tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25357837632818188272024-03-08T19:44:12.132+00:00YnwaNews update for friends.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger501125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535783763281818827.post-68837106518603307872019-07-12T22:41:00.002+00:002019-07-12T22:41:54.533+00:00Tosh 2 <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Continued from earlier post (about ten minutes ago!!!!) </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Four weeks later we drove back to the corn maze to pick up
the cats. In four weeks, the tiny little balls of bouncy podginess had grown a
lot. Kittens they were still, but not mewling, miaowing and puking little
helpless things. Instead, even though they were still very young (probably
about 8 weeks), what we met were two young cats – quite leggy, slim,
fit-looking, mistrustful, suspicious, alert, not friendly, wary, wild eyed even
and possibly angry and I suspect they’d already killed or at least had live prey
to play with. The farmer had tried to socialize them (which is probably why
they did not direct their subsequent attacks on the jugular vein) but with
about 20 kittens to try to socialize with these cats ‘being used to humans’ (I
cant use the word ‘domesticated’) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>meant
more - <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in the boy cat’s case <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>- that he didn’t bite as well as scratch when
I picked him up,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and in the female’s
case it meant that she only bared fangs, glared and hissed at us without
actually attacking. Fortunately though, both responded very well to being
grabbed by the scruff of the neck, going meek almost immediately – which I know
think was the flip side of their wildness as the firm neck scruff bite is how
older cats control younger cats - so we were able to put them in a cardboard
box, bung them in the back of the car and take them straight home without even
a stop at the excellent Timmies. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Back at the apartment we gently emptied the Wildlings (not
kittens) out of the cardboard box, showing them first the water and food we’d
laid on for them in the kitchen as a welcoming present, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and the little beds we’d bought and the litter
tray , and then stepped back to give them a bit of space.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’d prepared for the cats by reading
assiduously and we knew this – stepping back – was the right thing to do and
that we should’nt crowd them but let them come to us, which they would,
probably by later that night. We knew this because we’d had a few good evening trips
to Chapters (this was still the days when not all knowledge rested on the
internet) and picked up a few books about cat care. We’d also consulted trusty
friends and contacted a vet (to register) and picked up leaflets so we kind of
knew what to expect – a cute but <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>tentative sniff round their new abode (because
kittens are curious) then an exhausted and ultra- cute flop a bit later
(because kittens get sleepy) on the cutest pillow in the house. So after
placing them in the kitchen, we stepped back, as mentioned – a little distance
away, into the living room and kind of half – watched waiting for the cuteness
to begin. The cats looked at eachother, looked at the food, then looked at
eachother again. Then they looked at us, sitting on the couch in the living
room (it was an open plan apartment) with as much distrust as if they were
Wittgenstein’s lions and we’d asked them to compose a limerick. Then they ran
away down the hallway of the apartment and disappeared for two days. I have to
say that although this wasn’t how things were supposed to ‘go down’, the
ability they showed in totally disappearing over the next two days - in small
two bedroom apartment - was impressive. Sometimes we found them in weird places
– like they somehow managed to hide under a couch (we still have it) that is no
more that 1” from the floor – but when it was obvious they didn’t want to come
out, we didn’t try looking too hard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My
guess is wherever they were hiding they hid together because for most of the
rest of their lives they’d sleep together. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxtSOOzQX6mu9-schgKZ3qFlYuYeWttALPx2fM7SN9EedmSURv0qHbJPsF37VbRWWkp5evYHX6yPuaHK89pOBrFsdWS59OQ-9P0_R0RPw-_S3rpmCt4nQ4wwfa720-hPxSv4UjQievB5n4/s1600/167.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxtSOOzQX6mu9-schgKZ3qFlYuYeWttALPx2fM7SN9EedmSURv0qHbJPsF37VbRWWkp5evYHX6yPuaHK89pOBrFsdWS59OQ-9P0_R0RPw-_S3rpmCt4nQ4wwfa720-hPxSv4UjQievB5n4/s320/167.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Quickly the Wildings grew. I wont tell Calli’s story here –
that’s for another time and in fact I have already told of her time in the
apartment on this blog – but Tosh grew and grew. He grew bigger and bigger and
he grew more affectionate but only to us and Calli. He was never a particularly
curious, funny/cute cat – at least in the apartment and my guess is he was a
bit bored there. We got a real tree which we brought into the apartment and he
would climb it but in the apartment he spent a lot of time lolling round. He
liked wresting and fighting with us as we played so always had toys which he’d
shred with his back legs but in Ontario he was the quieter of the two cats. This
changed when we moved to England late in about 2007. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz6lH3ya21EunsxugVUE6g6LlR6GR_Nr-tvIFpH1_8kkWrKpt2C9L19tPslk3g5lJxgYsBk3Xyxc662KWJv70YiyF5u7bpF55ufBrEFfuh1IO5IvXmzxk3IyrwRUhPkGO_LcRpG-0HZMaR/s1600/shed+finger+camera+018.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz6lH3ya21EunsxugVUE6g6LlR6GR_Nr-tvIFpH1_8kkWrKpt2C9L19tPslk3g5lJxgYsBk3Xyxc662KWJv70YiyF5u7bpF55ufBrEFfuh1IO5IvXmzxk3IyrwRUhPkGO_LcRpG-0HZMaR/s320/shed+finger+camera+018.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
When RHB got a job ‘back’ in England, there was never any question
of whether the cats would come. The only question was the way they’d come which
at the time was that they either would have to spend months in quarantine on
arrival in the UK or that we got them a passport. Quarantine was by far the
cheaper and less effortful solution but it was of course out of the question,
so for half a year we took the cats to the local vets for injections and blood
tests which certified them free of rabies, Feline HIV and other diseases. This
animal friendly and humane approach to cat emigration all went very well until
we actually flew to England from Toronto. We had engaged a company that
described itself as ‘experts’ in international animal re-location, booked the
cats on to the same flight as us (on their advice) and planned the journey to
be as stress free as possible with water bowls, a favourite toy and a comfy
lining to each cat’s box. All we had to do, on arrival at Pearson airport was
take the cats to the cat check-in, hand them over then pick them up at
Manchester. Or so we thought.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfnl-Rc6Jr0EeJIRr2m0zUKyU4DLMvPRCS7ru_T6F9XsqjKhYuiNHEk4GOYKiax7KceDbqxaqWGx88mCDAi9EGWDlOZSzTvaMZJO1SwNjNcysiJ6gmwpoYZ5AszL5WhO4sYP3n8XKjxlEA/s1600/Staircase+and+hall+renos+006.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfnl-Rc6Jr0EeJIRr2m0zUKyU4DLMvPRCS7ru_T6F9XsqjKhYuiNHEk4GOYKiax7KceDbqxaqWGx88mCDAi9EGWDlOZSzTvaMZJO1SwNjNcysiJ6gmwpoYZ5AszL5WhO4sYP3n8XKjxlEA/s320/Staircase+and+hall+renos+006.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7xAyl2X91TqZpTfo5rZI9HDwRD3FqNdsG4zBcPxlFE-zxsYTRN9m5cifIaiB49tnE0HfPeR2qmLvqmRsuVT0xGWDpwcUtpm5ab-AYDDuC8ssZ0Ci8mW5zWBr4AuCg862VWkRyz7OP7zUi/s1600/Tosh+and+frog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1118" data-original-width="1600" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7xAyl2X91TqZpTfo5rZI9HDwRD3FqNdsG4zBcPxlFE-zxsYTRN9m5cifIaiB49tnE0HfPeR2qmLvqmRsuVT0xGWDpwcUtpm5ab-AYDDuC8ssZ0Ci8mW5zWBr4AuCg862VWkRyz7OP7zUi/s320/Tosh+and+frog.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7ObP1ZjgaLuBmaz3scgzh3DYsbch5viVDHvnrXNdfjLum7kn50p2NpAE4DVWi9svA1VTK-jsdafnNgY6dhObcOes7UOdzQBSIUAwrtgZ7aXGGLRyA_HzfUV-VlJKn98PHgWWRiVMrK4vA/s1600/Tosh+the+tiger+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="837" data-original-width="453" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7ObP1ZjgaLuBmaz3scgzh3DYsbch5viVDHvnrXNdfjLum7kn50p2NpAE4DVWi9svA1VTK-jsdafnNgY6dhObcOes7UOdzQBSIUAwrtgZ7aXGGLRyA_HzfUV-VlJKn98PHgWWRiVMrK4vA/s320/Tosh+the+tiger+2.jpg" width="173" /></a></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
What actually happened that on arrival at cat check-in we
were told that we had to deliver our cats to cargo handling where, we were
told, we could drop the cats off at the pre-departure point, ready for the
flight. As we followed directions, tensions rose as it became obvious that we’d
been directed to a massive warehouse. Once there, there was no no dedicated
pre-departure point for animals and no-one to speak to, just some warehouse
guys in dirty overalls wearing ear defenders. For minutes, no one would talk to
us – everyone we approached waved us away impatiently. Finally, one man listened
impatiently for just long enough that he understood what we were asking, then
told<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>tell us to put the cat boxes on the
diesel covered floor of the echoing warehouse next to a pile of boxes. We put
the cat boxes down, he nodded and walked off. Then another warehouse guy waved
us out of the warehouse so we had to leave, looking back only to see and hear
fork-lifts barging round belching smoke, men shouting, klaxons blaring and the
harsh dirty glare of inadequate fluorescents throwing little pools of light
onto the floor. And two little pair of eyes peering, terrified. The flight was
– for us – terrible, although my fears that the cats had simply been forgotten
were allayed by a solicitous member of the cabin crew assured us the cats were
in the pressurized hold. Once assured, all I wanted to do was land and get to
the new apartment (which we hadn’t seen) as quickly as possible.</div>
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In Hull, in the new apartment Toshack changed. The apartment
was on the ground floor and had a window in the kitchen which let out onto the
car park which in turn led out to a very large overgrown Edwardian garden, more
like a park really which backed onto our apartment building. After the three
requisite weeks of settling in, the cats were let out accompanied by us and
we’d wander towards this garden and away from the road so they were introduced
back into ‘the wild’ after three years of being cooped up in a tenth floor flat.
When we were happy they would wander in the right direction (away from the
road) , and for about a year, they’d go out the window on their own and
disappear into the park, coming back hours later. This was the start of
Toshack’s prime. He was about six, was very strong, dominant and – as I found
out - utterly fearless. On one occasion I wandered into the overgrown garden to
try to find him because the cats had been gone so long. The garden lay hidden,
a kind of secret no-mans land inbetween the huge rear gardens of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>massive, formerly-grand, three story
Edwardian houses that fronted two parallel leafy avenues in Hull’s bohemian
suburb where lecturers gardened organically and shabby chic was all the rage.
With the overgrown garden and the local tendency toward the ‘natural’ in
gardens, there were all sorts of nooks and crannies for a cat to explore. I –
worried as usual – sat on the 8ft wall of the secret garden, hoping my cats
were ok and that they’d just appear. Naturally they didn’t, so after a few
anxious moments, I jumped into the secret garden, conscious that I was
trespassing (it belonged to the biggest mansion in the Avenues). I crept along,
trying not make noise while whispering their names, trying not to be scared for
me (of getting caught) or for the cats (of an unimaginable fate) but mostly
hoping they’d show up. They did, sort of. </div>
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The first thing that happened was that I heard a horrible
shriek, clearly cat and – I am convinced to this day – I immediately recognized
the shriek as Calli. But I didn’t have time for feelings of dread because a
little calico streak came flying through the grass about fifty feet ahead of
me, running, unusually for a cat, in a straight line and full pelt. Hardly time
to register that it was Calli because she whipped right past me, flew over the
eight foot wall and disappeared. But all of this happened to my perceptions, at
the same time as a beautiful fox came running from the same direction as Calli
and a big pink streak exploded out of the grass to my right charging towards the
fox. It was Toshack. There was no warning, no feint, no noise and no stopping.
He just charged. The fox pulled up but Tosh carried on charging. He leapt at
the fox, no hesitation, no arched back performance and with paws swinging,
going for the face. The fox jumped straight up, there was a kind of mid-air
scrambled twisting of both, which landed in a heap then the fox ran. Tosh –
who’d landed facing the wrong way from his perspective (away from the fox) ,
twisted round faked-to-chase then stopped. He sat on the path, bolt upright,
quivering, ears up (which was really weird). Then he hunkered down. His tail
was massively puffed up and I was really wary of him, or maybe I was wary of
approaching him, but I whispered his name. He looked round at the fifth whisper.
