h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In the course of an entire month of journalling, some days are going to be more worthy of a write-up than others. Today was so utterly unremarkable that I'm rummaging through my memories of it, trying to find a single seed of interestingness from which to grow a journal entry, and I'm coming up with very little. I don't want to resort to recipes yet; I might need that dodge some other day.

So let's see. What happened...

I had my usual commute to the office. This passed without incident.

We had computer problems on and off all day. This is not uncommon at the moment.

My offsider did a moderately dopey thing. This is particularly normal, I'm afraid.

There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth about the cleaning roster for the coffee machine. I'm not sure what the issue was, or whose fault it was, as I don't drink coffee and tuned most of the noise out. But it does serve to highlight how many of my colleagues are insufferable when not adequately caffeinated.

I went to lunch. I went to the pharmacy. I went back to the office. No, nothing worth writing about there.

After a reasonable length of time I came home. I sat down and typed this twaddle.

And now, what *really* happened..?

Sadly, I can't go into the details of what I really did all day. It was actually rather interesting in parts and extremely interesting in others, but I can't discuss it. Politics, you see.

So why am I going on with all this rubbish?

I think my point, which I hadn't identified when I started typing, is that my journal - maybe anyone's journal - is only half a record. Maybe the untold story is the interesting one. Maybe not. But it can be fun sometimes, imagining what fills the gaps between the things that are spoken about.

And it can also be fun spinning a journal out of nothing at all.

Ivan.

Ivan, you have a gift of writing in a way that actually puts a picture of the way things are into my mind. Even the fact that you can't record publicly the actual 'business' you do at work is immaterial. I see the office politics and the incidentals. These, in fact, are what holds the daily grind together, like rubber bands holding a sheaf of papers.

Oooh rubber bands holding papers - won't they (the papers) get all wrinkled? Wouldn't you be better off with a folder of some sort?

Wrinkles add character to otherwise dull documents.

At my first ever public service job, we actually had a giant reel of genuine red tape that was used to tie up bundles of forms before they were sent to the archives. The tape was a soft, loosely-woven cotton and it was more of a muted magenta than a true red, but it was the real deal. I festooned the manager's office with the stuff one Christmas...

Lanza - yes, that's the effect I was hoping for. A couple of actual details, a couple of allusions to things happening out of shot, and the picture fills itself in. Of course, it helps that an office is an office is an office, when you get down to it.

Great post Ivan. Had me laughing too.

Ivan, do you think you're spending too much time with politicians?
We're used to them droning on for hours whilst actually saying nothing.

Reminds me strongly of The Day Before you Came - (Safe for Work)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HnOFwqpLRQ

A fascinating insight into, er, nothing. Well done!

You don't drink coffee?? I guess you're fortunate not to have this addiction. And not to have to clean the pot and whatnot.

>>But it does serve to highlight how many of my colleagues are insufferable when not adequately caffeinated.<<

That would be me. I try to get up and drink before anyone else gets eyes. And I do take my turns in cleaning the coffee making tools.

I, too, like your image-filled writings, and I also have had the pleasure of listening to and discussing with you live.

We did have some great laughs, didn't we?

Are you writing anything else but secret administrative stuff and journals? I really think you could write a novel of modern time Australia as an equivalent of Arthur Upfield's crime novels and short stories about life in Australia during the 30es, 40es and 50es...

Thanks everyone.

BMT - mercifully I have little direct contact with politicians, but a bit of 'Yes, Minister' does seep through into my daily life. It's unavoidable and awfully hard to eradicate.

Ben, that was an Abba song I didn't know. How odd, I thought I'd absorbed them all by osmosis. In fact... actually, no, I'll hold that memory aside and turn it into a journal one day. Tomorrow, maybe.

Hellbound - no, I've never liked coffee. Good coffee being brewed smells divine, but I think it tastes like an ashtray. I know I'm odd, and I probably am missing out on something or other.

Tartaronne - do come back someday. At the moment I am writing endless official/bureaucratic things but I do want to write fiction one day. I'm storing up ideas. It will happen.

I think what I latched on to the most, in this post, is the following:

>>I think my point, which I hadn't identified when I started typing, is that my journal - maybe anyone's journal - is only half a record. Maybe the untold story is the interesting one. Maybe not. But it can be fun sometimes, imagining what fills the gaps between the things that are spoken about<<

I always love that kind of thing. Making up the story from the bits you have - or even just looking at the bits of story, and knowing they belonged to something larger, which I could never fully fathom. This is why I love used postcards so much. You get a little fragment from the life of a complete stranger. It could be fascinating or mundane, but the one thing that is certain is that it's just a tiny piece of the whole - the very tip of an iceberg you will never be able to fully explore. And I think it's wonderful.
(I would plug my blog here, but I have such a haphazard posting schedule there that I would feel guilty...)

Oh, go on, plug it anyway. I *like* haphazard things.

Virginia Woolf used to make up stories about the lives of people she saw on the train, filling in the gaps where no real information was available. This works as a way to pass time on buses, too.

Something always comes of nothing... we come from nothing... return to nothing... but the nothing must be soemthing.... at very least it is 'nothing', and of course, as we can call it 'nothing', then it immediately comes 'something', like a giant swirling vortex of empty space... tlurnign and twisting and flipping and dancing unseen... unnoticed, until the point at which we notice it....

I always end up sitting next to the bus-nutter whenver I travel on a bus I useually manage to attract the nutter in the pub too when I'm there... Its like I've some kind of 'nutter magnet' I used to pick up 'fractions of sentences' wehn I was out more regularly on a dairly basis, going to college or uni, and construct strange 'somethings' up out of these disjointed and fragmented bits of sentences from a whole load of people, and manafest them into soemthing attritubed to whoever on that day turned out to be hthe biggest pub, bus, or general nutter... Helps pass the time

Yes, it does help pass time.

I'm just awfully afraid that I might be the bus nutter one day...

We can, all but hope, that one day, we each, through careful existance and forethought of actions, are able to elivate ourselves, to the hights of the true bus-nutter status I'm practising my 'can I talk to you about....' line

>>Virginia Woolf used to make up stories about the lives of people she saw on the train, filling in the gaps where no real information was available. This works as a way to pass time on buses, too.<<

You reminded me of a very lovely song.
'Laughing on the bus, playing games with the faces
She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy
I said be careful, his bowtie is really a camera'...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO3gWIGzH3A

I've never taken any _really_ long train/bus rides (unlike my sister, who travelled all over China in public transport where an 8-hour ride is considered small fries, or Dan who once took a train ride from Seattle to NYC) but there are some songs that just make me think of this sort of experience, sitting in a bus and staring out at long stretches of field around sunrise... and this is perhaps the best one.


As for the blog, it's here: http://foundsandfragments.blogspot.com
I like doing it a lot, but I haven't updated in over a month, and don't know when I'll get to it next. Just so you know. (No apologies, though... http://foundsandfragments.blogspot.com/2010/06/introduction.html#WhyNoUpdates )