"You are the music while the music lasts"

As I spent much longer than I had intended this afternoon updating my iPod, I began to wonder what my music collection says about me.  What do you think your music collection says about you?  Not literally, obviously, because that would be weird, but how (if at all) do you think it represents you as a person?  My iTunes library contains a diverse selection of the good, the bad and the simply embarrassing!


How intensely I listen to music can vary, but I love how that apparently simple combination of music and lyrics can enhance, frame and even alter my mood and so I've decided to write a few posts loosely based on the '30 Day Song Challenge'.


F-F-F-Friday!


When I leave the office on a Friday evening and make my way across London Bridge amongst the incessant stream of commuters, I like nothing more than to listen to something upbeat and uplifting.  Recently my songs of choice have included:

1. Cee Lo Green's "Bright Lights Bigger City";
2. Coldplay's "Viva la Vida";
3. Florence + The Machine's "Dog Days are Over"; and
4. Elbow's magnificent "One Day Like This" (one of my Favourite Songs in the World Ever).

Whilst this little selection (invariably taken from my "Purchased" playlist) probably says more about how I feel about my job than anything else, I relish feeling my shoulders begin to drop and the cares of the working week drift away as I approach London Bridge tube station with Tower Bridge to my left ,and the lights of Canary Wharf glittering in the distance (seriously: if you've never been to London Bridge at rush hour, you should make a point of going. Whether morning or evening, that mass of be-suited people is something to behold (and, unsurprisingly, popular with photographers)).  Although I know that those cares and anxieties will have wormed their way back by 8pm on Sunday evening, at that moment that may as well be another world away...

C

Set[ting] foot on one's own country as a foreign land

Walking today across Covent Garden piazza towards Trafalgar Square, I thought to myself: I need to do this more often.  I need to be a tourist in London.  Except for a year that I spent back in Cambridge to study for my MPhil, I have lived in London since September 2005 and there are too many places in London that I still haven't seen.  Today, I scored one of those off the list.  Well, I say 'list', I haven't actually made one yet, but I intend to.


I went to the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden. On a Saturday. At half term.  Normally I do my best to avoid London's tourists (part of the reason why there are quite a few places I haven't been to...) but it was one of those bright, crispy days so off I went.

The Transport Museum was great and is definitely worth a visit; especially if, like me, the fact that TfL manages to keep most of the tube network running at all is fascinating.


I spend my life with a pen in hand, marking up documents.  Unbelievably, there is a prescribed sequence of colours for the order this happens in with a different colour for each 'turn' of the document.  I think it goes red, green, blue, orange, violet.  Lawyers spend their lives point-scoring by noticing extra spaces and missing capital letters.  I do think, however, that our innate pedantry can be A Good Thing. I even like to think that I notice things that some other people miss: these bricks were on the side of a Pizza Hut (of all places).

And, amidst the hubbub of Trafalgar Square,  this beautiful, partly frozen fountain.

So, here's to appreciating our local areas with the eyes of a tourist (and the lens of a camera) and to scoring some more of those as-yet unseen places off the 'must see' list (once I actually get round to making it).


C

All that glisters is not gold (take 2)

So...I spent my lunch break writing a new post based on a quote from The Merchant of Venice and this evening noticed a typo in the title and, in fixing it, managed to delete the whole thing. Lesson learned.

I'm not going to attempt to rehash it but I also think that it is a bit of a shame since I don't think it hurts to be reminded just how deceptive appearances can be.

When people hear that I am a City lawyer they are, invariably, impressed.  They imagine bright, shiny towers of capitalism, champagne receptions, business lunches, high-powered meetings, designer suits, designer bags, designer shoes...  Whilst some of these elements are accurate (the little lights of truth in the stereotype), the reality is much more prosaic: hour upon hour behind a desk, hundreds of emails a day, pressure, dull meetings with people who are much too fond of the sound of their own voice, time-recording etc etc.

I was seduced by the 'milk round' and thought that I was fulfilling my potential.  Little did I know that a fat pay cheque and a high-powered job did not necessarily mean that I was fulfilling my potential.  The size of your success is not equal to the size of your salary.  To me, success is doing a job that you love and I realise now that I need to do what I love. 

At a book launch last week, I was told that you should endeavour to do a job where your values, passions and strengths overlap and I am lucky enough to know what that job is; unfortunately it's not being a City lawyer...

C

Everybody has to start somewhere.

I've been thinking about starting a blog for a while now.  Not because I think that what I have to say is particularly interesting but for the following reasons (amongst others):

1. I've been wanting to do some more writing;

2. I've been inspired by the blogs and websites of some friends and people I follow on Twitter; and

3. I'm planning some fundamental changes to my life and I'm hoping that, as a means of creative expression, it will help me make sense of what is going on.

So here goes.  In the words of Nina Simone, "It's a new dawn; it's a new day; it's a new life for me" (which, frustratingly wouldn't all fit as the title of my blog).  Bear with me!

C