I shook the treats I’d brought with me and he wanted over, lifted his paw and
gulped down about six. Then we went home. </div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">A large part of me wonders whether what I
witnessed was during a period of (for me) stress so that I mis-saw things or
misremember them. It is very possible. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
was unemployed at the time, had stopped playing music and hated England. When I
get stressed I do tend to do something which I now recognize as ‘dissociation’
so that the world becomes to a greater or lesser extent, unreal. And although
afterwards I searched the internet (for hours) on cat behavior, this behavior,
not just of Tosh but also of the fox, seems really unusual. Cats and foxes
usually do not fight. Cats almost never, as far as I can tell, launch all out
attacks with no warning. So maybe, what happened was that Tosh was running away
from something else and he and the fox met accidentally, both got a surprise,
reacted then they put space between eachother. This seems the most plausible
explanation. Except that on two other occasions, once in the same apartment
building, then years later when we were very settled in Large Mansions, I saw
him apparently attack again, only this time he attacked dogs. On both occasions
I was with him from the start to the end of the incident. On both occasions, we
came across the dog quite suddenly as all parties (me and cat, dog-owner and
dog) converged ‘pon a corner from different directions. On both occasions, he
hunkered down, hissed and bared his fangs then attacked, straight at the dog’s
face without much time between phases of the attack. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> I'm going to nearly end this now...I realise its a sudden end. But most of this and the previous post was written in the immediate aftermath of Tosh dying. I didnt post it at the time partly because of how self indulgent and boring to other people it had become. But also because my Dad's health has taken a sudden turn for the (much) worse. So trips to Liverpool have taken over - hospitals, bed-sides and the likes. And now we're well into a prognosis which gave my dad 3 months to live (a month and a half ago). That's kind of taken over..</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">But I do want to remember the last moments with Tosh so stop reading if this is upsetting or oversentimental for non-animal lovers...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Tosh was an old, arthritic cat by May 2019. He's lived and fought and killed well..he'd even tried to fuck his sister on a regular basis for a few years despite having a vastectomy (we didnt castrate him) until after getting seriously mauled by her for about the 987th time he stopped - so I dont expect cats would ask for more form life really. But by 2018 even, he was not a well cat. We (myself and RHB) eschewed vacations because we felt his care was more important ...so apologies to anyone who was expecting visits in this period but he needed looking after. Our expectation probably for about three months before he died, was that one morning we would wake up and he would be asleep permantently. SO I suppose we should have taken him to the vets and 'made a decision' in either March, April or May of this year. But he was eating, he was playing, he was affectionate and vocal as usual and an enhtusiast for all his regular routines. He was just gradually getting thinner and doing things more slowly. Then, one weekend, Nel went away for a conference on Friday 24th May. Tosh was ok. I woke up on Saturday 25th May and he wasnt particularly ok but was still ok. he was eating and everything, just a lot slower. I woke up on 26th May and he wasnt ok. He really, really wasnt. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">He went outside in the pouring rain and crawled under a bush. I kind of knew. Actually I definitely knew. I left him for a bit, panicking and walking roudn the kitchen crying. Then I went outside and dug him out of the bush. He could'nt really move. He lay on the kitchen floor, panting. His beautiful fur was soaked and bedraggled and he would'nt groom. His beautiful paws were filthy and he would'nt groom. I sat with him on the kitchen floor and cried my eyes out as I dried and groomed him. I begged him to eat. Begged him to eat some chicken and perk up. That was stupid of me. Then I took him to the emergency vet. There was no other thing to be done. He miaowed, almost angry, at the last minute - Tosh never liked being messed with and didnt like the vet, so despite the fact that he was sedated, when the vet attached the syringe to the cannula, he miaowed in protest. Just so Tosh - break my heart right at the end and make me think this was all a terrible mistake. The vet looked at me and I nodded and a beautifully coloured golden liquid left the syringe and he did , he really did, 'go to sleep' , peacefully, beautifully. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">I'm not religious. Which is why I mourn and celebrate and love Tosh's life as much as any other, including humans. We lived together, for eachother and with eachother. </span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535783763281818827.post-4353403394678875522019-07-12T22:00:00.003+00:002019-07-12T22:00:48.565+00:00Toshack <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2Lgh89XeKhN81846tD3RmHmFEmSiSOyj-t-6p-RDMua1slZErU5eTe-lknUhaJPTTsAvDFHyhjuEyxYXd4wRFoQ6tr9rcJGpXanEk-1ET8x73DojEuBjF8d_hUl4lk0Noh5HjVnrMFHSu/s1600/cats15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2Lgh89XeKhN81846tD3RmHmFEmSiSOyj-t-6p-RDMua1slZErU5eTe-lknUhaJPTTsAvDFHyhjuEyxYXd4wRFoQ6tr9rcJGpXanEk-1ET8x73DojEuBjF8d_hUl4lk0Noh5HjVnrMFHSu/s320/cats15.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tosh in Ontario as a barn kitten</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I wanted to write this somewhere and I dont care if anyone is interested ...Facebook seems to be the place these day to record things but although I might post on FB, it is not the place for this post.<br />
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Toshack died on Sunday 26th May about 2:30pm. He was my cat and I want to remember him. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXkkFi8V5dmqxZI80xbF7Joh2xBaQ-IysebC1CCL3Is17-_qc6U6_g9iMuwCwWV-taiv4JDBNg8PPcBKjMW3hAhyTn8VAO846SUHrFSwvkhPdofDtOlHDd6VGC9IBpG7wnxEaEQk5oi1P2/s1600/tosh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="425" data-original-width="567" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXkkFi8V5dmqxZI80xbF7Joh2xBaQ-IysebC1CCL3Is17-_qc6U6_g9iMuwCwWV-taiv4JDBNg8PPcBKjMW3hAhyTn8VAO846SUHrFSwvkhPdofDtOlHDd6VGC9IBpG7wnxEaEQk5oi1P2/s320/tosh.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In his prime - about seven years old</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">About four - still a kitten with his sister Calli, who, as I write does not really look any different. </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535783763281818827.post-68158003309069091022019-07-12T22:00:00.001+00:002019-07-12T22:00:09.623+00:00For Tosh cat (about 2005 to June 2019)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghnY4DXmIikFEVm9ao-Da_sH1a0lZse_KjSnERsDeX__sHDwgSkpxF3uXfPk8yzQWvPMvXg4afog5v53N9FtAzcOHVOrJagSBmrPtl1gkiss5PXiy9Q09LKacV87HbC7qvHWJ2e7RyPlAn/s1600/swipe+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghnY4DXmIikFEVm9ao-Da_sH1a0lZse_KjSnERsDeX__sHDwgSkpxF3uXfPk8yzQWvPMvXg4afog5v53N9FtAzcOHVOrJagSBmrPtl1gkiss5PXiy9Q09LKacV87HbC7qvHWJ2e7RyPlAn/s320/swipe+2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO3_CxfmaVqFjNhKM15seVb1We8QMU9VelcNdwqBze9kD5AhwKbBHcw65m753RS8SDOi7FyKl1N8ydIgwMpQd9BGAhZ6YZtceXLYC30sfTLbXtrNCzmmSYQMH6Wbt0nQft4dDLY_WRM_l4/s1600/swipe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="850" data-original-width="1134" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO3_CxfmaVqFjNhKM15seVb1We8QMU9VelcNdwqBze9kD5AhwKbBHcw65m753RS8SDOi7FyKl1N8ydIgwMpQd9BGAhZ6YZtceXLYC30sfTLbXtrNCzmmSYQMH6Wbt0nQft4dDLY_WRM_l4/s320/swipe.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Toshack was – quite literally – born in a barn. More
precisely, but not that precisely, he was born in a barn on a farm in Ontario,
about 40 minutes west of London, Ont. How Tosh came to be living with us was
accidental. Our little nephew Ethan, who was seven at the time, was visiting us
from England with his mum Sue. To be honest, Western Ontario (or maybe London,
Ontario) isn’t that great a place for kids to visit for a holiday. The Great
Lakes are hours away, cottage country is hours and hours away and the hinterland
of London is a flat, flat, flat boring scruffy landscape, criss-crossed by
boring, flat straight roads. There is almost nothing of interest – at least to
us and our tastes – ‘to see’. We know this because Nel and I used to – when we
first arrived – pick a point on a map and head out for a drive to see what’s
out and there you have to drive to go anywhere in Ontario. This technique had
worked - in the past - over four cities and two continents in the sense that
practically everywhere else we’d lived we’d come across unknown (at least to
us) gems like Rutland Water in Leicestershire, the Musquadobit Trail in Nova
Scotia and <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>abandoned railway lines and
hidden corners in one of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Liverpool’s
numerous parks. Even when our ‘stick a pin in a map’ technique meant that where
we ended up was shit, it was interestingly shit – the ‘boondocks’ in Dartmouth,
Nova Scotia and Hornsea (now) in Yorkshire being examples. </div>
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In Ontario, it <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>failed
utterly. Everywhere was shit. This does’nt mean we did not have a great time in
our five years because the people we met there were awesome – CCP, Jodie
Culham, the Oxford Arms Scousers in Exile crew, my ‘cousin’ Maurice Sheenan
(cousin by Irish rules), beautiful Ken and lovely Eric. We even had the
requisite number of nemeses (at least I did) namely the Root family, Fatty
Carpenter, the scag-head living down the hall in our apartment building and
there were even fascists in the shape of an unhealthy number of Empire
Loyalists who provided the necessary hidden enemy. So we ate, drank, talked and
lived quite happily but really didn’t go anywhere. It was just not a good place
for people to visit or for pootling about. This was especially the case when
Ethan and Sue visited because Ontario is all about the money and because of
this, ‘work’ means ‘work’, so employers took the hair-shirted ‘two week
vacation’ rule very seriously and we could not get any time off. Because we had
spent the whole two weeks visiting family in England the year when Ethan and
Sue visited we were working so didn’t even have time to do a ‘quick’ 8 hour
drive to somewhere interesting for an overnight stay. </div>
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We managed to snatch a day out though, at the weekend
probably, and this is how we met Tosh. We’d heard, from a friend, about a
corn-maze ‘somewhere off the 401’ so one mid-morning, probably a Saturday and
with a ‘how bad can it be’ attitude we pointed the car west. About forty
minutes later we were at a corn maze. For a change, and for Ontario, it had
promise. The sign at the gate was hand painted, a piece of 4’ x 4’ ply nailed
wonkily to a post. There was no-one else there. There wasn’t a car-park, a
shop, a rest room, safety instructions, flyers, information signage, guide
books or any of the other paraphernalia which usually accompanies, and ruins,
anywhere worth visiting. Instead, about ¼ mile down a track into some fields,
there was a dilapidated house, a dilapidated-er barn and some corn fields.
