The rubbish is collected weekly. Pretty commonplace. We're not (yet) one of those parts of the country to endure fortnightly collection. We've only got two receptacles for recyclables. We put newspapers in one, everything else the recycling collection will take in t'other. That means cardboard, tin and glass. On a bad week we take up the box plus another couple of bags of empties. This week it has all gone up in one with room to spare.
That's the trouble with this you see. Don't drink, don't recycle. That's a totally drunk argument. If I don't drink I don't add to demand for glass, so less is produced. And that's probably a better thing, so scrap the 'that's the trouble with this...'
Whoo hoo. [Five whole days.]
Sunday, 30 September 2007
Cultural phenomena (or what I hate more than I hate Christmas)
Do you know much about British Carnival Season? I certainly don't1. But I know enough to let rip, so here goes.
I hate 'carnival' week almost as much as I hate Christmas, and I hate Christmas A LOT. You haven't experienced me on Christmas yet. You've got me on novel writing before then so be patient.
In the mean time there's carnival week. This lame town has tried several other things in a half arsed way in a pathetic attempt to inject some life. Sensible Brits have always responded by staying away in droves. The town is on a downward spiral to dormitory town status - housing, a supermarket, some pubs plus an adequate sufficiency of hairdressers and life's absolute essential - the tanning salon.
The Beer Festival is a dirty little secret that is over before a beer drinker like me knows its happening and music week was cancelled this year for lack of support.
That leaves fucking carnival; a series of random events that don't add up to a coherent celebration of anything2. Our main playing field is taken over by a bunch of in-bred peasants trailing cheap and nasty 'rides' and side-show alley rip-off ventures. For several nights running our town becomes something bearing a passing resemblence to a war zone and almost a no-go area; we're over-run by foul mouthed youths, drunk, stoned and dragging half dressed banshee-like females about. More brawling, verbal and physical violence, vandalism, petty theft, underage drinking and drug taking happens in the space of this week than happens in the rest of the year.
For some reason people feel compelled to drag their young children out into the chilly late-September nights to witness this tawdry spectacle; perhaps they're just squaring up to the reality of what prospects this country's lamentable education system, tax and welfare arrangements and economic infrastructure leave these children.
Look son, one day all this will be yours.
I hate carnival.
A baby show is staged and the prize almost inevitably falls to the fat ugly grandchild of someone who if caught would be found to have their hands clutching a few strings. Something similar used to go for the trainee slut declared Carnival Queen, who for her trouble gets to travel up the high street wreathed in something like an early draft of Lady Diana Spencer's wedding dress while having money flung at her. Again, possibly valuable training for the life that awaits her. She's usually attended by a couple of girls who form her court - often chewing gum, sometimes asleep and once brazenly picking her nose as the procession passed us.
These days it is more a matter of 'you want to be it? The job's yours!' such is the level of interest among girls who know that, should they be chosen, it will be the case that while they spend the evening looking like a dickhead their mates are all off getting drunk and picking up one or other STD in the shadows beind the Twister or what ever ride provides the most ample cover.
For the duration the town is over-run with pallid, scrawny examples of the very worst sort of intellectually and physically undernourished underclass who can't put a sentence together without using the word FUCK at least once and habitually address people they dislike as CUNT. Clever, eh? They come in on the trains and then at the end of the week, thankfully, they go back to beneath whatever rock it was they crawled out from under.
The culmination of the week's 'festivities' is a 'torch lit' procession. This is lots of stupid but enthusiastic locals dressed up not quite as well as they'd like to think, yomping up the High Street rattling collection tins at those inhabitants not stupid enough to participate directly, but too stupid to get right out of the way of the whole sorry business.
The floats are interspersed with 'bands' (brass and pipe favoured, but not actually together thankfully) and 'marching bands' of fat girls in lots of lycra and porn-reject boots.
The procession, which is actually lit by a combination of bog-standard street lighting and a plethora of those nasty little multi-coloured glowing wands so beloved by children of all ages, ends with a fireworks display that annually terrorises cats, dogs and - as it takes place on land adjacent to the wild life reserve - lots of protected species .
Then, happily, the whole sorry business is all over.
The following day the in-bred mob on the playing fields pack up and leave, mercifully early, and within a couple of days the place is once again not too unpleasant a place to live. Roll on tomorrow then.
1. The origins typically lie in the late Victorian or Edwardian era when carnivals were staged periodically as a way of raising much needed funds for local hospitals and charities. The widespread phenomenon of the annual street carnival and procession rigamarole is much more recent, dating typically to the post-war years.
2. In theory the organising committee agrees a Theme and a set of worthy causes to benefit from a proportion of the monies raised, supposedly after Consultation and . In practice anything goes (except the whole damned idea) and I haven't the faintest idea what happened to the money.
I hate 'carnival' week almost as much as I hate Christmas, and I hate Christmas A LOT. You haven't experienced me on Christmas yet. You've got me on novel writing before then so be patient.
In the mean time there's carnival week. This lame town has tried several other things in a half arsed way in a pathetic attempt to inject some life. Sensible Brits have always responded by staying away in droves. The town is on a downward spiral to dormitory town status - housing, a supermarket, some pubs plus an adequate sufficiency of hairdressers and life's absolute essential - the tanning salon.
The Beer Festival is a dirty little secret that is over before a beer drinker like me knows its happening and music week was cancelled this year for lack of support.
That leaves fucking carnival; a series of random events that don't add up to a coherent celebration of anything2. Our main playing field is taken over by a bunch of in-bred peasants trailing cheap and nasty 'rides' and side-show alley rip-off ventures. For several nights running our town becomes something bearing a passing resemblence to a war zone and almost a no-go area; we're over-run by foul mouthed youths, drunk, stoned and dragging half dressed banshee-like females about. More brawling, verbal and physical violence, vandalism, petty theft, underage drinking and drug taking happens in the space of this week than happens in the rest of the year.
For some reason people feel compelled to drag their young children out into the chilly late-September nights to witness this tawdry spectacle; perhaps they're just squaring up to the reality of what prospects this country's lamentable education system, tax and welfare arrangements and economic infrastructure leave these children.
Look son, one day all this will be yours.
I hate carnival.
A baby show is staged and the prize almost inevitably falls to the fat ugly grandchild of someone who if caught would be found to have their hands clutching a few strings. Something similar used to go for the trainee slut declared Carnival Queen, who for her trouble gets to travel up the high street wreathed in something like an early draft of Lady Diana Spencer's wedding dress while having money flung at her. Again, possibly valuable training for the life that awaits her. She's usually attended by a couple of girls who form her court - often chewing gum, sometimes asleep and once brazenly picking her nose as the procession passed us.
These days it is more a matter of 'you want to be it? The job's yours!' such is the level of interest among girls who know that, should they be chosen, it will be the case that while they spend the evening looking like a dickhead their mates are all off getting drunk and picking up one or other STD in the shadows beind the Twister or what ever ride provides the most ample cover.
For the duration the town is over-run with pallid, scrawny examples of the very worst sort of intellectually and physically undernourished underclass who can't put a sentence together without using the word FUCK at least once and habitually address people they dislike as CUNT. Clever, eh? They come in on the trains and then at the end of the week, thankfully, they go back to beneath whatever rock it was they crawled out from under.
The culmination of the week's 'festivities' is a 'torch lit' procession. This is lots of stupid but enthusiastic locals dressed up not quite as well as they'd like to think, yomping up the High Street rattling collection tins at those inhabitants not stupid enough to participate directly, but too stupid to get right out of the way of the whole sorry business.
The floats are interspersed with 'bands' (brass and pipe favoured, but not actually together thankfully) and 'marching bands' of fat girls in lots of lycra and porn-reject boots.
The procession, which is actually lit by a combination of bog-standard street lighting and a plethora of those nasty little multi-coloured glowing wands so beloved by children of all ages, ends with a fireworks display that annually terrorises cats, dogs and - as it takes place on land adjacent to the wild life reserve - lots of protected species .
Then, happily, the whole sorry business is all over.
The following day the in-bred mob on the playing fields pack up and leave, mercifully early, and within a couple of days the place is once again not too unpleasant a place to live. Roll on tomorrow then.
1. The origins typically lie in the late Victorian or Edwardian era when carnivals were staged periodically as a way of raising much needed funds for local hospitals and charities. The widespread phenomenon of the annual street carnival and procession rigamarole is much more recent, dating typically to the post-war years.
2. In theory the organising committee agrees a Theme and a set of worthy causes to benefit from a proportion of the monies raised, supposedly after Consultation and . In practice anything goes (except the whole damned idea) and I haven't the faintest idea what happened to the money.
Geelong: A Clarification
I made an unpleasant remark in a recent post about the town of Geelong and feel a few points providing clarification are in order.
- I have never visited Geelong, not even for an afternoon tea
- I do not know one individual personally and directly who lives or ever has lived in Geelong
- I DO have family connections to Geelong
- Blogger's spell checker insists on replacing Geelong with Gee Long, which makes the place sound like a porn star
- The club's nickname is The Cats, though that kitty does look particularly ferocious.
- Geelong is a dump of a town to the south and west of Melbourne.*
Geelong is one of those thrusting regional centres that thinks throwing a few million tax payer dollars at a bright colour, chrome, steel, glass and modern art festooned Waterfront Development [yawn] is an adequate substitute for developing a sustainable economy.
That sort of sloppy thinking is all of a piece with having a Visit Geelong website continuing to promote the Christmas in July Black Tie Dinner as at the 30th September. Perhaps they haven't sold enough tickets yet?
* Oh, did I say that already?
The Demise of the Pink Palace
Should be doing this in the style of a Death Notice, of course. Ah, well. Live with it.
The gist of the matter, however, is that I've brought down the Pink Palace. The mattress, sleeping bag and pillow case are in the wash, along with oddments of clothing. The books are back on the shelves, the videos, DVDs, games &etc are all in a pile for madam to properly tidy up. Several soft toys have been gathered and deposited on the bed upstairs, a plastic bag has been filled with bits of paper and other detritus of her Summer in Residence. All in all it wasn't too bad which is more than can be said for the bits of the house I can only now reach with duster and vacuum cleaner.
The cat hasn't yet learned the terrible truth. He's been in a foul mood all week anyway so we probably won't notice a mood shift when he does put in an appearance.
The gist of the matter, however, is that I've brought down the Pink Palace. The mattress, sleeping bag and pillow case are in the wash, along with oddments of clothing. The books are back on the shelves, the videos, DVDs, games &etc are all in a pile for madam to properly tidy up. Several soft toys have been gathered and deposited on the bed upstairs, a plastic bag has been filled with bits of paper and other detritus of her Summer in Residence. All in all it wasn't too bad which is more than can be said for the bits of the house I can only now reach with duster and vacuum cleaner.
The cat hasn't yet learned the terrible truth. He's been in a foul mood all week anyway so we probably won't notice a mood shift when he does put in an appearance.
Saturday, 29 September 2007
Death Row Knockers
First of all the spell checker is beyond quirky or eccentric. It is simply stupid. It isn't good enough and it is worse than the one it replaced.
Secondly the porn blogs are back. The Next Blog button is once again virtually unusable.
There must be a solution to this. The old spell checker could come back; that would solve the first problem.
As to the second? Well it is difficult to suggest something that doesn't effectively involve censorship or restriction and I'm not keen on that. I wouldn't mind the Nottingham Tits if they popped out occasionally. I have a pair myself, after all.
Those behind these 'blogs' are doing something to keep themselves to the front of the Next Blog queue; the only libertarian solution would be to iron out the playing field so that individual Tits and individual Stay-At-Home-Mom-Bible-Bashers get an equal chance of annoying me.
Otherwise its the single bullet in the back of the head for Blogger. I'm getting very fed up with this and there are viable alternatives.
Secondly the porn blogs are back. The Next Blog button is once again virtually unusable.
There must be a solution to this. The old spell checker could come back; that would solve the first problem.
As to the second? Well it is difficult to suggest something that doesn't effectively involve censorship or restriction and I'm not keen on that. I wouldn't mind the Nottingham Tits if they popped out occasionally. I have a pair myself, after all.
Those behind these 'blogs' are doing something to keep themselves to the front of the Next Blog queue; the only libertarian solution would be to iron out the playing field so that individual Tits and individual Stay-At-Home-Mom-Bible-Bashers get an equal chance of annoying me.
Otherwise its the single bullet in the back of the head for Blogger. I'm getting very fed up with this and there are viable alternatives.
Reasons to be cheerful
This won't become littered with damp eyed romanticism or sports anecdotes but I can't let the Grand Final pass without comment.
What a splendid match it was, I say as someone who neither watched nor listened, and doesn't either support or particularly care for either of the competing teams. For the record they were Geelong and Port Adelaide.
The old fogey within that is being increasingly assertive regards the participation of two teams with proper histories as a Good Thing. Geelong is a dump of a town south and west of Melbourne and the team that bears its name was one of the twelve that in the Good Old Days made up the Victorian Football League1. Port Adelaide was one of the traditional Big Teams of the South Australian Football League.
Well it has all gone to hell in a handcart since those good old days: no more South Melbourne, No more Fitzroy. Instead we have Sydney [Swans] and Brisbane [Lions]. The fogey in me loathes these teams mostly because they can't get by being referred to either formally (ie, Sydney) or informally ('the Swans') but must needs travel American-style with the two names shackled together, presumably for strength and stability.
Then there's the new-fangled teams: West Coast [Weagles] and Adelaide [the Crows]. Subsequently the league was also joined by Fremantle and Port Adelaide - both of which are actually thoroughly proper footy teams with real pedigrees in the league of origin.
So that's now sixteen, and to accommodate so many teams without intruding on the pre-season competition which itself intrudes on the tail end of the cricket season and is played in stupidly hot weather there are byes and er, stuff.
Also the finals, played in September, which originally involved the top four teams now involves six in a convoluted arrangement designed to ensure that lots of teams get one (or possibly two) second chances - and possibly sort out which team was actually Top Team.
The last match of the season involves the last two teams standing - which takes us back to where this started.
