Look what I found: the Pergola and Hill Garden

I was out jogging and got lost. I carried on and found myself in a clearing with a giant open rooved building, buried in the woods over the road from Hampstead Heath and round the back of Jack Straw's Castle. Signs said the Pergola and hill garden were closed for the day and I immediately felt like breaking in. No-one else around. The entire place was covered in green and inside were herb gardens and columns, walkways that stretched out and vines that clutched round stone. A little magic garden all to myself.

I did some research when I got back. It turns out it's rather old. I was going to paraphrase the information I found, but figured I might as well transcribe some of it in original.

'Construction began in 1905. Central to the project was raising the large gardens of The Hill to the required level. This required an army of workers. There were no mechanical diggers or earth-movers then. Furthermore, a vast amount of material was needed. As chance would have it, the Hampstead extension to the Northern Line was being built at the same time. The contractors urgently needed somewhere to dump the spoil from tunnels being created. Soon thousands of wagon-loads of that spoil were making their way to The Hill, with the astute Lord Leverhulme being paid a nominal fee per wagon for accommodating the material that he happened to need to realise his dream.'

So there you go. I was standing on earth tunnelled from beneath the house I live in.

Serviced

I cycle to work and back every day. It's a fairly substantial distance and the brakes have gradually worn until the bite point is low, the braking distance long and the calipers immune to any amount of tinkering with my new allen keys. I finally gave in and took it to the experts for a service yesterday.

I had a free service at Evans a couple of months ago- one of the perks of having bought it from them, although it seems to be quite a common offer. I took it in, but when I collected it nothing had changed. I raced off to work but returned it at the end of the day, complained, and 10 minutes later it re-emerged from the mechanic, serviced. So I wanted to choose somewhere with a clearer sense of customer service this time round, and where I could come face-to-face with the mechanic.

In Japan, the bike guy is a thriving tradesman. Every neighbourhood seemed to have a leathery old dude with dungarees and wrenches and a workshop dripping in spokes from the ceiling. Sometimes two per neighbourhood. They charge a few hundred yen per job, or part, rather than the package service you're sold in London. Best of all, it's a face-to-face transaction. You get to know the guy. He's the bike guy, and he's your best friend on a monsoon Saturday when you pancake your tire. In London, the mechanic works in a separate room.

I called the makers of my bike, got the address for a family-run independent place down the road in Chalk Farm and ran it in yesterday. First thing the guy does is measure with a chain wear indicator pulled from his pocket. Next he asks if there were any particular problems. I explain the brakes, he tests the brakes. I explain the noisy bottom bracket, he tests it til it makes a noise then says, 'That noise?', I say, 'Yes, that noise'. I picked it up this morning and it rides like a dream. I took it along the canal for a change.

NEXT TIME

5 pints or a bottle of rosé.

Strawberry muffins, underpass near Box Hill, a dry evening film screening at Somerset House

My Boss came in late today, she usually does. It's her way of saying she's Boss. She's not really Boss, but the Real Boss is largely excluded from the day-to-day running of the business, so the Boss is in charge.

First thing she did she came in and she shouted at the New Guy. New Guy's been here about a month now, and he doesn't know who drinks tea and who doesn't drink tea at the morning meeting. Either that, or he's just being polite when he asks who would like to drink tea.

So he got shouted at and copped a scaly tail swing to the head. The Boss missed with her first effort, knocked one of the cups of tea off the table. Second time round she swung her tail twice as hard. Whoosh (miss), crack (cup of tea), sploosh (tea emptying), wallop (New Guy's head), whimper (New Guy). She hit him so hard she left a big red bruise on her tail.

Now every time she sees that big red bruise she reminds herself she should be angry about something and her whole tail glows red all over and she starts lashing out at things in her office. Bang crash gnash GNEuRFGh whizz whee crash krash etc etc. It gives the office a weird kind of avant-garde, percussive soundtrack. Not altogether uninteresting but a little unsettling. Who knows when she'll break through the walls.

Do they come in kevlar?

I'd been waiting for the moment for a little more than a year. I knew a man in Tokyo whose stated goal in life was to develop a pair of pants that could be washed, then dried with three swings around his head. He was a pants guy. He had filing cabinets filled with all manner of different pants. He really knew his fabrics. The samurai pants range was designed as something a wife might gift her husband to wear on that really important day at the office or for that crucial board presentation. They were a success- they even made it onto boing boing.

One of my last days in Tokyo he laid them all out, the samurai pants range, and he invited me to pick out my favourite pair. So I did, and they didn't surface again for a year; I hadn't forgotten about them, it's just the moment had never come. There's no board room in my office. There's only one room, really.

Recently I had an interview for a front-of-camera job. This was the moment. I wore them, and I like to think I really knocked that interview out of the park. Throughout the interview, I couldn't stop thinking about my pants (I think maybe I did need an L rather than M after all). One mighty swing. Bam. Here's my CV, yes it's all quite true, why thank you I'm proud of that yes. Didn't get the job though. They wanted someone with more front of camera experience.

A new post

Work has been slow. Typically I spend six hours of my day in front of the computer screen, one hour in front of a television screen, hovering over my lunch, and about one hour in total shuttling between the kitchen, the toilet and the fire escape, where I stare at planes coming and going from Heathrow airport.

Recently I've spent a good portion of the computer time looking at friends' blogs. It breaks up the day, it stops me from clock-watching and also planning dinner for the eleven-thousandth time. Unless of course I'm looking at a recipe on a friend's blog, in which case I catch myself thinking about dinner again. And it's interesting keeping up with old friends' news that way, reading posts, old posts (especially old posts), those recipes, travel tips and diaries, hobby notes, reflections and all kinds of unique experiences. Friends from Japan in particular are scattered far and wide. Two went back to America and married. Another two went back and had a baby. One from Tokyo is preparing to join another in California, to begin art school. Another couple are in New Zealand, having come through teacher training. Another friend has been writing flash fiction, one piece every day for the whole of 2010.

I've admired a friend's digital space for a while too. It has his own domain name, large and beautiful images and a clear, user-friendly format. It's not a run-of-the-mill blogger or tumblr. I am enormously envious, but sadly for all my time in front of a computer I am unable to fully harness the power contained in that black, oblong tower down by my feet and design my own. Google has been my go-to point for any question I've had since about 2007, but for designing my own blog I itch to join a class or take a course or grab a geek and chain him to my desk til he teaches me everything he knows.

So as a next-best, I jazzed up this blog a bit. I added some widgets and shifted the other things (whatever you call them) about. Then I deleted the widgets and shifted the other things back. Like you might spend an afternoon shifting heavy furniture around, just to see what it looks like the other way round in your room, before shifting it all back again and rewarding yourself with a beer for all the hard work. Hm. Maybe I'll have a beer with dinner tonight. Dinner..