Outside the barn was a rickety table and nice young woman, who along with her
partner, ran the farm. After a quick – to the point of visitor rudeness by
Canadian standards – 15 minute chat and handing over of a few loonies (because
me and Ethan were a bit anxious to get on with the maze) we plunged into a
field of corn and wandered round for a while.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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I, of course, emerged victorious from the maze about ¾ hour
later <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>having explored every single blind
alley (and despite what anyone might say I definitely wasn’t utterly and
hopelessly lost) and when I did emerge I saw my comrades – who all claimed to
have solved the maze in fifteen minutes - near the rickety table. They were
playing with, and looking at, about 26 kittens who were running and tumbling
through hay, mud and through cubicles in the barn under the watchful eye of
three dams. To this day I am unsure who - from encountering these kittens –
then came up with a plan,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>because in the
half hour <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the others - AKA the maze-slackers
- <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>had been ‘waiting’ for me as I
diligently mapped the whole maize maze, a <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>plan had been mooted, profferred, mulled,
negotiated and agreed so that by the time I got to the barn we had adopted two
kittens. My only role in the decision was actually a job which was <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to stick my nose into some of the kittens to see
if I experienced an extreme allergic reaction (I am generally severely allergic
to cats) which was – according to the agreement that had been made in my
absence – the deal clincher. Ever willing to experience acute breathlessness,
conjunctivitis, skin rashes and flea bites in the interests of the greater good,
I picked up one, stuck my face into its fur and took a long deep breath. As
this was a scientific test (and as RHB is a scientist) the operation was
repeated a number of times until the negotiating team were satisfied that a
wide enough sample had been taken so that a severe allergic reaction would be
inevitable if this variant of cat was the type I was allergic too. As I was
more allergic than RHB it could be assumed that if I was hospitalized as a
result of the field work, the kittens would not be suitable in which case no
further trials were necessary, so after the test I was ordered to stand still
for a few minutes so that the rest of the team could watch (they probably used
the word ‘observe’) me from a slight distance while life threatening symptoms
did, or did not, develop. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3RD71E_Wy2aHeK9XLo0u5woS93qgIp3KaY4WCoLQFEkaE1L8Pxlo4R8hLMQwvIXvRWsjaz24MaDWB6aDPJ1YuP-puWlaJpz3SDDQLkAaFn9uw5HQGpVkzo4RU3EGK5ko5RrgF2B5rJv_b/s1600/IMG_0098.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3RD71E_Wy2aHeK9XLo0u5woS93qgIp3KaY4WCoLQFEkaE1L8Pxlo4R8hLMQwvIXvRWsjaz24MaDWB6aDPJ1YuP-puWlaJpz3SDDQLkAaFn9uw5HQGpVkzo4RU3EGK5ko5RrgF2B5rJv_b/s320/IMG_0098.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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The drive home that day was fun. I was alive and not in
agony, two kittens had been selected for collection in a few weeks (when they
had been weaned) and there was a good Tim Hortons en route. Also, sometime during
the drive home, we hatched a plan for a wider scale kitten adoption programme
because it transpired (during negotiations which I had not been party to on
account of my maze-related heroism) that the farmers had admitted to having no
need for 26 kittens, only for about 2 or 3. The farmer was trying to rehome the
rest. Over the next few weeks we - mostly RHB – let friends and work mates know
about the corn maze and the kittens and the farmer, and as far as we know, most
of the kittens were eventually rehomed. That’s how we met Tosh..</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535783763281818827.post-59398850428462964432017-04-17T17:31:00.002+00:002017-04-17T17:31:53.196+00:00The Silk Road 1 <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Well imagine my disappointment when, instead of the Dreamliner of my dreams, or the 747 of my fears (I really don't trust 4 engines after watching the gremlins episode - 50's or 60's version - of the Twilight Zone) I'm going to be spending ten hours on a 777. A 777? - are you serious? I'm an international traveller abroad on business, an academic, a Professore Magistere, a bohemian, a vagabond, an international man of mystery, a blogger, an intercultural raconteur....strewth (a rapidly ageing Englishism usually used as a frusrated aspirate which mean 'God's truth' and stands for 'By God's Truth, I won't tolerate this' , but my first thoughts were "I'm not a fucking tourist on a package holiday"). However, I stand corrected although more accurately I could say that I lay, slept and ate corrected throughout a very comfortable flight. <br />
<br />
Clearly my hosts (for lets not forget I am here, being hosted, on an academic mission) disagree and on the first day we are treated, successively, and about an hour after a fifteen hour journey, to my worst nightmares - a trip to a market, a trip to a shopping mall for dinner and then as he pinnacle of the evening, a trip to a pub in a tourist area of ancient streets (which bear all the hallmarks of having been lovingly recreated) where a pint o'beer costs an eye watering eight pounds (equivalent).<br />
<br />
But lets backtrack and discuss 'why' I am here. I am here, a mere ten years after starting this blog, because having accomplished my goal of being the joint second best academic in England, now I am anxious to exend that achievement globally. My guess is that joint fourteenth best academic in the world is within my grasp, but of course to reach this lofty goal, travel I must. Now, it is true that my current travels are not organised- unlike my friend Jodie McJodie, the famous Canadian academic - around lofty issues like research. Some, indeed, would say that as a crude marketing exercise (my actual job is to interview international applicants to my University) , this trip is simple hackwork. Others would describe it in terms of 'the oldest profession' only on behalf of a corporate John. I accept these brickbats because without slings we would not have arrows, but reject them because now I am an actual academic I have discovered that its de rigour to have two utterly incompatible views at the same time and pretend that this is ok. So I claim that my work is vital and without it, Western civilisation and the accompanying inexhorable march to global intellectual dominance of China, India and Korea would not succeed. Who, I ask, am I to stand in the way of this? So here I am, in Shanghai, slightly jetlagged but at least not filling out a billion forms demanded of UK Higher Education, and ready to spread knowledge (especially knowledge of my opi 'Evolution :When?' 'Civilization: Why? ' and 'Apocalpse: How?) far and slightly further.<br />
<br />
What can I say about Shanghai? Well, its big, Really really big. Like very big but only if you take the words 'very' and 'big' seriously. If you do, its that big.<br />
<br />
What more can I say. Well not much apart from that in the years since I last blogged a number of new nemesi or nemeses have arisen with the intriguing names of Turnip Face, Shiny, Detail Guy (who's not a guy), Dave. Also new friends have been found including The Brescian, The Intellectual, Vaffanculo and Hot Josef. If, and its a big if, I continue to do this regularly, I'll introduce these rapscallians and heroes, these Aristotles (that's a bad thing by the way) and Plato's , these Cromwells and Cromwells..but for now its photos from Shanghai, a beautiful city in only the way super cities can be... <br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535783763281818827.post-88700900146246260512017-04-17T16:53:00.001+00:002017-04-17T16:53:08.792+00:00Sicilia <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
While I'm here, I may as well update on the last vacation RHB and self have taken...Last week we were in Sicily, challenging Etna to rain her fury on us, in the town of Acireale, just north of Catania. It was an interesting trip. In the previous sentence I am using the word 'interesting' in the way some people describe a friend of a friend who, once met, makes you wonder why said friend is even acquaintances with 'friend of'. It's informative to meet 'friend of' once but with all their quirks (and quirks are not things that make people interesting in my experience) and the suspicion that if you meet them twice they'll be inviting themselves to your house to couch surf for a week "just while they get their shit together" on the second occasion, declaring themselves your friend just because neither of you likes Governments, 'friends of' are usually dickheads I want nothing to do with after one encounter. I cannot say I never want to go to Sicily again, my favourite and only sister in law by direct relationship (as opposed to marriage) lives there. But I'll probably treat Sicily , in the future, as the 'friend of' so that I'll limit the acquaintance (in terms of time spent with) and cannot say I would mourn if we never met again. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535783763281818827.post-30309530869606197462017-04-15T10:33:00.000+00:002017-04-15T10:33:22.145+00:00Testing the multi regional hypothesis of human evolution<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Well if yesterday's train journey-Hull to Sheffield to Manchester Airport- and subsequent experience at Manchester Airport- checking in amid a billion RyanAir hen parties heading East to decorate ancient European Cities with good old British collective binge drinking - is taken as evidence, Blighty's trains, planes and airport hotels are not likely locations for the kind of evolution that leads to 'fitter' species. I'm not criticising my fellow travelers - heaven knows, Blighty is a place which has, and does, drive one to alcohol. But what is noticeable is how rigidly embedded our modes and manners of transport (at least) have made us and how even small variations in a formalised, written, scheduled and stamped plan appears to be destabilising. The default coping mechansim for some people appears to be violence and shouting, then more booze, then a bit more shouting.<br />
<br />
All that of course assumes that the Uk has'nt opted out of evolution in a similar fashion to its opt out of the very Europe that many of my fellow travellers are departing to revel in. This is of course a possibility and has historical precedent - after all a group of mammoths on Wrangel Island , just off Siberia, appear to have taken the this option a couple of thousand years ago. it didn't turn out well.<br />
<br />
I'm not on my way to Siberia, but I am off to somewhere equally 'exotic' (in the sense of being new to me) . AN opportunity has arisen , through work, to visit China, specifically Shanghai, Jinyan and Beijing. GIven the current situation in work (and if I return to regular blogging I may talk about this) I jumped at the opportunity to go on a trip that I'm not at all sure I want to go on. But having started my journey with a single step, I'm now committed.. travelling solo as I am, it seemed the perfect opportunity to revive this blog.....if Blogger isn't firewalled I'll be posting from China.....</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535783763281818827.post-42773131284147897132016-07-05T13:07:00.001+00:002016-07-05T13:07:51.145+00:00Moscow <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Well we went to Moscow to visit Joe and Anna. Here's some <a href="https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10154233866604400.1073741831.598564399&type=1&l=9c2c861671" target="_blank">photos</a> </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535783763281818827.post-89336951396965300352015-08-20T10:10:00.003+00:002015-08-20T10:23:51.045+00:00Package Number 8168013267<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
With my new career comes new found wealth, and with that new found wealth comes the chance to indulge in conspicuous and extravagant consumption. Another way of phrasing this is to say that the second tier of Large Mansions (known as 1st floor in the UK and the 2nd floor in Canada) might, just might, finally be rewarded for its patience and be granted the floor-covering it deserves. This is not aesthetics - the floor in the second tier currently comprises a mish mash of broken planks held together more by theory than any physical force. Tony Monk would be proud.<br />
<br />
I decide, after scrutinising the monthly accounts, we can afford the new floor. "About time" the assembled multitudes who regularly encamp at Large Mansions cry with one voice "We're heartily tired of losing small children and pets who have fallen through the gaps in the floor of your second tier!". " What type of flooring will it be? " they continue.<br />
<br />
Well here's the rub, the first one anyway. We have enrobed Large Mansions floors in bamboo. Not only was it 'eco' (more on this) but it was also the cheapest hardwood floor. It is also the squeakiest floor that has ever existed, making -a remote possibility but one has to consider everything - that secret midnight tryst between occasional visitors is well night impossible. At least the 'secret' part is. We decide to go for bamboo.<br />
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As far as the 'eco' is concerned, its true that bamboo, the plant, is pretty 'eco'. It doesnt need much in the way of nutrients, it mops up greenhouse gases as any other plant does and, the clincher, its associated with pandas and you dont get much more 'eco' than pandas. Well, ok, elephants and tigers are very 'eco' but neither of those critters have been as intimately involved in the creation of an ecosystem with the express intention of providing humans with hardwood floors. Admittedly, after the pandas' food has been chopped down for flooring, the 'eco' bit gets a bit fuzzy, what with the special high energy demand drying process required, oil based glues and laquers involved, shipping across the world and its short lifespan as a product which is caused by the fact that most people will remove it and throw it in a skip within a week of installation on account of being foiled in their trysts by the squeaking floor which makes secretive movement inpossible.<br />
<br />
But, we're nothing if not self-defeatingly stubborn here at Large Mansions, so we decided to complete tier two using bamboo. In order to check compatibility with existing, we ordered a sample. I did have to pay a small sum for said sample, but given aforementioned consultation with the monthly accounts (which is much more fun, and much less complicated to do after a few glasses of Pinot Gringio), the fee was paid to a company we had used before. The next day, I was sent a confirmatory email and an order number so I could track my order. As I am currently in the very final days of my thesis, doing the interminable job of formatting and correcting small errors (there never was the revolution in the UK in 2014 I predicted but so what, Alex Jones is always predicting doom and everyone thinks he's a genius) any association with anything that is apparently associated with forward progress - like the idea of something moving through a factory - is a straw, or piece of bamboo perhaps, to be grasped. Grasp I did, and I bookmarked the companies 'track order' page.<br />
<br />
The first time I checked my order, a few hours later, I was rewarded with the STATUS notification "ORDER RECIEVED". "Great" I thought, "these guys are really on the ball". About two hours later, when I was trying to decide whether to annoy my external examiners by using the American 'z' in words ending '-ise' throughout my thesis, I checked again. This first check told me my order had still been recieved. I was a little disgruntled, after all it was progress I was looking for, but if the thesis has taught me anything, it is patience, so I resisted the temptation to check my order's status again till that evening. I was rewarded for my patience over the two hours since check #2 on check #3. On check #3, it was clear there was progress as "WORK ORDER ISSUED" was proudly displayed in the STATUS box. I was immensely excited and subsequently returned to the STATUS page on a regular (by which I mean about four times per day) basis. It became my lifeline - a symbol of progress in an otherwise completely static world of daily exactly-the-same-thingness. The nest day, the status changed to "ORDER IN PROCESS". Excitement mounted. <br />