Port, Geelong, Geelong, Port. Hm. To care, or not to care. Well actually this was a very important match the result of which has left me with something to cheer about and something to hope for:
First of all the winning margin was 119 points and this is most excellent as this is the new record winning margin - it erases the shame of Melbourne Football Club being on the losing end of the Heaviest Ever Defeat.
Secondly this is the winning team's first title in 44 years2. They last won the title in 1963. Theirs was the longest drought - now the dubious honour of the longest non-winning streak in play falls to ... Melbourne; last premiership won in 19643. Our turn next?
What a splendid match it was, I say as someone who neither watched nor listened, and doesn't either support or particularly care for either of the competing teams. For the record they were Geelong and Port Adelaide.
The old fogey within that is being increasingly assertive regards the participation of two teams with proper histories as a Good Thing. Geelong is a dump of a town south and west of Melbourne and the team that bears its name was one of the twelve that in the Good Old Days made up the Victorian Football League1. Port Adelaide was one of the traditional Big Teams of the South Australian Football League.
Well it has all gone to hell in a handcart since those good old days: no more South Melbourne, No more Fitzroy. Instead we have Sydney [Swans] and Brisbane [Lions]. The fogey in me loathes these teams mostly because they can't get by being referred to either formally (ie, Sydney) or informally ('the Swans') but must needs travel American-style with the two names shackled together, presumably for strength and stability.
Then there's the new-fangled teams: West Coast [Weagles] and Adelaide [the Crows]. Subsequently the league was also joined by Fremantle and Port Adelaide - both of which are actually thoroughly proper footy teams with real pedigrees in the league of origin.
So that's now sixteen, and to accommodate so many teams without intruding on the pre-season competition which itself intrudes on the tail end of the cricket season and is played in stupidly hot weather there are byes and er, stuff.
Also the finals, played in September, which originally involved the top four teams now involves six in a convoluted arrangement designed to ensure that lots of teams get one (or possibly two) second chances - and possibly sort out which team was actually Top Team.
The last match of the season involves the last two teams standing - which takes us back to where this started.
Port, Geelong, Geelong, Port. Hm. To care, or not to care. Well actually this was a very important match the result of which has left me with something to cheer about and something to hope for:
First of all the winning margin was 119 points and this is most excellent as this is the new record winning margin - it erases the shame of Melbourne Football Club being on the losing end of the Heaviest Ever Defeat.
Secondly this is the winning team's first title in 44 years2. They last won the title in 1963. Theirs was the longest drought - now the dubious honour of the longest non-winning streak in play falls to ... Melbourne; last premiership won in 19643. Our turn next?
- The Good Old Days. When there were six matches played on Saturday afternoon, all kicking off at 2:00; when multiple radio stations covered all matches and, since all the matches except Geelong home games were played in Melbourne, a body could go to a game and be home in time to choose between multiple post-match football programs - mostly involving panelists called 'Doug' and a bloke bearing a strong resemblance to the bald eagle from The Muppets.
- The Winning Team. You'll notice I've not explicitly named the winning team, but you've enough information if you care to know and can't be arsed to google.
- And yet... We still stand in fourth place among all time title winners behind Carlton, Essendon and Collingwood. Now there's a fine Final Four for you.
Friday, 28 September 2007
Not that I'm counting or anything
That's day three (72 hours) over and almost out now. I on the other hand am not out of it, but I am off to bed.
Don't panic
The Corporal Jones element has been in its, well, element this last couple of days as we near the end of the Big Swinging Dick's two weeks away.
As though he'd organised it we've had big wigs galore down, including area management and sectional directors. The state of things hasn't gone down well, but with out anyone to keep the warehouse under control, halloween and christmas promotions coming through en masse and a change of regular promotions happening this weekend a flock of headless chickens would have offered a picture of orderliness compared with what we've had on display in our particular barn yard.
And everyone is blaming everyone else.
I really must look further into this job I've been invited to apply for.
As though he'd organised it we've had big wigs galore down, including area management and sectional directors. The state of things hasn't gone down well, but with out anyone to keep the warehouse under control, halloween and christmas promotions coming through en masse and a change of regular promotions happening this weekend a flock of headless chickens would have offered a picture of orderliness compared with what we've had on display in our particular barn yard.
And everyone is blaming everyone else.
I really must look further into this job I've been invited to apply for.
Also
I'm being encouraged by someone to apply for a job opening that has emerged recently ... will have a chat to the Big Swinging Dick next week when he's back from holiday. Still need to find out what the rate is ... could be worth me taking if I can keep a few hours with my current job.
That should put the cat among the pigeons.
That should put the cat among the pigeons.
Booze bulletin
Off the sauce for more than 48 hours now... nothing last night, nothing the night before. These early days are the most trying. Get through to bed tonight and that will be a nice round 72 hours.
Just thought I'd put that down for the record.
Just thought I'd put that down for the record.
I know, I know
As a MAHList I should be above these things. I can't help myself. This morning I am frankly revelling in the discomfiture of Peter Jensen and his ilk who've been outmanoeuvred in the struggle for the right to ordain female bishops in the Aussie anglican church. Never mind the religion feel the emancipation.
Sydney Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen, whose diocese led the case against women bishops, said he was disappointed by the decision.So that's decades of fun for on-lookers; in the history of slow train wrecks this could be one of the slowest on record.
"While I respect the judicial procedures which have led to this result I am disappointed that the matter has now been resolved in this way," Dr Jensen said.
"Those who are opposed to this development base their objection on conscientious grounds as a matter of biblical principle. "
The innovation will inevitably create ongoing difficulties around the church for decades to come."
What's wrong with this picture?
Two pieces from today's po-faced AGE.
One the one hand we have:
One the one hand we have:
Australia today called in Burma's official diplomatic representative in Canberra
to protest against the violent crackdown on demonstrators.
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said the government renewed calls for the immediate release of those arrested for exercising their fundamental human rights.
And then we have:
Riot police clashed with protesters outside the Burmese embassy in Canberra
today, taking one man into temporary custody during the disturbance.
A street in Canberra's diplomatic quarter was blocked off as the 100 protesters tried to march on the embassy, chanting for peace and democracy. About a dozen police, who had been stationed inside and outside the embassy gate, unsuccessfully tried to force the demonstrators back as they edged closer to the mission but had to call in a busload of reinforcements to set up a containment line.
The crowd initially tried to sit on the road but as they got up skirmishes began with the police gathered around them.
Some protesters fell to the ground as they clashed with the police, who dragged one of the organisers, Maung Maung Niang, away.
Very big sigh.
Thursday, 27 September 2007
The curvature of light
Putting a bit of a twist on the normal course of events we seem to be ahead of the curve when it comes to the environmentally critical questions of car usage and low energy light bulbs.
On the one hand we haven't had a car for years. Okay, okay I actually gave up the car because I knew that I was sooner or later going to kill someone (him possibly, both of us probably, potentially one or more innocent by-standers).
On the other hand I converted the house a couple of years ago to low energy light bulbs when our supermarket was offering them on a buy one get one free deal. Cynically I bought enough for every fitting in the dark and then two spares for each. I have no idea how much energy I've saved, how many pennies better off we are or the extent to which the planet is less depleted than in otherwise would have been. But I'm sure what I did wasn't a bad thing.
I haven't yet had to replace one of those light bulbs; they've turned out to be exceedingly good value.
On the one hand we haven't had a car for years. Okay, okay I actually gave up the car because I knew that I was sooner or later going to kill someone (him possibly, both of us probably, potentially one or more innocent by-standers).
On the other hand I converted the house a couple of years ago to low energy light bulbs when our supermarket was offering them on a buy one get one free deal. Cynically I bought enough for every fitting in the dark and then two spares for each. I have no idea how much energy I've saved, how many pennies better off we are or the extent to which the planet is less depleted than in otherwise would have been. But I'm sure what I did wasn't a bad thing.
I haven't yet had to replace one of those light bulbs; they've turned out to be exceedingly good value.
Mating rituals of the young and stupid
"I was there ... and this bird said 'you're fit' ... and I said 'sorry, I ain't got time."
This recitation by one young man to another, both dressed in those preposterous yellow jackets worn by rail side and other manual workers, was overheard this morning.
Only last night Bolshie Book Worm and I had an exchange on the very subject of very young men referring to girls their age as 'birds' and whether we should laugh or cry (we decided on balance we'd rather be amused).
What gave rise to it was news that The Big Banana has been dumped after two years by his tiny little girlfriend, but things are looking up as he has a date (with 'a new bird') tonight (Thursday) ... in celebration of which event he was off to' Get Drunk'. He's sixteen years old, his father works in a civilian capacity for the police, and neither of us said anything about the advisability or legality of the proposed course of action.
Guilty by default.
It is all of a piece with the Maltese Terrier who fresh from her shagging back home is getting it from her friend, an 'enormous' fireman who is in an unhappy marriage. 'Her' man spends the night with her occasionally. This is under the roof she shares with her two teenage children, one of whom intends to become a police officer herself. This is the same woman who takes her kids out drinking knowing full well the law and who in her day job haranguing the staff she supervises about the law on selling alcohol to the underage or knowingly to those intending to supply.
This is a woman who has anecdotes to share about sharing a spliff with her brother and a teenage cousin of theirs, and being panic stricken when said cousin's police officer girlfriend turns up - said police officer being concerned only that she doesn't inhale enough to fail a random drugs test to which she might be subjected. Again, all under the same roof as her teenage children.
Wonder how they're likely to turn out?
This recitation by one young man to another, both dressed in those preposterous yellow jackets worn by rail side and other manual workers, was overheard this morning.
Only last night Bolshie Book Worm and I had an exchange on the very subject of very young men referring to girls their age as 'birds' and whether we should laugh or cry (we decided on balance we'd rather be amused).
What gave rise to it was news that The Big Banana has been dumped after two years by his tiny little girlfriend, but things are looking up as he has a date (with 'a new bird') tonight (Thursday) ... in celebration of which event he was off to' Get Drunk'. He's sixteen years old, his father works in a civilian capacity for the police, and neither of us said anything about the advisability or legality of the proposed course of action.
Guilty by default.
It is all of a piece with the Maltese Terrier who fresh from her shagging back home is getting it from her friend, an 'enormous' fireman who is in an unhappy marriage. 'Her' man spends the night with her occasionally. This is under the roof she shares with her two teenage children, one of whom intends to become a police officer herself. This is the same woman who takes her kids out drinking knowing full well the law and who in her day job haranguing the staff she supervises about the law on selling alcohol to the underage or knowingly to those intending to supply.
This is a woman who has anecdotes to share about sharing a spliff with her brother and a teenage cousin of theirs, and being panic stricken when said cousin's police officer girlfriend turns up - said police officer being concerned only that she doesn't inhale enough to fail a random drugs test to which she might be subjected. Again, all under the same roof as her teenage children.
Wonder how they're likely to turn out?
Wednesday, 26 September 2007
The 'Barn Door' approach to education
Ed Balls has announced fresh moves to improve the teaching of 'The 3Rs' (which for the benefit of the uninitiated refers to Reading, Writing and Arithmetic - or as they are currently known Literacy, What?, and Numeracy), with a drive to help children with their spelling and handwriting skills.
This is a quick win policy initiative from the Government carrying a virtual guarantee of success given that any move for improvement from such a low base practically cannot fail. Sadly it is also Ball's Balls.
Unfortunately for the several currently living generations in this country enduring lives blighted by underdeveloped basic skills this initiative comes rather too late. These are people without any ability to manipulate numbers. These are people who cannot speak or spell competently and confidently in their first (and typically only) language; and if they could how would we know when they have no pen-craft.
I've of an age now when I can say I've interviewed, recruited and worked with people young enough to be my children. I've engaged people in a professional capacity in a global management consulting practice, people with quite good degrees in quite robustly academic areas of study awarded by reasonably well regarded institutions. And these people were modestly literate and numerate, but they were smug and self-confident. What matter, then, that they had no idea how to put persuasive text together without the aid of the copy/paste functionality of their word processor.
These people are not precisely the creme de la creme; but they're never the less among the brightest and ablest of this country's people or it would be reasonable to use that as a working assumption.
Behind them stand the massed ranks of the tragically under-educated, ill-disciplined and ambition less. They call talk back radio and complain that squaddies earn half as much as stackers of baked beans. They have no idea how little stackers of baked beans earn, but that matters little when set against their confidence, their ability to stand up and voice an opinion however ill informed it might be.
For the remainder of their lives they'll suffer for having never been taken to task, criticised, marked down for poor grammar, syntax, spelling, handwriting or plain factual inaccuracy. They'll never rise above the level of your average talk back radio participant, but because they can persuade a station researcher they've got something to say, they'll get to say it, on air, and be heard by millions: and that's what matters surely?
Why am I pissed off for this? Because even here where the 11 plus survives only the best 10 percent will get a place at a decent school. The rest are stuck in a sprawling complex of a high school that hauled itself out of the shit by re-styling itself as a specialist centre for learning (in IT), where massed ranks of students are unkempt, foul-mouthed and angrily drifting towards a life spent filling out Child Tax Credit and Working Tax Credit forms.
When I'm in this mood I'd cheefully axe all welfare payments (and introduce a flat income tax rate of 10% on indexed earnings starting at say, 10K).
This is a quick win policy initiative from the Government carrying a virtual guarantee of success given that any move for improvement from such a low base practically cannot fail. Sadly it is also Ball's Balls.
Unfortunately for the several currently living generations in this country enduring lives blighted by underdeveloped basic skills this initiative comes rather too late. These are people without any ability to manipulate numbers. These are people who cannot speak or spell competently and confidently in their first (and typically only) language; and if they could how would we know when they have no pen-craft.
I've of an age now when I can say I've interviewed, recruited and worked with people young enough to be my children. I've engaged people in a professional capacity in a global management consulting practice, people with quite good degrees in quite robustly academic areas of study awarded by reasonably well regarded institutions. And these people were modestly literate and numerate, but they were smug and self-confident. What matter, then, that they had no idea how to put persuasive text together without the aid of the copy/paste functionality of their word processor.
These people are not precisely the creme de la creme; but they're never the less among the brightest and ablest of this country's people or it would be reasonable to use that as a working assumption.
