The future's so bright... hah.

Many years ago I used to work for a small consultancy business that specialised in organisational development and occupational stress, and one of the few things that I remember from this time is that one of the main causes of stress is a person's lack of control (real or perceived) over their life. Why mention this? Well, because I'm not feeling particularly in control at the moment. Like a child's balloon in a hurricane I seem to be buffeted from one thing to another, taking knocks along the way. Whilst wearing my "pater familias" hat I guess that I should be steering the family ship with a firm hand on the tiller and a steely gaze to the horizon, but at the moment the seas seem to be a little too stormy to do anything other than lash myself to the mainmast and hang on. Work as an independent consultant is a very movable feast - you are either working or not, earning or not, and the decision as to whether you work or earn is not entirely in your own hands. A contract lost, a client in trouble, and suddenly you are in the business of looking for work. Not that this is the case at the moment, but the future looks ever more uncertain. I mean, Woolworths for god's sake - who would have thought it? I've seen the effects of this first hand - a company on the same business park as one of my clients supplies Woolworths - last week they laid off over half of their staff (close to 100 people I'm told), and this is only the beginning. A family member works in the car trade - and their dealership sold 2 cars in the last month with a profit margin of £60. The stories of wrecked businesses keep on appearing. God knows what the next year is going to be like. I really don't know how bad the recession/depression is going to get, but right now I strongly feel the need to get a plan together. And this is where it all falls down I guess - how can you plan for uncertainty? Do you just hunker down, cut your costs and hope that it will all blow over? Do you look at more radical alternatives? I think that most people will be hunkering down, which makes me want to go in another direction. If all turns to ordure, I don't think that the social security system will be strong enough to cope - so any safety net needs to be of my own making but what? I think that the answers will be found in the past - right now I'm researching the success stories of the great depression - I'll let you know how I get on.

Haiku

Snow on the cherry tree
A single leaf remains
Solitude or death?

Everywhere you go (Always take the weather with you) Or "a few days with Jesus"

Well, what a week. When I heard I was going to Spain I was less than excited - it was, after all, work and not a holiday, and living on your own in a cheap hotel for four days can be a bit of a drag. So I didn't exactly have a joyous spring in my step when I set off. Overall though, the experience was not as bad as it could have been and better than I had feared. Arriving in Malaga at 8 o'clock at night things did not get off to a good start. I picked up my hire car and quicly realised that;

a) I had not driven a manual car for over 6 years.

b) The steering wheel and gearstick are on the wrong side. (Although this turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because all the drivers drive on the wrong side of the road, so it sort of makes sense.)

c) The sat nav maps on my phone were at least 3 years out of date - and the display might just as well have displayed a skull and crossbones with the message "Here be Dragons" for all the use it was.

d) It was dark.

e) It was pissing down with rain.

So, to a merry accompaniment of shouts of encouragement from Spanish road users I lurched, juddered and swerved my way around Malaga until I spotted the road that I needed to take. It is a measure of my ability to quickly acclimatise that I was only lost for an hour or so. Some time later, I found the hotel. Then, looking for a parking spot, I got lost again and found myself on the motorway, speeding away from the hotel at a great rate of knots. By this time I was a seasoned Spanish driver, so it only took me about 45 minutes to find the hotel again. Cue a calming beer, and off to my room. I decided to use the USB dongle to pick up my emails, as the Internet connection in the hotel cost €24 (!) this proved to be a wise choice, as my Internet usage only came to some £35.....um. The next day it was off to the hills, where I was to be recording the Spanish Voice Over for a computer game.

The Studio

The studio was Little piece of hippy heaven snuggled into the foothills of whatever mountains were looming over us (note to self - pay more attention to geography). It was originally set up be a chap named Usul - a friend of Ravi Shankar's who died a couple of years ago, and was a place that had proudly earned the epithet "ramshackle". Take away the recording equipment and the tipsy wooden beams and placeholder roof would have not looked out of place in Hobbiton. The grounds were studded with orange, grapefruit, lime, clementine that you could just pick straight from the trees. I know, I can hear your thoughts already, but let's be fair, for most of us, the natural environment of the citrus fruit is the supermarket shelf, isn't it? In addition, there were the signs of another recently harvested crop which I would have found much more interesting had I needed to feel at one with life the universe and everything.... Inside, propped in a corner was a sitar that was once played by Ravi Shankar himself! Like any right minded person, I picked it up in the hope that Sitar playing skills had magically descended upon me. Alas no.

So, to work. The work would have gone swimmingly but for the constant interruptions of the local cockerel - every couple of minutes the recording would have to stop whilst we ran outside and shooed away the bloody thing. These things happen. The 2 actors, Jesus and Javier, were absolute stars, and made the trip for me - anyone who introduces themselves with the phrase " you are from England - you know David Icke?" can't fail to be interesting, or baffling. Or both. The work progressed, actors made sounds, we recorded them and all was well (cocks excepted).

After recording, I followed the same routine, hotel, shower, stroll, tapas, beer, hotel. A word about tapas. The tapas in Spain is Brilliant. (capital B intended), whether it's the chorizo, the anchovies, the octopus, the chicken livers, the little kebab things, the salads, the ham, the meatballs, the fried breadcrumbs, the potatoes in "stuff".. well, I'm sure that you get the point. For anyone planning to stay in San Pedro, the best place I found was La Bodega - relaxed, traditional, friendly, yummy and no Brits.

And so it went - having done my research and found that Estepona rejoiced in a year round climate of around 19 degrees, I was not best equipped for the freezing conditions. Evidently it is very rare for there to be snow. Really. And now back to the home front - delayed projects tapping me ever more urgently on the shoulder, things I really should be doing. And here I sit - blogging. Well, no more. To work it is. Until the next time, hasta la vista!