Good News...and More Good News

The main good news is that it’s now official that I will be going back to school! In September I’ll start on an MA in Town and Regional Planning at the University of Westminster. It’s a full time course, just one year, and then I will finally have a degree that actually allows me to get a job. So far I’ve had the kind of liberal arts degrees that make one a more well-rounded person, very good at chatting to strangers at parties about the “arts” but prone to analyzing movies far beyond the point where other people are interested. With this new degree, and after jumping through a few more hoops (mostly racking up enough hours of work experience), I’ll be a town planner and (hopefully) a member of the Royal Town Planning Institute. Membership in anything Royal is pretty exciting. Also, the campus where I’ll be taking classes is across the street from Madame Tussaud’s!

For those unfamiliar with it, town planning in the UK is like zoning on steroids. There are national, regional and local levels of regulations or “guidance” as it is euphemistically called, some of which can conflict, and which take into account everything from the aesthetics of a design, safety, impact on local traffic, accessibility for the disabled, environmental impact, archeological sensitivity of proposed building sites, to even whether new buildings will block too much sunlight to existing ones or “overlook” them and thus infringe on current occupants’ privacy. These things have to be considered in pretty much every construction situation - whether someone wants to build an extension on their house or a huge shopping centre. In some historical buildings, permission has to be given before changes are made to the internal layout.

Obviously, there is a lot to it and while planning has a reputation for being really boring, I find it fascinating. Last year I read what is considered the seminal text in the field The Death and Life of American Cities by Jane Jacobs and got really hooked. (I borrowed it from a friend and now have it on my Amazon wishlist - hint hint.) I’m now working my way through an anthology on urban design and have been scavenging magazines from the architects’ office where I’m temping. Last night I said to Matthew, “You know, this course only lasts one year. I don’t know if I’ll have time to learn everything I need to know!” His response was something along the lines of, “In that case, stop watching TV and get to reading your book.” I ignored this, as we were watching a Dylan Moran stand-up special which I was finding very funny.

More good news – Thursday we got cable! For free! Matthew works for a TV network which has recently decided that all their UK employees should be able to watch at home so they’re paying for us to get cable. I expect this will substantially improve our quality of life, or at least allow us to watch cricket on TV.* As Matthew says, woo and, indeed, hoo!

*Actually, we won't be able to watch the cricket, as it is on a different cable network. I am pretty disappointed because I actually do enjoy watching cricket. It is so English - they break for lunch and tea - and the game is so famously complicated that even a rudimentary understanding of it makes me feel that I might finally be cracking this "English" thing. (They have a phrase, "that's not cricket," which means something isn't right. It can be used about something really horrendous, like the Zimbabwean elections, but means that's just not the way we play the game. It came to a head last year when a Pakistani player was accused of ball-tampering, a racism row erupted, and all everyone could say was that it was just so not at all cricket!) Anyway, Matthew suggests that I start watching Formula 1 racing with him, but that's obviously ridiculous. However, we do have a "pick of the week" on-demand feature, which means that last night we watched Dr Who six days after broadcast without taping or downloading it or anything. So that's cool.