Behind them stand the massed ranks of the tragically under-educated, ill-disciplined and ambition less. They call talk back radio and complain that squaddies earn half as much as stackers of baked beans. They have no idea how little stackers of baked beans earn, but that matters little when set against their confidence, their ability to stand up and voice an opinion however ill informed it might be.
For the remainder of their lives they'll suffer for having never been taken to task, criticised, marked down for poor grammar, syntax, spelling, handwriting or plain factual inaccuracy. They'll never rise above the level of your average talk back radio participant, but because they can persuade a station researcher they've got something to say, they'll get to say it, on air, and be heard by millions: and that's what matters surely?
Why am I pissed off for this? Because even here where the 11 plus survives only the best 10 percent will get a place at a decent school. The rest are stuck in a sprawling complex of a high school that hauled itself out of the shit by re-styling itself as a specialist centre for learning (in IT), where massed ranks of students are unkempt, foul-mouthed and angrily drifting towards a life spent filling out Child Tax Credit and Working Tax Credit forms.
When I'm in this mood I'd cheefully axe all welfare payments (and introduce a flat income tax rate of 10% on indexed earnings starting at say, 10K).
Tuesday, 25 September 2007
How to get laid by a good looking bloke
No that was a question not the title for an self-help guide; on the other hand a self-help guide on that subject would be useful. Any contributions? Full attribution and a cut of the royalties available.
Would it be easier if I dropped the bit about good looking? Personally I'd like to keep the 'bloke' bit - though I might become flexible on that point in the future; I've heard that happens to a significant proportion of middle aged women, but if I'm going to take on an OU course I think I'm entitled to stick with my first preference for a while longer.
Would it be easier if I dropped the bit about good looking? Personally I'd like to keep the 'bloke' bit - though I might become flexible on that point in the future; I've heard that happens to a significant proportion of middle aged women, but if I'm going to take on an OU course I think I'm entitled to stick with my first preference for a while longer.
A few thoughts on copyright hooters
I read strine blogger for his feistiness and don't always see eye to eye with him. That's okay. Anyone who loathes and despises Little John (and all his works, and his Assembly of The Dark Forces) as thoroughly as he does can be forgiven much.
But on the matter of copyright I just don't get him. He might think he's being funny and libertarian, but.
The history of copyright law in the British Isles* is usually traced back to developments in the last decades of the seventeenth century and the first decade of the eighteenth, under the reign of Queen Anne. This of course is before the age of radio, satellite, fibre optics, silicone technology etc and the evolution of the concepts of streaming and downloading.
Crucially what is known as The Statute of Anne had the effect of giving creators some continuing financial interest in their works, wresting that financial interest from the printers in whom it had come to reside. The preamble to the act reads inter alia Whereas Printers, Booksellers, and other Persons, have of late frequently taken the Liberty of Printing, Reprinting,and Publishing, or causing to be Printed, Reprinted, and Published Books, and other Writings, without the Consent of the Authors or Proprietors of such Books and Writings, to their very great Detriment, and too often to the Ruin of them and their Families: For Preventing therefore such Practices for the future, and for the Encouragement of Learned Men to Compose and Write useful Books...
In the very nearly three hundred years since this Act of Parliament was enacted the principle of a "term of protection" has been confirmed, but that period of time has been lengthened from the original 14 years (21 years for existing works) so that the various forms of creative expression and output now covered by the scope of 'copyright' are now protected for a period of time typically linked to the life of the author and normally with a period of post mortem time added on.
It is worth reiterating though that the concern at the heart of the original act, the issue that informed the initial debate and provided impetus for the passing of The Statute of Anne was the financial hardship endured by those who would compose new works, and their families, and the need to provide an environment in which people capable of producing 'useful books' could do so, for the benefit of all.
Sorry, honey, but when you write "It didn't introduce copyright laws to inspire the creation of artistic works from which its citizens would benefit - it did it to enable us non-creative middle management types to profiteer by indefinitely locking up that content." you're wrong.
But on the matter of copyright I just don't get him. He might think he's being funny and libertarian, but.
The history of copyright law in the British Isles* is usually traced back to developments in the last decades of the seventeenth century and the first decade of the eighteenth, under the reign of Queen Anne. This of course is before the age of radio, satellite, fibre optics, silicone technology etc and the evolution of the concepts of streaming and downloading.
Crucially what is known as The Statute of Anne had the effect of giving creators some continuing financial interest in their works, wresting that financial interest from the printers in whom it had come to reside. The preamble to the act reads inter alia Whereas Printers, Booksellers, and other Persons, have of late frequently taken the Liberty of Printing, Reprinting,and Publishing, or causing to be Printed, Reprinted, and Published Books, and other Writings, without the Consent of the Authors or Proprietors of such Books and Writings, to their very great Detriment, and too often to the Ruin of them and their Families: For Preventing therefore such Practices for the future, and for the Encouragement of Learned Men to Compose and Write useful Books...
In the very nearly three hundred years since this Act of Parliament was enacted the principle of a "term of protection" has been confirmed, but that period of time has been lengthened from the original 14 years (21 years for existing works) so that the various forms of creative expression and output now covered by the scope of 'copyright' are now protected for a period of time typically linked to the life of the author and normally with a period of post mortem time added on.
It is worth reiterating though that the concern at the heart of the original act, the issue that informed the initial debate and provided impetus for the passing of The Statute of Anne was the financial hardship endured by those who would compose new works, and their families, and the need to provide an environment in which people capable of producing 'useful books' could do so, for the benefit of all.
Sorry, honey, but when you write "It didn't introduce copyright laws to inspire the creation of artistic works from which its citizens would benefit - it did it to enable us non-creative middle management types to profiteer by indefinitely locking up that content." you're wrong.
*And it generally holds true also of those part of the world subsequently colonised by the Brits and to whom the at that time extant body of common law and statute was imparted.
Seriously now
Anything involving or touched by Gordon is, perforce, Serious. Gordon and frivolous or merely light don't go together comfortably. I actually listened yesterday to most of his speech delivered to a rapt audiance at Bournemouth. Listening to Gordon is hard work. My attention wavered and I did, eventually, switch off - but only after losing track of Gordon's argument, if that's the right word for what he delivered.
I'm still not quite sure what Gordon was advocating.
Early on he said: "I stand for a Britain where everyone should rise as far as their talents can take them and then the talents of each of us should contribute to the well being of all. "
Further into the speech he said: "In Britain today too many still cannot rise as far as their talents can take them."
And then he elaborates, at length on this theme as follows:
As is the case with most political speeches it is necessary to hunt carefully for the meat, or in this case what's causing the faint feeling of indigestion or nausea. There it is. What Gordon wants to see and is offering the world is a bit of good old fashioned leftist social engineering. Equality of opportunity is no good if it doesn't offer equality of outcome, so it will be massaged and managed until it delivers equality of outcome, irrespective of the extent to which it still resembles equality of opportunity.
I'm still not quite sure what Gordon was advocating.
Early on he said: "I stand for a Britain where everyone should rise as far as their talents can take them and then the talents of each of us should contribute to the well being of all. "
Further into the speech he said: "In Britain today too many still cannot rise as far as their talents can take them."
And then he elaborates, at length on this theme as follows:
How many men and women who hope to move up the ladder in mid career are deprived of the chance to upgrade their skills and jobs? How much talent that could flourish is lost through a poverty of aspiration: wasted not because young talents fail to reach the stars but because they grow up with no stars to reach for?
And how many of our youngest children are still deprived of the early learning they need. Why should we accept so many children destined to fail even before their life's journey has begun?
So this is the next chapter in our progress. The next stage of our country's long journey to build the strong and fair society.
I want a Britain where there is no longer any ceiling on where your talents and hard work can take you. Where what counts is not what where you come from and who you know, but what you aspire to and have it in yourself to become.
Past generations unlocked just some of the talents of some of the people. In the new Britain of this generation, we must unlock all the talents of all of the people. Not the old equality of outcome that discounts hard work and effort.
Not the old version of equality of opportunity - the rise of an exclusive meritocracy where only some can succeed and others are forever condemned to fail.
But a genuinely meritocratic Britain, a Britain of all the talents. Where all are encouraged to aim high. And all by their effort can rise.
As is the case with most political speeches it is necessary to hunt carefully for the meat, or in this case what's causing the faint feeling of indigestion or nausea. There it is. What Gordon wants to see and is offering the world is a bit of good old fashioned leftist social engineering. Equality of opportunity is no good if it doesn't offer equality of outcome, so it will be massaged and managed until it delivers equality of outcome, irrespective of the extent to which it still resembles equality of opportunity.
No, captain, it definitely isn't history...*
The Slug undoubtedly knows how to press my buttons and does so for his own private amusement quite often. Sometimes, however, the joke is shared as was the case late last week.
I came home to find a book on my desk, a neat little hardcover in dust jacket in good order throughout and an intriguing title. He stood there and watched and waited with a shit-eating grin on his face in anticipation of the fireworks. They weren't long in coming. In fact I didn't get as far as digesting the whole of the sub-title without snorting.
The book is about claimants to the English or British crown. Without having seen this book, and the turf it covers, any list of "Pretenders" I'd have put together would have included Perkin Warbeck, Lambert Simnel and a string of increasingly decrepit Stuarts. The list could be padded out with a number of people who were legitimate claimants who did not succeed in pressing their claim, and those who were not precisely legitimate or best available alternatives but who succeeded however briefly in pushing a claim but they're two somewhat different kettles of fish.
Any ho, the list is a bit eccentric, and one entry in it caught my eye as the Slug knew it would. I discarded the rest and turned straight to the potted biography. I railed, I raged, I cursed, I wept, I gasped, I groaned in disbelief. All the while the Slug was just outside having a not so crafty fag and enjoying my fury from a safe distance.
So here's a test, and my advice is to deploy some seriously tangential thinking: the challenge is to identify this "Pretender" using only the following highly selective quotations from said biography for clues. As further assistance I've done no tinkering with the order in which they appear in a narrative that is or purports to be strictly chronological.
*as in, Its history Jim, but not as we know it.
I came home to find a book on my desk, a neat little hardcover in dust jacket in good order throughout and an intriguing title. He stood there and watched and waited with a shit-eating grin on his face in anticipation of the fireworks. They weren't long in coming. In fact I didn't get as far as digesting the whole of the sub-title without snorting.
The book is about claimants to the English or British crown. Without having seen this book, and the turf it covers, any list of "Pretenders" I'd have put together would have included Perkin Warbeck, Lambert Simnel and a string of increasingly decrepit Stuarts. The list could be padded out with a number of people who were legitimate claimants who did not succeed in pressing their claim, and those who were not precisely legitimate or best available alternatives but who succeeded however briefly in pushing a claim but they're two somewhat different kettles of fish.
Any ho, the list is a bit eccentric, and one entry in it caught my eye as the Slug knew it would. I discarded the rest and turned straight to the potted biography. I railed, I raged, I cursed, I wept, I gasped, I groaned in disbelief. All the while the Slug was just outside having a not so crafty fag and enjoying my fury from a safe distance.
So here's a test, and my advice is to deploy some seriously tangential thinking: the challenge is to identify this "Pretender" using only the following highly selective quotations from said biography for clues. As further assistance I've done no tinkering with the order in which they appear in a narrative that is or purports to be strictly chronological.
- "Famous as the overmightiest of subjects."
- His record is "one of power without achievement".
- "His royal pretensions became reality only for his ... descendants, and then in abundance"
- "Although uncrowned, he was acknowledged as the real ruler of England" for a period of some years.
- "Not once, despite constant suspicion, did he reveal himself openly as a pretender to the English throne."
- His "posthumous triumphs were not matched during his lifetime. In a career of paradoxes he became one of the most celebrated warriors in a family renowned for fighting."... "He himself ended a long military career as the most redoubtable campaigner in Europe..."
- "Extraordinary power and influence appear to have resided in a very ordinary man."
- "Nothing could seem less in character than the two actions for which [he] most deserves the gratitude of posterity. Not a man known for his cultural interests..."
- "A man of orthodox piety..."
- "... no pretender before or since has had such resources of his own at his disposal."
- "To achieve his ambition he now turned to diplomacy and proved surprisingly adept. His enemies may not have liked him, but they trusted and respected him." (!)
- "At home the unsuccessful quasi-king was unpopular."
- "Nevertheless, this voluntary retirement when most in demand does not suggest a diminution of ambition." "[He] was disappointed and bitter and heartily sick of playing second fiddle. His gesture signified 'king or nothing'."
- "Whatever his intentions, he was, too, a man of some principle, adhering to a code honoured in his age and class."
- "He was haughty and had no skill or even interest in courting the public. Although open-handed and often a friend of the poor, he stood on his dignity and never condescended."
- "Charged with the responsibility for making settlement with [a foreign power] the most formidable knight of the world of chivalry became transformed into the most eminent of European diplomats."
- "In England he was able to impose some semblance of order on the prevailing anarchy without reviving suspicion."
- "When [his wife] died he felt free to marry ... his mistress ... No one rebuked him for it."
*as in, Its history Jim, but not as we know it.
That was fun, a reverie on fence dwelling & etc
I've belatedly gotten round to stumping up for my MCC membership renewal. The MCG holds so many memories for me that letting go that membership would be like letting go of all but one of the best bits of my life ... dad taking us to a Sheffield Shield match attended by us, a few sad blokes in pork pie hats and thousands of raucous seagulls is probably my earliest memory.
We didn't know how little time we'd have left together. He must have been in his early thirties, thought himself fit and healthy. The cricket was slow, overly nuanced for a six year old. We went exploring. We found our way up to the top tier and then through a gap in the internal division separating the members from the hoi polloi. We made it round to about Bay 10 before recognising we were a very long way away from certain safety. Dad had only noticed we weren't there because we weren't fidgetting and generally getting on his nerves. He'd been grateful for the peace and possibliy relieved we'd not obviously been irritating someone else instead.