<br />
Twenty three days later, the status of my order changed to "DELIVERY IN PROGRESS". I have to confess, during the twenty two days in which my twelve inch long, 3/4' deep, 3' wide sample of hardwood floor was "IN PROCESS" I had begun to loose a little bit of hope. The fact that the delivery was now in progress re-ignited my optimism. I decided to use 'realize' throughout my thesis to give it that international flavour.<br />
<br />
And that, nearly, brings us up to date. The day on which it was announced "DELIVERY IN PROGRESS" was 13/08/2015. On that fateful day, I was redirected to the courier's website. Once there, the first entry was promising "Pickup done". I presume this meant the couriers had picked up from the producer. It seemed clear enough. In fact, the first few entries, after some thought, seemed clear enough and were impressively thorough: <br />
<br />
13/08/2015: CHINA 21:00 PICKUP DONE <br />
13/08/2015: CHINA 22:20 SHIPMENT INFORMATION TO BILLING SCAN<br />
13/08/2015: CHINA 23:25 SHIPMENT DEPARTURE SCAN<br />
<br />
Optimism soared as the sample's journey was meticulously recorded, but the next day, the first entry caused me a little alarm<br />
<br />
14/08/2015: UK 17:40 ARRIVED AT DESTINATION<br />
<br />
"Hang on", I said to the cat, "Nothing has arrived at the destination, maybe we ought to contact them". Toshack (the larger of the two cats), disagreed, taking the view, typical of cats, that if you want something, it will arrive. His theory, based on his knowledge of how doors open and how food is caught, was that I should just stare at the screen for hours and the sample would get here. Having effectively done this already over the previous twenty three days, I was skeptical. Soon after, however, my faith was restored as the following entries clarified what was going on: <br />
:<br />
14/08/2015: UK 18:26 CUSTOM CLEARANCE IN PROGRESS<br />
14.08/2015: UK 18:54 CUSTOM CLEARANCE COMPLETE<br />
14/08/2015: UK 19:45 SHIPMENT ARRIVE AT HUB<br />
<br />
"Brilliant" I thought "Tomorrow I will have a sample of bamboo."<br />
<br />
Inevitably, tomorrow never came. For three whole days nothing happened. Frustration turned to despair. Inevitably, my thesis tidying-up ground to a halt. "How?" I raged with exactly the same kind of logic displayed by both FOX news and Donald Trump, "...and why....are pandas so intent on ruining my whole career through the deliberate sabotage of my delivery thus making it impossible for me to do my entirely unconnected work?". I went back to formatting, this time trying to make decisions on whether to use ":" , ";" or "-" in sentences or whether to just leave the 3,456 'and'-s in place. Then, there was a status change: <br />
<br />
17/08/2015 UK 16:45 DEPARTURE HUB FINAL DESTINATION<br />
<br />
I was happy the status had changed but confused. What does "DEPARTURE HUB FINAL DESTINATION" mean? I wrestled with this. Did it mean there was a second HUB close to the final destination? Did it mean there was a section within the central HUB called 'Final Destination'. I was puzzled but not alarmed as whatever it meant, my sample was getting closer. The next day, though, there was full alarm as the status read<br />
<br />
18/08/2015 UK 13:25 ARRIVED AT DELIVERY LOCATION<br />
<br />
<br />
"NOOOO!!!!" I cried "It has'nt!!!! Large Mansions is the 'delivery location' and there ain't no bamboo here!!! Damn you PANDA!!" . The cat jumped up, swawking in protest. I decided to protest as well. I wrote an email to the couriers, requesting clarification. At 04.55, the company responded "The TEAM will contact you shortly". "Team?" I thought "What Team? And why do they need to contact me? They just need to either clarify the whereabouts of my sample or deliver it".<br />
<br />
The next day, the picture murkened, if you accept that when I say 'murkened', I mean "became less clear". The status of my order was updated to<br />
<br />
19/08/2015 UK 13:10 DEPARTURE FOR DELIVERY SECTION<br />
<br />
"WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?" I screamed at the computer screen, frustration coalescing after twenty four days of cat like patience, "HOW CAN MY SAMPLE HAVE ARRIVED AT THE 'DELIVERY LOCATION' THEN GONE BACK TO THE 'DELIVERY SECTION'? AND WHAT IS THE 'DELIVERY SECTION'? IS IT IN THE 'HUB'?". The cat, used to my screaming at the computer by now, did'nt move, he just continued to stare at his food bowl. I sent off a second email:<br />
<br />
<div>
"Hello, thank you for your reply. The status on my tracking now says
'departure for delivery section'. Can you tell me what that means? I
ask because if parcels are to be delivered I want to make sure I am here
to recieve<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
SO can you just let me know where exactly, the parcel is and if possible, what day it will be delivered?</div>
Thanks<br />
<br />
Martin"<br />
<br />
Underpinning this email was a knowledge of geography: (or ';' or '-' depending on which is correct) I knew that if the sample had arrived in the UK it's arrival airport was most likely Heathrow. Which is about five hours away from here by car or eight hours by Megabus. How is it possible for it to take four days for something to get here from Heathrow? Perhaps, I thought, I should have volunteered to pick it up - (or ';' or ':') the Megabus only takes eight hours and I could have left, picked up the sample and been back here in two days. Currently, I am awaiting either a reply, an updated status or my floor sample. Reluctantly, I have decided to go back to formatting. But yesterday, something Large mentioned induced either minor trepidation or a full blown panic attack (like my thesis its all a matter of interpretation). She told me we were going to act as guarantors for a friend in a business matter then asked me if this was ok. Naturally , I agreed to this already made decision , and having checked the accounts sober, noted that as long as - in the unlikely event of a default - the sum required of us was no more than £165.34 , we could cover any eventuality. This I was happy to do and is not the reason for the panic attack/mild trepidation. Instead, what caused me anxiety was that to confirm my willingness to act as guarantor, I have to log on to a website and enter some numeric digits. They start '81680....'<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535783763281818827.post-63475993677517153882015-08-02T14:23:00.003+00:002015-08-02T14:24:13.875+00:00Slap bang wallop<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Slap, bang, wallop : our luggage shot out of the mysterious door onto the carousel and majestically sailed round. We were at Halifax International Airport, it was half past midnight. I shoved fellow passengers aside, snatched my luggage then gambolled down the stair and out of the arrivals lounge, eager to be on Canadian soil (Toronto airport does not count), eager to smell the air and eager to jump into a massive embrace with my great friends who I could see waiting just beyond passport control. I bounded down the stairs, leap across the slippery tiles and presented myself in front of Grasshopper, arms spread, crying with happiness. She looked at me blankly, then asked "Who are you?". I walked away crestfallen, and Nel and I spent the next ten days in the Comfort Lodge, just outside of the perimeter of the airport, watching day time tv, ordering pizza and drinking rum. <br />
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Actually, although most of the above is true, the last bit is not. Not at all. The fact is that like many of us who advance towards decrepitude, twelve thirty at night is quite late, and for some of us, aspects of our vision, which are'nt that great in the first place, are gradually getting worse. For this particular friend, she has the visual recognition skills of cave dwelling fish. Fortunately, unlike a cave dwelling fish, she is both a great friend and does not smell. And of course, we had a great re-union.<br />
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These are the pictures from our <a href="http://holiday./">holiday.</a><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/1oP9fmcDm6zJGYQZ8" target="_blank">https://goo.gl/photos/1oP9fmcDm6zJGYQZ8</a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535783763281818827.post-67820655145604213432014-10-02T09:34:00.000+00:002014-10-02T09:34:07.893+00:00A job................<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In some senses the job of this blog is almost done - started when we 'returned' to the UK and documenting my efforts to get a job and the sense of frustration amazement and dismay at the overall state of Good Old Blighty. While a lot of our circumstances have changed, a lot of our sentiments have remained the same (and I say 'our' in the collective sense to include the cats who I know think the same but cant be bothered to blog). These include that when living in the UK you continually have to remind your self that you live in the eight richest economy in history in a era of untold glittering prizes. As humans we've walked on the moon, we're exploring Mars, medical science is phenomenal, and the dissemination of music, literature, information (real information not media) has never been wider. Yet as it was when we arrived, England is a miserable place. Not, I hasten to add that we (and in this I include RHB as well as me and the cats) are unhappy. Far from it, for one thing, our relatively new found hobby of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-YakIarV5g" target="_blank">Lindy Hop/Swing dancing keeps us laughing</a>. And secondly, I have finally found a job that I like. More of this in a bit, but what I mean by miserable is the public domain, or perhaps public demense would be more appropriate. Recent party political conferences have repeated the message (all of them!) that austerity will continue. The argument seems to be that England is on the brink of a disaster and being on this brink is what is keeping us all from being happy. However, the reason we arrived at this brink was by being quite happy with the way everything was going. So we got too happy and this led us to the edge of the chasm of happiness and we were in danger of falling in and becoming something like a Scandanavian country - permanently happy. This is bad because ...... actually there is never a reason given why its bad to be happy, it just is. The argument continues that the only way to make us really happy (in a non-Scandanavian way - remember, SCandanavian happiness is bad) is to make everyone miserable for quite a bit longer. Furthermore, the argument goes, once we've been miserable for quite a bit longer, the only way to keep us away from the brink that is preventing our unhappiness, is to continue being miserable for ever so that we dont ever feel comfortable enough to return to the edge of the chasm of happiness. The problem with this - and something that makes me deeply unhappy, is that this mantra has been the pervading mantra in England ever since I can remember. Everything is always a problem, there's always been a disaster looming somewhere. Its all very well for outside observers to say "Well just ignore the politics" but you cant . At this point I will have to refer you to Polyani and leave it there except to note that at some point - and this is a long term plan - we will escape.<br />
<br />
Its therefore fortunate that I have finally got a job, and it also provides some credence to my claims to be the UK's joint second best academic. Indeed, I was getting a little concerned about the validity of these claims seeing as I dodnt have either an academic job or a PhD. Well now, one of those aims has been obtained, albeit that the job is 0.4 Lecturer and includes delivering some lectures about things I actively hate - children. Perhaps that's unfair and overstating the case - I actually quite like the children I know, I just dont see the point in knowing anything about them in the academic sense because usually they grow up and ruin everything good about being children by becoming adults. Still the job is paid, I have 1/3 of an office sometimes and I am now invited to lots and lots of meetings. I have to admit that the number and scale and subject matter of meetings deemed relevant to my job is somewhat a surprise. Indeed you could almost be forgiven for two assumptions based on a quick scan of meetings since my appointment (the job started on Sept 12th). I am teaching on two programmes:<br />
<br />
1: General Induction ( all new staff meet Head of Department). Half an hour of chat. crap coffee and biscuits.<br />
2. New Staff meet established staff for Programme A.<br />
3. New Staff meet established staff for Programme B. <br />
4. Meet Dean of the Faculty<br />
5. Meet Vice Chancellor of the University<br />
6. Meet the Students (twice - A and B)<br />
7. Meet the administrative staff<br />
8. Departmental Meeting for the start of a new semester<br />
9. Meet my mentor<br />
10. meet the head of International engagement <br />
<br />
all the above are the kind of half an hour of chat, crap coffee and biscuits meetings that take up two hours. Then I have had the following substantive meetings about details of the modules....<br />
<br />
1.[empty]<br />
<br />
<br />
Then I have had a number of administrative tasks, all of which I have been told, by administrators I must do:<br />
<br />
1. Get photo taken<br />
2. collect name badge ( I dont do name badges)<br />
3. collect office key<br />
4. small amusing personal bio for 'getting to know you staff circular'<br />
5. formal bio for web page<br />
6. health and safety briefing<br />
7. donate to Angela's charity run (I dont regard this as optional based on tone)<br />
8. Sign a leaving card for someone I dont know<br />
9. Re-register with the payroll office for pay, tax, etc. This means filling in basic details forms such as name and address, where you want your money paid, tax declarations etc etc. I should add that this is particularly puzzling because the job is at the same University I have worked at on a 'sessional' basis for three years and when this re-registration was complete I had the same payroll number as I had before. Then when I received my first pay, it was wrong.<br />
10. Re-register with human resources for criminal record check, proof of identity and proof of accreditation. See above except it was slightly easier because my original documents were still with Human Resources because I'd forgotten to pick them up last time I was asked for this information (for the sessional work). SO HR just re-scanned the same documents again and all was set.<br />
11. Start thinking about the Christmas Party including whether I will be a vegetarian by then ( I dont know) , where I might like to eat on the last day before Christmas (very democratic but the answer is 'in my house, alone') and an amusing question for the quiz. <br />
<br />
The two conclusions its possible to reach from the above are both quite far-fetched. The first is that I am extremely important. This conclusion is reached mostly because of the calibre of people who want to meet me - Vice-Chancellors, Dean, HOD's and students. In fact the only people I havent met is the bar staff in the students union. The second conclusion to be reached is that it would be possible, if one was extremely sceptical, to come to the conclusion that the purpose of a University is to fulfil administrative requirements. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. <br />
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and the other day in a meeting I was asked my opinion on the basis that I was an expert. This was terrifying, so I put on my best expert voice and said "I agree with Ian". Ian is one of those very <br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535783763281818827.post-47185676406828876182014-07-16T23:26:00.002+00:002014-07-16T23:29:49.350+00:00The Ride of Hope IV (TROH S04: E01-E05): The Bad, The Good and the Ugly. <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
