I am a big fan of QI, a trivia quiz show on BBC presented by Stephen Fry. In fact, I am a big fan of trivia in general; useless knowledge is important to me for reasons I could not possibly explain, as I do not understand them, but knowing that (for example) submarines are classed as boats and not ships because they have no through decks gives me immense and inexplicable satisfaction.
QI is invaluable to me as a worthy source of new trivia, and I feel the need to share with my reader two amazing factoids that surfaced during last night's episode, which I recorded and have just now watched. The first of these concerns carbon footprints, those banes of the dinner-party attending classes, the wonderful truth being that the carbon footprint of owning an average size dog is greater than that of owning two Toyota Landcruisers. Depending on your viewpoint this is either disastrous or wonderful news. It was stated that even owning a cat is equivalent in that regard to owning a VW Golf, and I own two (cats, not VW Golfs. Or is it Golves...). This will hopefully go some way towards deflating my sense of moral superiority and general irritating smugness among road users as I cycle along. Before you all condemn my profligrate lifestyle and justify your own, however, it is worth mentioning that the carbon footprint of even a large dog such as an alsatian is considerably less than that of a child. Therefore it is morally more acceptable to own two Toyota Landcruisers than to create a human life.
The second of these delightful gems is the fact that the ownership of slaves in the UK was not made illegal until April this year, 2010. Everything else about slavery, buying or selling them, transporting them, capturing them for the purpose of enslaving them, has been made illegal in the UK during the first half of the 19th century, but the legislation never addressed the issue of owning slaves. This part of the programme included the disturbing fact that, according to the UN, 17 million people are nowadays living in slavery, sex slavery, or work bondage worldwide, a figure higher than at any time in history. That isn't trivia, just something that every human being on the planet should be ashamed of.
Saturday 13 November 2010
Tuesday 2 November 2010
Democracy and how it could be improved
Before you all start reading this, can I just remind everybody that views I express are my own opinions, and that I don't give a toss about yours. Furthermore, I am human (or so it is alleged) and reserve the right to be wrong, stupid, opinionated, ill-informed, etc. I mention all this because the subject of this rant is political, and politics is not known as a subject which encourages people to agree with each other, or even to agree to disagree, or even to disagree in any civilised manner.
Mid term elections in the USA at the minute, and they are making an even bigger meal of it than usual. The 'new kid on the block' wild card which has attracted the media's attention is the 'Tea Party', a right-wing movement to 'restore' the original core values of immediate post-revolution America, or at least modern Americans' understanding of them. My own view is that the 'Tea Party' is a bit of a flash in the pan which has tapped into mainstream American dissatisfaction with the current economic crisis they are suffering. Its expressions are demagogueish and populist and it will be unable to make any constructive contribution to whatever debate and policy making will be needed to deal with the issues; but it makes excellent tv and great spectator sport.
At the core of its misinformed concept, though, are the noble ideals of the Founding Fathers, expressed in the magnificent rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence, one of the most influential documents of Western Civilisations' History. These Founding Fathers were amongst the leading thinkers of the Enlightenmnet, and one of them, Benjamin Franklin, was a straight up, out and out, honest to god genius; men to take notice of even over 200 years later! The constitution they crafted was a clever and far-sighted device which included some very intelligent checks and balances to prevent any future dilution of thier intentions, and by and large these have worked (remember Nixon?), but even the Founding Fathers could not have forseen the racism, corporate power, crime, drug culture, and religious intolerance that plague modern US society. Well, arguably, they could and should have forseen the racism and religious fundamentalism, and perhaps should have realised that a federal state would be unable to deal effectively with organised crime, and that the federal organisations that would have to be created to attempt the task would inevitably descend into paranoia, secrecy, and a very undemocratic unaccountablility.
Stripped of the enlightend ideals, the American Revolution was actually based on something even more quintisentially American than even free enterprise democracy; a deal. The deal was between the leaders, Washington, Jefferson, Frankin etc, who proposed to the ordinary folk that, in return for their renouncing allegience to King George and fighting the War of Independence to a victorious conclusion, they would all get a vote. That was in itself a pretty astonishing idea at the time; possibly even more astonishing was the fact that the leaders honoured thier part of the bargain. One man, one vote was as good as it got in the 18th century, and modern comments that women and slaves were not included may not take this fully into account.
This blog is at last getting to some sort of point, honest. Our modern conception of what democracy should be like is still heavily influenced by those events. In the UK, most people if asked would state that they live in a Parliamentary Democracy with a Constitutional Monarch at its head, but our 'democracy' does not stand up for a second against the US one. Apart from the unelected Upper House, Britons have no constitutional right to own land except by permission of the Crown, to which thier elected representative have to swear allegience, all of us who think we own our homes pay ground rent, nor do we have any rights to any mineral wealth beneath them-I could go on. To most people throughout the world, the American system is the image had of the best possible Democracy. But is it in fact the best possible democracy?
Modern technology should be able to allow the voting procedure to do far more than the traditional cross against a name. It is my view that, in anything describing itself as a democratic system, voting would be compulsory, but that it would also be possible to have the choice to vote against candidates, or to register an abstention; in fact, if voting were compulsory, such choices would be essential! Now this would make politics much more fun as a spectator sport, as well as providing a much more accurate picture of the Will of the People. It would be possible for a party to attain power and form a government, without being to falsely claim, as most do now, that they have a 'mandate from the electorate' when maybe 20% or so have actually voted for them. In fact, you could even have a government that had attained power from the idea that they were simply the least objectionable to the electorate, the least of evils, which would possibly do something to quell the arrogance and self-assertion of modern politcians, and remind them who is supposed to really be in charge. It might even put the people who are supposed to be in charge-us-actually in charge! Now there's a really revolutionary idea....
Mid term elections in the USA at the minute, and they are making an even bigger meal of it than usual. The 'new kid on the block' wild card which has attracted the media's attention is the 'Tea Party', a right-wing movement to 'restore' the original core values of immediate post-revolution America, or at least modern Americans' understanding of them. My own view is that the 'Tea Party' is a bit of a flash in the pan which has tapped into mainstream American dissatisfaction with the current economic crisis they are suffering. Its expressions are demagogueish and populist and it will be unable to make any constructive contribution to whatever debate and policy making will be needed to deal with the issues; but it makes excellent tv and great spectator sport.
At the core of its misinformed concept, though, are the noble ideals of the Founding Fathers, expressed in the magnificent rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence, one of the most influential documents of Western Civilisations' History. These Founding Fathers were amongst the leading thinkers of the Enlightenmnet, and one of them, Benjamin Franklin, was a straight up, out and out, honest to god genius; men to take notice of even over 200 years later! The constitution they crafted was a clever and far-sighted device which included some very intelligent checks and balances to prevent any future dilution of thier intentions, and by and large these have worked (remember Nixon?), but even the Founding Fathers could not have forseen the racism, corporate power, crime, drug culture, and religious intolerance that plague modern US society. Well, arguably, they could and should have forseen the racism and religious fundamentalism, and perhaps should have realised that a federal state would be unable to deal effectively with organised crime, and that the federal organisations that would have to be created to attempt the task would inevitably descend into paranoia, secrecy, and a very undemocratic unaccountablility.
Stripped of the enlightend ideals, the American Revolution was actually based on something even more quintisentially American than even free enterprise democracy; a deal. The deal was between the leaders, Washington, Jefferson, Frankin etc, who proposed to the ordinary folk that, in return for their renouncing allegience to King George and fighting the War of Independence to a victorious conclusion, they would all get a vote. That was in itself a pretty astonishing idea at the time; possibly even more astonishing was the fact that the leaders honoured thier part of the bargain. One man, one vote was as good as it got in the 18th century, and modern comments that women and slaves were not included may not take this fully into account.
This blog is at last getting to some sort of point, honest. Our modern conception of what democracy should be like is still heavily influenced by those events. In the UK, most people if asked would state that they live in a Parliamentary Democracy with a Constitutional Monarch at its head, but our 'democracy' does not stand up for a second against the US one. Apart from the unelected Upper House, Britons have no constitutional right to own land except by permission of the Crown, to which thier elected representative have to swear allegience, all of us who think we own our homes pay ground rent, nor do we have any rights to any mineral wealth beneath them-I could go on. To most people throughout the world, the American system is the image had of the best possible Democracy. But is it in fact the best possible democracy?
Modern technology should be able to allow the voting procedure to do far more than the traditional cross against a name. It is my view that, in anything describing itself as a democratic system, voting would be compulsory, but that it would also be possible to have the choice to vote against candidates, or to register an abstention; in fact, if voting were compulsory, such choices would be essential! Now this would make politics much more fun as a spectator sport, as well as providing a much more accurate picture of the Will of the People. It would be possible for a party to attain power and form a government, without being to falsely claim, as most do now, that they have a 'mandate from the electorate' when maybe 20% or so have actually voted for them. In fact, you could even have a government that had attained power from the idea that they were simply the least objectionable to the electorate, the least of evils, which would possibly do something to quell the arrogance and self-assertion of modern politcians, and remind them who is supposed to really be in charge. It might even put the people who are supposed to be in charge-us-actually in charge! Now there's a really revolutionary idea....
Wednesday 27 October 2010
Summer Time, and the livin' is easy.....
... Fish are jumpin', and so on. In the UK, we have a daylight saving 'British Summer Time' period which lasts from the last Sunday in March to the last one in October, so that the clocks are put forward by an hour in spring and and back by an hour in Autumn. This is a device dreamed up during the First World War in 1916 to increase weapons production, and extended by a double hour during the Second World War for the same reason. Historically, prior to that, 'Greenwich Time' was standard throughout the UK except for Ireland, where a 'Dublin Standard Time', 23 minutes later and astronomically correct for Dublin, was used-this was abolished with the 1916 legislation. Prior to that, the Greenwich Time had been adopted when the builing of railways required a standard national time for timetabling and signalling purposes. Before that, every parish set it's own church or town square clock to midday when the sun was due south, so time varied according to how far east or west of the Greenwich Meridian you were, though places due north or south of each other showed the same times, assuming thier astromomcal observations were correct and their timepieces accurate. I live in Cardiff, where the correct astronomical time is 13 minutes behind Greenwich. In some parts of South Wales, local time is set at 1980.
Between 1968 and 1971, BST time was used experimentally all year to end the confusion caused by the spring and autumn changes, but eventually abandoned due to worries over schoolchildrens' safety in the dark mornings, the sky not starting to get light until nearly 10 am in the north of the country. Ever since, there have been attempts to re-introduce this 'permanent summer' and another is in the parliamentary pipeline now.
Personally, I would like to see the re-introduction of GMT year round (actually, I favour the re-introduction of astronomical time so that it would be easier to use an analogue watch as a compass, but I don't think that is likely), but I do think that there is a case for arguing that the time adopted is irrelevant, just so long as it is the same all year.
Despite being a devout atheist of many years standing, there is something about all this that smacks of humans interfering with god's sublime creation, and we all know where that leads, don't we, children, remember Dr. Frankenstien! (Devon yokel accent) B'aint natrull, oi tells ee. Trouble'll come of it...
This is one of those issues where I find myself in a minortiy of one, like the use of the death penalty for people who park illegally (their car would be crushed on the first offence, and crushed with them in it on the second, no excuses, no trial, no appeal just summary execution). Ok nurse, I'll take the nice medication now...
Between 1968 and 1971, BST time was used experimentally all year to end the confusion caused by the spring and autumn changes, but eventually abandoned due to worries over schoolchildrens' safety in the dark mornings, the sky not starting to get light until nearly 10 am in the north of the country. Ever since, there have been attempts to re-introduce this 'permanent summer' and another is in the parliamentary pipeline now.
Personally, I would like to see the re-introduction of GMT year round (actually, I favour the re-introduction of astronomical time so that it would be easier to use an analogue watch as a compass, but I don't think that is likely), but I do think that there is a case for arguing that the time adopted is irrelevant, just so long as it is the same all year.
Despite being a devout atheist of many years standing, there is something about all this that smacks of humans interfering with god's sublime creation, and we all know where that leads, don't we, children, remember Dr. Frankenstien! (Devon yokel accent) B'aint natrull, oi tells ee. Trouble'll come of it...
This is one of those issues where I find myself in a minortiy of one, like the use of the death penalty for people who park illegally (their car would be crushed on the first offence, and crushed with them in it on the second, no excuses, no trial, no appeal just summary execution). Ok nurse, I'll take the nice medication now...
Saturday 23 October 2010
Senile Delinquency
I have just got back from a trip to my local shops (oh, yeah, life on the edge, that's me, no fear....) where an old guy tried to push in front of me in the queue for the till. He didn't get away with it, because I saw him coming and strategically positioned myself to block his gambit.
So he got in behind me, muttered a few things under his breath for 30 seconds or so, and strared hitting me, punching me in the small of the back. I turned round and asked him to stop, and he offered me outside!!! He must've been into his 80s, and appeared to be sober, or at least I couldn't smell booze on hime. I suggested, without being abusive, that he might want to consider the possible consequences of this, calm down and behave himself, and leave me alone, and he promptly stated that he wasn't afreid of me and repeated his offer.
I further suggested that he was a silly old sod and again asked him to leave me alone, which fortunately he did this time , though contineing to mutter under his breath in a way that suggested he was not being entirely complimentary to me, my parentage, or anything else to do with me.
Had the situation developed, I would, I confess, have been at a loss as to how to deal with it. On the one hand nobody wants to start knocking pensioners around, on the other I was being physically assaulted. Bad enough that I had to infer a threat of violence to dissuade the bugger; if he'd persisted would I have been right to back the threat up with actual argy-bargy, or should I have let the bloke hit me without response. I suppose if push had come to shove, I'd have had to defend myself, but I was seriously glad that there would have been plenty of bystanders to have witnessed what had led to my aciton. I hope I would have avoided physical abuse, but, as I say, I will not allow violence perpetrated no me to go unchallenged. I do not go around punching other people and consider myself justified in demanding that they do not do so to me.
I con't believe i'd have hit the poor old sod, but I may well have resorted to pushing hime away in order to prevent his hitting me! Suppose he'd been pushed over and actually injured himself. Cue assault charges and court case against me for something someone else caused.
I really must try and get rid of the big neon sign saying 'victim' which apparently floats about 2 feet above my head at all times, as I have an unfortunate habit of attracting this sort of behaviour, in the same way that the nutter on the bus always goes out of his way to set by me. I am fed up with the way the world treats me . Just you all wait till I get my AK47....