In those days the seats were rickety wooden benches with peeling paint, bet they're long gone. Habitually we sat in the bit of members' area between the 'smoking stand' which was for members only [in those days men only] and bit of stadium further round on the wing that was for Melbourne Football Club members, though that was only apparant during the football season.We sat about two thirds of the way up the lowest tier, on the right hand side; if we could get there we'd sit up against the low wire fence separating the men from the mixed company.
This was important because my grandfather, who was often there too would take up position up against the fence but on the far side from my grandmother - so that he could enjoy all the comforts of home and the illusion of male bonding simultaneously - at fixed intervals guided by his diabetes she would pass him the sandwiches and tea without inconveniencing strangers. And this little arrangement was in place up and down that fence. A gentleman who inadvertently took up a seat on that far side and thereby took the place next to the wife of a fellow member would cheerfully vacate his place for that member however crowded the ground might have become, however difficult it might have been to find another seat.
What a strange ritualised time it now seems, before John Cain had his way.
It should be added that this cosy arrangement could come under some strain at times of peak interest and demand such as the Boxing Day test match and the Finals series. On such days there might instead be cheerful passing amongst strangers of cups and sarnies wending their way from wife to hubby. I have to admit that the camaraderie that built up amongst the fence dwellers might not have existed anywhere else in the ground (except among the fan club enclaves). I wouldn't know.
Except in extremis that was where we sat and it was our own little bubble. The position was almost ideal, being nearly behind the bowler's run up, but high enough and off-side enough to be unaffected by the sight screen and in winter perfectly placed on the wing. My mum helped me to bunk off school for the final day's play in the Centenary Test but we got there late; we ended up stranded near the Melbourne Football Club supporters and several rows higher up than usual which was a bit disorientating at first. By the time the last ball was bowled I couldn't have cared less where we were sitting, but then we did win the match ... and by the same margin as the match it was commemorating blah, blah.
We also got to the ground late and missed the start of England's first innings in the Melbourne test of the 1978/9 series: we heard one roar as we walked through the park from Richmond railway station and a second as we passed through the turnstiles. By the time we'd fought our way through to the ground side Rodney Hogg had taken both Boycott and Brearley for the price of two measly runs. Oh well.
I remember that roar the same way I remember the tumult of the crowd leaving the ground at the end of the 1973 Grand Final. My grandmother took me to that. I wouldn't have been very big at the time and crowd was phenomenally exhilarated and energised by what it had seen. I managed to slide out of slipstream pushing the pair of us towards the railway station and buy one of those traditional post-Grand Final cartoon posters that were part of tradition. I didn't care which team had one, I'd been there, done that and now I'd bought the poster.
Mum and I went to the 1977 Grand Final which was played out by Collingwood and North Melbourne. I've no precise figure for the attendance, and no firm grasp of the ground's attendance at that time, but there probably were between 95,000 and 100,000 souls in that ground that day. I've never known a silence like the one that fell over us as the final siren sounded, and I can still see the players of both teams having given their all for 120 minutes looking shell-shocked as realisation it had been for nowt took hold.
Later, still in the days before membership was opened to women but while both my grandfathers were alive and I had access to an indecent number of Ladies Tickets (both grandfathers were of sufficient in the club standing to be awarded two rather than one) I would go unaccompanied. I saw a lot of football and a fair bit of cricket too in my late teens and early twenties.
Before she went back to the US we took to the football an American girl who'd been at our school while her father spent a couple of years down under setting some company or other to rights. Not only had Deanna absolutely no interest in Aussie Rules whatsoever, she basically had no interest in sports in any form whatsoever. For her benefit we sat one tier up to give her a clearer perspective. Watching the game lower down is fine for the initiated, but a novice will benefit from the lesser foreshortening from the higher altitudes. For two quarters she sat quietly, taking it all in, asking few questions. By the end of the game she had a huge grin on her face. The penny had dropped, she'd got the point and ... she'd actually enjoyed herself.
Just once we made our way up to the open top tier at the western end of the ground just the 'other' side of the Smoking Stand. On that occasion I was with mum and a friend of hers and we hitched up our skirts to catch a few rays. One of the significant drawbacks to being up there, apart from the obvious disadvantage to the short sighted of being so very much further from the action, was that the big screen scoreboard was almost at one's back. Keeping track of the detailed score, never mind watching the replays, necessitated frequent swivelling. We only went up there once.
During my precocious then prolonged teenage rebellion I ditched the dowdy and hugely unsuccessful Demons, supported by generations of my family during their pomp, in favour of the raffish and hugely successful Tigers. I had a friend called Josie, also a Richmond supporter of convenience, and we went everywhere except Kardina Park in the wake of the Tigers. We'd take it in turns to drive.
On one memorable weekend I drove us to Moorabbin in my battered early model Torana to watch Richmond take on perennial no-hopers St Kilda. Out the Saints came for the kick off, seventeen men and something that looked human only scaled up. We turned to each other, two posh girls from Canterbury, and said almost simultaneously "What the Fuck is THAT?" A quick consultation of the Record revealed THAT to be one Tony Lockett. There at the birth of a legend, we were.
We loved slumming it. I particularly loved Victoria Park which in those days was home to the Magpies. An odd ground, low slung and lurking at the end of a truly, breathtakingly ordinary side street but oozing such charisma and history. The outer, or at least the bit of it we preferred, had no seating but instead gravel covered shallow terracing. Neither of us had turned out to be particularly tall (or particularly heavy) so we worked out a strategy of getting right up to the front of one of those terraces and then standing on a couple of upright (emptied, but surprisingly sturdy) tinnies for added height. We didn't drink and we didn't need to, there were usually plenty of cans lying about even before kick-off.
Later I repented my wild teenage ways and returned to the MFC fold in time to spend a period of my twenties swanking at the annual club Ladies' Lunch at which it was quite de rigeur to swoon as Robbie Flower signed ones menu. I have one somewhere in storage at home if the mice haven't eaten it or mum hasn't turfed it out with all my other crap.
Given the circle I've turned I'll probably be grateful the old slatted wooden benches on which I once parked my much younger arse have now given way for individual plastic jobs. I can't help thinking though that the kind of camaraderie I experienced on those benches as a child went to the scrap yard with them. If there are fifteen seats in that row, then there will be fifteen bodies in there, no more. But there was once a time when gentlemen ungrudging swapped seats with fellow members and we'd squeeze twenty in and pretty cheerfully too if necessary.
I've paid my membership for another year, have a whole year to settle that credit card bill, and the hope that one day I will get home to see another game.
We didn't know how little time we'd have left together. He must have been in his early thirties, thought himself fit and healthy. The cricket was slow, overly nuanced for a six year old. We went exploring. We found our way up to the top tier and then through a gap in the internal division separating the members from the hoi polloi. We made it round to about Bay 10 before recognising we were a very long way away from certain safety. Dad had only noticed we weren't there because we weren't fidgetting and generally getting on his nerves. He'd been grateful for the peace and possibliy relieved we'd not obviously been irritating someone else instead.
In those days the seats were rickety wooden benches with peeling paint, bet they're long gone. Habitually we sat in the bit of members' area between the 'smoking stand' which was for members only [in those days men only] and bit of stadium further round on the wing that was for Melbourne Football Club members, though that was only apparant during the football season.We sat about two thirds of the way up the lowest tier, on the right hand side; if we could get there we'd sit up against the low wire fence separating the men from the mixed company.
This was important because my grandfather, who was often there too would take up position up against the fence but on the far side from my grandmother - so that he could enjoy all the comforts of home and the illusion of male bonding simultaneously - at fixed intervals guided by his diabetes she would pass him the sandwiches and tea without inconveniencing strangers. And this little arrangement was in place up and down that fence. A gentleman who inadvertently took up a seat on that far side and thereby took the place next to the wife of a fellow member would cheerfully vacate his place for that member however crowded the ground might have become, however difficult it might have been to find another seat.
What a strange ritualised time it now seems, before John Cain had his way.
It should be added that this cosy arrangement could come under some strain at times of peak interest and demand such as the Boxing Day test match and the Finals series. On such days there might instead be cheerful passing amongst strangers of cups and sarnies wending their way from wife to hubby. I have to admit that the camaraderie that built up amongst the fence dwellers might not have existed anywhere else in the ground (except among the fan club enclaves). I wouldn't know.
Except in extremis that was where we sat and it was our own little bubble. The position was almost ideal, being nearly behind the bowler's run up, but high enough and off-side enough to be unaffected by the sight screen and in winter perfectly placed on the wing. My mum helped me to bunk off school for the final day's play in the Centenary Test but we got there late; we ended up stranded near the Melbourne Football Club supporters and several rows higher up than usual which was a bit disorientating at first. By the time the last ball was bowled I couldn't have cared less where we were sitting, but then we did win the match ... and by the same margin as the match it was commemorating blah, blah.
We also got to the ground late and missed the start of England's first innings in the Melbourne test of the 1978/9 series: we heard one roar as we walked through the park from Richmond railway station and a second as we passed through the turnstiles. By the time we'd fought our way through to the ground side Rodney Hogg had taken both Boycott and Brearley for the price of two measly runs. Oh well.
I remember that roar the same way I remember the tumult of the crowd leaving the ground at the end of the 1973 Grand Final. My grandmother took me to that. I wouldn't have been very big at the time and crowd was phenomenally exhilarated and energised by what it had seen. I managed to slide out of slipstream pushing the pair of us towards the railway station and buy one of those traditional post-Grand Final cartoon posters that were part of tradition. I didn't care which team had one, I'd been there, done that and now I'd bought the poster.
Mum and I went to the 1977 Grand Final which was played out by Collingwood and North Melbourne. I've no precise figure for the attendance, and no firm grasp of the ground's attendance at that time, but there probably were between 95,000 and 100,000 souls in that ground that day. I've never known a silence like the one that fell over us as the final siren sounded, and I can still see the players of both teams having given their all for 120 minutes looking shell-shocked as realisation it had been for nowt took hold.
Later, still in the days before membership was opened to women but while both my grandfathers were alive and I had access to an indecent number of Ladies Tickets (both grandfathers were of sufficient in the club standing to be awarded two rather than one) I would go unaccompanied. I saw a lot of football and a fair bit of cricket too in my late teens and early twenties.
Before she went back to the US we took to the football an American girl who'd been at our school while her father spent a couple of years down under setting some company or other to rights. Not only had Deanna absolutely no interest in Aussie Rules whatsoever, she basically had no interest in sports in any form whatsoever. For her benefit we sat one tier up to give her a clearer perspective. Watching the game lower down is fine for the initiated, but a novice will benefit from the lesser foreshortening from the higher altitudes. For two quarters she sat quietly, taking it all in, asking few questions. By the end of the game she had a huge grin on her face. The penny had dropped, she'd got the point and ... she'd actually enjoyed herself.
Just once we made our way up to the open top tier at the western end of the ground just the 'other' side of the Smoking Stand. On that occasion I was with mum and a friend of hers and we hitched up our skirts to catch a few rays. One of the significant drawbacks to being up there, apart from the obvious disadvantage to the short sighted of being so very much further from the action, was that the big screen scoreboard was almost at one's back. Keeping track of the detailed score, never mind watching the replays, necessitated frequent swivelling. We only went up there once.
During my precocious then prolonged teenage rebellion I ditched the dowdy and hugely unsuccessful Demons, supported by generations of my family during their pomp, in favour of the raffish and hugely successful Tigers. I had a friend called Josie, also a Richmond supporter of convenience, and we went everywhere except Kardina Park in the wake of the Tigers. We'd take it in turns to drive.
On one memorable weekend I drove us to Moorabbin in my battered early model Torana to watch Richmond take on perennial no-hopers St Kilda. Out the Saints came for the kick off, seventeen men and something that looked human only scaled up. We turned to each other, two posh girls from Canterbury, and said almost simultaneously "What the Fuck is THAT?" A quick consultation of the Record revealed THAT to be one Tony Lockett. There at the birth of a legend, we were.
We loved slumming it. I particularly loved Victoria Park which in those days was home to the Magpies. An odd ground, low slung and lurking at the end of a truly, breathtakingly ordinary side street but oozing such charisma and history. The outer, or at least the bit of it we preferred, had no seating but instead gravel covered shallow terracing. Neither of us had turned out to be particularly tall (or particularly heavy) so we worked out a strategy of getting right up to the front of one of those terraces and then standing on a couple of upright (emptied, but surprisingly sturdy) tinnies for added height. We didn't drink and we didn't need to, there were usually plenty of cans lying about even before kick-off.
Later I repented my wild teenage ways and returned to the MFC fold in time to spend a period of my twenties swanking at the annual club Ladies' Lunch at which it was quite de rigeur to swoon as Robbie Flower signed ones menu. I have one somewhere in storage at home if the mice haven't eaten it or mum hasn't turfed it out with all my other crap.
Given the circle I've turned I'll probably be grateful the old slatted wooden benches on which I once parked my much younger arse have now given way for individual plastic jobs. I can't help thinking though that the kind of camaraderie I experienced on those benches as a child went to the scrap yard with them. If there are fifteen seats in that row, then there will be fifteen bodies in there, no more. But there was once a time when gentlemen ungrudging swapped seats with fellow members and we'd squeeze twenty in and pretty cheerfully too if necessary.
I've paid my membership for another year, have a whole year to settle that credit card bill, and the hope that one day I will get home to see another game.
Monday, 24 September 2007
I don't want to be a MAHList any more
I've rather boxed myself into a corner with this one. An athiest being someone who "doesn't believe in god" at least in the common parlance must accept the existence of the thing he or she 'doesn't believe in' or that is roughly the line of country I've been dragging myself across over the course of the past 48 hours. A more accurate description of my position would be that I'm a person who believes in the non-existence of a supernatural entity, requires not such a concept to explain the world about me however immense and complex it might be. This rational state has been termed nontheism.
The problem is that I can't be a MNHList: I wouldn't have the faintest idea how to pronounce that. Shit
The problem is that I can't be a MNHList: I wouldn't have the faintest idea how to pronounce that. Shit
moan, moan, moan ... and no sex involved
What ever else might be said about the 'new' blogger the new 'spellchecker' is undoubtedly a retrograde step. The peculiarities of the old spell checker amused. Now the (a) quirky contents and (b) lack of a facility to add new [and we're talking very basic, standard English words] content are not even mildly entertaining. In fact I find the damned thing a tedious waste of time. Anyone?