As readers are aware, the annual semi-planned "The Ride of Hope" (TROH) is a series of disasters, or near disasters, interspersed with some enjoyable cycling, that for some unfathomable reason, its participants (who are also the members of seminal folk-rock combo 'Cheek to Cheek') start talking about every Spring as a 'good idea'. A date for the ride is speculated on and a route decided based on as little information as possible. Then follows months of inactivity - equipment is unchecked, training rides are cancelled because a good footy match is on the tv, and hoteliers, camp site owners and hostels are left untroubled by enquiries about availability of accomodation. Finally, and usually about a week before departure, the participants realise that they either have to 'put up or shut up'. The results are invariably that TROH comprises a series of encounters with strange people, unexpected diversions and wierd food....interspersed with great views, bizarre rambling conversations, hellish but brilliant ascents and unsuitable off-roading. This year's TROH was no exception. Lets take a look at what a television documentary would call 'the highlights' starting, in a break from the normal order, with 'the bad'.<br />
<br />
The Bad.<br />
<br />
This year's Richard Dawkins Award for Sheer Awefulness undoubtedly goes to the food experienced on TROH S04. A high calorific intake is necessary when riding long distances and you need to eat constantly while riding as well - my friend's Canadian adage "eat before you're hungry, drink before you're thirsty" is some of the best advice I have ever found out the price of ignoring. So we do carry food while we ride but mostly trail mix, jelly babys', granola bars and the like. At the end of the day however, something more substantial is needed in the form of a full meal. One solution may be that riders carry their own food but that seems (or perhaps bearing in mind this year's experiences 'seemed') unnecessary in this crowded, but occasionally sceptered isle as you are never really far from population centres and decent grub can surely not be that hard to find, spilling out of roadside inns competing for a dwindling tourist trade? While it may be true that grub could be found, the microwaved slush that was delivered about thirty five seconds after our order was taken in Berwick on Tweed's best Chinese restaurant, costing about thirty five pounds for two main courses, cannot be described as decent. The chicken I ate in Seahouses most popular fish and chip restaurant, rivaled BOT's Chinese disaster in how extremely bad it was, having the texture, and taste, of paint brush bristles that had been left in paint long since evaporated, and practically every bar meal we had - almost impossible to get wrong I previously thought - brought on hallucinations caused by salt overdose. As TROH S04 progressed, I began to dread the evening meal, a dread that was only surpassed by the dread induced by contemplation of the following morning's fat soaked sausages (I stopped eating pork years ago as a rule but vegetarian breakfasts are even worse, usually consisting of a warm egg (which obviously isnt vegetarian anyway) sloshed round a cooling pan and presented as scrambled eggs.)<br />
<br />
The food though achieved a narrow victory in the Richard Dawkins Award for Sheer Awefulness because sections of the route - which is advertised as part of the UK's national cycle network were spectacularly bad in specific ways. Some photos may help understand this, starting with a ford crossing near the sea near BOT<br />
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It does, I have to admit look picturesque but I should remind readers that this is a cycling route. The fact that the bridge is only passable if you have a unicycle with off road capacity as the bridge is too narrow for any handlebars so even a mountain bike is useless is one thing, but the really annoying thing is the regularity of gates on the route. In some sections, you repeatedly have to get off your bike, open the gate, close the gate then ride another 400 metres before repeating the operation.This goes on for miles. <br />
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The next problem with the route - called 'Castles and Coasts' (see the Sustrans website) is that an awful lot of it appears to be designed not to give an interesting or even safe ride, but to get bikes out of the way of cars. Thus a typical section in a town involves directing bikes through car parks, toilets, gravel pits, and abandoned roads on the undesireable side of town which look like the British Army used them to practice urban warfare techniques. The photos dont really do this justice as I was either too scared for my personal safety from roaming dogs, too concentrated on not getting punctured tyres from needles or broken glass or just too busy concentrating on not bumping into concrete bollards or rubbish to take many shots but here's a couple of images: <br />
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The crumbling waterfront north of Newcastle that ended in ...........<br />
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The abandoned road ...........<br />
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This is a constant problem - even when cycle lanes near main highways are provided, many drivers see them as convenient extra parking spaces...<br />
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And back to the gates............<br />
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and the car parks ..........<br />
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What must be borne in mind is that these are not short-cuts. In fact the contrary is true as 'Coasts and Castles' frequently involves massive detours from the crow flying to divert the rider to these places. In fact, the route frequently appears to be designed less with the crow flying in mind and more as an analogue of the nocturnal ramblings of a feral cat. Naturally, with two different academic paradigms on the Ride, this characteristic caused some debate, reminiscent of The Paradigm Wars. While we agreed that the inadequacies of the designed route suggested that in road planning meetings when " "Agenda Item 3: Planning for Cyclists" was reached the consensus view on cyclists among representatives present was probably "F*** 'em", how we should react to this was debated. The scientist among us , Iceman (by the second day we had decided we needed Top Gun style 'handles'), stuck with the scientific approach that took the route literally. For him, the route existed objectively, to be examined as a cycle route. The Critical Sociolinguist, Flamebearer (AKA yrs trly), thought that the route was there to be interpreted, and possibly with a twist of post-modernism, challenged fundamementally, ontologically and epistemologically. The result was a compromise wherein we interpreted some parts choosing better routes that would have been obvious to the route designers if they'd bothered to look at a map. let alone try the route out for themselves, and took other passages where the route was, possibly as an oversight, really good, literally. Which leads us to the whole point of the ride, which was the Good Stuff.<br />
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Good Stuff:<br />
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The views were occasionally stunning. The best thing to do is to just show a few pictures, although they do lack the smell of brine where we skirted the coast or the scent of wild garlic as we mountain biked through forests. Incidentally, mountain biking through forest trails with full panniers is not for the faint hearted but if it ever becomes an Olympic sport (and it should) I am stupid enough to enter as its an altogether different type of exhilirating, mostly terrifying. <br />
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This trail started off looking dead easy like this, but it quickly got narrow and very fast...wild garlic everywhere .. just incredible.<br />
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Fields of flowers like in a magazine (with a Newcastle housing project in the background to bring you back to earth)...<br />
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A river somewhere in Scotland I think...<br />
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A castle, of course..........<br />
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Same river as above...<br />
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Looking north to Bamburg castle ( I think) ...........<br />
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Next few (And one above) are from the final climb before Edinburgh - a ten mile climb, quite gentle, but we had miscalculated distance and the whole day was close to seventy miles with this climb the last thing we did before an exhilirating fifteen mile descent into Edinburgh. It would be pretty easy on a road bike, but on a loaded bike, you just have to slog up the hill. Iceman hates these climbs but I love them..<br />
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Iceman at the top looking down on the Edinburgh plain..<br />
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Final word goes to buildings and friends. <br />
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On buildings : we only stopped at one castle Bamburgh Castle. It is magnificent in some ways ..<br />
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.... but the miserable-ist in me cant help but think that the craftmanship and energy on show also represent a mind set of exploitation - the beams of the ceiling of the great hall were hewn from a type of teak (600 tonnes) that is now practically extinct as the tour guide - a definite enthusiast of Empire - almost gleefully recounted. The same guy, describing a piece of furniture in another part of the castle, described how it constituted part of a dowry. He then went on to explain that the dowry wasnt just the furniture, gold and cattle a bride's family gave to a husband, it also included the bride herself as property . He appeared to find this rather "charming" but the resonances of a man owning a woman remain in Western cultue today in all sorts of ways so I left pretty depressed.<br />
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What didnt depress me was the wigwam we stayed in, our only night's camping. <br />
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We lit a fire, bought a bunch of beer and just talked. <br />
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And finally what was best was the people, first of all Iceman........riding partners are not the easiest thing to find but we always quickly get into a rhythym, spelling eachother at the front, giving eachother space on descents and agreeing on rest stops without really discussing it..<br />
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.. and secondly our friend Sarah who we met in Edinburgh on the night of the World Cup Final...Sarah is an ex-colleague of RHB and Iceman, a keen scuba diver, sportswoman and a great laugh. <br />
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I have to finish by saying that The Ride of Hope is something me and Paul dreamed up as a jokey reference to the fact that whenever we told people we were doing a long distance ride, we would be asked "What charity are you doing it for?". In fact a whole industry of sponsored bike rides, hikes, climbs and runs in support of one good cause or another has grown up in the UK. Its almost as if you cant do a bike ride <i>unless</i> you're supporting some good cause or another - some people look askance as if its somehow selfish of you just to do a ride for pleasure. I'd never de-cry a good cause but when you consider that commercial companies are now heavily involved in these events, requiring a minimum sum to be pledged, from which they take a handsome cut and are effectively profiteering from say, cancer or mental health issues, the cynic in me wonders about the ethics of some of these events. It's true that these events raise awareness, but in many cases that's the best thing that can be said about them: when you examine the books (as I have done in the course of my research into the so-called Third Sector, an umbrella these companies fall under) they not only make profit from the participants ( who have to pay a fee) but also from the donations the participants raise and simultaneously they take advantage of tax-relief for charities, thereby increasing their profits further. Simply put, they profiteer from misery. As for the participants, the activities are often things they would love to do, like sky-diving or trekking in remote places. I have to wonder whether, if the event was to spend an equivalent amount of time looking after a person with mental health issues or involving experiencing the hardships of a condition in some way - a much more direct way of raising their own awareness - as many people would participate. So I'm pretty sceptical of many of these events.<br />
<br />
But not all of them, which is where my friend Reka comes in. Nel and I met Reka (her house is about fifty feet away) shortly after we moved into Large Mansions. She was among the first to welcome us to the area and, as I soon found out, was pivotal in local community action, including arts projects I later got involved in. She was also instrumental in integrating us in what is a truly unique local community based on our experience of living in two countries and numerous cities: : summer barbeques, dancing at the Adelphi, house parties, sharing cars, helping with DIY - we became friends over the last five years - Christmas parties, Halloween, mad arts projects, street festivals, just hanging out. She was also a keen cyclist who had cancer. As such she did participate in bike rides for a cause but for her it wasnt a 'holiday' or stumbling into making a profit for someone else, she rode because she loved it and because she wanted to show the value of exercise and that you could live even as a cancer 'sufferer' (although she was <i>never</i> that). Her own awareness could'nt be questioned and at times she seemed as interested in getting people into cycling or fitness as 'the cause'. We talked about bikes, about the advantages and disadvantages of using cleats, about climbs and descents and about food on the road. We even talked about my cynicism about 'sponsored bike rides' with Reka telling me off for being so cynical, although I (think/hope I) was clear that it wasnt her type of ride I was sceptical about. <br />
<br />
Reka died three days before I left for this years TROH. I did think about her a lot on this year's ride and will miss her an incredible amount. I never went with Reka on one of her long rides only going for a couple of trips locally, which ended up in the pub. We almost never talked about her illness although she did raise my awareness of cancer - I never imagined someone as ill as her <i>could</i> ride from Lands End to John O'groats while having chemotherapy. But most of all she raised my awareness of how much difference a brilliant person with a warm heart and mad enthusiasms can make. This one was for you Reka. <br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535783763281818827.post-78410562432584223152014-06-08T15:52:00.002+00:002014-06-08T15:52:52.010+00:00Cats, sheds and transoceanic exploration<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
At first glance this post may appear a bit of a mish-mash. At a second glance, this post may also appear a bit of a mish mash. Frankly, its the best I can do as I nurse an enorgantic hang-over after a BBQ which finished a week which may be described as bearing less than good news (of which more later) ..first up cats. Here's a few pictures of the cats Kali and Tosh, who we shipped to the UK from Ontario. They themselves are transatlantic voyagers:<br />
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Cats have a very obvious point besides being rodent killers and mice suppressors, which is that they make people happy. They dont do anything else and they probably dont intend to make people happy (although how do we know either way?) but the fact that they do is why we flew them from Ontario. Next is a few pictures of a shed that me and my friend Jeremiah James have built in some spare time for another friend in her massive and very beautiful garden. Even if it doesnt look like it, this shed is heavy on improvisation as it was constructed from discarded parts of another shed - it took considerable wood wrangling to make everything fit together and we are both incredibly proud of the result. In a way, the shed is a transoceanic thing because Jerry (he grew up in a pretty remote village in Jamaica) and I crossed the Atlantic twice for settlement (and hope to do so one more time Westwards one day). In the pub the other night, Jerry and I were saying that we didnt know what to do now that we'd finished the shed. <br />
