Impulsive? Moi?

Perhaps its a sign of a mid-life crisis (hah - as if being in a relationship with someone 16 years younger than me wasn't evidence enough. Ahem. Joking, obviously) but I seem to be becoming rather more impulsive these days. After work yesterday, I decided - on a complete whim - to experiment with a new route to get to a toy shop that's otherwise been rather frustrating to get to. Located in Friern Barnet, getting to my closest Smyths Toys has previously required a trip via Brent Cross (and, therefore, Toys'R'Us). It occurred to me (quite at random, during the day at work) that the Piccadilly line has a bizarre route through Greater London that eventually almost doubles-back on itself, with Cockfosters actually not that far away from where I live, as the crow flies, despite me living at virtually the opposite end of the line. I work not far from Kings Cross St Pancras, though, which is only about a 20 minute journey from Bounds Green which, as it transpires, is only about a 20 minute walk from the Friern Barnet Retail Park. Leaving a little early on Friday, I decided to try the journey, to see how it would go, and to see if I could get anything cool while I was there (obviously because it's my niece's birthday soon, and I fully intend to shower her with TransFormers again, not so I could load up on plastic crack myself).

As it turns out the route is almost annoyingly simple, and the walk from Bounds Green is quite pleasant compared to the hellish bus rides involved in getting to Brent Cross and then on to Friern Barnet. There's even the possibility that getting back home the Brent Cross route - either picking up the Piccadilly line at Park Royal or the Metro at Wembley - would end up quicker than simply walking back to Bounds Green and hopping back onto the Piccadilly line before it picks up the Central London crowds. That would be vastly more expensive, however, so I elected for the single-train route... Only to realise (after letting three Heathrow trains and one Northfields train to go past) that I could probably shave about 20-30 minutes off the journey time if I switched to the Metro at Kings Cross. And, having had that realisation, the train after mine when I got off to transfer at Kings Cross was, naturally, the Uxbridge service...

Still, I even got a seat on the Metro, and managed to finish my current book - a sort of biography of the American astronaut Virgil I. 'Gus' Grissom - on the journey home.

This week has been quite an eye-opener in many ways. I have been surprised, over the past year, by several things I have in common with my boss (penchant for sci-fi, reading Asimov while growing up, listening to rock music, etc.) despite us being very different people (and not in a way that guarantees anything complementary... or complimentary, for that matter) with very different styles of management. This week has shown the entire team that she's not necessarily as incompetent as we have thought, because her second magazine has now been taken on by the editorial team that have always operated her first... and their first month was such an unmitigated disaster that it eventually stumbled to press right at the end of the day after their press day.

What I found bizarre is that, despite the apparent lack of any proofing of the editorial pages at any time before press day, our boss decided to later praise the lead editor's piss poor performance, telling me that he'd done well, for his first crack at the magazine. I have to bear in mind that, for non-work reasons, she wasn't in the best emotional state for a press day, so perhaps she's just being too forgiving... but this editorial team just seem to be getting worse in their attitude toward 'press day'... and, given the lack of noise from our boss yesterday, I'm suspicious that Monday's press day will be similarly abused.

And, on the subject of abuse, just when I was making ready to leave, I had an email from another editor who is 'managing' a client project... and when I say 'managing', I mean that she is merely interfering in the most annoying way possible - there's a third-party designer working on the artwork, I was dealing with the advertising artwork, and my boss was dealing with the print side of things, so quite what she thought she had to do, I have no idea. Nevertheless, it seems that the designer, having received all the advertising from me on time that day, decided to contact her rather than me when it transpired that we were two pages short (and this, after she had contacted me regarding what she thought was an extraneous ad because she hadn't scrolled to the top of the list I sent her). The salesperson who had been working on this project didn't quite know what to make of that initially, but soon realised that she had 'agreed' the additional two pages earlier this week... over a fortnight after we agreed a page total with the designer.

And no-one thought to tell the guy who was dealing with the advertising artwork.

So two extra pages had to be found for the job in the few minutes before the end of the day, simply because this editor got unnecessarily involved at two points in the proceedings, and didn't communicate all the necessary information to all the relevant people.

Last night, the end of a remarkably busy week at work, brought a rather curious 'anthology' dream, which started with a white mouse being loose in my home. Weirdly, 'home' was a blend of my flat and my parents' home, so that my bedroom was actually their back bedroom (the 'guest room' now), my bathroom was seemingly located in my old bedroom (now used by my niece whenever she visits) and certain current furniture was replaced by stuff from my distant memories. The upshot of this section was that this mouse (possibly my girlfriend's pet?) got loose somehow and was intent on coming into the bedroom. I kept batting it out with what seemed to be the wheat sack I stick in the microwave to heat up for my back, and it kept hiding underneath a wardrobe. When my girlfriend announced she needed to get to the toilet, I warned her not to let the mouse in, but get in it did... So I had to bat it out again more vigorously (no real animals were harmed during this dream... I don't think I even disturbed my girlfriend, a notoriously light sleeper).

The next phase was either very brief, or I've forgotten too much to make sense of it because all I can remember is finding little caterpillar things - much like the moth larvae I had in my kitchen a couple of years ago - crawling around part of my toy collection.

To conclude this night of - frankly exhausting - wackiness was a return trip to an exaggerated Perivale Wood. The straw bale visitors' centre was complete... and surrounded by legions of travellers and assorted unwashed folks who wanted to live 'off the grid', as it were. They were rowdy, they had arranged themselves into little streets, like some kind of mediaeval village, some of them were drinking and saluting the hill (or something else in that general direction which I couldn't see)... and they only had three portaloos to service the entire community.