familiar with all the pieces that were played, it was still wonderful to hear them live, and especially to see the string section working overtime during the Psycho pieces.

My first Saturday back in London was spent wandering through the West End, visiting the weekly computer fair on Streatham Street, lunch in Soho, followed by an hour at the National Portrait Gallery. The roads leading to Trafalgar Square were backed up for hundreds of metres. I followed the congestion to the square, where an anti-war protest was wrapping up. I have more photos here.

Today I met up with Kurt, Max, and David for lunch, before we all participated in the Kairos Walking Tour of Gay and Lesbian Soho. Home to Poland Street and Greek Street, and adjacent to Chinatown, Soho has a long history of providing safe harbour to minority groups. I've been meaning to do the walk for some time, and it was well worth the time. It was also nice to be oustide on a beautifully sunny day. It's so exciting to know that summer is definitely on the way.

V for Vendetta

This is the Odeon cinema on Leicester Square. The largest cinema in Great Britain, with a capacity of 1700, this is where all UK film premieres, and the BAFTAs, are held. The building, and often the whole square, is redecorated for a major film release. You can still see some V for Vendetta flags still hanging near the tree.

I really enjoyed the film. It's glossy, thought-provoking, and offers a few narrative twists to keep things interesting. It also features several London locations, including the Old Bailey, the BT Tower, and the Houses of Parliament.

Set in a dystopic future vision of London, the film attempts to present the flip-side of terrorism - the notion that terrorists are inherently honourable, and a necessary evil to overpower fascist regimes. Despite the futuristic setting, the city looks very much like today's capital. And as there are several high-profile terrorist events, including one attack on the Underground, this all might ring a little too true for some Londoners. I saw around ten people walk out of the picture, never to return. Then again, maybe I'm reading too much into it. For an action film, it wasn't afraid of miring the action in slow scenes.

Still, unlike many action films, this one does make you think. The film ends (literally) quite explosively, seemingly on a high note, and seemingly in favour of terrorism (at least under certain circumstances). In fact, it teeters on the brink of being irresponsible, and I fear that many viewers will not look past the Hollywood ending, and not see the subtle hint that terrorist events are empty promises, and that nobody really wins.

Remember, remember, the fifth of November...

Here and Now

Now at the end of my Australian vacation, I have time to reflect on all that's happened. I missed Paul every day of the nine months we were apart, and longed for the day when I would see him next. So you can imagine my shock when that day turned out to be the day that he chose to break up with me. It was an awful way to start a vacation, especially one that was supposed to revolve around his birthday, but I'm trying to recognise the opportunity afforded by this mess, and am confident of the good that can and will come of this. What happened? I don't know, and I'm not sure I'll ever know exactly, and it may not even matter. But I'm mindful of Annie Hall, where Woody Allen says "A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark." All that remains are the good memories, which Allen captures so well, with a closing montage of Alvy Singer's relationship with the eponymous Annie Hall. Right now, I'm editing the mental montage.

I jam-packed my fortnight in Australia with a myriad of adventures. Most of the time was spent catching up with family and friends. I'm happy to report that I saw nearly everyone at least once, and not just those in Brisbane. The first weekend was reserved for a vacation to the Sunshine or Gold Coast, to mark Paul's 30th. With a lot of free time on my hands, that fortunately coincided with Sydney's Mardi Gras festivities, I called Virgin and cashed Paul's Melbourne ticket for a flight to the Emerald City. Mardi Gras was fabulous. This was my sixth, and first in four years. After five in a row, I needed a break, and there was little they could do to keep my interest. The crowds are smaller, and the party numbers are down, but these are positives, in my view. More room to dance, and more space to keep cool.

I returned to Brisbane for one day, unfortunately spent moving furniture, but flew out on the second Tuesday to Melbourne. Murder's a Drag screened at the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, in the Celluloid Casserole event. I'm very proud to report that Murder's a Drag won the Selectors Choice Award for Best Film. This was completely unexpected, and I'm still buzzing about my good fortune. Nine shorts were in competition, and most were very good. The first two had Australian Film Commission funding, one had Film Victoria funding, and most of the rest were university projects from Victorian College of the Arts students. I was honoured to be in this league, and as already noted, very pleased with the result. I take pride in self-funding my films, but it's an expensive hobby. So the prize money will help to defray the entrance fee costs for some of the expensive North American festivals, and I'll also try and save a little bit for the eventual switch to high-definition equipment.

I was fortunate to experience all the things I miss about South-East Queensland in the short time I was home. A thunderstorm, fresh seafood on the Gold Coast, an outback barbeque lunch in the sun, and a fitting going away at the Big Gay Day street festival. Marcia Hines and Rogue Traders were the headline acts, and it was a nice little send-off with my friends.

I'm writing this post from Changi Airport, on my way back to London. I'm unsure of what the future holds for me, but I'm running toward it head up, and excited about the fun and challenges that lie ahead. In the meantime, in Kipling's words, I'm filling each unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run.