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Finally, last night we had a barbeque in my garden , largely cooked on a barbeque that we are looking after for the RHB's sister, Nysa. (NOTE: You all should know her name isnt Nysa but everyone on this blog gets a nickname and Nysa is norse for 'to seek') .We made far too much food and did nothing but eat, drink, sing and dance until the early hours in the company of people some of who we will not see again. The people at the BBQ were from all around the world. The reason we are looking after the barbeque is that Nysa is currently in Tonga (or thereabouts) in the middle of the Pacific an an adventure, sailing round the world on a sailboat. She really is a transoceanic explorer - she was gone for the best part of last year and will be about another year and a half travelling West before ending up in Italy or thereabouts. Its an incredible expedition for all sorts of reasons. I dont know exactly why our transoceanic explorer is doing what she is doing other than I know it is not for money: if I had to guess, I'd say she wanted a challenge.<br />
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Next time any idiot talks to you about 'human nature' in association with competitiveness or rationale economics and the application thereof to macro-economics, or alternatively talks to you about immigration and its problems (this is a dual use post) ask them to read this post before 'unfriending' them on Facebook.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535783763281818827.post-59730792267688365032014-05-18T12:52:00.000+00:002014-05-18T12:52:02.621+00:00The Bad Back <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>BAckground: "I've got a bad back". A ridiculous piece of language when you think of it - firstly the bodily area in question isn't a unitary thing, secondly it would be better to use a possessive pronoun, and thirdly the back has'nt done anything wrong. Nevertheless, and ridiculous as it is, the phrase is accurate - to whit, I have a bad back. Or rather I have had a bad back in earnest since about 1995 although even prior to that time, the back was suspect. Suspect is another ridiculous word to describe a body part, used in soccer as follows: 'The boy Rigby has a suspect hamstring' (younger members of any given team are referred to as 'the boy...(name)'. Actually the more I think about it, the more ridiculous any and every language continues to be and a good part of me wishes we communicated in binary, with politicians limited to unitary. </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Anyway, the back (mine) has been bad (damaged not misbehaviour) probably the result of a combination of factors including yrs trly being long and stringy, damage caused by badly performed but repeated physical actions (such as carrying and lugging), bad posture and inappropriate or reduced exercise. The most recent bout has been the result of both inappropriate and reduced exercise but it has been in a good cause. This good cause has been the rapid writing of academic papers for publication which has seen me planted at the desk for much longer than normal.</i><br />
<br />
The story: It all started with a visit from a famous academic in January. This particular academic is so famous that major parties consult him, he is frequently on tv and radio and now he was coming to my town to give a talk. I went along, not because I was impressed by the fame, but because I was interested to see that this guy's work had wandered into territory I cover in my research. I say wander, because the talk, although good, gave some impression that the speaker's interest in the topic was quite political and probably temporary - a kind of ideological diletante visiting 'immigration', possibly because every politician in the UK is obsessed with immigration at present, so the issue is 'current' (and we are obliged to swear in blood that our research will be current) . Equally however, the speaker's interest may be burgeoning and a lifelong commitment to researching immigration may follow. Whatever the speaker's motivation, for me, and as being an immigrant is what inspired the PhD in the first place and because I think processes of migration warrant further study rather than political visiting, the speaker's attention was welcome if, by dint of making a serious, academic and professional point at the conclusion of his talk, I could impress on him the need to make his visit (to the topics of migration) slightly longer and therefore have several important facts about migration relayed to senior politicians (who seem utterly unacquainted with facts of any type). That was the hope anyway, and if you think that the sentence immediately preceding this one is complicated, requiring a coupla reads before you understand what it says, you want to be there when I ask a question at academic conferences.<br />
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The problem is that I am so utterly out of place at academic events. No, really, this is not false modesty, I just dont belong at these things. Its not imposter syndrome either - I've discussed this with my good (newish) friends Riccardo and Cecilia and they clearly feel that someone will find <i>them </i>'out' as new academics. If anything, I have reverse-imposter syndrome - I believe <i>I </i>have <i>found out</i> the world of academia - a lot of it is constructed and stage managed so carefully because some people are terrified of (good) radical new ideas . And this puts me out of place at academic events because although I recognize the complex mirage-dance of manners, I just cant do it very well. Take 'the coffee bit' for example. I know that after you've grabbed your inadequately sized cup of shit coffee, you're supposed to chat, usually in some type of foyer, completely unsuitable for chatting. I havent got a clue what you're supposed to chat about , only that you're supposed to look intelligent or interested with a very controlled demeanour that should be pre-set somewhere between polite smugness and vaguely amused interest both with a dash of appraisingness while you drop names. In no circumstances ever should you be "abso-fucking-lutely furious" (as I am about the immigration policy of the UK), and you should definitely not describe it in terms, or manner which indicates that you are abso-fuckin- lutely furious. You also should'nt find anything "brilliant", "really funny", "dead sad" or "a load of w***" all of which I have uttered during various 'the coffee bit'-s. If you do commit the crime of actually saying what you think, or talking about last night's footie or expressing strong emotion, there is a sideways glance and/or an imperceptible but perceptible shuffle on the part of your conversant and you find yourself alone-among-people in a large foyer that is completely unsuitable for being alone-among-people in. One solution to this is to take a conference-buddy, which is a bit like a f**-buddy (and may also be that as well), so that you dont have to endure 'the coffee bit' alone but this still means that if you ask a question within the talk, and you are not in the (or 'a') 'in crowd' you have to do so solo. <br />
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This was the point I was trying to raise about three paragraphs ago, and that its taken this long to get 'there' may also be an illustration of why I hate asking questions in academic situations: I find it really difficult to <i>have</i> enough thoughts of the right standard while listening to an academic talk, let alone formulate coherent questions. Thus it is embarassing to feel that I <i>have</i> to ask a question at some point. My accent - which is notorious in the UK - also doesnt help , threatening (the accent that is) as it does, through various social constructions of 'scousers', to tell a joke, issue a threat of violence and be radically politically Left Wing simultaneously in a whiney nasal tone in any question I ask even though I might'nt say anything which suggest any of those things with my words. The result is that when I do ask a question meant as a genuine enquiry it is wildly incoherent because I'm conciously trying to avoid sounding funny, threatening, Left Wing or whiney but instead am trying to sound academic. <br />
<br />
The result of asking my rubbish question is a bad back months after the event. This is both a surprise and a problem because much to my surprise my observations strike a chord and I am identified as something of an expert, refreshingly regional and radical, a bit dangerous perhaps but academically sound. This is good for my research field, so is welcome, but is also a problem because having been identified in certain quarters as someone with something to say, I now have to say it, rather than (as was the current condition) say that I am going to be saying something (at some unspecified point). Thus much time has been spent writing furiously, glued to the laptop where I have had to concentrate on removing the word 'clearly' from everything I have ever written and replacing it with evidence. And such writing has reduced exercise significantly which has resulted in a bad back. I've already resolved for the sake of the back never to ask another question in an academic conference again. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535783763281818827.post-34497794937321961062014-05-18T09:35:00.001+00:002014-05-18T09:35:52.627+00:00THe BA\d <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535783763281818827.post-7076691976951055582014-04-15T11:28:00.003+00:002014-04-15T11:29:32.606+00:00Dogged determinism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Well, Yrs trly has finished in York and not before time, mainly to do with patience. Dont misunderstand me, York is a pretty enough city, as blights on the landscape that cities represent, go. And I am now officially qualified to do what I have been doing for a number of years, namely teach people to speak the English. But a month was enough, for two, or possibly three, reasons.<br />
<br />
Firstly, the commute. It doesnt take long before irritation sets in with commuting. The first thing that annoys me about this is the inanity of early morning commuting conversation, repeated year-in-year out. I'm not a conversation snob - listening to Mandy (our friend) telling her stories about work is a jaw dropping pleasure. Mandy has the 'she said and then I said' style of narrative down to an art form: "She said 'That's my mop' she said, and I said to her I said 'Get yer own naffin mop'" all delivered with shudders and finger pointing at exactly the right moment. But there is a certain type of lower middle management whose commuting conversation is a crime against speaking or any other form of communication. This is the type that actively <i>wants</i> to live in a new build estate named 'Elm Lea Grange' by the contractors Redrow in memory of all the trees they removed to build the inadequately insulated chimneyless plasticized boxes that infest English suburbia and who sprays insecticide everywhere in their garden to get rid of 'pests' but who likes going to 'country pubs' because its more natural who proudly describe themselves as pragmatic and the type who will survive a zombie apocalypse: unimaginative, prosaic, bilious and dull. An example of this during the last week of my commute was provided by Cathy. Cathy gets on at Selby every morning with two friends and last week was planning a thirtieth birthday party, one of her primary ambitions for which was to ensure that 'people' did'nt get too drunk because she "could'nt be doing with" a party that was "chaotic". In fact, Cathy's descriptions of "how much bother" was involved in arranging the party revolved around ensuring the maximum control over peoples' behaviour, including start and finish times (not too early, not too late), clothing ("I dont want anyone turning up like its a cattle market"), music (the dj's been given a list), children's involvement (they have specific duties), food ("the eating bit should'nt go on too long because then everyone gets settled and just talks") and arranging the date so it's impossible for people she does'nt like (but has invited anyway because she 'has to') to politely refuse to attend ("I told Emma weeks ago so she's got no excuse"). Cathy's friend's murmured agreement that as long as she could arrange everything exactly as planned, "the night" should go well and offered a few suggestions for further control, such as the exact timing of when Cathy should allow everyone to sing her 'Happy Birthday' and how she should manage the receiving of gifts which everyone was required to bring, the purchase of which Cathy had directed in advance by issuing a list of acceptable items ("a good idea" intoned her co-commuters). Just before alighting at York, Cathy mused that sometimes she wondered if it was all "more trouble than it was worth", and I found myself nodding in furious agreement, the first, and only time in the half hour I had been earwigging her conversation that we concurred entirely. <br />
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The second reason a month was enough concerns the phrase 'station stop' (as in "Selby is your next station-stop"). Regular readers will remember my action filled one man campaign to have this hideous phrase removed from the lexicon, a campaign which I believed , at the time, to be successful. However, as fellow activist campaigners will know and as demonstrated by Nelson Mandela, the search for justice is never done, If a warrior for freedom abandons vigilance for even a moment, the forces of tyranny will rise up again, relentless and implaccable. Thus it has been with 'station-stop'. Since I abandoned my campaign, satisfied that I had struck a blow against the hegemony of shit phrases, 'station stop' has returned with a vengeance, possibly being employed with more frequency than ever before. Clearly, a month has not been enough to re-launch my campaign so I have had to accept that at 07:37 every morning, the speaker in the carriage will crackle into life and "Selby is your next station stop" will echo unsonorously throughout the train. It has been tough on the nerves. <br />
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<br />
The third reason a month was enough concerns the qualification achieved in the month, a growing discontent with which may have fuelled the irritations expressed above. The qualification was an English language teaching qualification, necessary for my future employment, but as the course progressed I experienced a mounting disquiet, similar to that experienced when being taught about 'learning styles' in my undergraduate degree. As a relatively recent acolyte at the altar of learning, and therefore not someone who can claim expertise, repeated contact with experienced academics and teachers has led me to the conclusion that learning (and teaching) without criticality is a waste of time. This criticality may take a number of directions, from functional analysis of reductive evidence in support of an idea (common in science) to analysis and critique of one's own worldview (common in social science) but despite an occasional divergence between academic paradigms (I know its a horrible word and one I try to avoid but the only one I can think of at the moment), the fundamental principle that is suggested is rigour (of thinking). In my recent course, debates over rigour focused n the thorny issue of 'pair work', which we, as trainee teachers, had been told was integral to good language teaching. One day, near the end of the course, I (who had been repeatedly marked down in assessment of my teaching for not pairing students) could stand it no longer: <br />
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"What...." I asked, genuinely curious "...if like me, a student doesn't like 'pair work'?. What if, like me, they want to absorb new information themselves before discussing it with another person in case the other person is equally ignorant of the new information and themselves also require time to absorb it before they can say anything useful ? Also, what if, like me, they dont like the person they are paired with?" (this latter comment slipped out accidentally but reflected the actual situation in the training room because I really didnt like the person I was paired with and the extent of the dislike was such that it was evident to the rest of the class, causing an amused ripple in the room) "Not that I dont like the person I'm currently paired with" I lied " but what if I didnt?". <br />
