Out of the blue I got a phone call from Will asking if I wanted to go go-karting yesterday and it didn’t take much convincing. I didn’t even realise we had a go-kart track in the Bridge, but apparently we do, and for the hour or so we spent there was much enjoyed. It’s not something I’ve tried before (not for not wanting) and found the whole experience much like paintball; great fun but one of those things you’ll only ever do every so often, so I was keen to make the most of it. I’d definitely do it again one of these days, though the unusual surge of adrenaline in the morning meant I had to drink coke all afternoon to stop myself from falling asleep.

In the evening I helped Dad assemble a vast collection of parts for his new compressor. It involved visits to Brierley Hill, Netherton and Wollaston before we finally got the whole apparatus together. While we were up near Quarry Bank we went over to one of the family graves which hadn’t been visited for by anyone for years. Despite being 99 years old this year, the memorial is still intact and good to see still standing. Only four or five of the nearby graves (out of many hundreds) are still tended and most have been vandalised, collapsed or fallen apart. It’s the first time I’d seen it and it’s a pretty impressive bit of stonework, put together for my great-great grandfather (Edward) in 1909, then used for his wife (Emma) and their son (Richard, my Gran’s dad who died four days after she was born, yet whom she still eulogises for).

I love this sort of stuff - not the macabre aspect of the graveyards, but seeing things that are genuinely important to your family history. There was something striking about this, probably the biggest memorial in the whole cemetery, in the highest plot, but now so wrapped up in brambles you cannot get to it without climbing through trees and round collapsed stonework. It’s completely lost to most people, but thankfully remains intact apart from some minor ageing. The other thing that intrigues me about this stuff is that I simply would not have existed without the people who lie in that grave, buried almost a century ago; people not even my 95 year old Grandmother ever really knew. And yet there it stands still.

I finally completed all the paperwork I needed to, created some interesting vector work and took a trip up to Sheffield to organise a new project this week. Despite this, it doesn’t quite feel like Easter yet - it seems to early - and I think next weekend is likely to be more relaxing than this one (says the man who’s organised a photography trip to mid-Wales).

Last weekend was the largest Multipack meetup that we’ve had for a good while. As well as a good turn out of regular faces, there were also a large assortment of new ones, and despite some awkward seating arrangements and the lack of rugby being shown (the projector was broken) it was a very good afternoon.

Talking of rugby, I can only be pleased at the final England game in the Six Nations, however the disappointment at our general/earlier performance doesn’t inspire confidence. I’m prepared to be a bit more optimistic, but really, how did we manage to go and lose the Calcutta cup? Come to think of it, I’m glad the projector was broken.

I’ve got a mountain of forms to be filled out this week. With what can only be described as a marathon event of bureaucratic gymnastics ahead of me, changing one or two details with Companies House is clearly not as simple as I had hoped.

A client invited me to a business seminar earlier this week, and so I asked Will if he wanted to come along. We had to get over to Villa Park, but it was a good evening, and it provoked some in depth discussions about the types of work we are both involved in. I’m not one for schemes and things, but the psychology and profiling techniques were fascinating and I definitely was able to gain some perspective on my own situation right now.

I’ve made a couple of gem-like discoveries this week on the software front. BluePhone Elite has solved my problem of writing text messages quickly while working. I believe it can also allow me to take calls through the iMac too, but I’ve yet to figure out how to do that. It does pop up and tell me who is calling though. If there is one thing about phone communication that inspires a rage in me, it’s txting, especially when speaking is a more effective method of communication. Admittedly, there are times when a text works - a time, a number, a two word confirmation, but my inclination to create an essay or use long words make predictive text and tiny keys only confirm that these are the tools of Beelzebub. I bet he uses text messaging for every piece of communication.

