What's wrong with this picture?

Two pieces from today's po-faced AGE.

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.

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.

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:

I don't hate the WELSH!