Business and busyness

Both continue. Completed my fourth week at the new job, and while the gradient on the learning curve remains steep, my legs aren't giving out. Off to Sheffield this Thursday to meet one of our larger clients. I've still mostly been *through* The North on the way to Scotland, so I'm looking forward to having a quick look. Necessarily quick as I'll spend most of my time there in a meeting, of course.

Much else continues besides. Hannah & I have taken advantage of the sunshine and strolled - my preferred mode of transport - a few areas of London we're less familiar with. Apart from that we've checked out:

• Synecdoche, New York. My twittereview will serve here: impenetrable tosh. I love his earlier films, but this is too ambitious, too long and too insufferable. Maybe I'm too stupid to get it, or maybe the emperor has no clothes: either way, I don't really care.
• His Dark Materials - the brilliant National Theatre adaptation, a new production of which is currently touring regional theatres. I was fortunate enough to see the fabulous original production at the National. This touring production has necessarily stripped down staging, but otherwise preserves all the wonder and skill of the original, including the fantastic puppets used to represent daemons and armoured bears. It sounds awful: six hours of children's fantasy with puppets, a huge cast of characters and complicated metaphysical themes, but it works amazingly well. It necessarily whips through the epic story at pace, but you never feel cheated like so many did by the lame film version. See it if you get the chance.
• Yesterday we made a short visit to the annual Day Of Dance, where the Westminster Morris Men host Morris teams from around the country for, well, dancing. In the day. There is, I am reliably informed, beer in the evening. I'm afraid I'm generally indifferent and often hostile to folk dancing from any country, but I was impressed with a geordie team who tangle themselves in knots with a kind of sword thing. Good fun. Following that we walked about 30 metres to a candlelit evening of baroque favourites at St-Martin-In-The-Fields. Luvverly.

Now it's sunny and lovely and I'm going to try and fix my bloody iTunes. Again.