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The trainer smiled "An interesting point" he said "And thanks for that! So, like Mazzer says, how do we ensure students work in pairs? Have a think about it, in your pairs, for a few minutes..."<br />
<br />
"I'm sorry" I said, utilising the phrase 'I'm sorry' in its full English usage "But that's not what I meant. I dont understand <i>why</i> we insist on 'pair work'. I mean, what is the theory behind it?"<br />
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"That's a good question. And thanks for that!" said the trainer, seamlessly practising one of the other tenets of teacher training which is to never engage in a debate about anything, especially when asking other people to debate something "In your pairs, also talk about why 'pair work' is so effective. I want to see some real discussion going on". He leant closer to me and smiled "Thanks for that" he said, then indicated that the class should continue.<br />
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The phrase 'dogged determination' is understood to describe an individual's persistence because, according to vox populi comprehension, it describes a canine pursuing a goal single-mindedly, such as gnawing on an old bone. However, there is nothing as determined as a cat which wishes to embrace the dawn chorus but finds the cat flap, or the back door, locked and the persistence with which said feline will sit on the bed padding a human's face or sticking its sharpest claw up the right nostril until it gets a response, makes a dog look like a diletante. I returned to the fray, channeling Toshack:<br />
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"But what are we discussing? Are we debating whether 'pair work' works or just accepting that it does and talking about it?" I asked, and determined not to be thanked again I rushed on, this time risking appearing to be that most hated of classroom entities, the smart arse " I mean, is 'pair work' based on Brunner's appropriation of the work of Vygotsky, the oft misunderstood notion of scaffolding? Because if it is, then surely it would only work if you were very careful about who was paired with who and..."<br />
<br />
"Thanks for that!" the trainer interrupted smilingly "yes 'pair work' is effective because the students enjoy it as Mazzer says, and it helps them to learn and lots of research has shown this. So have a think about that, in your pairs, for three minutes, then we'll have a discussion".<br />
<br />
The inner cat slunk off. I capitulated and sat, in silence with the other half of my pair while she carefully wrote 'Pair work' on a fresh sheet in her notebook, outlined the words with a little cloud and proceeded to tag the cloud with phrases like "students enjoy", "good practice" and "good for learning". "What do you think? " she asked. "I dont" I replied. <br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535783763281818827.post-8075431898790843842014-04-05T11:22:00.000+00:002014-04-05T11:22:51.432+00:00Earth and Water<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The sharp pain in the achilles, just above the ankle is indication that there has been an infrigement of mine personage. I turn round and see that its just Pat. I have been barged into by Pat, so I am the bargee and Pat the barger. Her instrument of choice is a scuffed plastic trolley, the topmost layer of which contains, for want of a better description, "food" items, and it would appear, to the uniformed, that Pat has just jumped the queue at Pumpkin, Hull Paragons foremost refreshment stand, and is now, like me, waiting for a hot drink. But looks can be deceptive, because Pat, according to her name badge, is a five star member of the Pumpkin's customer service team and this morning, her job is to replenish the supply of 'hot and cold snacks, sandwiches and light refreshments' which henceforth we'll refer to as hcsslr, that repose on the countertop near the till. <br />
<br />
"Thiei dont get out'tt'way do thiei?" she asks Lindsey, as she lifts large plastic lids off plates of hcsslr. The lids, ill matches for the plates they cover, look like they've been purchased secondhand from Bargain Village, having that post-apocalyptic sheen typical of old plastic, and have condensation on the inside which rapidly starts pooling on the floor which is where Pat has placed them. Other customers in the queue start retreating form the growing pool, but, as the bargee, I feel duty bound to stand my ground, so I dont move. This doesnt bother Pat, she just leans in, like a roller derby queen on the final bend, and sweeps the old hcsslr in front of me into a plastic bag. She drops a few into the pool of spreading water, but picks them up and chucks them in the bag. <br />
<br />
"Yeh cant get at them from t'other side" says Pat, and I realize she's probably earned her stripes through implementation of innovative resupply strategies. When the plates have been emptied, Pat reloads them with the new hcsslr form the top of her trolley, pausing only to place her hand firmly on each item of hcsslr "Them sausage baps're still 'ot" she tells Lindsey, who has ceased service completely to watch Pat at work.<br />
<br />
Now there are times when a cessation of service at the drinks counter of a busy railway station may cause problems and some stress. If one analysed timetables carefully, one could probably predict when these times and the causal chain behind the resulting stress. I conducted such an analysis one morning while glancing briefly at the departure board, and the results were astonishing. In early morn, between ten two and five past seven, the trains for all of the natural commuter destinations realistically achievable from Hull (Selby, Leeds, York), and the most popular business and airport destinations (London and Manchester) all leave. The pattern is repeated about half an hour later, with the delayed 7.37 leading the charge. Thus, one might predict that at a refreshment stand, demand might peak slightly prior to these departures, perhaps tailing off after ten minutes. In terms of service, this may imply a logistical problem - a log jam, in effect around these departure times as hordes of thirsty commuters roll up at your counter baying for a 'latte', 'americano' or even a hcsslr and a beverage.<br />
<br />
You can imagine the hcsslr service staff who've worked these shifts as battle scarred veterans: ,steel eyed, square jawed, hard bitten survivors of a battle where steam bilged from the expresso maker as orders came in thick and fast "Latte!", "Tea!", "Capuchino" and even the dreaded "Decaf Americano" as the crowd of pre-stressed communters built to a peak, flyers and business people impatient, waiting, urgent. In this imagining, the staff gave as good as they got, hurling themselves from coffee maker to fridge to cup storage to till... "one latte!!", "expresso!!!" "two pounds fifty!" "next please" .. hot beverage orders flying off the counter top until they did it.... they stemmed the tide. Like Spartans at Thermopylae they knew their victory was temporary but like Spartans, they approached their fate phlegmatically "We'll serve hcsslr in the shade" indeed. <br />
<br />
This is perhaps a romantic view, but having commuted in the UK and travelled abroad (as they say), hcsslr staff are increasing Spartan. Identikit uniforms, scripted dialogue, scrupulously clean, ruthlessly, inhumanly efficient, and utterly careless about your (the customer's) fate. That is what customer service is about. You are brushed aside in order to prove how much the company care about you by showing you they can get rid of you quickly <i>and</i> this is done while they convince you that this is what you want. Rush hours are not a problem - there's just more product to shift, efficiently, ruthlessly, inhumanly. Buying a coffee in York, Leeds or London rail stations is one of the most demoralising experiences I have....and if you notice the tense, you will realise that I repeat the experience, frequently.<br />
<br />
<br />
There's only two places I have been which buck the trend. In Hull, Pat has solved the problem of the log jam by timing her replenishment of hcsslr so that it co-incides with the imminent departure of the busiest trains. No service happens while Pat is replenishing from the front of the counter and the enemy attack just withers away. Commuters who are really hoping for a last minute coffee abandon the queue in droves, and scores more by-pass Pumpkin. You'll only get a drink if you time your run perfectly. <br />
<br />
"What can I get you love?" asks Lindey, brightly after Pat's finished "Any hcsslr today?". The replaced plastic tops of the resupplied hcsslr plates are condensing quite quickly. "No thanks" I say brightly "Not today! Just tea!". Lindsey delivers, I pay and she asks "Where you off to today then?" as to my right a newbie customer is jiggling his change and jumping up and down, apopleptic, but clearly English and Yorkshire, because he says nothing about his agitation. "Just York like normal" I tell her "See you tomorrow".<br />
<br />
As a note on the progress of this blog, I realise that this most recent spate of wrting is supposed to be about my adventures as a CELTA trainee in York, yet it is still only 06:56 and we havent left Hull yet after two attempts! Forgive my indulgence reader! I find commuting from Hull a unique experience but probably one which will not last forever, given increasing homogeneity. I can think of only two places I have been in similarly industrialised countries where the railway station or airport refreshment stands equal Hull's in terms of quirkiness and those two other places are Liverpool, where the main barrier is understanding anything the staff say, and Halifax NS where you get the feeling that hclssr might be Government make-work training schemes.I wil try to get to York tomorrow!<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535783763281818827.post-40480839712595095522014-03-29T11:59:00.001+00:002014-04-19T11:32:34.686+00:00Symbolic Interactionism and Waggagaling <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Its a vagrant misty morning and two old companions have resumed a familiar routine. If I were to mention that the aforementioned routine involves the Crosstowner, early, early morn and Hull's Paragon Railway station, regular readers would probably be able to deduce that the second member of the partnership is yrs trly. And having deduced that fact (which I can confirn), the same regular reader might be aghast. "Has he taken leave of his senses?" they might say "Surely, our friend, and PhD candidate MJ etc cannot have resumed commuting? Why it seems like only two years ago that I was reading, with horror, tales of the (delayed) 7.37 to Leeds". Shaking their head, the regular reader may decide to read on, but I imagine that some would make themselves a very strong cup of coffee before deciding whether to forge ahead - although (and as will be discussed in another post) there may be some debate on whether you can 'forge ahead' with reading.<br />
<br />
To allay some immediate fears, it is not the (delayed) 7.37 that we are intending to rendevous. And, having rendevoused, the Crosstowner wont join me on the train, but will stable in a quiet berth, near the employees rest rooms, at Hull Paragon station. And it is not 7.37am that is our temporal target, but the slightly earlier time of 7.07. And as a final piece of essential information, the destination is not the hideous metropolis of Leeds, but the much more attractive city of York, where I have enrolled on a course leading to accreditation known as CELTA necessitating a month of travel, of which, half way through I am. 'Why' may be addressed later, but lets return to the immediate (recent) past present and the scenario we opened with, the Crosstowner thundering across Pearson Park, breaking through the early morning mist like a warhorse on the fields of Agincourt.<br />
<br />
We roll into Hull Paragon Interchange Bus/Railway Station/Taxi Stand at 6.45 and I ruminate, as I glance at the sign, on the fact that if, half way through my commute, the undecided nature of Hull Paragon is a source of growing irritation, I have much to be grateful for that this commute is not permanent. I breeze past coffee stand No 1 - not open - and head for WH Smith, vendor of newspapers and magazines. Those with long memories may recall a running battle between proprietor of said store and self, based around my refusal to insert the word 'Thank you' into every utterance. I walk into his store, grab a pack of gum and stick it on the counter with the exact money, wave cheerily without a word, especially 'thank you' - as his face rapidly ascends to puce - and walk out. Or rather, I try to, because he calls out '!Excuse me sir'. Actually, if I had to use phonological symbols, I could represent what he said better, because the ! is really a strangled 'Oi!' which he realizes half way through he is not allowed to say because of corporate customer care policy (WH Smith is a franchise in railway stations) so he transmangles the 'Oi!' halfway through utterance and starts his sentence sounding a bit like our cats when they are particularly annoyed by the rain. However, he makes it clear with his follow-up that I should return to the counter.<br />
<br />
Stretching his palm out expectantly he says "Thank you, sir, I need to scan the gum". He is <i>just </i>short of waggaling (please note the spelling is deliberate to emphasize just how much he wanted to waggal at me) his fingers impatiently. I wont be pushed around, so I say:<br />
<br />
'Cant you just scan another pkt of gum?'<br />
<br />
His near- waggaling escalates into near-waggagaling: <br />
<br />
'Cant do that, sir! Need to scan for stocktaking. The Gum' (an order, linguistically an imperative, near waggalling reaching new peak of intensity).Thank you' (an expletive, socio-anthropologically a challenge to a death match).<br />
<br />
'Well I've torn the packet now' I say, indicating an unreadable bar code.<br />
<br />
The near-waggagalling becomes the full waggagal, indicating I should hand over the bar accompanied of course, with a curt 'Thank You' (phonologically his 'thank you's' have also become shorter). He looks at the packet in disgust 'Technically, that's shop lifting, you see' he says 'until its been scanned'. While saying this he's trying to scan the half open pkt o'gum with its damaged bar code. He realises very quickly this is impossible so he redoubles his efforts exaggeratedly sweeping the gum past his scanner, sighing dramatically.He contorts his body, twisting his upper arms so he looks as if he's doing an impression of a nesting ostrich, but the pkt o'gum remains unscannable.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, I am amazed that I have practically been accused of shoplifting, so look for support to the growing line behind me with a sceptical raising of the eyebrows and equally theatrical nod towards puce-face intended to be visible to my audience. There are not sympathetic tuts or wry smiles, indeed no support is evident and there's no sign of an incipient constituency either : queue-ers in WH Smith at this time of the morning are, by and large, a certain type of Middle England commuter, the type of person who tolerates losing three hours of every single day travelling to work on a crappy rail system and buys the same middle brow newspaper which regularly reports on the crappy railway system and inhuman job market that makes people travel ludricrous distances to hold down a-shitty-job-in-a-financial-institution-that-caused-the-unemployment-in-your-home-town-that-means-your-life-is-just-a-procession-of-transferals-from-metal/train-box-to-concrete/office-box in the first place and who thinks these reports are about other people. For commuters like this, utterly self absorbed, life is 'that's just the way it is' and things are done a certain way because....well just because. Buying gum without scanning the bar code or four 'thank-you's' is a hanging offence. I receive no support; instead I am tutted at (we have discussed the etiology of English tutting before and I wont repeat the discussion here). <br />
<br />
