SPEAKING

Usually the first day of the month is entirely taken up with running stuff for monthly reports which takes up most of the day, is mostly slightly dull, tedious and predictable and only interesting when something is being amended or automated or when something goes tits-up. We weren't even able to log in to the system from which the majority of the data is extracted this morning so had a slightly different day than might have otherwise been experienced. When things break or aren't available in the morning there's always an associated risk that they might suddenly come back on-line in the mid-afternoon and that people will then want stuff out of them before the end of the day; in this case people were still fixing hardware faults at lunchtime which made it entirely impossible for anything to be back in place that day with the result that quite a few people drifted away as soon as was politely possible, probably to go and sit in the sun but in my case to go and sit in the shade where the sun couldn't get me.

Popped to see Sleep Furiously at the Cameo as it sounded interesting (untraditional documentary about random changing-life happenings in a Welsh village with noises from the Aphex Twin) and turned out to look and sound excellent. Lots of care-taken shots of random farming, codger and community happenings, the activities of the mobile library and the mobile librarian's reticence to start using a laptop to keep track of borrowings and the weather. Unfortunately there were a couple of people a couple of rows in front blatantly and repeatedly speaking. After a few shushes, a "could you please not talk?" and the eventual "would you shut up please?" they eventually got up and left just after the nice shot of a couple of threads of sheep wandering from right to left across the frame, though whether because they were being asked to shut up or because they didn't like the film is unknown. If it was because they were being asked to be quiet it was possibly the first truly successful instance of quiet-requestment (where the perpetrators didn't get to see the film as well as everyone else (all three of us, widely-spaced) getting to be able to concentrate on it). I was surprised that they turned out (when they stood to leave) to be oldish (though not old enough to qualify for codger concession) people rather than students, especially as they were slouching all over the place as well as jabbering.