So he got in behind me, muttered a few things under his breath for 30 seconds or so, and strared hitting me, punching me in the small of the back. I turned round and asked him to stop, and he offered me outside!!! He must've been into his 80s, and appeared to be sober, or at least I couldn't smell booze on hime. I suggested, without being abusive, that he might want to consider the possible consequences of this, calm down and behave himself, and leave me alone, and he promptly stated that he wasn't afreid of me and repeated his offer.
I further suggested that he was a silly old sod and again asked him to leave me alone, which fortunately he did this time , though contineing to mutter under his breath in a way that suggested he was not being entirely complimentary to me, my parentage, or anything else to do with me.
Had the situation developed, I would, I confess, have been at a loss as to how to deal with it. On the one hand nobody wants to start knocking pensioners around, on the other I was being physically assaulted. Bad enough that I had to infer a threat of violence to dissuade the bugger; if he'd persisted would I have been right to back the threat up with actual argy-bargy, or should I have let the bloke hit me without response. I suppose if push had come to shove, I'd have had to defend myself, but I was seriously glad that there would have been plenty of bystanders to have witnessed what had led to my aciton. I hope I would have avoided physical abuse, but, as I say, I will not allow violence perpetrated no me to go unchallenged. I do not go around punching other people and consider myself justified in demanding that they do not do so to me.
I con't believe i'd have hit the poor old sod, but I may well have resorted to pushing hime away in order to prevent his hitting me! Suppose he'd been pushed over and actually injured himself. Cue assault charges and court case against me for something someone else caused.
I really must try and get rid of the big neon sign saying 'victim' which apparently floats about 2 feet above my head at all times, as I have an unfortunate habit of attracting this sort of behaviour, in the same way that the nutter on the bus always goes out of his way to set by me. I am fed up with the way the world treats me . Just you all wait till I get my AK47....
Wednesday 13 October 2010
Well done Chile!
Lovely to have some good news for a change, and the success of the rescue of the Chilean miners after 10 weeks is a real cheeruper! Chile is not a 3rd world country, but at the same time not the sort of place you'd call at the cutting edge of technology. Nonetheless, they have put on a magnificent rescue effort, and a tremenduous example of what humans can do when they put thier minds to it; and they have been rewarded with success.
The little capsule, 'Fenix', is the real life version of Thunderbirds' 'mole', but in actuality little more than a tin can whose success (fingers crossed as the rescue is proceeding as I type) depends on the straightness and smoothness of a remarkably small shaft, drilled at an angle with amazing precision over a considerable distance. The thing is winched up and down on a steel cable-no high tech here, but it works1 I cannot help but smile as miner after miner emerges and is swamped by hugs from his delighted family. The media are making a meal of it, of course, and Chile's president is making political capital out of it, but not too much so in all fairness, and who in fairness can blame them. This is one of those few news stories that anyone anywhere can take nothing but pleasure in-just plain heartwarming.
And I've needed it, as the darker side of humanity has been intruding into my poor little existence. I've managed in the space of one week to lose a bicycle and a mobile phone to thieving wastes of skin. Not a good week! I will resist the temptation to have a rant about the state of society, the morality of the sort of people who thieve off others. Bikes and phones, even annoyingly uninsured ones, are only things, which can be replaced when the money eventually allows it-Chilean miners are people, and much more important. Kudos to those who didn't give up on them in the bleak early days when it would have been easy enough to simply assume there were no survivors.
The little capsule, 'Fenix', is the real life version of Thunderbirds' 'mole', but in actuality little more than a tin can whose success (fingers crossed as the rescue is proceeding as I type) depends on the straightness and smoothness of a remarkably small shaft, drilled at an angle with amazing precision over a considerable distance. The thing is winched up and down on a steel cable-no high tech here, but it works1 I cannot help but smile as miner after miner emerges and is swamped by hugs from his delighted family. The media are making a meal of it, of course, and Chile's president is making political capital out of it, but not too much so in all fairness, and who in fairness can blame them. This is one of those few news stories that anyone anywhere can take nothing but pleasure in-just plain heartwarming.
And I've needed it, as the darker side of humanity has been intruding into my poor little existence. I've managed in the space of one week to lose a bicycle and a mobile phone to thieving wastes of skin. Not a good week! I will resist the temptation to have a rant about the state of society, the morality of the sort of people who thieve off others. Bikes and phones, even annoyingly uninsured ones, are only things, which can be replaced when the money eventually allows it-Chilean miners are people, and much more important. Kudos to those who didn't give up on them in the bleak early days when it would have been easy enough to simply assume there were no survivors.
Thursday 22 July 2010
Leave it be, John-it's not worth the bother!
Do you remember when you were a kid and there were those little puzzles that were a sqare tray with tablets numbered 1-8 and only nine spaces? You had to re-organise the jumbled numbers into order which was hard because there was only one space to move into and you had to plan. Well, keep that in mind for a few minutes-you'll see why.
I think I may have mentioned before that I keep fishes. Things to avoid when you keep fishes include 1) Moving the tank around if you can avoid it. The tank, without water in, is 3' and monstrously heavy; taking the fishes out, keeping the mature water and so on is a logistical nightmeare, And 2) Putting the tank anywhere it'll get to much light, especially direct sunlight. Too much light means algae, which consume oxygen which your fishes need, harbour pollutants, looks unpleasant, and is a bugger to clean.
You will be starting to see what is coming by now. Also the weight of the whole setup was starting to deform the very strudy coffee table it was sitting on, so something had to be done. Thing is, my living room is a bit like the sqare puzzles-everything hsa to move before anything else moves, plus there are places some things can't go because they will be away from sockets, blocking fire alarm buttons and so on. But the tank had to move nonetheless, and, with the help of a burly friend, this happend yesterday without too much disturbance or problem being caused to the fishes.
However, disconnecting all the leads for lighting, computer, hi-fi and such and moving all the other furniture round to open the space for the tank in it's new place, and the cabinet it now sits which is the only furniture I have strong enough was 3 hours work before the old coffee table was gently slid across the room and the half empty aquarium was gently lifted into position. That was fairly close to the physical limit of what I am capable of, and it is as well it went up and in first time! Today, my back is a bit tender.
Now, 24 hours later, I have still not finished wiring everything back up, and there is a pile in the middle of the floor of USB hubs, cables and power supplies which can only matched to thier devices by trial and error. It is sorting itself out slowly, but at the moment I am starting to wish I hadn't bothered!
There are collateral advantages, though. My new sofa position allows me to look out on to the patio, and the monitor, through which I also view tv, faces away from the window so there are now no reflections on the screen-and I don't have to look at the kitchen all the time...
I think I may have mentioned before that I keep fishes. Things to avoid when you keep fishes include 1) Moving the tank around if you can avoid it. The tank, without water in, is 3' and monstrously heavy; taking the fishes out, keeping the mature water and so on is a logistical nightmeare, And 2) Putting the tank anywhere it'll get to much light, especially direct sunlight. Too much light means algae, which consume oxygen which your fishes need, harbour pollutants, looks unpleasant, and is a bugger to clean.
You will be starting to see what is coming by now. Also the weight of the whole setup was starting to deform the very strudy coffee table it was sitting on, so something had to be done. Thing is, my living room is a bit like the sqare puzzles-everything hsa to move before anything else moves, plus there are places some things can't go because they will be away from sockets, blocking fire alarm buttons and so on. But the tank had to move nonetheless, and, with the help of a burly friend, this happend yesterday without too much disturbance or problem being caused to the fishes.
However, disconnecting all the leads for lighting, computer, hi-fi and such and moving all the other furniture round to open the space for the tank in it's new place, and the cabinet it now sits which is the only furniture I have strong enough was 3 hours work before the old coffee table was gently slid across the room and the half empty aquarium was gently lifted into position. That was fairly close to the physical limit of what I am capable of, and it is as well it went up and in first time! Today, my back is a bit tender.
Now, 24 hours later, I have still not finished wiring everything back up, and there is a pile in the middle of the floor of USB hubs, cables and power supplies which can only matched to thier devices by trial and error. It is sorting itself out slowly, but at the moment I am starting to wish I hadn't bothered!
There are collateral advantages, though. My new sofa position allows me to look out on to the patio, and the monitor, through which I also view tv, faces away from the window so there are now no reflections on the screen-and I don't have to look at the kitchen all the time...
Sunday 11 July 2010
The screen goes green, and I want to SCREAM!!!
Can't work up any enthusiasm at all for the World Cup Football Final tonight. I'm no footy fan to start with, but I can usually bring myself to watch 1 game every 4 years. This time I just lost interest when Brasil were knocked out (and they deserved it-they were crap), and out of Spain or Holland, the truth is, I just don't care. And to enjoy a game properly you must have at least a slight preference. Still, at least England disgraced themselves as usual, to the unadulterad joy of all Welsh, Scottish and Irish folk....
So, this gives me a brilliant opportunity to go out for either a walk or a bike ride this evening. The weather is good, and if I go over the park, or town, after 7.30, I'll have the place to myself, give or take the odd ball of tumbleweed. Magic! No squawking brats, squeaky snappy little dogs, kids on skateboards, people pushing prams who don't look where they're going, blokes who only have dogs or children so they can have something to shout at, and all the other things that conspire to make my life less fun than it should be. And empty roads to cycle on.
I am growing, or to be more truthful have grown, into a gloriously miserable old git. Almost anything that other people enjoy pisses me off, and no one else likes the things I do, so everyone thinks I am just a bit wierd (this statement of course excludes those who know me. They already know I'm wierd). My tolerance of people at large and their irritating lives is worn thin, and I don't know if this is a part of getting older or just me being ornery (lovely word from my childhood watching 'B' movie westerns. There was critters and varmints, then there was ornery critters and ornery varmints, which were worse) which I always was a bit. Everyone needs a hobby and being a misserable old git is mine, and as long as you lot persist in having brats, dogs, noisy lifestyles, ridiculous 4x4 cars and kids who cannot listen to an music track from beginning to end without switching to another one (this sends me inexplicalbly into a frothing rage), I will defend my right to my hobby.
If any aspect of the World Cup has really put my back up though, it is the unrelenting, unavoidable, all-present marketing. This is as bad as Xmas. Products which have no connection with soccer at all cannot be allowed into the shops without a little football logo on them somewhere. I sort of understand why TV manufacturers jump on the bandwagon (although I wish they wouldn't), but what have crisps, or orange squash, or shampoo, or motor oil got to do with it? In one TV advert, for Marks & Spencer, Caroline Quentin claims to love the football, but spends the time you'd have though she would use to watch the match, which is on in the background, in the kitchen preparing a sort of pick'n'dip salad with M & S products, which she then wheels into the TV room as the game finishes. The sheer illogicality of this has annoyed me to the extent that I have resolved never to shop at M & S again (yes I did, sometimes). I would have really liked to extend this boycott to all the products which have so irritatingly been connected with the World Cup in this spurious way, but that would result in death from malnutrition fairly rapidly. 'But it's only once every 4 years' they say, but in the 2 intervening years there are the Olympics (yawn) and the Rugby World Cup to put up with, and every bloody year enhances the misery of winter with fucking Xmas. which will start any day now.
And another thing...all TV adverts jumping on the bandwagon inevitably have the soundtrack of cheering crowds-but they cannot possibly represent the World Cup crowds as there are no vuvuzelas. Ah, vuvus-has anything ever been devised which is more perfect for the purpose of annoying me? Seriously, fire one of those fuckers off anywhere near me and I promise you will need major surgery to remove it.
Thank you, Ann, for provoking me into writing this here blog, as I've got some of the bile off my chest at least!
So, this gives me a brilliant opportunity to go out for either a walk or a bike ride this evening. The weather is good, and if I go over the park, or town, after 7.30, I'll have the place to myself, give or take the odd ball of tumbleweed. Magic! No squawking brats, squeaky snappy little dogs, kids on skateboards, people pushing prams who don't look where they're going, blokes who only have dogs or children so they can have something to shout at, and all the other things that conspire to make my life less fun than it should be. And empty roads to cycle on.
I am growing, or to be more truthful have grown, into a gloriously miserable old git. Almost anything that other people enjoy pisses me off, and no one else likes the things I do, so everyone thinks I am just a bit wierd (this statement of course excludes those who know me. They already know I'm wierd). My tolerance of people at large and their irritating lives is worn thin, and I don't know if this is a part of getting older or just me being ornery (lovely word from my childhood watching 'B' movie westerns. There was critters and varmints, then there was ornery critters and ornery varmints, which were worse) which I always was a bit. Everyone needs a hobby and being a misserable old git is mine, and as long as you lot persist in having brats, dogs, noisy lifestyles, ridiculous 4x4 cars and kids who cannot listen to an music track from beginning to end without switching to another one (this sends me inexplicalbly into a frothing rage), I will defend my right to my hobby.
If any aspect of the World Cup has really put my back up though, it is the unrelenting, unavoidable, all-present marketing. This is as bad as Xmas. Products which have no connection with soccer at all cannot be allowed into the shops without a little football logo on them somewhere. I sort of understand why TV manufacturers jump on the bandwagon (although I wish they wouldn't), but what have crisps, or orange squash, or shampoo, or motor oil got to do with it? In one TV advert, for Marks & Spencer, Caroline Quentin claims to love the football, but spends the time you'd have though she would use to watch the match, which is on in the background, in the kitchen preparing a sort of pick'n'dip salad with M & S products, which she then wheels into the TV room as the game finishes. The sheer illogicality of this has annoyed me to the extent that I have resolved never to shop at M & S again (yes I did, sometimes). I would have really liked to extend this boycott to all the products which have so irritatingly been connected with the World Cup in this spurious way, but that would result in death from malnutrition fairly rapidly. 'But it's only once every 4 years' they say, but in the 2 intervening years there are the Olympics (yawn) and the Rugby World Cup to put up with, and every bloody year enhances the misery of winter with fucking Xmas. which will start any day now.
And another thing...all TV adverts jumping on the bandwagon inevitably have the soundtrack of cheering crowds-but they cannot possibly represent the World Cup crowds as there are no vuvuzelas. Ah, vuvus-has anything ever been devised which is more perfect for the purpose of annoying me? Seriously, fire one of those fuckers off anywhere near me and I promise you will need major surgery to remove it.
Thank you, Ann, for provoking me into writing this here blog, as I've got some of the bile off my chest at least!
Sunday 13 June 2010
Nekkid!!!!
What is the fusss? You've all got one. It's your body, and it's covered with skin to keep your insides inside your inside.