The second piece of software that has solved a problem that until now I couldn’t explain fixes a niggling problem with my Macbook. I didn’t realise, but the having to wait up to thirty seconds for my laptop to go to sleep isn’t a consequence of age - it turns out that it has to save all the memory to disc at the moment. As a matter of course I put in the full amount of memory possible into all my computers, and didn’t realise this is why the process has become agonisingly slow of recent - it’s moving 2GB to hard disc every time I close the lid.

Well as a person who’s laptop spends more time on his desk than on the road, this is something I’m prepared to cut out, and with the SmartSleep preference pane the Mac now (once again) sleeps the instant I close the lid. Of course, on the move it’s more important to use the hibernate feature, so when the battery power drops below 20% it automatically turns it back on for safety reasons, but it’s bliss once again being able to flip the thing closed and put it directly into the carry case without having to wait for it to brace itself for some kind of nuclear disaster.

This is good news.

This morning I received a parcel that I’ve been waiting on for around a week. When I say a week, what I really mean is two years, but lets not get too technical.

I’ve been meaning to get a proper printed copy of my dissertation since I wrote it back in 2006. After the uni kept the one copy that I hand-bound myself, I hadn’t got anything tangible left, and considering it’s one of my favourite bits of work that I produced during my studies (for a variety of reasons, not in the least that it was on a topic that none of the staff in my department had a clue about), I really wanted a hard copy for myself.

The original was bound in a wrap around cover and held together with some brass binding screws, but I couldn’t be hassled with going through the rigmarole of pillar drilling and lining up of all the bits and pieces involved again, so about a year ago I decided I’d get it professionally done with short-run online printers, Lulu.

Well, in total I probably spent two weekends worth of time wrangling with the document, trying to convert my highly formatted text into a size that could be printed on, but failed repeatedly times before finally producing a copy that was passable. And so it went to press.

So this morning when I peeled back the layers of bubble wrap I was really pleased to find one case bound copy of my dissertation. Maybe the cover could have been a little less glossy (by I can’t remember having that option to choose a satin finish), but aside from that I’m really pleased I’ve got closure and a decent copy of the work.

My advice if you ever consider using Lulu; always design to their templates from the word go; never try to work it the other way around, especially if you have in the region of 80 pages with illustrations, custom margins and things that inevitably will fall apart the minute you have to resize anything. Otherwise, the process was straight forward enough, and the end product looks top notch.

Much like the bloke in the shed from The Fast Show, this week I have been mostly making a light tent. Well that’s not exactly true. Mostly I’ve been doing other things, but about one hour of my time has been dedicated to this little project which is meant to transform a free box into a £400 photographer’s light tent. I’ve not had time to test it yet, and I’m still missing a couple of critical parts (a high range bulb and a sheet of bristol board) but aside from those, it’s looking dapper.

Last weekend Will’s brother was back from France in time for his birthday (due to an skiing injury) and so we ended up in the bridge. George brought along some home-brew cider (always good) and Gwyz made a long awaited appearance and told us he’s going to become a solicitor.

I’ve also been back at the alma mater. Their annual careers convention took me back once again, and once again I made the most of the free buffet and time to catch up with some folk I’ve not seen in a while. For various other reasons I’ve been back over there probably four times in two weeks, which is more than I have for a couple of years.

I’m digging some newly-found music at the moment. Goldfrapp’s A&E wasn’t an immediate hit for me, but has grown (this is the second track with the same title that’s recently caught my attention… for the other, see Patrick Wolf’s fantastic album, The Magic Position). Also I’m very much liking The Cat Empire, who I’ve not come across before but as a fan of Fat Freddy and the Easy Star All Stars, I was assured I’d like their self-titled album (even if it is a few years old) and I did.

I’ve got tickets to see Rich Hall in a few weeks time, and hoping to sort out a couple of other stand up acts who I’ve been wanting to see for a while. My brain is going overtime on organising the bigger aspects of my life at the moment, and it’s exciting, just for want of some actual progress.