Plans
I'm bored.
Novel writing is still another month and a bit away. After that, what? Something affordable on our severely restricted budget. How poor are we? Poor enough to be able to entitled to full coverage of OU course fees and grants towards specialist equipment.
How bored?
How about a BSc (Mathematics). Bored enough? I don't know how this works, and whether past tertiary study and qualifications count or have to count or whatever. Now I'm intrigued. But not quite as bored as I was this afternoon.
Novel writing is still another month and a bit away. After that, what? Something affordable on our severely restricted budget. How poor are we? Poor enough to be able to entitled to full coverage of OU course fees and grants towards specialist equipment.
How bored?
How about a BSc (Mathematics). Bored enough? I don't know how this works, and whether past tertiary study and qualifications count or have to count or whatever. Now I'm intrigued. But not quite as bored as I was this afternoon.
And the bad news is
That grinning loon who I'd briefly believed would NOT be moving in to a house near us will be a neighbour, and that before the end of the month. Oh shit.
He's talking about walking the offspring home and baby sitting her and her baby sitting their offspring in due course (baby due at the beginning of October, offspring old enough to baby sit in four and a half years).
I DON'T WANT YOU NEAR MY LIFE. GO AWAY!
He's talking about walking the offspring home and baby sitting her and her baby sitting their offspring in due course (baby due at the beginning of October, offspring old enough to baby sit in four and a half years).
I DON'T WANT YOU NEAR MY LIFE. GO AWAY!
Freedom's just another word for sharing; your...
fingerprints, DNA, credit rating, tax records, innoculation history, sexual health and so forth are every other fucker's affair.
Every poor bastard crossing the path of a government agency ceases to be an individual with any meaningful degree of self-determination and becomes a line of elements in a database. Like the inmates of that hotel you can be found to be not guilty and fully compliant and still they'll keep you on their books - for the rest of your life.
You touch something and They will know about it; you sneeze and leave a snot trail sometime in the future, They will put your name to it unerringly.
Don't ask to opt out, that's no longer an option. You will conform.
Every poor bastard crossing the path of a government agency ceases to be an individual with any meaningful degree of self-determination and becomes a line of elements in a database. Like the inmates of that hotel you can be found to be not guilty and fully compliant and still they'll keep you on their books - for the rest of your life.
You touch something and They will know about it; you sneeze and leave a snot trail sometime in the future, They will put your name to it unerringly.
Don't ask to opt out, that's no longer an option. You will conform.
There we were
thinking that things had been bloody awful weather wise... and then autumn turned up in the early hours of this morning to set us all right on that point.
Sunday, 23 September 2007
Strewth, Them Libs is a Class Act
With each passing year I am more and more deeply shamed by the knowledge that once, a long time ago now, I was a fully paid up member of the Liberal Party (Victoria Division).
What was I thinking? Well I certainly wasn't thinking that I was contributing to a political machine that would one day foist on a frighteningly complacent and compliant nation the likes of John Howard, Peter Costello, Tony Abbott, Alexander Downer, That Woman who was once the Minister for Sending Eight Months Pregnant Women to China for Forced Abortions* and the remainder of the sorry horde.
Back in those days Costello was part of a double act that also included Andrew Peacock's son-in-law which was primarily seen as being engaged in a fight to bring the party into the twentieth century and out of the stultifying grasp of a gerontocracy - though Costello came to that particular knees-up via a relationship with organised labour hating HR Nicholls society leadership. This was a distasteful coalition of vested interests and fundamentalist irrationalists who want the rest of us to believe that meaningful wage negotiations can take place between say, for instance, a national (or international) retail business and an individual check out or shop floor worker. Hm.
Now he's playing second fiddle to someone else. Difficult as it is to credit Little John with anything it must be said that he picked a good-un when searching for a stooge; Costello came to the job with years of practice.
Well I've repented. Whatever they might be they're not liberal. They're no better morally than any other clutch of politicians. In other words they're self-serving social misfits, border-line psychopathic hypocrites.
But by crikey they know how to fight ... just like cornered rats.
* This is Amanda Vanstone, but I couldn't remember her name last night.
What was I thinking? Well I certainly wasn't thinking that I was contributing to a political machine that would one day foist on a frighteningly complacent and compliant nation the likes of John Howard, Peter Costello, Tony Abbott, Alexander Downer, That Woman who was once the Minister for Sending Eight Months Pregnant Women to China for Forced Abortions* and the remainder of the sorry horde.
Back in those days Costello was part of a double act that also included Andrew Peacock's son-in-law which was primarily seen as being engaged in a fight to bring the party into the twentieth century and out of the stultifying grasp of a gerontocracy - though Costello came to that particular knees-up via a relationship with organised labour hating HR Nicholls society leadership. This was a distasteful coalition of vested interests and fundamentalist irrationalists who want the rest of us to believe that meaningful wage negotiations can take place between say, for instance, a national (or international) retail business and an individual check out or shop floor worker. Hm.
Now he's playing second fiddle to someone else. Difficult as it is to credit Little John with anything it must be said that he picked a good-un when searching for a stooge; Costello came to the job with years of practice.
Well I've repented. Whatever they might be they're not liberal. They're no better morally than any other clutch of politicians. In other words they're self-serving social misfits, border-line psychopathic hypocrites.
But by crikey they know how to fight ... just like cornered rats.
Howard asserts that the party hasn't 'engaged in smears' which is perfectly true provided he doesn't consider what's gone on here as engaging in smears. So he's covered his back neatly, but just to be on the safe side he's gone on to disassociate himself personally with a superlatively playground-type line of argument which goes perfectly with a side-salad of "I'm not listening; la la la la la la la.""AMID an escalating brawl over political mud-slinging in the countdown to the election, the latest smear on a Liberal figure has been traced to his own party. Claims that a married federal minister visits gay bathhouses and sexually harasses other men in political circles surfaced yesterday in News Limited papers...
"Mr Howard was incensed by suggestions of foul play. "We have not engaged in smears, and I am just not going to accept that we have," he said. "The Labor Party last week was given an opportunity to substantiate a claim that we had and they failed completely."
* This is Amanda Vanstone, but I couldn't remember her name last night.
Alca Pone
How yesterday could have been a slow news day is a bit of a mystery: Labour Party Conference, Bluetongue Disease, The Special One? Yet in the face of all this stout competition The Big Country regularly made news bulletins. Normally this happens on dreadfully dull days or in the aftermath of the most recent thumping handed out to the representatives of England by one or other Australian side.
But ... at the end of a week when we'd also failed to make the final in SuperSilly Cricket, and when we're only keeping pace with the Kiwis ... space was given over to a 'major' story emanating from the other side of the world: not sending the army into the heart of darkness to solve the many social problems besetting the isolated, impoverished and under-educated communities living there, but rounding up the dole-bludgers, lay-abouts, long-haired dope smoking hippy freaks and communists that are a blight on far too many of the nation's most desirable costal real estate.
These beaches are beautiful, therefore it is entirely inapproapriate that they be populated by the sort of people who tend to cohabit without being married and more generally dispense with the proprieties as Little John sees them (ostentatious church going, voting Liberal, tax evasion, wearing a suit and tie).
Something must be done, particularly in a week when John's mates have been caught running a Smear Unit without John's permission and using real life criminals to pose as 'criminal' unionists in a series of anti-union advertisements - this has subsequently been described as method acting [Method acting is an acting technique in which actors try to replicate real life emotional conditions under which the character operates, in an effort to create a life-like, realistic performance.]
Just in time the Government has found a soft target and with an election looming there are just two chances it will stop kicking any time soon.
But ... at the end of a week when we'd also failed to make the final in SuperSilly Cricket, and when we're only keeping pace with the Kiwis ... space was given over to a 'major' story emanating from the other side of the world: not sending the army into the heart of darkness to solve the many social problems besetting the isolated, impoverished and under-educated communities living there, but rounding up the dole-bludgers, lay-abouts, long-haired dope smoking hippy freaks and communists that are a blight on far too many of the nation's most desirable costal real estate.
These beaches are beautiful, therefore it is entirely inapproapriate that they be populated by the sort of people who tend to cohabit without being married and more generally dispense with the proprieties as Little John sees them (ostentatious church going, voting Liberal, tax evasion, wearing a suit and tie).
Something must be done, particularly in a week when John's mates have been caught running a Smear Unit without John's permission and using real life criminals to pose as 'criminal' unionists in a series of anti-union advertisements - this has subsequently been described as method acting [Method acting is an acting technique in which actors try to replicate real life emotional conditions under which the character operates, in an effort to create a life-like, realistic performance.]
Just in time the Government has found a soft target and with an election looming there are just two chances it will stop kicking any time soon.
Wednesday, 19 September 2007
I hate customers
Oh, this is another of those "Am I turning English? posts" but its undeniable. I hate them. I hate them all. I hate the ones that race up and down aisles pushing trollies or in mobility carts knocking merchandise and other customers aside in their single minded obsession with whatever it is that fills their tiny little minds. I hate the nit pickers who stand there for minutes after completing a transaction, looking for that one or two 'p' they think we might be taking out of them. I hate the ones who come back weeks after the event with something that wasn't quite right.
I hate you all. It is irrational. Right up until the moment when my meagre earnings are the only justification for having to give the kid glove treatment to some barnacle who has failed to notice the big red and white sign saying Buy One, Get One Free and taken only one. Oops. Can I come back and take another one? No You Can't. That would be theft. Fuck off.
I hate you all. It is irrational. Right up until the moment when my meagre earnings are the only justification for having to give the kid glove treatment to some barnacle who has failed to notice the big red and white sign saying Buy One, Get One Free and taken only one. Oops. Can I come back and take another one? No You Can't. That would be theft. Fuck off.
Stop it!
Fully 80% of page FOUR (4) of today's Times is given over to coverage of a row that has broken out at Oxford University. Of that material about two thirds is a straight reporting piece written jointly by Ruth Guildhall and John O'Leary, while the remaining third is a commentary piece by Ruth Gledhill alone.
The story is not one of politicking in the customary Oxford sense, or any one of the usual fillers always on standby for deployment during slow news weeks: admissions (over-representation of posh kids from Public School among student intake), sexual misadventure, substance abuse, admissions (under-representation of un-posh kids with the same grades as posh kids but emerging from a comprehensive located in one or other inner city slum district), undergraduate hi-jinx, falling academic standards, admissions (the scandal of bias in the interview process which either plays to the advantages of posh kids or results in over compensation for impoverished backgrounds), plagiarism, under-funding, commercialisation, Americanisation and, er, admissions (over reliance on the ability to spell, construct grammatically correct sentences and count as indicators of make the most of a tax payer subsidised stint at university) .
What we get, instead, is column inch after column inch given over a review into the Seven Pillars of Ignorance at Oxford which are its seven christian private halls. Rather puzzlingly the article describes them thus: "two Anglican, one Baptist and three Roman Catholic", though by my calculation St Benet's (benedictine/premonstratensian*), Blackfriars (dominican), Campion Hall (essentially jesuitical) and Greyfriars (capuchin) makes, um, FOUR. What have I missed? Have the Jjesuits given up entirely on God?
The fact that the piece is an opportunity for Gledhill ( who should more accurately be described as the Times Religious Correspondent) to take an arch swipe at those who are concerned by the state of play in these Halls and particularly what is going on at Wycliffe (those who've written a letter of concern about developments have indulged in "an unprecedented breach of normal academic protocol") constitutes aggravating circumstances; the real problem is the grotesque prominence given to hocum, superstition and the intellectualising of fairy tales in the first place.
The piece by Gledhill actually contains the following sentence: "It is an indication that the atheistic creed, preached by dons such as Richard Dawkins, is in the ascendancy." That O'Leary might have been the author of that outrageously sly dig is irrelevant, since Gledhill puts her name to the entire article.
The Nigerians and the Jenson Brothers must be rubbing their hands in glee, given the ability of their type to see advantage in every set back. Now, if they'd only indulge themselves in the privacy of their own homes. The clarion call by Carol Sarler to rid the pages of our print media and the airways of an excessive attention to matters 'religious' was met with a furious response and it seems the Times has taken the views of one side in that debate to heart - 80% of page 4.
The story is not one of politicking in the customary Oxford sense, or any one of the usual fillers always on standby for deployment during slow news weeks: admissions (over-representation of posh kids from Public School among student intake), sexual misadventure, substance abuse, admissions (under-representation of un-posh kids with the same grades as posh kids but emerging from a comprehensive located in one or other inner city slum district), undergraduate hi-jinx, falling academic standards, admissions (the scandal of bias in the interview process which either plays to the advantages of posh kids or results in over compensation for impoverished backgrounds), plagiarism, under-funding, commercialisation, Americanisation and, er, admissions (over reliance on the ability to spell, construct grammatically correct sentences and count as indicators of make the most of a tax payer subsidised stint at university) .
What we get, instead, is column inch after column inch given over a review into the Seven Pillars of Ignorance at Oxford which are its seven christian private halls. Rather puzzlingly the article describes them thus: "two Anglican, one Baptist and three Roman Catholic", though by my calculation St Benet's (benedictine/premonstratensian*), Blackfriars (dominican), Campion Hall (essentially jesuitical) and Greyfriars (capuchin) makes, um, FOUR. What have I missed? Have the Jjesuits given up entirely on God?
The fact that the piece is an opportunity for Gledhill ( who should more accurately be described as the Times Religious Correspondent) to take an arch swipe at those who are concerned by the state of play in these Halls and particularly what is going on at Wycliffe (those who've written a letter of concern about developments have indulged in "an unprecedented breach of normal academic protocol") constitutes aggravating circumstances; the real problem is the grotesque prominence given to hocum, superstition and the intellectualising of fairy tales in the first place.
The piece by Gledhill actually contains the following sentence: "It is an indication that the atheistic creed, preached by dons such as Richard Dawkins, is in the ascendancy." That O'Leary might have been the author of that outrageously sly dig is irrelevant, since Gledhill puts her name to the entire article.