The World Naked Bike Ride had an event in Cardiff yesterday. I was going to participate, but another engagement came up (honest). The reactions of my friends to my telling them this was, well, frankly, in my view, a bit wierd. Some seemed to believe I would only do it out of some sort of pervyness, several registered disgust at the idea of my naked body being on display (to be fair I'm more oil slick than oil painting, but I've seen worse), and the all-pervading reaction was one of 'oh, no, I couldn't possibly do that!'. All giggled uncomfortably like embarrassed children.
Britain is a funny place to talk about, or do, public naked stuff. Culturally, we are European, though that is sometimes difficult to believe, but it seems to me that attitudes to this on mainland Europe vary but can be very roughly divided into the Mediterannean countries, where long centuries of Catholic influence have equated nakedness with sinfulness and sexuality, and the Northern countries, where the winters are so long, cold and dreadful that as soon as the warm weather turns up they can't wait to get thier kit off. We seem to fall into a sort of unpleasantly prurient crack inbetween. Being publicly naked is not illegal, but using nakedness to threaten,insult or offend is, the law being quite sensible for once. Yesterday's ride had a (uniformed) police escort.
I'd have ridden naked around Cardiff yesterday because firstly I am in agreement with the aims of the WNBR events, which are to focus attention on the world's overdependence on carbon fuels, and to promote the concept that nakedness is a normal and natural thing which should not lead to the sexual objectivication of the naked person, at least not in a public setting, and secondly because, while I am not particularly proud of my own physique, I absolutely refuse to be in any way ashamed of or embarrasssed by it; this I consider to be an adult and healthy attitude.
I do not assume that everyone or anyone else feels the same as I do about this, and I am obviously in a minortiy, but as with all minorities, it would have been nice to have been among like minded folk. I will certainly do it next year if the chance arises.
Then there were the 'practical' objections. Yesterday here was warm and sunny, so no-one could argue that one, but there was 'won't it be uncomfortable? I mean, eeewww....' Well, I don't want to go too far down that line of discussion, but a piece of cloth or tissue between saddle and the area discussed seems a fairly obvious way of avoiding the unpleasantness. 'Suppose you see someone you know in the crowd?' Well, smile and wave, I suppose. IF they know you well enough it'll be no suprise to them, and if they don't, they aren't really that important are they? And the inevitable 'What if you get an erection?' It's World Cup time, hang a Brasilian flag off it... anyone who has ever been publicly naked will tell you that it is just not that sort of situation where an erection occurs, ever. 'But, there'll be women and everything, won't you stare?' No, why would I? Why would you? Get a grip, man-sorry, I mean, control yourself! And, to my mind wierdest of all from some of the ladies 'oh, yeah, if I was young and sexy, then maybe I'd be up for it'. So what are you saying here, girls-that you are natural exhibitionists who are now too ashamed of whatever it is you've got to indulge yourselves. Willing to bet my next pension cheque you were just as shy when you were yonng and sexy anyway-you're fooling no one! This of course relates to another objention 'Yeah, but there'll be some right mingers I bet'. Check yourself out before you comment about other people with more openmindedness than you, buddy.
Come on people, it's only skin! Grow up and get over yourselves...
The World Naked Bike Ride had an event in Cardiff yesterday. I was going to participate, but another engagement came up (honest). The reactions of my friends to my telling them this was, well, frankly, in my view, a bit wierd. Some seemed to believe I would only do it out of some sort of pervyness, several registered disgust at the idea of my naked body being on display (to be fair I'm more oil slick than oil painting, but I've seen worse), and the all-pervading reaction was one of 'oh, no, I couldn't possibly do that!'. All giggled uncomfortably like embarrassed children.
Britain is a funny place to talk about, or do, public naked stuff. Culturally, we are European, though that is sometimes difficult to believe, but it seems to me that attitudes to this on mainland Europe vary but can be very roughly divided into the Mediterannean countries, where long centuries of Catholic influence have equated nakedness with sinfulness and sexuality, and the Northern countries, where the winters are so long, cold and dreadful that as soon as the warm weather turns up they can't wait to get thier kit off. We seem to fall into a sort of unpleasantly prurient crack inbetween. Being publicly naked is not illegal, but using nakedness to threaten,insult or offend is, the law being quite sensible for once. Yesterday's ride had a (uniformed) police escort.
I'd have ridden naked around Cardiff yesterday because firstly I am in agreement with the aims of the WNBR events, which are to focus attention on the world's overdependence on carbon fuels, and to promote the concept that nakedness is a normal and natural thing which should not lead to the sexual objectivication of the naked person, at least not in a public setting, and secondly because, while I am not particularly proud of my own physique, I absolutely refuse to be in any way ashamed of or embarrasssed by it; this I consider to be an adult and healthy attitude.
I do not assume that everyone or anyone else feels the same as I do about this, and I am obviously in a minortiy, but as with all minorities, it would have been nice to have been among like minded folk. I will certainly do it next year if the chance arises.
Then there were the 'practical' objections. Yesterday here was warm and sunny, so no-one could argue that one, but there was 'won't it be uncomfortable? I mean, eeewww....' Well, I don't want to go too far down that line of discussion, but a piece of cloth or tissue between saddle and the area discussed seems a fairly obvious way of avoiding the unpleasantness. 'Suppose you see someone you know in the crowd?' Well, smile and wave, I suppose. IF they know you well enough it'll be no suprise to them, and if they don't, they aren't really that important are they? And the inevitable 'What if you get an erection?' It's World Cup time, hang a Brasilian flag off it... anyone who has ever been publicly naked will tell you that it is just not that sort of situation where an erection occurs, ever. 'But, there'll be women and everything, won't you stare?' No, why would I? Why would you? Get a grip, man-sorry, I mean, control yourself! And, to my mind wierdest of all from some of the ladies 'oh, yeah, if I was young and sexy, then maybe I'd be up for it'. So what are you saying here, girls-that you are natural exhibitionists who are now too ashamed of whatever it is you've got to indulge yourselves. Willing to bet my next pension cheque you were just as shy when you were yonng and sexy anyway-you're fooling no one! This of course relates to another objention 'Yeah, but there'll be some right mingers I bet'. Check yourself out before you comment about other people with more openmindedness than you, buddy.
Come on people, it's only skin! Grow up and get over yourselves...
Monday 7 June 2010
Philosophy Pheline Stylee
Can't really think of anything much I want to blog about this time, so I think I'll bore you all with stuff about Marx and Engels, who may be better known as 19th century socialist philosophers, but are actually my cats, so named in the hope of irritating my middle-class neighbours in my old place, although this turned out to be a waste of time. Most people just say 'don't you mean Marx and Spencer' or 'who, what?' I just don't know what they teach kids in schools these days, but the social and economic history of the industrial revolution clearly isn't part of it. I have just attempted to attach photos of these guys, but I think the tech has defeated me, and I am not sure how to check that the attachments have actually attached if you see what I mean, as they are not apparent in the preview...
Anyway, if you have the pics, Marx is the black and white one and Engels is the very dark brown one. I had them as kittens just over a year ago in order to deal with a mouse problem in my old flat. They are brothers from the same litter, and constantly amaze me with how different thier personalities are, taking into account that they have never been separated since birth, and thier environment and life experiences have been identical, so this may be of some interest to anyone whose life involves them in a 'nature v nurture' argument.
Now of course these guys are cats, not humans, and there is a limit to how much one can anthropomorphise them, but they have obvious personalities nonetheless. Marx is small, wiry and quite muscular; I regard him as the fitter of the two, though this is without any objective or scientific backing, just my impression. He is the more adventurous, 'laddish' character of the two, a bit of a scruff by cat standards, though I do not feel myself in a position to be judgememntal about this sort of thing. He tends to regard my place as a hotel providing him with food and a place to sleep when he is tired of adventuring (I should point out that both are neutered, so it isn't that sort of behaviour; if I'm not getting any, I don't see why they should), although he is spending a little more time at home in the day over the last few weeks.
Engels is plump, sleek, lazy and affectionate. Paradoxically, he is noticeably the better climber of the pair, and sleeps at the foot of my bed every night making himself a useful winter footwarmer, something his brother would never condescend to doing1 He is a sly and intelligent little sod, who worked out that, if he mewed at the patio door to go out, I would open it for him and Marx would go bounding out of the flat with considerable enthusiasm, leaving E to refuse to go-and having all the food to himself! This sounds like deductive reasoning to me, and it took me some time to wise up to the ruse. He is also by far the more vociferous, engaging in long and involoved discussion with me about fuck knows what, and telling Marx off when he comes in late-I wish I spoke cat... M very rarely says anything, and in fact for his first 6 months of life I thought he might be dumb.
I no longer have a mouse issue, and the pair are really nothing but a drein on my resources in terms of cat food and litter. I wouldn't be without them though; they are a constant supply of amusemnt and affection, items not unwanted in this particular sad old git's life.
Anyway, if you have the pics, Marx is the black and white one and Engels is the very dark brown one. I had them as kittens just over a year ago in order to deal with a mouse problem in my old flat. They are brothers from the same litter, and constantly amaze me with how different thier personalities are, taking into account that they have never been separated since birth, and thier environment and life experiences have been identical, so this may be of some interest to anyone whose life involves them in a 'nature v nurture' argument.
Now of course these guys are cats, not humans, and there is a limit to how much one can anthropomorphise them, but they have obvious personalities nonetheless. Marx is small, wiry and quite muscular; I regard him as the fitter of the two, though this is without any objective or scientific backing, just my impression. He is the more adventurous, 'laddish' character of the two, a bit of a scruff by cat standards, though I do not feel myself in a position to be judgememntal about this sort of thing. He tends to regard my place as a hotel providing him with food and a place to sleep when he is tired of adventuring (I should point out that both are neutered, so it isn't that sort of behaviour; if I'm not getting any, I don't see why they should), although he is spending a little more time at home in the day over the last few weeks.
Engels is plump, sleek, lazy and affectionate. Paradoxically, he is noticeably the better climber of the pair, and sleeps at the foot of my bed every night making himself a useful winter footwarmer, something his brother would never condescend to doing1 He is a sly and intelligent little sod, who worked out that, if he mewed at the patio door to go out, I would open it for him and Marx would go bounding out of the flat with considerable enthusiasm, leaving E to refuse to go-and having all the food to himself! This sounds like deductive reasoning to me, and it took me some time to wise up to the ruse. He is also by far the more vociferous, engaging in long and involoved discussion with me about fuck knows what, and telling Marx off when he comes in late-I wish I spoke cat... M very rarely says anything, and in fact for his first 6 months of life I thought he might be dumb.
I no longer have a mouse issue, and the pair are really nothing but a drein on my resources in terms of cat food and litter. I wouldn't be without them though; they are a constant supply of amusemnt and affection, items not unwanted in this particular sad old git's life.
Sunday 30 May 2010
Where are ya?
Does it matter if you don't know where you are? Obviously yes, to me, but I am sometimes a bit out of step with the rest of the world, and there is the faintest of possibilities that what I think actually doesn't matter very much...
Thing is, sometimes I go away places with my band for a fun weekend or for intensive workshop practice away from the distractions of home. These outings tend to take place in remotish and often spectacularly lovely places; we have recently been to Lundy, an Island in the Bristol Channel. Now, as a sweeping generalistion, the people who come on thes jaunts are fairly intelligent, knowledgeable types who can do crosswords and read broadsheet newspapers and would consider themselves to be adequately educated.
Yet some of them have a limited to say the least concept of geography. Taking the Lundy trip as an example, one couple were suprised to find that they could not take thier car to the island, and a bit disconcerted to find that there was no way of leaving earlier than the usual boat on the last day, which neccessitated them re-arranging a plan for that evening when they thought they would be home. Another person thought we were going to Caldy Ialand, despite the journey to Ilfracombe in North Devon to access the place. There seemed to be, for some, a bit of a blank not only about where Lundy is but about what it is.
I found this genuinely shocking-Lundy is not much more than 60 miles in a straight line from where we live, although that is in a sense an academic consideration unless one has one's own helicopter! I think I could probably tell you how to get to anywhere but the tiniest of hamlets in a 60 mile radius of where I live. On another trip recently, we spent a weekend at Stackpole, in South Pembrokeshire and famous for it's lily ponds. 'What lily ponds', quoth one of our number, who had been there several times before!
Of course, these people would no doubt argue (if I had taken the point up with them, something I do not consider I have any right to do) that in an age of satnav it does not matter that no one knows where anywhere is-you just tell the little box in your car where you want to go and it gives you step by step instructions until you are there. But I get a huge buzz out of knowing this sort of stuff, and I wonder if the way one experiences life is diminished by not knowing it. I am certain that my life would be so diminished, but of course I can only speak for myself. But I am a little more worried by their apparent blindness as to what sorts of places these and no doubt others that they visit are. And I get a bit cross with folk who cannot grasp that they will be lucky to find a cafe open in a small Mid-Wales market town on a winter Sunday evening-it happens!
This awareness of where I am, and where I am going and have been, is an integral part of how I relate to the world and attempt to live within my society and culture. I'm not talking about being Captain Cook here, just an awareness that in order to get to, say, Bristol, then you head for Newport, and then in order to avoid going via Gloucester one is going to have to use a bridge, tunnel, or boat, and luckily 2 of those alternatives are available to me. I am genuinely concerned for the quality of life of these "lost' souls, although they are more than happy with thier satnavs.
This is part of a much larger issue about the impact that technology has on ordinary peoples' lives. In the same way that people below a certain age cannot read the time unless it is presented to them digitally, satnav may be eroding the ability to read maps and plan routes, at once a positive thing as the need to do that is removed, and a negative thing as people unlearn the skill to map read and route plan. I'm not a Luddite; I think satnavs, digital clocks, and all the rest of the technowonders everyone takes for granted are brilliant ideas and I cannot for the life of me imagine how people (myself included) managed before they were invented. No one needs to perform simple arithmetic in a world full of calculators, which in my case only means I can get sums wrong to 8 decimal places. Despite calculators having been in normal use for nigh on 40 years now, I still have to use old fashioned HTU columns in order to work things out on paper, with a pencil so I can rub out my cock ups, a fact of which I am not proud.
Will someone please invent a microwave bed so I can get 12 hours sleep in 20 minutes...
Thing is, sometimes I go away places with my band for a fun weekend or for intensive workshop practice away from the distractions of home. These outings tend to take place in remotish and often spectacularly lovely places; we have recently been to Lundy, an Island in the Bristol Channel. Now, as a sweeping generalistion, the people who come on thes jaunts are fairly intelligent, knowledgeable types who can do crosswords and read broadsheet newspapers and would consider themselves to be adequately educated.
