Black & White – 1
It’s not often I will post in black & white but I thought I’d make the exception for the weekend.
This is a piece of artwork from somewhere in New York. I can’t think where in New York to try to find more information about it but I can recall that it was cold and damp that day; funny what will stick in your mind! From December 2008, I think. I can’t find any of the original images taken from that trip which is bit of shame.
“Abandon hope all ye who enter”
As we come towards the last few months of life in the Mad House, I thought I would share a view of where I spend my days engaged in work of “national strategic importance”. It looks quite nice from the outside, and it is even quite nice in parts of the ground floor and on the 3rd floor (which house the corporate offices and HM’s office). However, money obviously ran out as we moved up through the building and where I am on the 6th floor is probably something Dickens would recognise (well apart from the computers, that is!).
There’s a family connection here; my brother’s company built this entrance way (and thus it explains why the two pillars need to be blocked up on bricks!!). Despite his involvement, it seems to work quite well
At one time, we had both this building and the one in the background but now we occcupy just the one building and parts of that are empty and yet we still have plenty of space. Mad House 2 which we are due to occcupy from November is about a quarter of the size and we’ve been practicing “new ways of working” (ugghhh!!) – i.e cramming one’s lifetime’s pocessions into a storage area the size of a shoe box, clearing the desk each night (takes about 2hrs), getting it all out next morning (another 2hrs) and seeing if we can fit 150 people into a toilet cubicle (although we have been assured that there are sufficient toilets so everyone can each have 30mins a day “private time” in there!! (I wonder if we need to book?).
Luckily, I can do my work anywhere where there’s decent broadband speed. I always refuse to go to meetings because they are generally a complete waste of time – email me, tell me what you want, why you want it and I’ll do it or tell you why I can’t and we’ve already found that the local pub has wi-fi! I usually work one day a week from home and I can see that increasing to around 3 days/week – even I need some time to pick up the office gossip.
Actually, I’m looking forward to going there – my gym is around 200yds from it (and they have wi-fi too!).
