Working in the Centre
27 May

Since late January of this year, the firm I work for has been based in the centre of Liverpool.

Laying aside the commercial imperatives that led to the move, for me it has brought nothing but good.

For example, each morning and evening, I have a 10 to 15 minute walk in the fresh air. My chosen route takes me through a park and down a tree lined suburban street. When I began taking this journey regularly, I was leaving home in the twilight; now the sun is fully risen. I've watched the earth become hard as iron in the grip of a hard frost. I've watched it soften in the rain. I've watched the bulbs come through and the trees come to full leaf. Even as the train carries me to and from central Liverpool, I have twenty minutes or so to look out of the window and watch the play of light on the River Mersey or clouds massing behind Everton Brow or the sun streaming over the Wirral and the Welsh hills beyond. It's fabulous. You can't buy moments like that.

It's also given me the opportunity to read whilst I travel. Yes, I do miss listening to either Radio 3 or a CD of my choosing. But you certainly can't read and drive at the same time.

Probably the best book on my travelling so far has been Ghostwritten by David Mitchell. This was his first published novel and, in many ways, it anticipates some of the structural ideas picked up in Cloud Atlas a few years later.

The book is a sequence of short stories. The stories don't specifically follow on from each other but they are inter-related by characters, by idea, by themes, by motifs. They also travel the globe,travelling west all the time starting from Japan. There are some items which are better realised than others. You can't say that he's quite found his full authentic voice at this stage but it's riveting stuff.

I also polished off Saturday by Ian McEwan. Whilst it's not the best book of his that I've read, it's certainly accomplished. For example, the descriptions of brain surgery are written with an authentic details and relish. However, I really didn't believe the central conflicting moment in he book when two thugs force and entry into the family home of the brain surgeon and hold the whole family hostage. It just didn't feel at all likely to me.

What I did like, however, was the location in time and place. It all happens on the day of the Iraq anti-war demonstration in 2002. And, of course, I was on that demonstration with Ross and Jill. It's also set in and around Fitzrovia and Bloomsbury, which through my two periods at University College London, I know quite well. So, that all placed it for me. Given the anti-war protest that forms a backdrop to some of the events of the day, the final theme of forgiveness and reconciliation felt apt as well.

It's also great to be based in the centre of town as well. Come lunchtime, there are places to go even if it is just a mooch round the shops.

I've made good use of this in my preparation for the upcoming holiday. I've bought a sequence of Dorling Kindersley travel books for the major cities which we are visiting and I'm trying to make some plans and preparations for the sorts of things Ross and I might get to see. Mind you, organising him in this way is a bit like trying to nail jelly to a wall. I've also been making strategic use of the fact that work is based right next to Debenham's and that there have been a series of mid-season sales taking place. I haven't bought a lot of clothes recently but the past few months have built up stocks again replacing worn out shirts, a windcheater which had disintegrated, light-weight pullovers which had shrunk in the wash and shorts which could no longer take the strain of my middle-aged belly.

I suppose I could have stayed in town and had a meal in advance of a mid-week RLPO concert but I didn't. After Mr Petrenko's stunning Mahler 3 last week, it was perhaps inevitable that this week's concert would represent a bit of a dip. Our conductor, Lothar Zagrosek, was at his best in the first piece, Richard Strauss's Don Juan, which came up freshly minted. From there, things go progressively less interesting. I loved Schumann's Cello Concerto in my youth. I suppose that Daniel Mueller-Schott gave it as good as it deserved but I just found it - well - boring.

After the interval, Berlioz's Waverley Overture was alright but I really disliked the account of Beethoven's Symphony No 8 which followed. Lothar Zagrosek saw the work as a their heir to the fifth and sixth symphonies. I don't. I see the lineage extending back to Haydn and forward to Prokofiev. There's energy yes but it's energy in the service of grace rather than vigour. So, I left a trifle disappointed.

I did, however, take advantage of a lunchtime concert at the Phil the following day. Brahms's Violin Sonata in G was the heavyweight work in this recital by Concettina Del Vecchio on the violin and Ian Buckle on the piano. It was alright without gripping me by the throat. More enjoyable was the coda of salon music by Coates, Farnon and Elgar. I'd organised a half day's Time of in Lieu so I headed for my back garden and an afternoon in the sun with a bottle of beer.

In leaving work for personal enjoyment, I missed out on one of our CEO's irregular briefings. Apparently, I could have written the script for him. Times are hard. We must all re-double our efforts. There are massive uncertainties after the General Election. If things don't pick up, there will have to be changes. The thing is that he's a one-trick poney. As Ian has put it, he knows how to squeeze projects and make cuts in order to save money but he doesn't know to grow an enterprise. Frankly, I'm glad that I didn't change my plans in order to engage in another exercise in collective demoralisation.

And I can see for myself that the General Election result will cause an upheaval and probably bring to an end the Ambition:IT project for me and Creative Partnerships for Ross. Given that, in the recent German elections, North Rhine-Westphalia has rid itself of a Conservative/Liberal alliance, I just wonder whether or not we in the UK may have embraced another German export.

And I can't understand why those scientists are so excited about witnessing a supermassive black hole being flung out of its parent galaxy when the rest of us know that its name is Gordon and that it is now somewhere in Kirkcaldy.