Yet some of them have a limited to say the least concept of geography. Taking the Lundy trip as an example, one couple were suprised to find that they could not take thier car to the island, and a bit disconcerted to find that there was no way of leaving earlier than the usual boat on the last day, which neccessitated them re-arranging a plan for that evening when they thought they would be home. Another person thought we were going to Caldy Ialand, despite the journey to Ilfracombe in North Devon to access the place. There seemed to be, for some, a bit of a blank not only about where Lundy is but about what it is.
I found this genuinely shocking-Lundy is not much more than 60 miles in a straight line from where we live, although that is in a sense an academic consideration unless one has one's own helicopter! I think I could probably tell you how to get to anywhere but the tiniest of hamlets in a 60 mile radius of where I live. On another trip recently, we spent a weekend at Stackpole, in South Pembrokeshire and famous for it's lily ponds. 'What lily ponds', quoth one of our number, who had been there several times before!
Of course, these people would no doubt argue (if I had taken the point up with them, something I do not consider I have any right to do) that in an age of satnav it does not matter that no one knows where anywhere is-you just tell the little box in your car where you want to go and it gives you step by step instructions until you are there. But I get a huge buzz out of knowing this sort of stuff, and I wonder if the way one experiences life is diminished by not knowing it. I am certain that my life would be so diminished, but of course I can only speak for myself. But I am a little more worried by their apparent blindness as to what sorts of places these and no doubt others that they visit are. And I get a bit cross with folk who cannot grasp that they will be lucky to find a cafe open in a small Mid-Wales market town on a winter Sunday evening-it happens!
This awareness of where I am, and where I am going and have been, is an integral part of how I relate to the world and attempt to live within my society and culture. I'm not talking about being Captain Cook here, just an awareness that in order to get to, say, Bristol, then you head for Newport, and then in order to avoid going via Gloucester one is going to have to use a bridge, tunnel, or boat, and luckily 2 of those alternatives are available to me. I am genuinely concerned for the quality of life of these "lost' souls, although they are more than happy with thier satnavs.
This is part of a much larger issue about the impact that technology has on ordinary peoples' lives. In the same way that people below a certain age cannot read the time unless it is presented to them digitally, satnav may be eroding the ability to read maps and plan routes, at once a positive thing as the need to do that is removed, and a negative thing as people unlearn the skill to map read and route plan. I'm not a Luddite; I think satnavs, digital clocks, and all the rest of the technowonders everyone takes for granted are brilliant ideas and I cannot for the life of me imagine how people (myself included) managed before they were invented. No one needs to perform simple arithmetic in a world full of calculators, which in my case only means I can get sums wrong to 8 decimal places. Despite calculators having been in normal use for nigh on 40 years now, I still have to use old fashioned HTU columns in order to work things out on paper, with a pencil so I can rub out my cock ups, a fact of which I am not proud.
Will someone please invent a microwave bed so I can get 12 hours sleep in 20 minutes...
Saturday 22 May 2010
Why am I so tired?
All the bloody time. I just haven't got the energy to do anything, and when I do force myself to do something, and I mean force because the least activity seems to involve a huge effort, I run out of steam halfway through. It quite literally feels like that-on a recent walk which was not a major affair, perhaps 5 miles of fairly easy terrain, I simply came to a complete standstill after about 4 miles. I had nothing; couldn't have put another foot forward to save my life, not if the devil had been chasing me with a job application. I just had to sit on a rock for half an hour before I could carry on.
I hope I haven't got ME. I don't want ME. I didn't ask for it, and if I can avoid it, it would suit me fine, thank you very much. Perhaps I'm being a drama queen, and it's just me adjusting to my new circumstances and recovering from my holiday. Hope so.
It's not that I'm going without sleep. I can sleep for Wales-actually, I could sleep for Earth in the Interplanetary Olympics- and my lifestyle allows plenty of time to sleep in. Time, I think, to book a seeing to by Doctor whateverisnameis, maybe he can give me some make you go pills, I mean make you perambulate, not make you go....
But what's the point. It is World Cup time, and I bloody hate football. I grew out of it when I was about 12, and it still seems to me to encapsulate the most childish and least attractive of people's natures. My tv is swamped with adverts jumping onto the bandwagon, on behalf of 'our boys', meaning England. I'm not even English, and therefore have no more interest in thier National Side than anyone else's. The constant repetition of this rubbish makes me hope that Germany crush them in the final. The buggers are insufferable when they beat anyone, poor old Germany especially, and of course all the unpleasant recist and xenophobic overtones are out on show.
Not that I am suggesting that we Welsh are backward in coming forward in xenophobicness mind you-for from it, we can hold our own with any bigots in the world-but at least we save our most potent bile for our own conntrymen if they do not happen to conform to what we think is the proper way of being Welsh.
All that said, of course I'll be in some pub watching the Final, whoever is in it (Brasil will of course win!). It is the World Cup after all, it's only once every 4 years and it should be a reasonably entertaining game....
Everybody should, in my view, be proud of thier nationality, what they are and where they are from. What I cannot abide is the dissing, the contempt for other cultures, that seems endemic and all pervasive in football, at club level as well as national (who are you?).
Enjoy the football, who and wherever you are. I'll be in bed somewhere recovering from nothing in particular!
I hope I haven't got ME. I don't want ME. I didn't ask for it, and if I can avoid it, it would suit me fine, thank you very much. Perhaps I'm being a drama queen, and it's just me adjusting to my new circumstances and recovering from my holiday. Hope so.
It's not that I'm going without sleep. I can sleep for Wales-actually, I could sleep for Earth in the Interplanetary Olympics- and my lifestyle allows plenty of time to sleep in. Time, I think, to book a seeing to by Doctor whateverisnameis, maybe he can give me some make you go pills, I mean make you perambulate, not make you go....
But what's the point. It is World Cup time, and I bloody hate football. I grew out of it when I was about 12, and it still seems to me to encapsulate the most childish and least attractive of people's natures. My tv is swamped with adverts jumping onto the bandwagon, on behalf of 'our boys', meaning England. I'm not even English, and therefore have no more interest in thier National Side than anyone else's. The constant repetition of this rubbish makes me hope that Germany crush them in the final. The buggers are insufferable when they beat anyone, poor old Germany especially, and of course all the unpleasant recist and xenophobic overtones are out on show.
Not that I am suggesting that we Welsh are backward in coming forward in xenophobicness mind you-for from it, we can hold our own with any bigots in the world-but at least we save our most potent bile for our own conntrymen if they do not happen to conform to what we think is the proper way of being Welsh.
All that said, of course I'll be in some pub watching the Final, whoever is in it (Brasil will of course win!). It is the World Cup after all, it's only once every 4 years and it should be a reasonably entertaining game....
Everybody should, in my view, be proud of thier nationality, what they are and where they are from. What I cannot abide is the dissing, the contempt for other cultures, that seems endemic and all pervasive in football, at club level as well as national (who are you?).
Enjoy the football, who and wherever you are. I'll be in bed somewhere recovering from nothing in particular!
Wednesday 5 May 2010
For no particular reason other than a paucity of creative imagination, I was earlier thinking about my train spotting career of the mid 1960s, and the lads that used to accompany me on some of the epic voyages we made on the uncharted ocean of British Railways when there were still ways and it didn't stop at British Rail. Not really fair to call us train spotters, either, as we had long past and outgrown just taking numbers and ticking them off in the Book*. We preferred the term 'Railway Enthusiasts', which in those heady days had slightly more cachet, though now it is equally derogatory. In the later years we called ourselves 'Gricers', although the origin of this term is lost in the mythical mystical misty mist, mister. Gricer, though, implies the sort of itinerant existence I will shortly describe.
There were 4 of us, classmates, and for 5 years between '63 and '68, we left an impressive trail of toffee and Mars Bar wrappers the length and breadth of England. There were others who came on some trips, but we were the hardcore, the team, the Railway Lads, and we had developed into a finely oiled machine for the purpose of living rough for next to nothing over a weekend when we might cover over 1000 miles in a day. We were 11 years old in '63, and consequently 16 in '68, and exploited opportunities which are unimaginable to modern teenagers-imagine the reaction of the parents of one of today's 13 year olds on being told on Friday evening at 8 o'clock 'Finished my homework, so I'm catching the 5 past midnight Liverpool, see you sometime Sunday evening!'. Even our parents gibbed a bit at first, but rapidly came to recognize that we were good at this, gave us each a shilling for emergency phone calls (never used), and let us get on with it. What they would have done had we ever rung them up from, say, Huddersfield late on a Sunday evening with school in the morning and no means of support is not something I suspect they had thought completely through. As you will see, we'd have probably coped without difficulty.
We did not conform exactly to the nerd image, either. Graham Thomas was what they call in Somerset a 'gert lummox of a lad' who played school rugby in the front row, where things could get a bit brutal. Andy McEnzie, Mac, was another rugby player, a small, fast, clever outside half who could think on his feet. Lewis Bevan, Scab (he had impetigunous issues), was what they called in those days 'gangly', an odd collection of seemingly disconnected limbs and torsos and glasses that flew in loose formation, but certainly flew-he would frequently win cross-country events: though there was never any style or grace to his running, one of his generally associated bits would get over the line first and the rest would turn up eventually. And, hard though it is to believe now (even I have difficulty), I was a fair hack tennis player.
Graham, as you might expect, was a bit out of his depth unless something heavy had to be lifted; Mac was the intellectual, capable of doing the calculation neccessary to work out the speed of a train from the timing between 1/4 mile posts in his head without drooling. Scab was the engineer. He had an impressive Rolleiflex medium format camera he'd inherited from his late father, who had in turn inherited it from a late German at Monte Cassino-word was that Bevan senior, on spotting the Rollei, had made himself instrumental in occasioning the hapless German's lateness-anyway, the point of this was that Scab had made a tripod for this beast himself, out of scrap bike bits! I was the philosopher of the group, and if you don't think such a thing was neccessary, I can only say that someone had to have a moral standpoint in order to stop the blagging going too far...
The name of the game was Steam Engines. These were already becoming thin on the ground (there weren't many on railway lines either) locally in '63, and thier eventual extinction in '68 saw a steady retreat of the borders of thier habitat to firstly the Midlands, then the North of England and finally to Lancashire, coming full circle from Robert Stephenson, the 'Rocket' and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Initially, the tool of the trade was bicycles. We would set off across the Gwent levels with the wind behind us heading for Severn Tunnel Junction via the Newport Transporter Bridge, stopping fairly frequently for Graham to catch up. He was physically the strongest, but while the rest of us had 5-speed 'racers', he had to make do with a thing called a Triumph Palm Beach. This was practically standard issue for schoolboys at the time, 26" wheels, 3-speed Sturmey Archer, fitted steel mudguards and a chainguard. It was bombproof, but weighed many tons, and Graham never got the hang of cycling efficiently. Our business at the Tunnel completed, we would go for tea and biccies in the little buffet they once had there, which had an impressive poster extolling the delights of travelling to New York on the long scrapped Mauretania. Tired and with a headwind to face, we would catch a train home, having saved maybe ninepence on the single over the cheap day return fare. Guards were mostly sympathetic about bicycles....
The bikes were used for local evening outings to Radyr and East Dock sheds, where steam engines lingered until the summer of '65, but it was obvious that bigger, longer, better expeditions were gonna be needed. These could only be done by train, and we all got paper rounds to finance the enterprise, so the bikes were still essential. Until '66, day trips could be done to take in the various engine sheds around Birmingham, and some action was even to be had at Gloucester if you only had an afternoon, but after that, Crewe was the nearest-but once past that point, for 2 years, one entered a magical land where steam engines were still the norm on goods trains and could even be found on some passenger trains! But the clock was ticking and we knew it. Every month Railway Magazine published lists of loco withdrawals, closed or deiselised sheds, and new, closer, predictions of the End of Steam, or in other words life as we knew it. Problem was having enough time in this magical land to see anything much, and the solution was the 00.05 Cardiff-Liverpool.
This was not a fast train. It ran to a timetable probably unaltered since the opening of the Hereford-Shrewsbury line in the 1870s, and consisted of one passenger coach next the loco and a hefty string of parcels vans. Loading and unloading of these was performed at the stops, i.e. everywhere, and at Hereford and Shrewsbury vans were attached and detached. None of this mattered, as the purpose of this part of the trip was to sleep. Once you got to Crewe, at about half 5 in the morning, the whole wide grim world of 'oop North' lay before you, and there were connections to all of it within the next hour. At this point a fiendishly complex itinerary, worked out by me usually, swung (swang?) into operation, which would certainly take in the sights (steam engine, of course) of either Liverpool or Manchester, and then onward to Preston, Bolton, Carnforth, Carlisle, maybe a stop at Tebay to see the Shap bankers, then back over the Settle and Carlisle for Leeds and Huddersfield, until summer '67 when Yorkshire went steamless. Saturday was for steam trains in action, working, the harder the better, and there was, for a few short years, plenty. Saturday night introduced us to such places as Newton Heath, Manchester, or Neville Hall, Leeds, where there were carriage sidings full of carriages which would be our accomodation for the night. The railway staff knew and turned a blind eye. Here one would meet other lads with the same idea, from Scotland, or Kent, or Devon, East Anglia and London. Public Schoolboys mixed with lads from the Gorbals with holes in thier shoes, or farm hands from Sussex, and mostly I remember lots of laughing. The carriage cleaners would wake us up when the Sunday day shift started, we'd grab a cup of tea in thier messrooms, and move on to the Sunday business, which was Engine Sheds. Sometimes we would even encounter the shadowy, legendary, figures of the Master Neverers Association, a secret organisation whose purpose it was to sneak into engine sheds, trespassing of course but again the railwaymen turned a blind eye, and illicitly clean the engines, then dissappear back into the darkness whence they came.**
We rode free on ECS, empty coaching stock, empty trains not in the timetable but which we had heard about from sympathetic railwaymen or other gricers. Drivers cheerfully stopped by word of mouth arrangement to pick us up or drop us off to connect with timetable trains. We lived off the land, learning early that it was poinless taking supplies with you-they'd be eaten before you got to Newport. Greasy spoon caffs, factory canteens, bus depot messrooms kept us going, onward, ever onward as exhaustion set in and Sunday pm started getting dark. We travelled light-our knapsacks or duffle bags containing a spare jumper, pencil sharpener, notebook and pencil (never a biro, we needed things that worked even in the freezing chill of a Yorkshire winter morning), Mars Bar, maybe a Melton Mowbray Pork Pie, Tizer***, the fuel on which railway enthusiasm ran, and, of course, the Book*. We wore duffle coats in winter and sport jackets in summer; anoraks were unknown to me until 1969, prior to which they were called snorkels and only worn by Mods on scooters. Some of the farm lads had donkey jackets, which smelled as if they were made of real donkeys.The ultimate goal was the reaching of Crewe before 20 past 8, when the Cardiff train left, and we never missed this, ever. We would commandeer a compartment, finish the Tizer, eat whatever remained in bags and pockets, hopefully food though we often past caring by then, and sleep all the way home. Parents, mine or Graham's, would meet us off the train at 11.35 and ferry us all home, where the experienced mother had a boiler of bath water heated up for thier now indescribably filthy offspring to delouse in, and a basket for the even filthier clothes, worn now for 2 days. Trains were never clean in those days, and we'd been living rough around steam engines, remember... This seems a good point to remind you that we were 14 or 15 years old at the time.