The Nigerians and the Jenson Brothers must be rubbing their hands in glee, given the ability of their type to see advantage in every set back. Now, if they'd only indulge themselves in the privacy of their own homes. The clarion call by Carol Sarler to rid the pages of our print media and the airways of an excessive attention to matters 'religious' was met with a furious response and it seems the Times has taken the views of one side in that debate to heart - 80% of page 4.
Fred Dagg, Genius
This post is entirely and unabashedly self-serving. It took me so phugging long to find this text I'm posting it here in the hope that I won't lose it again.
I was prompted to go in search of it by a fellow blogger and fellow strine who is of rather tender years, particularly relative to yours truly. He's just begun the torturous process of off-loading his current abode and has been moved to post a rant on the iniquities of what he refers to as Land Rats. If only he'd read this first, he'd have been spared the disillusionment:
I was prompted to go in search of it by a fellow blogger and fellow strine who is of rather tender years, particularly relative to yours truly. He's just begun the torturous process of off-loading his current abode and has been moved to post a rant on the iniquities of what he refers to as Land Rats. If only he'd read this first, he'd have been spared the disillusionment:
All of this is best read in a Kiwi accent while wearing gum boots, shorts, black singlet and bush hat. I'm now off to revist other past glories in the form of Death in Brunswick.Like so many other jobs in this wonderful society of ours, the basic function of the real estate agent is to increase the price of something without actually producing anything and as a result it has a lot to do with communication, terminology and calling a spade a delightfully bucolic colonial winner facing north and offering a unique opportunity to the handyman. But the main thing to master, of course, is the vernacular, and basically this works as follows.
There are three types of house:
"glorious commanding majestic split-level ultra-modern dream homes" that are built on cliff-faces
"private bush-clad inglenooks" that are built down holes; and
"very affordable solid family houses in much sought-after streets" that are old gun-emplacements with awnings
A "cottage" is a caravan with the wheels taken off.
"panoramic", "spectacular" or "magnificent" view is an indication that the house has windows and, if the view is "unique", there’s probably only one window.
I have here the perfect advertisement for a house, so we’ll go through it and I’ll point out some of the more interesting features. So here we go, mind the step.
"Owner transferred reluctantly instructs us to sell" means the house is for sale.
"Genuine reason for selling" means the house is for sale.
"Rarely can we offer" means the house is for sale.
"Superbly presented delightful charmer" doesn’t mean anything really but it’s probably still for sale.
"Most attractive immaculate home of character in prime dress-circle position" means that the thing that’s for sale is a house.
"Unusual design with interesting and intriguing solidly built stairs" means the stairs are in the wrong place.
"Huge spacious generous lounge commands this well-serviced executive residence" means the rest of the house is a rabbit warren with rooms like cupboards.
"Magnificent well-proportioned large convenient block with exquisite garden" means there’s no view but one of the trees had a flower on it the day we were up there.
"Privacy, taste, charm, space, freedom, quiet, away from it all location in much sought-after cul-de-sac situation" means it’s not only built down a hole, it’s built at the very far end of the hole.
"A must for you artists, sculptors and potters" means that only an idiot would consider actually living in it.
"2/3 bedrooms with possible in-law accommodation" means it’s got two bedrooms and a tool shed.
"Great buy", "ring early for this one", "inspection a must", "priced to sell", "new listing", "see this one now", "all offers considered", "good value", "be quick", "inspection by appointment", "view today", "this one can’t last", "sole agents", "today’s best buy" means the house is still for sale.
And if ever you see "investment opportunity" in the newspaper, turn away very quickly and have a crack at the crossword.
Monday, 17 September 2007
It isn't fair
Where would be without the wit and wisdom of the Liberal Democrats? Wonder no more. One of their number, a woman natch, has finally fingered the source of global warming, famine, drought, plague, pestilence, poverty and etc.
It is manifest that if we were all togged out in ethical cotton loin cloths and subsisting on a diet of crystal clear mountain spring water, nut burgers and berries then there would be an immediate cessation to all hostilities, a general outbreak of peace and goodwill and an instantaneous fair and equitable distribution of resources. In this utopia of tree-hugging, pan pipes and physical fitness - and I'm sure any similarities between the Lib Dem vision and that set out by the Nazis is purely coincidental, or an unavoidable by-product of any political belief system that purports to Know Best - the obvious first casualty will be competition. That is, after all Nazi as in National Socialist.
The Lib Dems have always regarded competition as the root of all evil - few have possessed the balls to call it like it is. Cometh the hour, cometh the woman. The Lib Dem's parliamentary representatives will all be able to get to next year's party conference in a couple taxis, possibly with a bit of room to spare.
And yet, in the mind of one (female) speaker at Conference, come the revolution you Rugger Buggers will be first up against the wall. Then, and only then will it be safe to tuck daisy into rifle barrels, link hands and sing a couple of rousing verses of some secular equivalent of Kumbaya. Some frightful hairy legged harridan of the fruit loop fringe has castigated the England captain for bullying an American opponent on the pitch. This is a moment for a few perfectly enunciated Phuts ... as in Phor Phut Sake....
These people want to run your life. Don't say you weren't warned, if that couple of taxi loads of sandal wearers end up holding the balance of power in a nearly hung parliament. Okay?
It is manifest that if we were all togged out in ethical cotton loin cloths and subsisting on a diet of crystal clear mountain spring water, nut burgers and berries then there would be an immediate cessation to all hostilities, a general outbreak of peace and goodwill and an instantaneous fair and equitable distribution of resources. In this utopia of tree-hugging, pan pipes and physical fitness - and I'm sure any similarities between the Lib Dem vision and that set out by the Nazis is purely coincidental, or an unavoidable by-product of any political belief system that purports to Know Best - the obvious first casualty will be competition. That is, after all Nazi as in National Socialist.
The Lib Dems have always regarded competition as the root of all evil - few have possessed the balls to call it like it is. Cometh the hour, cometh the woman. The Lib Dem's parliamentary representatives will all be able to get to next year's party conference in a couple taxis, possibly with a bit of room to spare.
And yet, in the mind of one (female) speaker at Conference, come the revolution you Rugger Buggers will be first up against the wall. Then, and only then will it be safe to tuck daisy into rifle barrels, link hands and sing a couple of rousing verses of some secular equivalent of Kumbaya. Some frightful hairy legged harridan of the fruit loop fringe has castigated the England captain for bullying an American opponent on the pitch. This is a moment for a few perfectly enunciated Phuts ... as in Phor Phut Sake....
These people want to run your life. Don't say you weren't warned, if that couple of taxi loads of sandal wearers end up holding the balance of power in a nearly hung parliament. Okay?
Saturday, 15 September 2007
I'm not a racist
But do I really have to be civil to cretinous gobby scousers. Seriously. Is that in the MAHL charter? Where?
Phut!
We had one in tonight who did a small shop; enough to feed and 'water' herself tonight. Sadly she hadn't enough left over to purchase a birthday card for her son. Late at night, underage operators who can't sell alcohol (or potato peelers) unsupervised I'm on my own and I get this fucking woman at the tills. This is all I need.
Can I help her find a card she can afford? Hm, I think to myself. Perhaps I refund that cheapo bottle of new world plonk you've purchased. With that money back in your hand you'll be able to purchase both a reasonable quality birthday card for your son and a top quality bottle of ale or beer that will have the kick of three small glasses of Peruvian chardonnay without the bonus hangover. Do I suggest this. Er, no. Customer services doesn't allow for the customer ever being wrong. Even when she's a gobby cretinous scouser. Even then.
So I follow her to the birthday card stand and start to explain the price marking system to her.
"I do have a degree", she insisted - to which stupidly though entirely truthfully I replied "and I'm not trying to patronise you."
The problem, as I discovered, is that her degree hadn't equipped her to grasp quickly that card prices are indicated by a symbol usually but not always a figure enclosed in a circle printed on the back of the card.
In her increasingly agitated state she was distressed when I attempted to drag myself away from her and return to supervise (yet another) alcohol sale, notwithstanding my promise to find someone at liberty to spend as much time as required undistracted by the demands of other staff and idiotic customers, in the search for a card sufficiently cheap and nasty to enable her to have her cheap and nasty bottle of zinfandel or whatever fashionable tipple it was in her bag of purchases.
In the end she stumped up a colossal £1.20 for a card for her beloved son, being unable to waste any more time she could better spend getting pissed.
Phut!
We had one in tonight who did a small shop; enough to feed and 'water' herself tonight. Sadly she hadn't enough left over to purchase a birthday card for her son. Late at night, underage operators who can't sell alcohol (or potato peelers) unsupervised I'm on my own and I get this fucking woman at the tills. This is all I need.
Can I help her find a card she can afford? Hm, I think to myself. Perhaps I refund that cheapo bottle of new world plonk you've purchased. With that money back in your hand you'll be able to purchase both a reasonable quality birthday card for your son and a top quality bottle of ale or beer that will have the kick of three small glasses of Peruvian chardonnay without the bonus hangover. Do I suggest this. Er, no. Customer services doesn't allow for the customer ever being wrong. Even when she's a gobby cretinous scouser. Even then.
So I follow her to the birthday card stand and start to explain the price marking system to her.
"I do have a degree", she insisted - to which stupidly though entirely truthfully I replied "and I'm not trying to patronise you."
The problem, as I discovered, is that her degree hadn't equipped her to grasp quickly that card prices are indicated by a symbol usually but not always a figure enclosed in a circle printed on the back of the card.
In her increasingly agitated state she was distressed when I attempted to drag myself away from her and return to supervise (yet another) alcohol sale, notwithstanding my promise to find someone at liberty to spend as much time as required undistracted by the demands of other staff and idiotic customers, in the search for a card sufficiently cheap and nasty to enable her to have her cheap and nasty bottle of zinfandel or whatever fashionable tipple it was in her bag of purchases.
In the end she stumped up a colossal £1.20 for a card for her beloved son, being unable to waste any more time she could better spend getting pissed.
Playing favourites
Phut. That's a definite. And also Phug. These are sophisticated terms of abuse, readily distinguished from common vulgarisms by the deployment of the almost archaic 'Ph'. In Wales these words are spelled LLut and LLug or possibly FFut and Ffug or even, maybe, Ddut and Ddug. I don't know, but then my grasp of the venerable and honourable language of Our Fathers of Cymru is rather feeble. This is so you can spot sophisticated Welsh abuse. Haven't spotted any sophisticated Welsh abuse? Well I never.
You played beautiful rubgy today boyos. We played better. Nur nur nee nur nur.
I will return when I turn seven or when I sober up; which ever comes first. Oh how did the Enger-lish do yesterday evening? Hm.
You played beautiful rubgy today boyos. We played better. Nur nur nee nur nur.
I will return when I turn seven or when I sober up; which ever comes first. Oh how did the Enger-lish do yesterday evening? Hm.
And As I Dream
I don't dream of running a supermarket. Oh no. I have my eyes fixed firmly on those glittering lights above my head. I'll probably find on my death bed they were the reflections off a disco ball, but in the mean time...
I need a kick up the arse and after a couple of years of toying with the idea and backing off because I know once I start I won't be able to stop however bad the results I've almost committed myself to signing up for this year's Panorama.
Having to do too many early days might screw that completely, though. If I work the late shift I have to get up, get the offspring to school then have about two and a half hours available before I have to get ready to work. By the time I get in the offspring is in bed. That's about 9:30. Depending on what time the Slug fucks off and leaves me in peace I might get a bit more in before I have to go to bed. In all probability that gives me four hours a day, plus the days I'm not working plus every second Sunday to reach a target of 50,000 not necessarily readable words, though obviously producing something I'm prepared to attach my name to would be a positive.
And I've shelved the outline I put together last month which is clearly too ambitious and already unwieldy in favour of something simpler and more achievable.
I need a kick up the arse and after a couple of years of toying with the idea and backing off because I know once I start I won't be able to stop however bad the results I've almost committed myself to signing up for this year's Panorama.
Having to do too many early days might screw that completely, though. If I work the late shift I have to get up, get the offspring to school then have about two and a half hours available before I have to get ready to work. By the time I get in the offspring is in bed. That's about 9:30. Depending on what time the Slug fucks off and leaves me in peace I might get a bit more in before I have to go to bed. In all probability that gives me four hours a day, plus the days I'm not working plus every second Sunday to reach a target of 50,000 not necessarily readable words, though obviously producing something I'm prepared to attach my name to would be a positive.
And I've shelved the outline I put together last month which is clearly too ambitious and already unwieldy in favour of something simpler and more achievable.
What's happening?
Well the Bolshie Book Worm's rear end issue hasn't gone away and the topical solution time frame is drawing to a close. The alternative which she is facing up to is the surgical approach. That means cutting but packing rather than stitching and months of recuperation. Speculation is already rife about who will get the task of filling her boots. Her departure will coincide with the semi-retirement of the Cowman and that adds to the intrigue, because Desperate Dave's the second highest paid member of staff. The money freed up by his retirement will fund considerable additional hours within the business over and above the hours he'll no longer be working, such is the gap between what he's paid and the actual going rate for his job.
All in all the 'opportunity' I've enjoyed over the past few weeks to demonstrate my capacity to haul my arse out of bed by 4:30 and be compos mentis by 6:00 might well stand me in very good stead indeed. Do I want it? Yes actually. Very much.
And it isn't just a matter of the better pay. The fact remains the core elements of my current job amount to that pitcher of warm spit and the bits I enjoy most are the bits I get into when I've got those core elements out of the way. Just as I'm the sort who'll eat first those bits on my plate I least savour so I prefer to get the crap out of the way so I can relax and enjoy. I don't enjoy being locked away in a room devoid of fresh air and natural light, sometimes not seeing a friendly face for hours on end, at the beck and call of absolutely everyone. This would be a chance to have some influence over the way things are done.
Everyone's entitled to a dream...
All in all the 'opportunity' I've enjoyed over the past few weeks to demonstrate my capacity to haul my arse out of bed by 4:30 and be compos mentis by 6:00 might well stand me in very good stead indeed. Do I want it? Yes actually. Very much.
