Random Thoughts 7: on being down and more random than most

Well it was all a bit too good to be true wasn’t it?

Having gone on about how well I was coping with my election defeat, how it was time for new plans and looking to the future, and with a burst of energy going into new projects and writing on this blog, on reflection it seems inevitable that I would have some sort of crash. Well it happened. The last few weeks I’ve been a bit rubbish, both mentally and physically.

I’ve had a major change to my life imposed on me and it was perhaps a bit naive to expect my reaction to that to be only positive. So I’ve been on a bit of a down slope. Lacking energy, getting behind with tasks, over worrying about things and generally not being on top form. This of course includes failing to blog, the last post here being back on the 13th July.

That doesn’t mean that my general feeling of being OK with things has changed. That still holds true, it is just that I am a bit more bruised by the experience than I thought. I think the jury is still out on whether turning 40 at the end of June has anything to do with it. It also doesn’t mean that nothing positive hasn’t been happening. In fact quite a few cool things have happened since I last blogged.

I’ve been on a short business trip up to Yorkshire, wished the outgoing head teacher of the junior school where I am a governor good luck on her retirement, attended the lovely wedding of a good friend, and achieved one of my ambitions by seeing Eddie Izzard live. I’ve also been getting used to my new iPad – although too much of that has been becoming addicted to the game Settlers – and trying out various apps, I’ve started experimenting with Google+, and I became friends with a cat on Facebook. More seriously I have been watching with fascination the development of the News International scandal and the political reaction to it as well as the unfolding of the financial crises in Europe and the US.

I have also been collecting various random links, some as inspiration for blog posts that now will never be written, that I will now dump here:

Firstly, I didn’t get a chance to mention that my post ‘Meet the Bedford Labour Councillor the Luton Labour Party want to throw off the Police Authority‘ got this blog into Liberal Democrat Voice’s The Golden Dozen. This reminds me that I will be posting a, delayed, update on this story shortly.

Also posted on Lib Dem Voice was this video. I know it is now a cliche to refer to a West Wing clip whenever there is a big US political story but this does just feel so appropriate:

Talking of the school where I am a governor, I have written about my small part in the merger of Downside Infants and Juniors here, but it is still a bit of a shock that the new primary school will be opening its doors in only a months time. The latest news, as reported in the local press, is that the new school building is open and working well.

One of my long standing drop of the hat rants is about how we should respect and value the suffragists far more than we do the suffragettes. However I doubt that I’ve ever put it as neatly as Jennie has in her post for Emmeline Pankhurst’s birthday.

Other new iPad users who may be getting frustrated with some of the limitations with it’s built in web browser may find the following article I wrote useful; Bookmarklets in Safari on your iPad.

Probably my favourite living author, Douglas Coupland, wrote this article on the 100th birthday of Marshall McCluhan and what his famous phrase ‘the medium is the message’ means for us today. I also rather enjoyed James Graham’s slapping down of a journalist whose research seemed to consist of nothing more than looking at the first result of a Google search.

Finally, like most people I was horrified by the tragic events in Norway. It is difficult to know what say about something that awful, but I was moved by what Alex has written on his blog;

“Whatever party you’re in, whatever tradition you come from, whatever philosophy you believe in, now’s the time to encourage young people to stand up and be counted, not to tell them what a terrible place the world is and that all they can do is cower under batons and battier laws.”

This content was originally posted on my old Strange Thoughts blog.