We learned stuff on those outings which is hard for kids today to pick up. We saw some of the worst slums still standing in Britain, and wonderful scenery. We mingled with lads from different worlds, amicably. We met with nothing but friendliness and gratuitous, unlookedfor kindnesses from the folk of the North; tolerance from the poor buggers trying to run the railway in the midst of all this, and bemusement from everyone else, but always friendliness, often from people who had fuck all and would still happily share it with us. Admittedly this friendliness was not always cheerful-there are some miserable bastards oop north-but it was always there and always genuine. We learned how to fend for ourselves, how to deal with problems there was no point in moaning about. We became resourceful and inventive, we got on with it. We put ourselves through not inconsiderable hardships, and we were ecstatically happy. We never ever felt unsafe, and we probably never actually were. And the public schoolboys learned that if you slept in the same carriage as the Gorbals lads, you were the one with the shoes with holes in in the morning, and it didn't matter!
In '68, all this came to an end. The Last Steam Train was booked solid the day it was announced and watched by perhaps a hundred thousand people on it's circular route around Lancashire. I wasn't there. The media suddenly became aware of gricers and began commenting on the phenomenon with thier usual perceptive understanding. if you wanted to see a steam engine you had to go to a preserved railway, abroad, or, as in our case, the local coal mine railways. This meant going back to the bicycles, and as we had now discovered girls and beer, the excesses of life in the carriages were no longer appropriate, so it was perhaps as well. At least by now Graham had got himself a 5 speed! We all missed it though, and were aware that we'd had the time of our lives in a way which could never be re-created by less fortunate generations, even those say 2 years younger. We were of our time, a short time in a doomed, hopeless and shrinking place, and therefore unique.
Symtomatic of the times of course; the nation was disentangling itself from the Empire and adjusting to not being a superpower, and, like the trolleybuses and paddle steamers, many old certainties were being found inconvenient and dispensed with. Even if we threw away the babies with the bathwater, there is no doubt the bathwater had to go-it stunk as much as any of our late Sunday night drainings. British society at the start of the '60s was still pinned to the old shibboleths of 'best in the world', colonialism, class, racism, xenophopia, homophobia, misanthropic and white supremacist mindsets. By 1970 there were no 'proper' steam trains, trolleybuses or paddle steamers, and my world was a poorer place for it, but I'd never for one second have gone back-those shibboleths just mentioned had not been destroyed nor have they yet, but they had been mortally wounded, and the sort of world where you could meet people as different from yourself as is possible in one society while you were kipping in the carriages and having a laugh was exactly among the sort of things that dealt the death blow. I'm glad I was part of it.
*British Railway Locomotives (Combined Volume), published yearly in hardback by Ian Allan, the Bible, a list of locomotives steam, deisel and electric divided into classes with basic information in each class heading. And photos. Known as 'The Combined', it had a companion cloth-covered book, 'British Railways Locomotive Shed Directory', a list of engine sheds, which engines were allocated to them, and, most importantly, how to find them by walking and/or bus from the nearest railway station. Some of these were mini expeditions in themselves.
**This really existed. I'm not making it up.
***Scots lads had Iron Brew. Made in Scotland. From girders.
--
Johnboythelostandterminallyconfused
There were 4 of us, classmates, and for 5 years between '63 and '68, we left an impressive trail of toffee and Mars Bar wrappers the length and breadth of England. There were others who came on some trips, but we were the hardcore, the team, the Railway Lads, and we had developed into a finely oiled machine for the purpose of living rough for next to nothing over a weekend when we might cover over 1000 miles in a day. We were 11 years old in '63, and consequently 16 in '68, and exploited opportunities which are unimaginable to modern teenagers-imagine the reaction of the parents of one of today's 13 year olds on being told on Friday evening at 8 o'clock 'Finished my homework, so I'm catching the 5 past midnight Liverpool, see you sometime Sunday evening!'. Even our parents gibbed a bit at first, but rapidly came to recognize that we were good at this, gave us each a shilling for emergency phone calls (never used), and let us get on with it. What they would have done had we ever rung them up from, say, Huddersfield late on a Sunday evening with school in the morning and no means of support is not something I suspect they had thought completely through. As you will see, we'd have probably coped without difficulty.
We did not conform exactly to the nerd image, either. Graham Thomas was what they call in Somerset a 'gert lummox of a lad' who played school rugby in the front row, where things could get a bit brutal. Andy McEnzie, Mac, was another rugby player, a small, fast, clever outside half who could think on his feet. Lewis Bevan, Scab (he had impetigunous issues), was what they called in those days 'gangly', an odd collection of seemingly disconnected limbs and torsos and glasses that flew in loose formation, but certainly flew-he would frequently win cross-country events: though there was never any style or grace to his running, one of his generally associated bits would get over the line first and the rest would turn up eventually. And, hard though it is to believe now (even I have difficulty), I was a fair hack tennis player.
Graham, as you might expect, was a bit out of his depth unless something heavy had to be lifted; Mac was the intellectual, capable of doing the calculation neccessary to work out the speed of a train from the timing between 1/4 mile posts in his head without drooling. Scab was the engineer. He had an impressive Rolleiflex medium format camera he'd inherited from his late father, who had in turn inherited it from a late German at Monte Cassino-word was that Bevan senior, on spotting the Rollei, had made himself instrumental in occasioning the hapless German's lateness-anyway, the point of this was that Scab had made a tripod for this beast himself, out of scrap bike bits! I was the philosopher of the group, and if you don't think such a thing was neccessary, I can only say that someone had to have a moral standpoint in order to stop the blagging going too far...
The name of the game was Steam Engines. These were already becoming thin on the ground (there weren't many on railway lines either) locally in '63, and thier eventual extinction in '68 saw a steady retreat of the borders of thier habitat to firstly the Midlands, then the North of England and finally to Lancashire, coming full circle from Robert Stephenson, the 'Rocket' and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Initially, the tool of the trade was bicycles. We would set off across the Gwent levels with the wind behind us heading for Severn Tunnel Junction via the Newport Transporter Bridge, stopping fairly frequently for Graham to catch up. He was physically the strongest, but while the rest of us had 5-speed 'racers', he had to make do with a thing called a Triumph Palm Beach. This was practically standard issue for schoolboys at the time, 26" wheels, 3-speed Sturmey Archer, fitted steel mudguards and a chainguard. It was bombproof, but weighed many tons, and Graham never got the hang of cycling efficiently. Our business at the Tunnel completed, we would go for tea and biccies in the little buffet they once had there, which had an impressive poster extolling the delights of travelling to New York on the long scrapped Mauretania. Tired and with a headwind to face, we would catch a train home, having saved maybe ninepence on the single over the cheap day return fare. Guards were mostly sympathetic about bicycles....
The bikes were used for local evening outings to Radyr and East Dock sheds, where steam engines lingered until the summer of '65, but it was obvious that bigger, longer, better expeditions were gonna be needed. These could only be done by train, and we all got paper rounds to finance the enterprise, so the bikes were still essential. Until '66, day trips could be done to take in the various engine sheds around Birmingham, and some action was even to be had at Gloucester if you only had an afternoon, but after that, Crewe was the nearest-but once past that point, for 2 years, one entered a magical land where steam engines were still the norm on goods trains and could even be found on some passenger trains! But the clock was ticking and we knew it. Every month Railway Magazine published lists of loco withdrawals, closed or deiselised sheds, and new, closer, predictions of the End of Steam, or in other words life as we knew it. Problem was having enough time in this magical land to see anything much, and the solution was the 00.05 Cardiff-Liverpool.
This was not a fast train. It ran to a timetable probably unaltered since the opening of the Hereford-Shrewsbury line in the 1870s, and consisted of one passenger coach next the loco and a hefty string of parcels vans. Loading and unloading of these was performed at the stops, i.e. everywhere, and at Hereford and Shrewsbury vans were attached and detached. None of this mattered, as the purpose of this part of the trip was to sleep. Once you got to Crewe, at about half 5 in the morning, the whole wide grim world of 'oop North' lay before you, and there were connections to all of it within the next hour. At this point a fiendishly complex itinerary, worked out by me usually, swung (swang?) into operation, which would certainly take in the sights (steam engine, of course) of either Liverpool or Manchester, and then onward to Preston, Bolton, Carnforth, Carlisle, maybe a stop at Tebay to see the Shap bankers, then back over the Settle and Carlisle for Leeds and Huddersfield, until summer '67 when Yorkshire went steamless. Saturday was for steam trains in action, working, the harder the better, and there was, for a few short years, plenty. Saturday night introduced us to such places as Newton Heath, Manchester, or Neville Hall, Leeds, where there were carriage sidings full of carriages which would be our accomodation for the night. The railway staff knew and turned a blind eye. Here one would meet other lads with the same idea, from Scotland, or Kent, or Devon, East Anglia and London. Public Schoolboys mixed with lads from the Gorbals with holes in thier shoes, or farm hands from Sussex, and mostly I remember lots of laughing. The carriage cleaners would wake us up when the Sunday day shift started, we'd grab a cup of tea in thier messrooms, and move on to the Sunday business, which was Engine Sheds. Sometimes we would even encounter the shadowy, legendary, figures of the Master Neverers Association, a secret organisation whose purpose it was to sneak into engine sheds, trespassing of course but again the railwaymen turned a blind eye, and illicitly clean the engines, then dissappear back into the darkness whence they came.**
We rode free on ECS, empty coaching stock, empty trains not in the timetable but which we had heard about from sympathetic railwaymen or other gricers. Drivers cheerfully stopped by word of mouth arrangement to pick us up or drop us off to connect with timetable trains. We lived off the land, learning early that it was poinless taking supplies with you-they'd be eaten before you got to Newport. Greasy spoon caffs, factory canteens, bus depot messrooms kept us going, onward, ever onward as exhaustion set in and Sunday pm started getting dark. We travelled light-our knapsacks or duffle bags containing a spare jumper, pencil sharpener, notebook and pencil (never a biro, we needed things that worked even in the freezing chill of a Yorkshire winter morning), Mars Bar, maybe a Melton Mowbray Pork Pie, Tizer***, the fuel on which railway enthusiasm ran, and, of course, the Book*. We wore duffle coats in winter and sport jackets in summer; anoraks were unknown to me until 1969, prior to which they were called snorkels and only worn by Mods on scooters. Some of the farm lads had donkey jackets, which smelled as if they were made of real donkeys.The ultimate goal was the reaching of Crewe before 20 past 8, when the Cardiff train left, and we never missed this, ever. We would commandeer a compartment, finish the Tizer, eat whatever remained in bags and pockets, hopefully food though we often past caring by then, and sleep all the way home. Parents, mine or Graham's, would meet us off the train at 11.35 and ferry us all home, where the experienced mother had a boiler of bath water heated up for thier now indescribably filthy offspring to delouse in, and a basket for the even filthier clothes, worn now for 2 days. Trains were never clean in those days, and we'd been living rough around steam engines, remember... This seems a good point to remind you that we were 14 or 15 years old at the time.
We learned stuff on those outings which is hard for kids today to pick up. We saw some of the worst slums still standing in Britain, and wonderful scenery. We mingled with lads from different worlds, amicably. We met with nothing but friendliness and gratuitous, unlookedfor kindnesses from the folk of the North; tolerance from the poor buggers trying to run the railway in the midst of all this, and bemusement from everyone else, but always friendliness, often from people who had fuck all and would still happily share it with us. Admittedly this friendliness was not always cheerful-there are some miserable bastards oop north-but it was always there and always genuine. We learned how to fend for ourselves, how to deal with problems there was no point in moaning about. We became resourceful and inventive, we got on with it. We put ourselves through not inconsiderable hardships, and we were ecstatically happy. We never ever felt unsafe, and we probably never actually were. And the public schoolboys learned that if you slept in the same carriage as the Gorbals lads, you were the one with the shoes with holes in in the morning, and it didn't matter!
In '68, all this came to an end. The Last Steam Train was booked solid the day it was announced and watched by perhaps a hundred thousand people on it's circular route around Lancashire. I wasn't there. The media suddenly became aware of gricers and began commenting on the phenomenon with thier usual perceptive understanding. if you wanted to see a steam engine you had to go to a preserved railway, abroad, or, as in our case, the local coal mine railways. This meant going back to the bicycles, and as we had now discovered girls and beer, the excesses of life in the carriages were no longer appropriate, so it was perhaps as well. At least by now Graham had got himself a 5 speed! We all missed it though, and were aware that we'd had the time of our lives in a way which could never be re-created by less fortunate generations, even those say 2 years younger. We were of our time, a short time in a doomed, hopeless and shrinking place, and therefore unique.
Symtomatic of the times of course; the nation was disentangling itself from the Empire and adjusting to not being a superpower, and, like the trolleybuses and paddle steamers, many old certainties were being found inconvenient and dispensed with. Even if we threw away the babies with the bathwater, there is no doubt the bathwater had to go-it stunk as much as any of our late Sunday night drainings. British society at the start of the '60s was still pinned to the old shibboleths of 'best in the world', colonialism, class, racism, xenophopia, homophobia, misanthropic and white supremacist mindsets. By 1970 there were no 'proper' steam trains, trolleybuses or paddle steamers, and my world was a poorer place for it, but I'd never for one second have gone back-those shibboleths just mentioned had not been destroyed nor have they yet, but they had been mortally wounded, and the sort of world where you could meet people as different from yourself as is possible in one society while you were kipping in the carriages and having a laugh was exactly among the sort of things that dealt the death blow. I'm glad I was part of it.