And it isn't just a matter of the better pay. The fact remains the core elements of my current job amount to that pitcher of warm spit and the bits I enjoy most are the bits I get into when I've got those core elements out of the way. Just as I'm the sort who'll eat first those bits on my plate I least savour so I prefer to get the crap out of the way so I can relax and enjoy. I don't enjoy being locked away in a room devoid of fresh air and natural light, sometimes not seeing a friendly face for hours on end, at the beck and call of absolutely everyone. This would be a chance to have some influence over the way things are done.
Everyone's entitled to a dream...
Friday, 14 September 2007
Who's MAHLier than thou?
Carol Sarler's piece in the Times of 13 September and online here.
Our attention was demanded yesterday by headline “news” that, thousands of miles away in Zimbabwe, Archbishop Pius Ncubehas tendered his resignation to the Pope after rumours of sexual derrings-do – even though, in his case, his alleged partner was adult, female and consensual; hardly, therefore, an earth-shattering story except, possibly, to the small minority of Britons who are Roman Catholics.
The previous day, we had been similarly commanded to turn our thoughts to the pros and cons of subjecting Muslim faith schools, beloved of an even smaller minority, to state control. Last week conservative religious leaders of all stripes were handed ample airtime to condemn embryo research; for three straight months we have been daily reminded, amid all else, of the beliefs of the family McCann.
It is a peculiar reversal of social logic that the decline in the practice of religion should be met with such a rise in reference to it. Consider: if as many as 6.3 per cent of the population attend church (hold tight; we’ll nit-pick the figures in a moment) and if it would be fair to say that easily half of those don’t give a fig whether the bloke in the robes at the front is gay or not – why is it that the remaining 97 per cent of unconcerned people are being relentlessly subjected to the quibbling about it?
Of course, it might not be exactly 6.3 per cent; this happens to come from the religious think-tank Christian Research, but religion and statistics are notoriously awkward bedfellows. Census results have been criticised for the phrasing of the question “Which religion are you?”, which produced twice as many “Christians” as another survey found believers in God. The Catholic Church, enjoying something of a boost from Polish and other migrant workers, claims more than 900,000 Mass attendances per week – which sounds healthy until you ask how many of the devout
go more than once a week.
Our Muslim population is 1.6 million, but considerably more than half of those are children, while the Jewish population is believed to be alone in undercalculating its size, given an understandable reluctance – especially among older Jews of Eastern European origin – to tick boxes marked “Jewish”. Nobody, however, sensibly denies the overall decline in religious practice. Even the top-up provided by ethnic minority immigration does not help; in London, black churchgoers now outnumber whites, but declining churches are still losing more people than growing churches are gaining.
And yet, our pal from Mars, dropping by for his first visit in a generation, would be hard pressed to believe it. Last time he called, the British enjoyed a comfy relationship with their religions, whereby more people worshipped but far fewer mentioned it. Weeks would go by without religious reference in the media beyond
Thought for the Day and Songs of Praise; these days, by contrast, it is routinely the stuff of front pages.
When I was a child, archbishops were kindly, benign coves, wheeled out on big occasions; they didn’t, by and large, jump into newsprint to tackle “issues” in the name of their cloth. Even half a generation ago, Ann Widdecombe’s sincerely held religious commitment, one which must have informed her work as a minister, was regarded as just part of an amiable eccentricity that elevated her to a national treasure; today, Ruth Kelly’s comparable commitment has become her defining characteristic.
This is not to say that the tenets of religion have opened to greater debate: indeed, if only. Good manners today disallow the questioning of a man’s belief as sternly as they disallow jokes about it and to offend by either means may be, at least, a sacking offence or, at most, a matter of law. It has become a sine qua non of courteous interaction that those of us without a religious bone in our bodies must defer to those who have, and even determined antitheists are to hush our mouths lest we “cause offence” (in vain might we cry of the offence that we often feel).
The more liberal the person or the institution, the more likely it is that they accommodate the illiberal – as long as it comes in religious guise. Take, for instance, schools; all progressive schools worth their label will, these days, boast of their efforts to teach children about each other’s “cultures”. In fact, they lie. What they are teaching is each other’s religions.If they really meant culture, it would involve song, dance, art, literature, dress, drink and food; all we actually get, in most cases, are religious festivals – and if food gets mentioned, it is only to explain that the reason child X cannot eat the meal as enjoyed by child Y is because child X has a god who says he must not.
It cannot be coincidence that this deference towards religion in general has paralleled the muddled, if well-meaning, response specifically to the growth of Islam. Muddled because of a confusion between ethnicity and religion; well-meaning because it was the same commendable urge to show respect for ethnicity that widened to insist upon respect for the religion that often came with it. And if endless news bulletins bowed to “From a Muslim point of view . . .”, it is hardly surprising that, in the name of all things equal, every other small minority possessed of a deity has demanded prominence too.
It does not, however, make it any less absurd. At the moment, there are in Britain more practising anglers than practising Anglicans – but it is unimaginable, is it not, that in an effort to give properly representative nods to similarly consuming passions we might afford the same attentions to the sexuality of a carp that we give to a priest’s?
Nobody should seek to deny the right to worship. Whatever gets you through the night and all that. But a sense of proportion is running overdue; the interests of a minority are, by definition, a minority interest and deserve no more, if no less, consideration than any other.
Certainly not out of fear of “causing offence”, when secular sense is there to remind us that nobody, ever, has the right not to be offended. God-given or otherwise.
Wednesday, 12 September 2007
Now I'm really confuzzled
It doesn't take much, admittedly.
We start off, fifteen years ago, with a story about a brother and a sister he remembers. No names are mentioned, they died with he was still a child and he can barely remember either of them. I let the thing wash over, I let him say his piece, said everything that was appropriate, made empathetic noises. Something didn't ring true but in those days I wasn't too keen on looking too closely.
Reel forward to the present and tonight for only the second time that brother and sister are mentioned. Except now they're, if I'm not misunderstanding him, miscarriages. And he's learned from his mother that there was a third miscarriage which she hadn't previously told anyone about.
These things happen. She's of that generation determined to shoulder everthing while displaying a cast iron upper lip - and never ever talking about it. And if she'd already had two it makes sense that she sought to shield a husband who'd already borne much from yet another loss. And yet, and yet... I do so wish the store he told was at least consistent in its essentials.
We start off, fifteen years ago, with a story about a brother and a sister he remembers. No names are mentioned, they died with he was still a child and he can barely remember either of them. I let the thing wash over, I let him say his piece, said everything that was appropriate, made empathetic noises. Something didn't ring true but in those days I wasn't too keen on looking too closely.
Reel forward to the present and tonight for only the second time that brother and sister are mentioned. Except now they're, if I'm not misunderstanding him, miscarriages. And he's learned from his mother that there was a third miscarriage which she hadn't previously told anyone about.
These things happen. She's of that generation determined to shoulder everthing while displaying a cast iron upper lip - and never ever talking about it. And if she'd already had two it makes sense that she sought to shield a husband who'd already borne much from yet another loss. And yet, and yet... I do so wish the store he told was at least consistent in its essentials.
Yoda moments
Yoda has a new hairstyle. Her bottle blonde locks are currently being style in tumbling loose ringlets falling to her shoulders. This is a ridiculous look in anyone over the age of two and a half.
Yoda reaches retirement age in the next decade.
Yoda reaches retirement age in the next decade.
Shoot me, please. I'm an anti-social bitch
I'm sure the feeling's mutual: we're you're nightmare neighbours. But things are about to get much, much worse.
Just when we thought we'd seen the last of him a ghost from the recent past is returning, taking a lease on the house two doors down from us. These are mid-nineteenth century terraced cottages. In this town the tendency was to put a right-of-way around the buildings and provide small gardens behind, beyond the right of way. What this means in practice is that one's neighbors (and the rest of the world too, for that matter) have the right to gallumph about on the three or so foot wide path that runs across one's home bisecting what is otherwise one's private property and personal space. Our particular block is offset from the road and therefore provided with front and back gardens; that didn't stop the people who laid the land out putting a RoW right round the block. It might look like a ring but it feels like a fucking noose.
It was ok at first because we are the furthest from the road. We went back and forth past our neighbors front doors, so they could monitor our comings and goings (whether they wanted to or not) but we were pretty oblivious to them. Then couple moved into the property on the other side from the rest of the terrace and introduced themselves by bringing down the tall hedge that had at least given privacy from that direction. Now we had a tree house overlooking the what had once been secluded, and a row of windows visible in the houses stetching away into the distance. So much for a quiet sunbathe then.
Endless local FM played at full volume topped the whole thing off perfectly. It had been an oasis and it no longer felt like mine. It was about this time I really started to neglect the garden. If I couldn't enjoy the fruits of my labour I wasn't going to fucking well do much.
Then the house next to ours in the terrace was bought by the eldest son of the people who'd moved in on the other side. They took the idea of the Right of Way and ran with it. Up would come a fence panel on a good day (and by good I mean a day when the weather was fine and everyone could get out) and our little RoW would resemble Oxford Street with a constant stream of grand-parents, kids, grand kids, aunts, uncles, cousins and assorted hangers-on.
Cooped up in the house without a career or a job or any prospect of escape, waiting for approval of my visa, money running out, shit-bag husband; that was what my life was like.
Just when we thought we'd seen the last of him a ghost from the recent past is returning, taking a lease on the house two doors down from us. These are mid-nineteenth century terraced cottages. In this town the tendency was to put a right-of-way around the buildings and provide small gardens behind, beyond the right of way. What this means in practice is that one's neighbors (and the rest of the world too, for that matter) have the right to gallumph about on the three or so foot wide path that runs across one's home bisecting what is otherwise one's private property and personal space. Our particular block is offset from the road and therefore provided with front and back gardens; that didn't stop the people who laid the land out putting a RoW right round the block. It might look like a ring but it feels like a fucking noose.
It was ok at first because we are the furthest from the road. We went back and forth past our neighbors front doors, so they could monitor our comings and goings (whether they wanted to or not) but we were pretty oblivious to them. Then couple moved into the property on the other side from the rest of the terrace and introduced themselves by bringing down the tall hedge that had at least given privacy from that direction. Now we had a tree house overlooking the what had once been secluded, and a row of windows visible in the houses stetching away into the distance. So much for a quiet sunbathe then.
Endless local FM played at full volume topped the whole thing off perfectly. It had been an oasis and it no longer felt like mine. It was about this time I really started to neglect the garden. If I couldn't enjoy the fruits of my labour I wasn't going to fucking well do much.
Then the house next to ours in the terrace was bought by the eldest son of the people who'd moved in on the other side. They took the idea of the Right of Way and ran with it. Up would come a fence panel on a good day (and by good I mean a day when the weather was fine and everyone could get out) and our little RoW would resemble Oxford Street with a constant stream of grand-parents, kids, grand kids, aunts, uncles, cousins and assorted hangers-on.
Cooped up in the house without a career or a job or any prospect of escape, waiting for approval of my visa, money running out, shit-bag husband; that was what my life was like.
When the approval of my visa application came through I found I'd graciously been given two years, with the promise of an extra two years to follow if I behaved myself and handed over further great wodges of money we don't really have.
It is difficult enought to get a fairly good job, from scratch, at my age and as far as I've been able to determine impossible when the Home Office has reserved the right to fling me out without any right of appeal if it gets in a Mood. No employer can offer me a contract longer than the outstanding length of the visa which means I have absolutely fuck-all security of employment. Which means we can't remortgage, to lengthen the term and ease the strain at least in the short term.
Things don't look too bad, but only when viewed through the bottom of a glass or bottle.
Now I'm going to be made more miserable than ever with the arrival at the end of the month of the Poor Sod who left our employ back in early July. He was a fucking nightmare as a colleague, now he's going to just be one of the crowd as a fucking nightmare neighbour.
Monday, 10 September 2007
Yippee
I've briefly been distracted by my (relatively) extreme cleverness in founding a new movement destined to sweep the world, resolve all the current faith, ethnicity and economics-based conflict, reverse global warming, eliminate hunger and disease, find ET and generally clear the decks so that we have space for a whole raft of new isms and conflict.
So distracted I've hardly had time to bemoan the amount of alcohol passing my lips, the weight I'm piling on.
The Jolly Hulk is a cretin. She's actually proud of the fact that she's not learned a fucking thing about the job she's paid to do. She's perfected the art of laughing loudly and cajoling the other fools she works with to laugh along. Being jolly together is a lot less stressful than telling a colleague to pull her fucking finger out and do her job properly.
So distracted I've hardly had time to bemoan the amount of alcohol passing my lips, the weight I'm piling on.
The Jolly Hulk is a cretin. She's actually proud of the fact that she's not learned a fucking thing about the job she's paid to do. She's perfected the art of laughing loudly and cajoling the other fools she works with to laugh along. Being jolly together is a lot less stressful than telling a colleague to pull her fucking finger out and do her job properly.
Mind your language
Under a MAHLism based oligarchy expressions such as Where Angels Fear to Tread might result in a translation to Butlins-style re-education camp.
Also, it is probably true that the early history of MAHLism can be told, as adherents split into Dawkinsians and Hitchinsians. The outcome is all too predictable, with split after split resulting in a tawdry and diverse range of factions squabbling amongst themselves and becoming enmeshed in a web of arguments over the evidence for the non-existence of God, the number of angels being able to dance on a pin head being zilch, whether early leadership of the Dawkinsian movement had any legitimacy, which scholarly tomes are canonical and which are to be filed in the fiction section or even proscibed (and so forth and so on).
How sad.
Also, it is probably true that the early history of MAHLism can be told, as adherents split into Dawkinsians and Hitchinsians. The outcome is all too predictable, with split after split resulting in a tawdry and diverse range of factions squabbling amongst themselves and becoming enmeshed in a web of arguments over the evidence for the non-existence of God, the number of angels being able to dance on a pin head being zilch, whether early leadership of the Dawkinsian movement had any legitimacy, which scholarly tomes are canonical and which are to be filed in the fiction section or even proscibed (and so forth and so on).
How sad.
Where angels fear to tread
That's usually where you'll find me blundering about like a baby elephant.
