I’m going to be cryptic for a while.
About ten years ago I wrote a piece on a website about a particular time in my life. I’ve written about it before on this blog, but I don’t particularly want to go into details now. The website is still there (with the login details long forgotten), and you can still find it if you go googling for it in the right way. I received a message on facebook today from a journalist on the Independent wanting to use quotes from it for an article he is writing.
I am in a slight quandary as to what to say to him.
I am quite clearly not the same person that I was ten years ago, much less the person I was ten years before that which is the time span of the piece in question. I could either agree to him using whatever he likes, ignore him completely or write back to explain how I feel now, at the risk of stirring up a painful past best left undisturbed. I shall have to ponder this one.
In insomnia news another tack that I am trying is cutting down on caffeine (which I originally typed as caddwyn in some sort of welsh touch typing offset finger fail). One of the fields on the sleep diary app is for the number of caffeinated beverages drunk in a particular day and I was a bit concerned when I actually totted it all up and found that I was drinking seven or eight in a day. The problem is that we have a bit of software in the office called a Network Beverage Selector that keeps track of who had made rounds of drinks for whom and runs a little race to decide who is making the next one. It is far too easy to opt into the round by default and find yet another cup of coffee lined up on your desk.
So, the solution is to try decaff instead, alternating with cups of water from the water cooler to try to reset my levels of caffeine tolerance to a more sensible point. With a bit of luck this will mean that when I get home in the evenings I can then get the benefit of having a proper cappuccino to perk me up.
In games news, I played most of the first level of Call of Juarez : Bound in Blood last night. It’s been a while since I played a first person shooter, but I soon got into the rhythm of moving and shooting. It’s got a fairly high difficulty curve, particularly when the damn Yankees start lobbing dynamite around, and I got stuck on a section where I was firing a cannon at Union soldiers crossing a river. Firing twin six guns with alternate triggers is very satisfying though, and once you have killed sufficient bad guys you have access to a bullet time concentration mode where you can line up a flurry of aimed shots. Excellent fun.
Podcast of the day is an excellent bit of standup from Daniel Kitson recorded at his 2005 show at The Stand and unleashed onto iTunes. He really is very, very, very good.
4 comments:
stick with the caffeine free versions of coffee, they vary hugely in taste. Some are truly ghastly, some very satisfying. Try Nescafe Alta Rica decaff, my personal favourite :-)
Think long and hard about the Independent thing...and then say NO!
Just my opinion. Four years ago, when what happened, happened, The Grauniad got in touch with me. It spiralled, rapidly, out of control. I'm glad I said NO at the time, and at no time have I regretted it. I think that what you say in a blog, you control. What a journalist makes of what you said, has nothing to do with you. Think about what happened to Richard Herrin recently.
Anyhoo, I realise that you will do what you will do. But, for what it is worth, "Just Say NO!"
Thanks Dk - the Nescafe that they have at work isn't too bad, but I think that I might try some fruit and herbal teas as well.
@Mr Cake (or can I call 6p00 for short?). I've cautiously said yes depending what he wants to quote, and it's for a book rather than a paper which is a slightly different kettle of fishies. See today's post for more crypticness.
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