A busy one, today. Driving lesson between 11:30 and 1:30. The driving seems to have reached some kind of plateau, in a manner of speaking. I’ve been away for a few weeks so I’m a bit out of practice, I suppose. There are moments behind the wheel now where t all seems to slot together in a nice relaxed fashion. Other times when Jim has to put me right or talk me through. He’s a good chap, my driving instructor. I’ve had a few in my time, so I know enough to compare. Very calm, Jim likes his music, has a dry, slightly lugubrious voice, and is a ready fount of information about the various celebrities who reside in and around Brighton and Hove. He’s been teaching me since October last year, on the recommendation of my previous instructor Clive, a fiery ex-serviceman from the west country who’d yell and swear at other vehicles if he felt they were crowding me, and be similarly forthright in telling me if I made any mistakes. Before that, back when I was in Norwich there was Coleman, something of a Master in the Zen Art of clutch control. And finally, the first guy whose name I forget, who only taught me a few times before I went away to Uni, and whose only lasting impression on me was his insistence that I refer to the gear stick as the gear lever because gear stick was ‘American’. All in all, a diverse array of practical, mechanically - minded, provincially accented, decent fellows who did their level best to teach me how not to stall at junctions. I stalled today, having left the car in 3rd. gear at a junction. Ho hum.
Afterward, I was dropped in town and decided to embark on a spot of clothes shopping. If I was as enthusiastic about clothes, and as ready with a digital camera as my buddy Mark (see Diffractedthinking.Blogspot.com) I could provide you with lots of pretty pictures of the various hep items now adorning my wardrobe. Sadly this isn’t the case, although some of the items are indeed pretty. My relationship with clothes is a bit confused. I consider myself to have a pretty good eye when it comes to these things, an aesthetic commonsense probably inherited from my ex-Art teacher grandmother. If I see a particularly well-considered sweater or dress on one of my friends, I have been known to comment on it. However, in the last few years I have been tending more towards sobriety in the clothes-buying stakes, more often than not feeling reluctant to replenish my wardrobe for quite long stretches of time. This is of a piece, I think, with a slow abandonment of the pursuit of ‘hipness’, that engaged me for much of my late teens and early twenties, and covered music and social habits as well. Call it growing up, if you like, but also I think I’ve always had a slight ascetic bent, a touch of guilt, that makes me a bit uncomfortable with the idea of spending lots of money on clothes. Where that comes from I don’t know. It’s there. Yet if you leave it long enough, as I did, what happens? You look at your wardrobe one day, and you feel grubby. Then, you go out and spend lots of money on clothes. As I did, today. Nice clothes, for the most part. Whats wrong with that? Nothing really.
I’m beginning to get the sense that I might have a lot of time on my hands this term. I received my provisional grade for my dissertation, and it’s better than I thought. Still needs tweaking, and I have quite a bit of Fieldwork prep to be getting on with. I’m hoping to go to Sierra Leone in January for language training, the paperwork for which takes a few months to get processed. But I’m still without a regular weekly schedule. I suppose I could get things kicked off on the London side of things. I’ve a clutch of facebook and email contacts that I ought to start cultivating properly. If I could sort out a regular job or placement that would embed me in the SL scene then that would be a healthy start. But apart from work, I’d quite like to get involved in something extra-curricula while I’m Brighton. Walking? Guitar? Volunteering? Many options…
Dx
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