*British Railway Locomotives (Combined Volume), published yearly in hardback by Ian Allan, the Bible, a list of locomotives steam, deisel and electric divided into classes with basic information in each class heading. And photos. Known as 'The Combined', it had a companion cloth-covered book, 'British Railways Locomotive Shed Directory', a list of engine sheds, which engines were allocated to them, and, most importantly, how to find them by walking and/or bus from the nearest railway station. Some of these were mini expeditions in themselves.
**This really existed. I'm not making it up.
***Scots lads had Iron Brew. Made in Scotland. From girders.
--
Johnboythelostandterminallyconfused
Anna Raks
For no particular reason other than a paucity of creative imagination, I was earlier thinking about my train spotting career of the mid 1960s, and the lads that used to accompany me on some of the epic voyages we made on the uncharted ocean of British Railways when there were still ways and it didn't stop at British Rail. Not really fair to call us train spotters, either, as we had long past and outgrown just taking numbers and ticking them off in the Book*. We preferred the term 'Railway Enthusiasts', which in those heady days had slightly more cachet, though now it is equally derogatory. In the later years we called ourselves 'Gricers', although the origin of this term is lost in the mythical mystical misty mist, mister. Gricer, though, implies the sort of itinerant existence I will shortly describe.
Such as us have taken a lot of stick over the years as societal failures who haven't got a life, and we are generally lumped in with computer nerds, mathematical prodigies and the like as oddities whom it apparently acceptable to ridicule if you are a fat, thick, drunk football fan who is clearly above ridicule (or, as I prefer to think of it, beneath contempt). No fair, and please allow me this opportunity to plead our just and righteous cause.
There were 4 of us, classmates, and for 5 years between '63 and '68, we left an impressive trail of toffee and Mars Bar wrappers the length and breadth of England. There were others who came on some trips, but we were the hardcore, the team, the Railway Lads, and we had developed into a finely oiled (well, we were oily enough when we got home!) machine for the purpose of living rough for next to nothing over a weekend when we might cover over 1000 miles in a day. We were 11 years old in '63, and consequently 16 in '68, and exploited opportunities which are unimaginable to modern teenagers-imagine the reaction of the parents of one of today's 13 year olds on being told on Friday evening at 8 o'clock 'Finished my homework, so I'm catching the 5 past midnight Liverpool, see you sometime Sunday evening!'. Even our parents gibbed a bit at first, but rapidly came to recognize that we were good at this, gave us each a shilling for emergency phone calls (never used), and let us get on with it. What they would have done had we ever rung them up from, say, Huddersfield late on a Sunday evening with school in the morning and no means of support is not something I suspect they had thought completely through. As you will see, we'd have probably coped without difficulty.
We did not conform exactly to the nerd image, either. Graham was what they call in Somerset a 'gert lummox of a lad' who played school rugby in the front row, where things could get a bit brutal. Mac, was another rugby player, a small, fast, clever outside half who could think on his feet. Scab (he had impetigunous issues), was what they called in those days 'gangly', an odd collection of seemingly disconnected limbs, torso, hair and glasses that flew in loose formation, but certainly flew-he would frequently win cross-country events; though there was never any style or grace to his running, one of his generally associated bits would get over the line first and the rest would turn up eventually. And, hard though it is to believe now (even I have difficulty), I was a fair hack tennis player.
Graham, as you might expect, was a bit out of his depth unless something heavy had to be lifted; Mac was the intellectual, capable of doing the calculation neccessary to work out the speed of a train from the timing between 1/4 mile posts in his head without drooling. Scab was the engineer. He had an impressive Rolleiflex medium format camera he'd inherited from his late father, who had in turn inherited it from a late German at Monte Cassino-word was that Bevan Senior, on spotting the Rollei, had made himself instrumental in occasioning the hapless German's lateness-anyway, the point of this was that Scab had made a tripod for this beast himself, out of scrap bike bits! I was the philosopher of the group, and if you don't think such a thing was neccessary, I can only say that someone had to have a moral standpoint in order to stop the blagging going too far...
The name of the game was Steam Engines. These were already becoming thin on the ground (there weren't many on railway lines either) locally in '63, and thier eventual extinction in '68 saw a steady retreat of the nearest borders of thier habitat to firstly the Midlands, then the North of England and finally to Lancashire, coming full circle from Robert Stephenson, the 'Rocket' and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Initially, the tool of the trade was bicycles. We would set off across the Gwent levels with the wind behind us heading for Severn Tunnel Junction via the Newport Transporter Bridge, stopping fairly frequently for Graham to catch up. He was physically the strongest, but while the rest of us had 5-speed 'racers', he had to make do with a thing called a Triumph Palm Beach. This was practically standard issue for schoolboys at the time, 26" wheels, 3-speed Sturmey Archer, fitted steel mudguards and a chainguard. It was bombproof, but weighed many tons, and Graham never got the hang of cycling efficiently. Our business at the Tunnel completed, we would go for tea and biccies in the little buffet they once had there, which had an impressive poster extolling the delights of travelling to New York on the long scrapped Mauretania. Tired and with a headwind to face, we would catch a train home, having saved maybe ninepence on the single over the cheap day return fare. Guards were mostly sympathetic about bicycles....
The bikes were used for local evening outings to Radyr or East Dock enginesheds, where steam engines lingered until the summer of '65, but it was obvious that bigger, longer, better expeditions were gonna be needed. These could only be done by train, and we all got paper rounds to finance the enterprise, so the bikes were still essential. Until '66, day trips could be done to take in the various engine sheds around Birmingham, and some action was even to be had at Gloucester if you only had an afternoon, but after that, Crewe was the nearest-but once past that point, for 2 years, one entered a magical dreamplace where steam engines were still the norm on goods trains and could even be found on some passenger trains! But the clock was ticking and we knew it. Every month Railway Magazine published lists of loco withdrawals, closed or deiselised sheds, and new, closer, predictions of the End of Steam, or in other words life as we knew it. Problem was having enough time in this magical land to see anything much, and the solution was the 00.05 Cardiff-Liverpool.
This was not a fast train. It ran to a timetable probably unaltered since the opening of the Hereford-Shrewsbury line in the 1870s, and consisted of one passenger coach next the loco and a hefty string of parcels vans. Loading and unloading of these was performed at the stops, i.e. everywhere, and at Hereford and Shrewsbury vans were attached and detached. None of this mattered, as the purpose of this part of the trip was to sleep. Once you got to Crewe, at about half 5 in the morning, the whole wide grim world of 'oop North' lay before you, and there were connections to all of it within the next hour. At this point a fiendishly complex itinerary, worked out by me usually, swung (swang?) into operation, which would certainly take in the sights (steam engine, of course) of either Liverpool or Manchester, and then onward to Preston, Bolton, Carnforth, Carlisle, maybe a stop at Tebay to see the Shap bankers, then back over the Settle and Carlisle for Leeds and Huddersfield, until summer '67 when Yorkshire went steamless. Saturday was for seeing the steam trains in action, working, the harder the better, and there was, for a few short years, plenty to see. Saturday night introduced us to such places as Newton Heath, Manchester, or Neville Hall, Leeds, where there were carriage sidings full of carriages which would be our accomodation for the night. The railway staff knew and turned a blind eye. Here one would meet other lads with the same idea, from Scotland, or Kent, or Devon, East Anglia and London. Public Schoolboys mixed with lads from the Gorbals with holes in thier shoes, or farm hands from Sussex, and mostly I remember lots of laughing. The carriage cleaners would wake us up when the Sunday day shift started, we'd grab a cup of tea in thier messrooms, and move on to the Sunday business, which was Engine Sheds. Sometimes we would even encounter the shadowy, legendary, figures of the Master Neverers Association, a secret organisation whose purpose it was to sneak into engine sheds, trespassing of course but again the railwaymen turned a blind eye, and illicitly clean the engines, then dissappear back into the darkness whence they came.**
We rode free on ECS, empty coaching stock, empty trains not in the timetable but which we had heard about from sympathetic railwaymen or other gricers. Drivers cheerfully stopped by word of mouth arrangement, or even hand signal if they were not going fast, to pick us up or drop us off to connect with timetable trains. We lived off the land, with cash we'd told our Mothers was needed for B & B's, learning early that it was poinless taking supplies with you-they'd be eaten before you got to Newport. Greasy spoon caffs, factory canteens, bus depot messrooms kept us going, onward, ever onward as exhaustion set in and Sunday pm started getting dark. We travelled light-our knapsacks or duffle bags containing a spare jumper, pencil sharpener, notebook and pencil (never a biro, we needed things that worked even in the freezing chill of a Yorkshire winter morning), Mars Bar, maybe a Melton Mowbray Pork Pie, Tizer***, the fuel on which railway enthusiasm ran, and, of course, the Book*. We wore duffle coats in winter and sport jackets in summer; anoraks were unknown to me until 1969, prior to which they were called snorkels and only worn by Mods on scooters. Some of the farm lads had donkey jackets, which smelled as if they were made of real donkeys.The ultimate goal was the return to Crewe before 20 past 8, when the Cardiff train left, and we never missed this, ever. We would commandeer a compartment, finish the Tizer, eat whatever remained in bags and pockets, hopefully food though we often past caring by then, and sleep all the way home. Parents with cars, mine or Graham's, would meet us off the train at 11.35 and ferry us all home, where the experienced mother had a boiler of bath water heated up for thier now indescribably filthy offspring to delouse in, and a basket for the even filthier clothes, worn now for 2 days. Trains were never clean in those days, and we'd been living rough around steam engines, remember... This seems a good point to remind you that we were 14 or 15 years old at the time.
We learned stuff on those outings which is hard for kids today to pick up. We saw some of the worst slums still standing in Britain, and wonderful scenery. We mingled with lads from different worlds, amicably. We met with nothing but friendliness and gratuitous, unlookedfor kindnesses from the folk of the North; tolerance from the poor buggers trying to run the railway in the midst of all this, and bemusement from everyone else, but always friendliness, often from people who had fuck all and would still happily share it with us. Admittedly this friendliness was not always cheerful-there are some miserable bastards oop north-but it was always there and always genuine. We learned how to fend for ourselves, how to deal with problems there was no point in moaning about. We became resourceful and inventive, we got on with it. We put ourselves through not inconsiderable hardships, and we were ecstatically happy. We never ever felt unsafe, and we probably never actually were. And the public schoolboys learned that if you slept in the same carriage as the Gorbals lads, you were the one with the shoes with holes in in the morning, and it didn't matter!
In '68, all this came to an end. The Last Steam Train was booked solid the day it was announced and watched by perhaps a hundred thousand people on it's circular route around Lancashire. I wasn't there. The media suddenly became aware of gricers and began commenting on the phenomenon with thier usual perceptive understanding. if you wanted to see a steam engine you had to go to a preserved railway, abroad, or, as in our case, the local coal mine railways. This meant going back to the bicycles, and as we had now discovered girls and beer, the grime and excess of life in the carriages were no longer appropriate, so it was perhaps as well. At least by now Graham had got himself a 5 speed! We all missed it though, and were aware that we'd had the time of our lives in a way which could never be re-created by less fortunate generations, even those say 2 years younger. We were of our time, a short time in a doomed, hopeless and shrinking place, and therefore unique.
Symtomatic of the times of course; the nation was disentangling itself from the Empire and adjusting to not being a superpower, and, like the trolleybuses and paddle steamers that I also loved, many old certainties were being found inconvenient and dispensed with. Even if we threw away the babies with the bathwater, there is no doubt the bathwater had to go-it stunk as much as any of our late Sunday night drainings. British society at the start of the '60s was still pinned to the old shibboleths of 'best in the world', colonialism, class, racism, xenophopia, homophobia, misanthropic and white supremacist mindsets. You'd have thought that we'd won the war and that the 20 million Russians who died on the Eastern Front were in a minor skirmish. By 1970 there were no 'proper' steam trains, trolleybuses or paddle steamers, and my world was a poorer place for it, but I'd never for one second have gone back-those shibboleths just mentioned had not been destroyed nor have they yet, but they had been mortally wounded, and the sort of world where you could meet people as different from yourself as is possible in one society while you were kipping in the carriages and having a laugh was exactly among the sort of things that dealt the death blow. I'm glad I was part of it.
So next time you are about to describe someone contemptuously as a train-spotter, think on. He may well have had the upbringing to be a better man than you, my friend.
*British Railway Locomotives (Combined Volume), published yearly in hardback by Ian Allan, the Bible, a list of locomotives steam, deisel and electric divided into classes with basic information in each class heading. And photos. Known as 'The Combined', it had a companion cloth-covered book, 'British Railways Locomotive Shed Directory', a list of engine sheds, which engines were allocated to them, and, most importantly, how to find them by walking and/or bus from the nearest railway station. Some of these were mini expeditions in themselves.
**This really existed. I'm not making it up.
***Scots lads had Iron Brew. Made in Scotland. From girders. See you, Jimmy...
--
Johnboythelostandterminallyconfused
Such as us have taken a lot of stick over the years as societal failures who haven't got a life, and we are generally lumped in with computer nerds, mathematical prodigies and the like as oddities whom it apparently acceptable to ridicule if you are a fat, thick, drunk football fan who is clearly above ridicule (or, as I prefer to think of it, beneath contempt). No fair, and please allow me this opportunity to plead our just and righteous cause.
There were 4 of us, classmates, and for 5 years between '63 and '68, we left an impressive trail of toffee and Mars Bar wrappers the length and breadth of England. There were others who came on some trips, but we were the hardcore, the team, the Railway Lads, and we had developed into a finely oiled (well, we were oily enough when we got home!) machine for the purpose of living rough for next to nothing over a weekend when we might cover over 1000 miles in a day. We were 11 years old in '63, and consequently 16 in '68, and exploited opportunities which are unimaginable to modern teenagers-imagine the reaction of the parents of one of today's 13 year olds on being told on Friday evening at 8 o'clock 'Finished my homework, so I'm catching the 5 past midnight Liverpool, see you sometime Sunday evening!'. Even our parents gibbed a bit at first, but rapidly came to recognize that we were good at this, gave us each a shilling for emergency phone calls (never used), and let us get on with it. What they would have done had we ever rung them up from, say, Huddersfield late on a Sunday evening with school in the morning and no means of support is not something I suspect they had thought completely through. As you will see, we'd have probably coped without difficulty.
We did not conform exactly to the nerd image, either. Graham was what they call in Somerset a 'gert lummox of a lad' who played school rugby in the front row, where things could get a bit brutal. Mac, was another rugby player, a small, fast, clever outside half who could think on his feet. Scab (he had impetigunous issues), was what they called in those days 'gangly', an odd collection of seemingly disconnected limbs, torso, hair and glasses that flew in loose formation, but certainly flew-he would frequently win cross-country events; though there was never any style or grace to his running, one of his generally associated bits would get over the line first and the rest would turn up eventually. And, hard though it is to believe now (even I have difficulty), I was a fair hack tennis player.