Gran’s finally reached the point where she’s had to go into a residential home, although she doesn’t really understand it. After a fall that put her in hospital a few weeks back, she’d pack up her belongings every day and sit and wait by the ward reception for Dad to arrive at visiting time, much to the amusement of the nurses who couldn’t persuade that she had to stay for a few more days. When he finally arrived, she’d offer him a drink and sandwiches from the bar, which was probably the most confusing part for all of them, as there isn’t one. Although she can think all right in the immediacy, it’s just context and remembering what’s happened that baffles her. I’ve always thought it but the closer to 95 she gets, the more she cuts the shape and temperament of the grandmother figure from the old Giles cartoons.

Tomorrow I buy some bristol board and a lightbulb.

Beyond Seven Years In Tibet: My life before, during and after has been the third book that I have read by Heinrich Harrer, and probably the last for sometime. Being his autobiography, it really is more than just an expansion upon his most famous work, Seven Years In Tibet, and the other book I recently finished, Return to Tibet.

It’s odd that I never showed any great interest in his writing before, or really had any knowledge of this man’s life. It wasn’t until after my time in Tibet, India and Nepal that I actually got around to reading any of it. Most of the volunteers who we met out there had already read the book, leaving me a little out of the loop until I got back home and started my way through some of it.

This version in English was only published in July, and it took me 6 months for a copy to arrive. I rarely use the local library, but it saved me £25 as ithey had to purchase it specially as there were no copies in the system when I first asked after it.

Harrer penned the original German copy of the book back in 2002, but his death at the age of 93 (this time two years ago) meant that he didn’t live to see the UK release.

The book is very much in the same distinctive literary style that all his writing takes. Incredibly matter of fact, with little in the way of emotion or ornamentation, it makes makes for text with exceptional clarity, although at times you do wish he would give away just a little more. I felt more satisfied with this book than with the previous two for a couple of reasons. Firstly, this book really does set the scene. His childhood life in Austria, his (Olympic) sporting career, and his successful first ascent of the famous Eigerwand mountain in the lead up to the second world war (which is interesting as it is from a German perspective). It also covers his time spent at Dehra Dun civilian prisoner of war camp in India, and then joins up with Seven Years as he makes his way deep into the Himylaya.

His time in Tibet provides an extraordinary account, and after visiting the place, and comparing it to the photographs and accounts of previous explorers, I can’t help but find the whole idea of pre-occupation Tibet as being a truly magical and romantic existence.

But of course that was all to end, and after returning home to meet his son for the first time, he then tells of the many expeditions and photographic assignments he undertook in the following 40 years. And this is where I became truly captivated with this book. I had read a lot about Tibet by the time I started this, and I’m glad he doesn’t dedicate more than he needs to the subject - if you want to read about that you clearly should read his 1957 book. But for all the details of his experience in the Belgium Congo, with the final days of the remote tribes of New Guinea, along the Amazon, Borneo, Africa, India and Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet once more, then you need this volume.

It amazes me that after his time in Tibet he spent so much time networking with the mountaineering/explorating elite - encounters with Sherpa Tenzing, Edmund Hillary, King Leopold III and others - and to think that all of this occurred in only the past forty years is astounding. Mainly because it’s hard enough to believe Pygmy tribes living in a practically Neolithic existence still survived well into the mid to late 20th century. His encounters with native inhabitants in still highly unchartered and often dangerous lands and times seem impossible now, and his love of the outdoors and for ethnological study really comes to the foreground as his passion - something I don’t think that is so easily picked up from his most famous, earlier writings.

Clearly he experienced some distress in the later part of his life when journalist started digging up his past, but as I can’t seem to find much discussion about this and it’s hard to draw any conclusions. If anything, this is one aspect of his life that I still am unsure I truly understand. By the time he got around to producing his memoirs he seems to have been content with his achievements, and I think I’m now content with my exploration of his life.

A truly remarkable man who led an extraordinary existence and never seemed to waste any of his 93 years.