So rather late in the day I've decided to investigate those who went before me in adopting the acronym MAHL, and the word if it exists. Those I've unearthed, in Google-Order, include:
So rather late in the day I've decided to investigate those who went before me in adopting the acronym MAHL, and the word if it exists. Those I've unearthed, in Google-Order, include:
- mahl magazine, which I must confess I spent no time whatsoever looking into. On that basis my impression is that the people behind it are likely to very skinny girls in smock tops and boys with exotic-shaped bits of beard about the jaw line, plus a couple of older men in artistic spectacles;
- there are, of course, the mahl stick and the mahl bridge - available at all good suppliers of artists' requisites. ;
- there's also the Mid-Atlantic Hockey League, which if it sounds more interesting than this can be reached here;
- it is a surname*
- a language spoken by the half-dozen or so inhabitants of Minicoy Island, India. It is a variant of the official language of the Maldives (and it is actually spoken by about 15-20,ooo people). It is also sometimes refered to as Mahal.
- a place in Texas, USA**, Latitude 31.7336, Longitude -94.6761, Altitude (feet) 449
- it stands for Maastricht Aachen Hasselt Liège (major cities of the Meuse-Rhine)
- and Master of Arts in Hebrew Literature/Letters
- and Midland Amateur Hockey League (Midland, Michigan)
- it is also the stock code on the Stockholm (that's Sweden, ok?) bourse for a company called AB MÄHLER & SÖNER, producers of "snow clearance equipments for truck, wheel loader, and road grader." It was founded in 1895 and is based in Rosson, Sweden. (This is not investment advice, ok.)
- there is the MAHL method, which is something brain-achingly science-ish
- it is the ID for a weather station at Horseshoe Lake in Arizona, USA** at LATITUDE: 33.98, LONGITUDE: -111.71, ELEVATION: 2001 ft
- it is the name or partial name of sundry sole practices and partnerships (an inevitable consequence of it being a surname and some people of that name becoming doctors*
- Milton Adult Hockey league: "of Miltonians, by Miltonians, for Miltonians" or something very like that
Finally, the search produced the web pages for the Mercian Order of St.George about which I could unearth little besides the self-descriptory phrase "an Eclectic Unitarian Fraternity". You can read a little more here.
* Doctors are on the whole a pretty dedicated bunch of self-publicists who never knowingly under sell themselves and have taken to the internet as a marketing tool like a very large flock of particularly agressive ducks.
** Does this grate? Redundancy always does.
Now scanning that lot I have to concluded that I got off lightly. Even the Mercians might be god botherers but they're hardly offensive in their belief-set or approach. The rest are largely either hockey nuts or derived from a surname.
So I think that's that. It is safe to describe myself as a Militant Atheist Humanist Libertarian.
Saturday, 8 September 2007
I'm a WHAT?
Hate was, of course, the wrong word. What most English in my experience feel towards the Welsh is something less inaccurately labelled contempt. I used the word Hate, possibly with the fat that the Slug is a Taff Slug in mind. And of course he is the exception that proves the rule (that is to say the rule about it being contempt rather than hatred).
While I'm underlining my credentials as a non-racialist let me say this on a not entirely unrelated matter.
Three million cheers and equally many congratulations must go the Japanese for their showing in today's Rugby match. This will of course be interpreted as a typically obnoxious piece of bullying arrogance from a bullying arrogant Aussie - but notwithstanding the brutal final score line, the Nips apparently acquitted themselves quite magnificently particularly during the first half. I didn't see the match or listen to it; my impression is based only on the BBC on-line coverage of the match which presumably is based on a report of the match filed by someone who was in touch with some one who was somewhere in Europe when the match was taking place. So that's authoritative, right?
Anyway, well done, Tojo.
And the plucky kiwis also had a quite solid win over whoever they were playing. So well done to them too.
The English, on the other hand, can celebrate not one but THREE victories at international level, today. What a tremendous hat trick that is chaps. Well done! Romping to victory in the match and the Best Of series against solid opposition in the form of India is splendid. To have ground the Red Sea Pedestrians (as the Slug described them) into the turf despite Michael Owen's best efforts to keep them in the tie is a Grand effort! A veil had best be drawn over the rather patchy performance against the USA in the World Cup. A Win's A Win, as they say. Never mind the quality feel the, er, remaining in contention.
Today's piece on hate came courtesy of the deeply peculiar 'Englishman' Graeme Le Saux, a man never knowingly found to have forked out on a copy of The Sun, and once rumoured (by pretty much all and sundry) to have no interest whatsoever in that august journal's Page Three Stunna du Jour.
For that sarong and frilly pantie wearing pal of the Sir Elton John's to casually diss a fellow player in the most pejorative terms at his disposal is one thing; that he does not have the balls - be they of gold or base metal, to say "All is fair in love and war, and I routinely call anyone who can string a coherent sentence together a faggot" is quite another matter. I suspect strongly that Golden Balls views on those few footballers who don't read at the Sun/Mirror end of the journalistic market are pretty commonplace, not excluding among those who actually work in the mass media.
After that, and one or two other things that have happened to cross my path today I have decided to become a Militant Atheist Humanist Libertarian. I've tried (a bit) to come up with some alternative combination or alternative words that would provide me with a snappy acronym and failed. Perhaps if I hadn't had a couple of bottles of Hobgoblin already.... Anyway
So now I'm a MAHL, a strangulated creature stranded somewhere mid-Atlantic (between the British and American pronunciations of that dangerous little tyke of a word - m.a.l.l.).
To the two female members of staff who've announced that they've progressed in their "faith" to the point where they must wear some garment, the name for which they have I've forgotten but which seems to approximate to what you or I would call a Head Scarf, because "only their husbands should see their hair"... I say this:
You go right ahead girls. You've been going up to London and immersing yourselves ever deeper in your "faith" and if wearing a head scarf is where this has led you so be it, though I challenge you to show me where in the Koran or the Hadith the particular garment is stipulated, and if not, what is actually required of you beyond dressing modestly - an imprecation surely open to the widest imaginable interpretation and as manifested anywhere and everywhere largely reflecting a cultural imperative.
But let me also say this. The minute you stray beyond what is strictly demanded of you by your "faith" and lapse into an expression of what would more honestly be described as the culture your parents brought to this country with them when they migrated, I will absolutely assert my right to express my culture, in whatever way I interpret that.
OK?
Probably not, but I've been imbibing, and that probably goes a long way to proving your point and, as it happens, mine also.
Good night.
While I'm underlining my credentials as a non-racialist let me say this on a not entirely unrelated matter.
Three million cheers and equally many congratulations must go the Japanese for their showing in today's Rugby match. This will of course be interpreted as a typically obnoxious piece of bullying arrogance from a bullying arrogant Aussie - but notwithstanding the brutal final score line, the Nips apparently acquitted themselves quite magnificently particularly during the first half. I didn't see the match or listen to it; my impression is based only on the BBC on-line coverage of the match which presumably is based on a report of the match filed by someone who was in touch with some one who was somewhere in Europe when the match was taking place. So that's authoritative, right?
Anyway, well done, Tojo.
And the plucky kiwis also had a quite solid win over whoever they were playing. So well done to them too.
The English, on the other hand, can celebrate not one but THREE victories at international level, today. What a tremendous hat trick that is chaps. Well done! Romping to victory in the match and the Best Of series against solid opposition in the form of India is splendid. To have ground the Red Sea Pedestrians (as the Slug described them) into the turf despite Michael Owen's best efforts to keep them in the tie is a Grand effort! A veil had best be drawn over the rather patchy performance against the USA in the World Cup. A Win's A Win, as they say. Never mind the quality feel the, er, remaining in contention.
Today's piece on hate came courtesy of the deeply peculiar 'Englishman' Graeme Le Saux, a man never knowingly found to have forked out on a copy of The Sun, and once rumoured (by pretty much all and sundry) to have no interest whatsoever in that august journal's Page Three Stunna du Jour.
For that sarong and frilly pantie wearing pal of the Sir Elton John's to casually diss a fellow player in the most pejorative terms at his disposal is one thing; that he does not have the balls - be they of gold or base metal, to say "All is fair in love and war, and I routinely call anyone who can string a coherent sentence together a faggot" is quite another matter. I suspect strongly that Golden Balls views on those few footballers who don't read at the Sun/Mirror end of the journalistic market are pretty commonplace, not excluding among those who actually work in the mass media.
After that, and one or two other things that have happened to cross my path today I have decided to become a Militant Atheist Humanist Libertarian. I've tried (a bit) to come up with some alternative combination or alternative words that would provide me with a snappy acronym and failed. Perhaps if I hadn't had a couple of bottles of Hobgoblin already.... Anyway
So now I'm a MAHL, a strangulated creature stranded somewhere mid-Atlantic (between the British and American pronunciations of that dangerous little tyke of a word - m.a.l.l.).
To the two female members of staff who've announced that they've progressed in their "faith" to the point where they must wear some garment, the name for which they have I've forgotten but which seems to approximate to what you or I would call a Head Scarf, because "only their husbands should see their hair"... I say this:
You go right ahead girls. You've been going up to London and immersing yourselves ever deeper in your "faith" and if wearing a head scarf is where this has led you so be it, though I challenge you to show me where in the Koran or the Hadith the particular garment is stipulated, and if not, what is actually required of you beyond dressing modestly - an imprecation surely open to the widest imaginable interpretation and as manifested anywhere and everywhere largely reflecting a cultural imperative.
But let me also say this. The minute you stray beyond what is strictly demanded of you by your "faith" and lapse into an expression of what would more honestly be described as the culture your parents brought to this country with them when they migrated, I will absolutely assert my right to express my culture, in whatever way I interpret that.
OK?
Probably not, but I've been imbibing, and that probably goes a long way to proving your point and, as it happens, mine also.
Good night.
Acclimatisation
It is something I've always feared and fought against. I suppose if I'd rolled over and accepted this fate as inevitable, embraced it, life would have been so much easier. I'd have fawned over his parents and allowed them to fawn over me, I'd have turned my back on my previous life and taken them as my family. I'd have enthused over queues, awful food, warm beer, rampant hypocrisy, appalling public 'services', a dependency culture, a crippling social welfare mentality, racism, class-ism, a royal family, sycophancy as a virtue....
Of late I've feared I might be succumbing through sheer weight of years and a growing sense that things at home are very, very wrong. All this god bothering whether from Howard or Rudd, the racism, homophobia, misogyny. But I still resist. And in those dark hours when I fear it might be happening despite my stout resistance I comfort myself with one thought:
Of late I've feared I might be succumbing through sheer weight of years and a growing sense that things at home are very, very wrong. All this god bothering whether from Howard or Rudd, the racism, homophobia, misogyny. But I still resist. And in those dark hours when I fear it might be happening despite my stout resistance I comfort myself with one thought:
I don't hate the WELSH!
Friday, 7 September 2007
Things I'm too tired to do
This list doesn't include cooking an evening meal for the family, scrubbing the bathroom out or having a couple of beers.
I have been awake since 4:00am this morning. Things I might at one point have commented on include:
I have been awake since 4:00am this morning. Things I might at one point have commented on include:
- the grotesque lewd humour to which I was subjected by the Big Swinging Dick and the Maltese Terrier before 9:00 this morning,
- my opinion on the McCanns and what I make of their being interviewed at great length;
- being the dubious pleasure of being patronised by my immediate supervisor,
- The Argies sticking it up the Frogs*,
- how much I loathe Yoda
- why I hate my job
- why my husband is a sad lazy fucker
But it has taken me so long to log in to Blogger that all I can offer is a tidied up but otherwise totally uninteresting piece on drivers and this list as an insight into what goes on in my tiny little mind.
I just might pick up on the lewd conversation bit. I didn't think that in this day and age it went on any where. Believe me, it does.
Thursday, 6 September 2007
In defence of drivers
Historically those who injure, maim and kill have expected to find themselves punished, and severely at that. What is about drivers and driving that those who voluntarily place themselves behind the wheel and in charge of a machine that is a lethal weapon think that:
- they can eat and keep that lethal weapon fully under control
- they can drink and keep that lethal weapon fully under control
- they can put their make-up on and keep that lethal weapon fully under control
- they can twiddle with a radio/cassette/CD player and keep that lethal weapon fully under control
- they can read a map and keep that lethal weapon fully under control
- they can read a newspaper/book/magazine and keep that lethal weapon fully under control
- they can listen to an iPod/CD/Cassette etc player and keep that lethal weapon fully under control
- they can twiddle with the SatNav and keep that lethal weapon fully under control
- they can get dressed/undressed and keep that lethal weapon fully under control
- they can text/phone and keep that lethal weapon under control
Never mind introducing stricter penalties for those who injure, maim and kill. Seriously we should introduce psych testing before issuing driving licences. There are some people who genuinely believe that they can perform an exotic combination of two or more of the above non--driving actions simultaneously while controlling their late modal lethal weapon.
Driving is difficult, with practice it becomes easy like everything else, sometimes to the point where in normal circumstances it becomes almost instinctive.
But it is still the case that a momentary lapse in concentration can end in catastrophe and not always for the driver. In the past couple of years a young mother with three children at the local primary school lost when a mother who wasn't looking carefully enough reversed her great big vehicle into the woman, trapping her against the car behind and crushing one leg. Everyone with a child at the school knows this story. Everyone sees her each morning and afternoon, struggling to get her children into school on one leg and a prosthesis.
We all see the stories of deaths and injury on the roads, experienced the frustration of being trapped in the aftermath of a serious accident, creeping past a mangled vehicle with a blanket strategically draped over the windscreen.
Everyone knows how dangerous cars can be. Is it too much to ask people to take care and concentrate on the task in hand? The answer to this question is apparently yes. Will people behave more responsibly if the consequence is a slap on the wrist. The answer is obviously no, or people would have abandoned driving with a mobile phone planted to one ear.
It is time to send out a message to all drivers that they are to be held fully accountable for their irresponsibility. Killing someone is killing someone. It is indefensible that in this day and age a person can take the life of another and not suffer a heavy penalty. Most drivers, it seems, need a reality check.
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