Graham, as you might expect, was a bit out of his depth unless something heavy had to be lifted; Mac was the intellectual, capable of doing the calculation neccessary to work out the speed of a train from the timing between 1/4 mile posts in his head without drooling. Scab was the engineer. He had an impressive Rolleiflex medium format camera he'd inherited from his late father, who had in turn inherited it from a late German at Monte Cassino-word was that Bevan Senior, on spotting the Rollei, had made himself instrumental in occasioning the hapless German's lateness-anyway, the point of this was that Scab had made a tripod for this beast himself, out of scrap bike bits! I was the philosopher of the group, and if you don't think such a thing was neccessary, I can only say that someone had to have a moral standpoint in order to stop the blagging going too far...
The name of the game was Steam Engines. These were already becoming thin on the ground (there weren't many on railway lines either) locally in '63, and thier eventual extinction in '68 saw a steady retreat of the nearest borders of thier habitat to firstly the Midlands, then the North of England and finally to Lancashire, coming full circle from Robert Stephenson, the 'Rocket' and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Initially, the tool of the trade was bicycles. We would set off across the Gwent levels with the wind behind us heading for Severn Tunnel Junction via the Newport Transporter Bridge, stopping fairly frequently for Graham to catch up. He was physically the strongest, but while the rest of us had 5-speed 'racers', he had to make do with a thing called a Triumph Palm Beach. This was practically standard issue for schoolboys at the time, 26" wheels, 3-speed Sturmey Archer, fitted steel mudguards and a chainguard. It was bombproof, but weighed many tons, and Graham never got the hang of cycling efficiently. Our business at the Tunnel completed, we would go for tea and biccies in the little buffet they once had there, which had an impressive poster extolling the delights of travelling to New York on the long scrapped Mauretania. Tired and with a headwind to face, we would catch a train home, having saved maybe ninepence on the single over the cheap day return fare. Guards were mostly sympathetic about bicycles....
The bikes were used for local evening outings to Radyr or East Dock enginesheds, where steam engines lingered until the summer of '65, but it was obvious that bigger, longer, better expeditions were gonna be needed. These could only be done by train, and we all got paper rounds to finance the enterprise, so the bikes were still essential. Until '66, day trips could be done to take in the various engine sheds around Birmingham, and some action was even to be had at Gloucester if you only had an afternoon, but after that, Crewe was the nearest-but once past that point, for 2 years, one entered a magical dreamplace where steam engines were still the norm on goods trains and could even be found on some passenger trains! But the clock was ticking and we knew it. Every month Railway Magazine published lists of loco withdrawals, closed or deiselised sheds, and new, closer, predictions of the End of Steam, or in other words life as we knew it. Problem was having enough time in this magical land to see anything much, and the solution was the 00.05 Cardiff-Liverpool.
This was not a fast train. It ran to a timetable probably unaltered since the opening of the Hereford-Shrewsbury line in the 1870s, and consisted of one passenger coach next the loco and a hefty string of parcels vans. Loading and unloading of these was performed at the stops, i.e. everywhere, and at Hereford and Shrewsbury vans were attached and detached. None of this mattered, as the purpose of this part of the trip was to sleep. Once you got to Crewe, at about half 5 in the morning, the whole wide grim world of 'oop North' lay before you, and there were connections to all of it within the next hour. At this point a fiendishly complex itinerary, worked out by me usually, swung (swang?) into operation, which would certainly take in the sights (steam engine, of course) of either Liverpool or Manchester, and then onward to Preston, Bolton, Carnforth, Carlisle, maybe a stop at Tebay to see the Shap bankers, then back over the Settle and Carlisle for Leeds and Huddersfield, until summer '67 when Yorkshire went steamless. Saturday was for seeing the steam trains in action, working, the harder the better, and there was, for a few short years, plenty to see. Saturday night introduced us to such places as Newton Heath, Manchester, or Neville Hall, Leeds, where there were carriage sidings full of carriages which would be our accomodation for the night. The railway staff knew and turned a blind eye. Here one would meet other lads with the same idea, from Scotland, or Kent, or Devon, East Anglia and London. Public Schoolboys mixed with lads from the Gorbals with holes in thier shoes, or farm hands from Sussex, and mostly I remember lots of laughing. The carriage cleaners would wake us up when the Sunday day shift started, we'd grab a cup of tea in thier messrooms, and move on to the Sunday business, which was Engine Sheds. Sometimes we would even encounter the shadowy, legendary, figures of the Master Neverers Association, a secret organisation whose purpose it was to sneak into engine sheds, trespassing of course but again the railwaymen turned a blind eye, and illicitly clean the engines, then dissappear back into the darkness whence they came.**
We rode free on ECS, empty coaching stock, empty trains not in the timetable but which we had heard about from sympathetic railwaymen or other gricers. Drivers cheerfully stopped by word of mouth arrangement, or even hand signal if they were not going fast, to pick us up or drop us off to connect with timetable trains. We lived off the land, with cash we'd told our Mothers was needed for B & B's, learning early that it was poinless taking supplies with you-they'd be eaten before you got to Newport. Greasy spoon caffs, factory canteens, bus depot messrooms kept us going, onward, ever onward as exhaustion set in and Sunday pm started getting dark. We travelled light-our knapsacks or duffle bags containing a spare jumper, pencil sharpener, notebook and pencil (never a biro, we needed things that worked even in the freezing chill of a Yorkshire winter morning), Mars Bar, maybe a Melton Mowbray Pork Pie, Tizer***, the fuel on which railway enthusiasm ran, and, of course, the Book*. We wore duffle coats in winter and sport jackets in summer; anoraks were unknown to me until 1969, prior to which they were called snorkels and only worn by Mods on scooters. Some of the farm lads had donkey jackets, which smelled as if they were made of real donkeys.The ultimate goal was the return to Crewe before 20 past 8, when the Cardiff train left, and we never missed this, ever. We would commandeer a compartment, finish the Tizer, eat whatever remained in bags and pockets, hopefully food though we often past caring by then, and sleep all the way home. Parents with cars, mine or Graham's, would meet us off the train at 11.35 and ferry us all home, where the experienced mother had a boiler of bath water heated up for thier now indescribably filthy offspring to delouse in, and a basket for the even filthier clothes, worn now for 2 days. Trains were never clean in those days, and we'd been living rough around steam engines, remember... This seems a good point to remind you that we were 14 or 15 years old at the time.
We learned stuff on those outings which is hard for kids today to pick up. We saw some of the worst slums still standing in Britain, and wonderful scenery. We mingled with lads from different worlds, amicably. We met with nothing but friendliness and gratuitous, unlookedfor kindnesses from the folk of the North; tolerance from the poor buggers trying to run the railway in the midst of all this, and bemusement from everyone else, but always friendliness, often from people who had fuck all and would still happily share it with us. Admittedly this friendliness was not always cheerful-there are some miserable bastards oop north-but it was always there and always genuine. We learned how to fend for ourselves, how to deal with problems there was no point in moaning about. We became resourceful and inventive, we got on with it. We put ourselves through not inconsiderable hardships, and we were ecstatically happy. We never ever felt unsafe, and we probably never actually were. And the public schoolboys learned that if you slept in the same carriage as the Gorbals lads, you were the one with the shoes with holes in in the morning, and it didn't matter!
In '68, all this came to an end. The Last Steam Train was booked solid the day it was announced and watched by perhaps a hundred thousand people on it's circular route around Lancashire. I wasn't there. The media suddenly became aware of gricers and began commenting on the phenomenon with thier usual perceptive understanding. if you wanted to see a steam engine you had to go to a preserved railway, abroad, or, as in our case, the local coal mine railways. This meant going back to the bicycles, and as we had now discovered girls and beer, the grime and excess of life in the carriages were no longer appropriate, so it was perhaps as well. At least by now Graham had got himself a 5 speed! We all missed it though, and were aware that we'd had the time of our lives in a way which could never be re-created by less fortunate generations, even those say 2 years younger. We were of our time, a short time in a doomed, hopeless and shrinking place, and therefore unique.
Symtomatic of the times of course; the nation was disentangling itself from the Empire and adjusting to not being a superpower, and, like the trolleybuses and paddle steamers that I also loved, many old certainties were being found inconvenient and dispensed with. Even if we threw away the babies with the bathwater, there is no doubt the bathwater had to go-it stunk as much as any of our late Sunday night drainings. British society at the start of the '60s was still pinned to the old shibboleths of 'best in the world', colonialism, class, racism, xenophopia, homophobia, misanthropic and white supremacist mindsets. You'd have thought that we'd won the war and that the 20 million Russians who died on the Eastern Front were in a minor skirmish. By 1970 there were no 'proper' steam trains, trolleybuses or paddle steamers, and my world was a poorer place for it, but I'd never for one second have gone back-those shibboleths just mentioned had not been destroyed nor have they yet, but they had been mortally wounded, and the sort of world where you could meet people as different from yourself as is possible in one society while you were kipping in the carriages and having a laugh was exactly among the sort of things that dealt the death blow. I'm glad I was part of it.
So next time you are about to describe someone contemptuously as a train-spotter, think on. He may well have had the upbringing to be a better man than you, my friend.
*British Railway Locomotives (Combined Volume), published yearly in hardback by Ian Allan, the Bible, a list of locomotives steam, deisel and electric divided into classes with basic information in each class heading. And photos. Known as 'The Combined', it had a companion cloth-covered book, 'British Railways Locomotive Shed Directory', a list of engine sheds, which engines were allocated to them, and, most importantly, how to find them by walking and/or bus from the nearest railway station. Some of these were mini expeditions in themselves.
**This really existed. I'm not making it up.
***Scots lads had Iron Brew. Made in Scotland. From girders. See you, Jimmy...
--
Johnboythelostandterminallycon
Saturday 17 April 2010
The bells, the bells.
I am 58 years of age. I am neither especially proud nor particularly ashamed of this statistic, but mention it in order to remind my reader(s) that my once proud liberal tolerance and forbearance of the foibles of my fellow humans is, inevitably, worn now a little thin, and my general attitude to those same fellow humans more Genghis Khan than Gandhi these days.
For many this long year now, I have, from both choice and neccessity, lived in rented flats of various sorts, various qualities, in a variety of types of neighbourhood, and with a wide variety of types of people sharing the same building and, in some cases, parts of the living spaces. Some of these have been fairly dodgy characters, and not the sort of person you would take to your mum's for dinner; drug addicts, thieves, whores and even Estate Agents, but none of them have ever caused me as much irritation and annoyance as the folk who are the subject of this week's rant. And it is a rant; I make no claim to reasonableness or tolerance here, I'm just gonna go for it and get the bile and hate off my chest.
My issue is with people who come to a building which has flats in it, and ring my bloody doorbell when they want to see someone else!!!!!! What causes this is that some character who wants to see Dave* (or whoever) has rung Dave's bell, or knocked his window, or shouted up at it, and got no response. This will be because Dave is a) out, b) in prison/on the run/on holiday/away working, c) dead, d) doesn't live here, e) doesn't exist, all of which should, in my view, be obvious to anyone who has borrowed a brain cell for the day. Then they see my doorbell, which has my name and/or my flat number on it, so they press it. When I answer the door, they say something like 'is Dave in?'
Why should I know, or care? How should I know, or care? Dave lives in a different flat, with a different life, and because we live so uncomfortably close to each other, he keeps himself largely to himself and so do I. So 'I would have no idea' I reply. Looking a bit annoyed (oh yes, these morons think they are the ones being inconvenienced here), they inevitably now say 'well, I thought you might know, seeing you are his neighbour'! When I was young, and lived in a house which was occupied entirely by my family in one household, I cannot remember anybody, ever, ringing or knocking the door and asking if Mrs. Ress 3 doors away was in, because they would not have expected any of us to know. Living in a flat should be like that, but it never is.
I blame that 60s sitcom where Robin Nedwell shares a house with two attractive girls for all this (was it called 3's a Crowd?). It has engendered amongst people who live in entire houses a myth that flat dwellers are always in and out of each others' tenancies borrowing cups of sugar and such. The reality is nothing like this, and while I sort of generally look out for the well being of those who live in the same buildings as me, and they generally do the same, and we bid each other 'good morning' (morning-who am I trying to kid!) when we pass in the communal hallways, that is as far as it goes. Living in smaller, and partly shared, circumstances neccessarily means that personal boundaries are more strictly observed by default, on top of which we are British, dammit!
Also, it is the nature of things that flat types are fairly mobile (and not always upwardly) and in houses where there may be more than half a dozen occupants in separate homes, it is not easy to keep track even if you felt the need, and I don't.
Entry communication systems are not the answer either, although they may save you the walk to the front door. 'Beeblbeep' goes your little intercom phone, you pick it up and say 'yes?', and there it is, the same inquisitve idiot voice asking 'is Dave in, mate'. 'Have you rung his bell?', to which the response is either 'Yes, but he didn't answer' or 'No, mate, dunno his number'. The safe distance imposed by the intercom gives me full licence to let rip at the fool.
Please, if you want to contact someone who lives in flats, find out which one they live in, and knock on thier door or ring thier bell. Stop bloody ringing mine!!!!!! I am considering replacing the bell with a note asking callers to phone me instead and I will come to the door, but not including my phone number. This would have the advantage that people who don't know my phone number wouldn't be able to call me, and if you don't know my phone number you have no legitimate business speaking to me anyway!
Rant over (for now).
*generic flat dweller not intended to represent any real person, especially Dave.**
** whoever he is.***
***and I don't know if he's in either. Have you tried ringing his doorbell?
For many this long year now, I have, from both choice and neccessity, lived in rented flats of various sorts, various qualities, in a variety of types of neighbourhood, and with a wide variety of types of people sharing the same building and, in some cases, parts of the living spaces. Some of these have been fairly dodgy characters, and not the sort of person you would take to your mum's for dinner; drug addicts, thieves, whores and even Estate Agents, but none of them have ever caused me as much irritation and annoyance as the folk who are the subject of this week's rant. And it is a rant; I make no claim to reasonableness or tolerance here, I'm just gonna go for it and get the bile and hate off my chest.
My issue is with people who come to a building which has flats in it, and ring my bloody doorbell when they want to see someone else!!!!!! What causes this is that some character who wants to see Dave* (or whoever) has rung Dave's bell, or knocked his window, or shouted up at it, and got no response. This will be because Dave is a) out, b) in prison/on the run/on holiday/away working, c) dead, d) doesn't live here, e) doesn't exist, all of which should, in my view, be obvious to anyone who has borrowed a brain cell for the day. Then they see my doorbell, which has my name and/or my flat number on it, so they press it. When I answer the door, they say something like 'is Dave in?'
Why should I know, or care? How should I know, or care? Dave lives in a different flat, with a different life, and because we live so uncomfortably close to each other, he keeps himself largely to himself and so do I. So 'I would have no idea' I reply. Looking a bit annoyed (oh yes, these morons think they are the ones being inconvenienced here), they inevitably now say 'well, I thought you might know, seeing you are his neighbour'! When I was young, and lived in a house which was occupied entirely by my family in one household, I cannot remember anybody, ever, ringing or knocking the door and asking if Mrs. Ress 3 doors away was in, because they would not have expected any of us to know. Living in a flat should be like that, but it never is.
I blame that 60s sitcom where Robin Nedwell shares a house with two attractive girls for all this (was it called 3's a Crowd?). It has engendered amongst people who live in entire houses a myth that flat dwellers are always in and out of each others' tenancies borrowing cups of sugar and such. The reality is nothing like this, and while I sort of generally look out for the well being of those who live in the same buildings as me, and they generally do the same, and we bid each other 'good morning' (morning-who am I trying to kid!) when we pass in the communal hallways, that is as far as it goes. Living in smaller, and partly shared, circumstances neccessarily means that personal boundaries are more strictly observed by default, on top of which we are British, dammit!
Also, it is the nature of things that flat types are fairly mobile (and not always upwardly) and in houses where there may be more than half a dozen occupants in separate homes, it is not easy to keep track even if you felt the need, and I don't.
Entry communication systems are not the answer either, although they may save you the walk to the front door. 'Beeblbeep' goes your little intercom phone, you pick it up and say 'yes?', and there it is, the same inquisitve idiot voice asking 'is Dave in, mate'. 'Have you rung his bell?', to which the response is either 'Yes, but he didn't answer' or 'No, mate, dunno his number'. The safe distance imposed by the intercom gives me full licence to let rip at the fool.
Please, if you want to contact someone who lives in flats, find out which one they live in, and knock on thier door or ring thier bell. Stop bloody ringing mine!!!!!! I am considering replacing the bell with a note asking callers to phone me instead and I will come to the door, but not including my phone number. This would have the advantage that people who don't know my phone number wouldn't be able to call me, and if you don't know my phone number you have no legitimate business speaking to me anyway!
Rant over (for now).
*generic flat dweller not intended to represent any real person, especially Dave.**
** whoever he is.***
***and I don't know if he's in either. Have you tried ringing his doorbell?
Wednesday 7 April 2010
The Throne of Contemplation
The rented flat in which I live is a fine place, well decorated and appointed in a modern style, and though I have been here only a little over 6 weeks, I am so far content with it, and it is certainly a major improvement on my previous hovel. A minor grouse, however, was the toilet seat, a flimsy white plastic arrangement which moved underneath me in a rather disconcerting way. Now, without going into the grimmer details of the business, it seems to me to be a basic human right of the sort delineated in the United Nations Charter of Human Rights that a person in such a situation should not be disconcerted, but on the way to, if not Nirvana, at least a kind of inner peace...
So I took the bull by the hornybits and went out and bought a mahogany veneered throne seat. The improvement is considerable and immediate! This is only a cheap, mahogany effect veneered thing, the bulk of which may well be mdf, or plastic, or anything really, but it is the bulk of the thing which counts. When I rest my ample form on it, it stays where it should stay. It doesn't flex and bend. It doesn't slide sideways and make you re-position yourself to balance it on the rim. It just quietly does what it does, and I like it!
Also, it looks mahogany. Not only does this remind me of my childhood toilet, an important part of anyone's early life, but mahogany seems to me to impart a certain gravitas to the proceedings. A mahogany toilet is a Man's toilet, for a Man's life in a Man's world. What re-assurance! No namby-pamby apologist pine to go with your girly pastels shades, no pseudo hippy dolphins or reiki pebbles, but good old fashioned, manly, dark, serious mahogany, redolent of a lost age of Victorian certainty. Now I am fully aware that the lost age of Victorian certainty was an age of racism, warmongering, child prostitution and consumptive illnesses, and lost is a bloody good place for it, but surely there is no harm in it in a bathroom.
This is my flat. That is my toilet. If you want the seat down, put it down and don't complain to me.
So I took the bull by the hornybits and went out and bought a mahogany veneered throne seat. The improvement is considerable and immediate! This is only a cheap, mahogany effect veneered thing, the bulk of which may well be mdf, or plastic, or anything really, but it is the bulk of the thing which counts. When I rest my ample form on it, it stays where it should stay. It doesn't flex and bend. It doesn't slide sideways and make you re-position yourself to balance it on the rim. It just quietly does what it does, and I like it!
Also, it looks mahogany. Not only does this remind me of my childhood toilet, an important part of anyone's early life, but mahogany seems to me to impart a certain gravitas to the proceedings. A mahogany toilet is a Man's toilet, for a Man's life in a Man's world. What re-assurance! No namby-pamby apologist pine to go with your girly pastels shades, no pseudo hippy dolphins or reiki pebbles, but good old fashioned, manly, dark, serious mahogany, redolent of a lost age of Victorian certainty. Now I am fully aware that the lost age of Victorian certainty was an age of racism, warmongering, child prostitution and consumptive illnesses, and lost is a bloody good place for it, but surely there is no harm in it in a bathroom.
This is my flat. That is my toilet. If you want the seat down, put it down and don't complain to me.
Saturday 3 April 2010
Another Week in a life....
...and not much stuff is happening, which is the way I like it. Not that I am one of those sort of people who had a highly adventurous youth, got away with it just, and is now so relieved that he is never going to do anything like that again!-I have always liked a quiet, safe life, on the borders of boredom and contentment.
I keep tropical fishes. Always have, maybe to do with my being a Piscean. From an early age, there have been fishes in my rooms, despite the logistical nightmare they provide if you move house! I've never had any problems from the cats I've had over the years either. Anyway, those of you who are fish people will understand the sheer joy with which I fulfilled a long held ambition and purchased several Discus this week. These guys are not cheap, nor easy to set up for, but they are so worth the effort. They are simply spectacular; beautiful, graceful, full of personality. They have so far settled in with no problems, and are currently enthusiastically chasing each other around the tank trying to establish a pecking order.
The non-fish folk can safely come back now. So far as I know, the only people who have read this blog are those who know me personally and are used to my various oddnesses, and therfore sort of don't count (sorry guys!). I would really appreciate if you are someone who doesn't know me, but are just reading this out of boredom or curiosity, if you would make your prescence known. I won't bother you with a conversation or anything-promise-but it'd be nice to know if I'm just venting my occasional need to write into the cyber-darkness or not.
I'm usually philosophical about the weather, an unusual trait in someone British. I get irritated by people who complain when it rains, as if that is somehow an unexpected and calamitous event on an island off the coast of NW Europe where the prevailing winds are from the sea, or that they are cold, at a latitude where most other people in the world experience real cold as opposed to the slight coolness that passes for cold here (it must be close on 30 years since it has been frozen all day where I live). Gotta say though, that spring is late this year, it is now April and we have yet to have a properly warm day-you know, the sort where girls start to look even prettier and all the flowers bloom at once. My birthday is in late February, and I have for many years noticed when the daffodils bloom locally, and being especially pleased it that happens on my birthday or St. David's Day (I'm Welsh). They were a good 4 weeks late this year, and that may be partly due to the cool, wet summer last year, but it must also reflect the dull, cool dragging of winter into a spring which seems to so far have been a slightly warmer version of winter this year. We are probably shaping up for another damp squib of a summer, and I suppose I should be grateful, as I do not thrive in hot weather, but the truth is that even I am getting sick of it all.
Maybe a holiday somewhere bright and sunny would be a good idea, but I can't really justify the expense. I don't work (for health reasons), so I cannot take expensive decisions lightly! Any resident of the Seychelles who wants to pay for me to visit them for a couple of weeks, get in touch (dream on, boy, dream on).
The rain has stopped and I have some shopping to do, and anyway my muse has dried up, so....
I keep tropical fishes. Always have, maybe to do with my being a Piscean. From an early age, there have been fishes in my rooms, despite the logistical nightmare they provide if you move house! I've never had any problems from the cats I've had over the years either. Anyway, those of you who are fish people will understand the sheer joy with which I fulfilled a long held ambition and purchased several Discus this week. These guys are not cheap, nor easy to set up for, but they are so worth the effort. They are simply spectacular; beautiful, graceful, full of personality. They have so far settled in with no problems, and are currently enthusiastically chasing each other around the tank trying to establish a pecking order.
The non-fish folk can safely come back now. So far as I know, the only people who have read this blog are those who know me personally and are used to my various oddnesses, and therfore sort of don't count (sorry guys!). I would really appreciate if you are someone who doesn't know me, but are just reading this out of boredom or curiosity, if you would make your prescence known. I won't bother you with a conversation or anything-promise-but it'd be nice to know if I'm just venting my occasional need to write into the cyber-darkness or not.
I'm usually philosophical about the weather, an unusual trait in someone British. I get irritated by people who complain when it rains, as if that is somehow an unexpected and calamitous event on an island off the coast of NW Europe where the prevailing winds are from the sea, or that they are cold, at a latitude where most other people in the world experience real cold as opposed to the slight coolness that passes for cold here (it must be close on 30 years since it has been frozen all day where I live). Gotta say though, that spring is late this year, it is now April and we have yet to have a properly warm day-you know, the sort where girls start to look even prettier and all the flowers bloom at once. My birthday is in late February, and I have for many years noticed when the daffodils bloom locally, and being especially pleased it that happens on my birthday or St. David's Day (I'm Welsh). They were a good 4 weeks late this year, and that may be partly due to the cool, wet summer last year, but it must also reflect the dull, cool dragging of winter into a spring which seems to so far have been a slightly warmer version of winter this year. We are probably shaping up for another damp squib of a summer, and I suppose I should be grateful, as I do not thrive in hot weather, but the truth is that even I am getting sick of it all.
Maybe a holiday somewhere bright and sunny would be a good idea, but I can't really justify the expense. I don't work (for health reasons), so I cannot take expensive decisions lightly! Any resident of the Seychelles who wants to pay for me to visit them for a couple of weeks, get in touch (dream on, boy, dream on).
The rain has stopped and I have some shopping to do, and anyway my muse has dried up, so....
Sunday 28 March 2010
Greetings, Earth Creatures
Ann, this is all your fault, so if you don't read it and tell me how wonderful it is, I will hunt you down and make you buy me beer. Seriously, I cannot believe than anyone will bother with this except for people who already know me and and can email me anyway, it all seems a bit pointless.
Any thing I say here will be my view or opinion, not a statement of fact, unless I claim it to be. I may change my views or opinions at any time for any or no reason whatsoever. You, dear reader, are welcome to your own opinions, but if you don't like mine, that is not my fault any more than it is your fault if I don't like yours.
It is 15.10 on sunday. I am sitting in my living room writing a blog. The patio doors are open and there is a background noise of traffic on the main drag a block away, people several gardens over talking and birdsong. Weather is fine, though still cool, but there are some nice clouds and I could go over the park later, perhaps with the camera. It is too long since I took any photos, and I need to get back in the zone before I go to Lundy in a few weeks.
Aha, something interesting, knew stream of conciousness wouldn't let me down! I will be visiting Lundy in a few weeks, not telling you when in case any of you are house burglars, and I will report back when I return. Lundy will be my last Bristol Channel Island to complete the collection, unless you count Denny Island which would be silly, although it conforms to my definition of an island-out of the water at all states of tide and with vegetation on it. Nobody ever goes there, though. This makes Rockall not an island as there is no vegetation. I'm not likely to ever go there either.
Engels (he is a cat) has just discovered that I am typing and has come to sabotage me. There is another cat, Marx, but he is out doing whatever cats do when they're out, not much as they have been castrated, poor sods. They are brothers from the same litter, but thier personalities are radically different. They are part of the reason for the blog, as I wanted to start a mailing list of friends who would be interested in thier adventures, only to be persuaded by the above mentioned Ann to start a blog instead. It'll be interesting to see if anyone beyond my normal circle of chums reads or responds to this, or it would be on some alternative planet where 'interesting' means 'actually not really very interesting unless you are really bored and at a loose end.
I think, dear Ann, that I will do the blog to satisfy my need to write this sort of pointless rumination, and do the cat stuff on a mailing list.
Is there a way of seeing if anyone has read this, and knowing who they are? O well, here comes another learning curve!
Any thing I say here will be my view or opinion, not a statement of fact, unless I claim it to be. I may change my views or opinions at any time for any or no reason whatsoever. You, dear reader, are welcome to your own opinions, but if you don't like mine, that is not my fault any more than it is your fault if I don't like yours.
It is 15.10 on sunday. I am sitting in my living room writing a blog. The patio doors are open and there is a background noise of traffic on the main drag a block away, people several gardens over talking and birdsong. Weather is fine, though still cool, but there are some nice clouds and I could go over the park later, perhaps with the camera. It is too long since I took any photos, and I need to get back in the zone before I go to Lundy in a few weeks.
Aha, something interesting, knew stream of conciousness wouldn't let me down! I will be visiting Lundy in a few weeks, not telling you when in case any of you are house burglars, and I will report back when I return. Lundy will be my last Bristol Channel Island to complete the collection, unless you count Denny Island which would be silly, although it conforms to my definition of an island-out of the water at all states of tide and with vegetation on it. Nobody ever goes there, though. This makes Rockall not an island as there is no vegetation. I'm not likely to ever go there either.
Engels (he is a cat) has just discovered that I am typing and has come to sabotage me. There is another cat, Marx, but he is out doing whatever cats do when they're out, not much as they have been castrated, poor sods. They are brothers from the same litter, but thier personalities are radically different. They are part of the reason for the blog, as I wanted to start a mailing list of friends who would be interested in thier adventures, only to be persuaded by the above mentioned Ann to start a blog instead. It'll be interesting to see if anyone beyond my normal circle of chums reads or responds to this, or it would be on some alternative planet where 'interesting' means 'actually not really very interesting unless you are really bored and at a loose end.
I think, dear Ann, that I will do the blog to satisfy my need to write this sort of pointless rumination, and do the cat stuff on a mailing list.
Is there a way of seeing if anyone has read this, and knowing who they are? O well, here comes another learning curve!
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