I get my gum in the end, a definitively Pyrrhic victory, and wander over to Pumpkin, the notorious coffee franchise people may remember from my exploits as a Leeds-bound commuter. At one time relations with the Pumpkin staff were not good, following an incident involving a ham sandwich and a croissant, but over the last year or two , the Pumpkin staff and I have grown closer.<br />
<br />
'Where'y off to t'day then love?' says Lindsey as I gesture vaguely, which she inteprets (correctly) as 'tea with a little bit of milk' <br />
<br />
'York, again' I say. I've explained to Lindsey several times over the previous two weeks that:<br />
<br />
1. I <i>used</i> to travel to Leeds but dont anymore<br />
2. On Thursday evening I go to Beverley<br />
3. Now I go to York every day.<br />
4. Occasionally I go elsewhere <br />
<br />
'Oh thats right,...' says Lindsey '....there you go love (handing over the tea).....I forget where you're off to ...cant keep track of all your travelling'.<br />
<br />
That someone who works in a railway/bus station/taxi rank is surprised that someone they regularly meet at (and because of) a railway station, should travel a lot is itself surprising, but Lindsey is lovely- bright, bubbly and friendly. I hand over £1.80 for my cup of disgusting tea and tell Lindsey 'Cheers. Thanks. Ta! See you later'.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535783763281818827.post-90231878962322833702013-11-23T10:55:00.001+00:002013-11-23T10:55:13.274+00:00ROH 3: The Full English Breakfats<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I acknowledge that this final installment on the ROH eventuates quite considerably after said vacation. Notwithstanding, and with all the usual excuses, I shall plunge onwards , if only for the sake of completeness.<br />
<br />
<i>As a recap, we are somewhere hot with a pool</i>.............<br />
<br />
It may just be that I lack the necessary perspicacity, but I cannot tell, at a glance, that the locals of somewhere-hot-with-a-pool (SHWAP) are lazy, at least not without the benefit of a good meal inside me. The subject of a good meal crops up in the following account but we are all driven by forces and emotions we cannot control - or at least the Racists later told me - and one of my driving fears, at least as far as these accounts go, is that a true(ish) record unsequentially told may miss something vital, so I will start at how it started.<br />
<br />
It is one am and I am drunk. This in itself is not unusual, but more unusual is the RHB is also drunk, ditto Skarra, who I have seldom.....correction never......seen so regularly blotto. Perhaps that's why we engaged in conversation with the Racists, but perhaps it was just the good mood engendered by sunshine, exercise under said sunshine and satisfying food. Much to my surprise, the couple that join us at the bar appear drunker than us if their attempts to mount the adjacent bar stools, resembling as they do those of eager puppies trying to climb a smallish step. That they can have achieved a more drunken state that us is surprising, and frankly a little offensive, but not nearly as surprising and offensive as thei introductory remarks:<br />
<br />
"Fucking Hell" shouts the female version "My fuckin oldest daughter's just spent two hours holding her sister's fucking placenta. Those Fucking twats in the National Health Service."<br />
<br />
The Racists are from Hull.<br />
<br />
I look at our Greek host, a family man who own the bar and the apartment complex. He smiles, perhpas a little tentatively<br />
<br />
"Hi Angela, what are you drinking?" he asks politely.<br />
<br />
"I NEED a fucking drink" says the elderly lady "Gimme a gin. Double".<br />
<br />
She then proceeds to describe the chaos that the "Fucking twats" in the National Health Service have caused by not turning up to her younger daughter's unexpected early delivery of progeny until called, including repeating a gynaecological description of the birth until we all understood that it was a messy affair. Having offended our host via an entirely culturally insensitive disregard for acceptable topics of conversation, she slumps exhausted at the bar with a final "Fucking.........twats".<br />
<br />
"You're from Hull, arent you?" I ask.<br />
<br />
"Born and bred" she says ignoring that breed isnt just the physical process of development but is usually considered to include some instruction in decorum as well.<br />
<br />
"We live in Hull" I say brightly " its great"<br />
<br />
This is all it took for the Racist to launch into a well rehearsed diatribe on how Hull <i>used</i> to be great but is now crap. Lnes of 'argument' include:<br />
<br />
"They get all the housing - and I should know I am responsible for allocating public housing in the North End"<br />
<br />
"I lock my car doors when I drive down Newland Avenue - its like driving through a foreign city" <br />
[Note: estimated BME population of Hull is about 8% of the total population and we live in Newland Avenue near the University where there are quite a few international students.]<br />
<br />
"I'm terrified of them burkhas - you dont know whether there's a man under one with a gun or a knife"<br />
(This said in relation to local bus services).<br />
<br />
"Why did they have to come to Hull? Arent there enough crap places in their own country?" <br />
<br />
"I'm not racist but (yes the male version did actually say this or an anlaog of) unless they (?) stop them (?) there will be violence on the streets just like there used to be."<br />
(The logic of this, and the historical accuracy escapes me but it was said in response to my objections to their comments.)<br />
<br />
Now it should be noted that early in the diatribe, RHB and Skarra with drew from the conversation, on reflectoin a wise decision and an option which was open to me. I however was drunk enough to think that I could use reason and logic to persuade them, in a non-confronatational way, that not only were their words offensive and ill-chosen, but that their thoughts were also offensive and ill-chosen with the additional handicap of being wrong. And it should also be noted that while I utterly failed in my attempt, I maintained a calm demeanour throughout, sensitive to maintaining the appearance of harmony in our host's establishment. Unfortunately, this tactic had the opposite effect, so much so that eventually the female Racist screamed at me and told me I didnt know what I was talking about because I was an immigrant too and "as bad as all them".<br />
<br />
In an act of conciliation, and further in the interests of keeping our hosts' establishment peaceful, I offered and olive branch<br />
<br />
"Ok" I said "Let's agree to disagree and I dont think we're going to persuade eachother. I respect your viewpoints and I understand your fears" (I dont and I didnt) "Lets talk about this place... you know it quite well obviously " (they had talked about previous visits and how lovely "the locals" where, while presumably simlutaneously being grateful that he same locals were'nt in Hull)<br />
<br />
The male racist agreed, and chummily slapped my arm "Fair enough" he said " You'll change when you've seen a few things. But I can tell you about this bar - best food on the island"<br />
<br />
"Oh really" I said, grateful he'd picked up the lead "We love food - we're a bit 'foodie' I suppose! What's on the menu here?"<br />
<br />
"I can tell you, my friend" the male Racist said, apprently to me "you can get the Full English Breakfast - thats' sausage, eggs, bacon, beans, toast, hash browns and tomatoes - here for only six Euros".<br />
<br />
I must have looked a bit blank because he re-phrased:<br />
<br />
"Sausage, eggs, bacon, tomatoes, hash browns, beans and toast for only six Euros. That would cost about seven in Cyprus".<br />
<br />
I must have continued looking blank, because he re-re-phrased:<br />
<br />
"In Hull, the full English Breakfast - that's bacon, eggs, hash browns, toast, sausage and tomatoes - would cost about six quid (seven Euros) and no cup of tea included. That's how good the food is here"<br />
<br />
I have to admit, I felt like restarting the argument about immigration again but at that moment, RHB and Skarra announced that they were even drunker than previously so we headed back to our apartments.<br />
<br />
The next day, I recounted the 'conversation' I had had with the Racists to both. As the holiday progressed, two themes emerged as a result of the conversation and my account of it. Frstly, Skarra started laboriously listing every ingredient of every dish, or edible substance, at every opportunity. For example, if we were going to have coffee and a small pastry, he would say "I will meet you for a snack - that's coffee, yeast, flour, sugar, milk and suitable flavourings - at eleven am". The second theme that emerged was that it was obvious that the Racists, despite the apparent detante of the evening, had not forgotten and not forgien and that Not only I, but RHB and Skarra, had been tarred with the same shameful brush of being tolerant and not-Fascist. When any of us went to the pool, either communally or individually, the Racists would sit glaring at us, sipping gin and beer and eating bacon butties, chunnering under their breath "there's the liberals, look at them with their offensive beliefs in the fundamental equality of human beings".<br />
<br />
It got so bad that none of us felt comfortable going to the pool bar which was sad becasue the host was very nice and it was close enough to our aprtment that even very drunk you could still get home. Thereforeone night, I attempted a reconciliation, heroically seeking to take the burden of being labelled as socially divisive from my fellow do-gooders' shoulders so that they at least could get drunker near to home. I approached the Racists - who none of us had spoken to for two weeks- at the bar.<br />
<br />
"Hey Guys" I ventured "Erm...."<br />
<br />
I was about to say, in the interests of reconciliation, that despite our introductory conversation, were werent really all that tolerant and in fact were all suspicious of Klingons (an identifiable ethnic minority), which nearly made us Racists too. I have to confess that this was a bit of a lie - Skarra has declared his respect for Klingons and an interest in eating 'Ghaa' on more than one occasion - but what the heck, I thought, we are on holiday somewhere warm with a pool - you cant fight fascism every day.<br />
<br />
The female rascist interrupted me. "Its ok" she said " We were a bit over the top the first night. We dont really hate immigrants - not all of them anyway-and I think we might have got off on the wrong foot......."<br />
<br />
{The English love of euphemism needs to be commented on here: 'getting off on the wrong foot' implies a regrettable, but mutual misunderstanding between two people who, it is implied, largely share values. If I were being pedantic, I would say that we didnt get off on the wrong foot, rather, a racist met and anti-racist and had an argument. Wrong footedness had nothing to do with it, the basic problem was incompatible world view or weltenschauung. }<br />
<br />
I realised I had not been listening and the racist was still droning on about how she wasnt racist it was just that she could'nt tell if the five foot one inch tall person dressed in a burkha she had once seen was a female or a strapping male and as she was in a vulnerable place subject to terror threat (the No15 bus to Orchard Park) her hatred of everyone in 'ethnic' clothes was hence justified ".................but despite all that I think its fear rather than that I dont like them as people" she said.<br />
<br />
I was temporarily staggered. I had just not-listened to the closest a biggot will come to admitting that the fault is not one of Other, but rather a trait that they themselves ought to 'deal' with . I remember thinking to myself that rapprochment would not get closer - at least not Somewhere warm with a pool. I bought them a drink and said something about 'well that's good news' (at which female racist looked puzzled) and was enjoying the conversation dying as conversations do between people who have nothing to say to eachother, not even argument. The atmosphere reached a level of true tranquil serenity as the conversation breathed its last - it was so dead we may all have been utterly alone - then the female Racist said conversationally "Well, you know after all that fuss, we dont really know anything about you and your 'friends'...." she said (she and hubby harboured the idea that Large, self and Skarrat were in a menage a trois) "...what do you all do , for work you know, and why did you come here?" Despite the territoriality of the way she said "here' , the question was I believe well intentioned, the type of information she would need when describing to her friends back home the wierdos she had met. I answered for all of us, shorthand (and therefore I acknowledge not entirely accurately but I wanted to be back with my imagined lovers) :<br />
<br />
"Oh we're academics, you know, RHB and Sk psychologists and I'm a kind of linguist..." I noticed a strange look developing on her face but carried on ".....and this isnt our type of holiday really... you know me and Sk usually go for a bike ride, last year we did coast to coast ..."<br />
<br />
The explosion caught me somewhat by surprise "FUCKIN CYCLISTS !! AT THE FUCKING UNIVERSITY !!! FUCKING .........................I HATE CYCLISYS.....FUCKING HI VIZ TWATS........FUCKIN UNIFUCKINVERSITY.....GET AREAL JOB......FUCKIN SNOBS..........."<br />
<br />
I left shortly after and have not seen the World's Best racists since. The next day our trois (sans menage) flew home . One of the first things we did on arrival back in the UK was purchase a full English breakfast (vegetarian option). <br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535783763281818827.post-4044668796347231732013-08-07T16:23:00.001+00:002013-08-07T16:23:17.744+00:00ROH 3: somewhere hot, with a pool<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
By the time yrs trly reaches somewhere-hot-with-a-pool, it is too late: too late that is for the expectation that a portion of life would be spent not considering the emotional, psychological and physical needs of cats (which can be summed up as "feed me but dont expect gratitude"). The cats have taken over the balcony and the timetable. Now this may sound as if I am complaining for comic affect about RHB's disposition (which some would describe as 'obsessed') towards cats. And this claim is true, I <i>am</i> complaining toward such a comic effect. But I - like so many of us - am nothing if not hypocritical. i rapidly become obsessed with the cats and their welfare. On the second day, I enquire of RHB:<br />
<br />
"Have you named them yet?"<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4IrJ0gf8M9ewSuv3kstkZNh4csD8Bff73D0NKYpWbHPVNDsW9Xo8Ewd6BHPdppw6DelXCAGx9vdPIAKjViDBSOHYMYBjw_CeQa40NlwfNcxU4TV_jG-Q2HUu1rgo5bXSrapzc1O55H5Dk/s1600/CNV00025.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4IrJ0gf8M9ewSuv3kstkZNh4csD8Bff73D0NKYpWbHPVNDsW9Xo8Ewd6BHPdppw6DelXCAGx9vdPIAKjViDBSOHYMYBjw_CeQa40NlwfNcxU4TV_jG-Q2HUu1rgo5bXSrapzc1O55H5Dk/s320/CNV00025.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
She confirms that she has not. I regard this as an omission, tantamount to crueltly, so the cats are quickly named, based on personality and probable future life experience. In the picture above, the mummy cat is called Hera and from left to right are Luna, Hercules, Loki and Persephone. A large male lurks around picking up scraps but is very shy and never gets close enough for me to photograph. We assume he is the father and name him Zeus. <br />
<br />
The rest of the ROH3/vacation starts according to plan. All of us present (self, RHB and Skarra) have had what soccer writers describe as a 'torrid' time since winter. The plan for this trip is to do absolutely nothing, to try to achieve a state of utter boredom. So the first few days are: rise late-ish, eat leisurely breakfast, feed cats, read book, swim in pool, eat lunch, feed cats, sleep, read, swim in pool, feed cats, go for dinner and drinks, feed cats. It is surprising how quickly a state of utter boredom is achieved using this technique and RHB and Skarra have been at it for days. If you consider that I arrive on what English people call 'the Monday', by 'the Wednesday', adventure is sought.<br />
<br />
During our trips to the small centre where all the identical, built-for tourist bars and restaurants are located, we notice a number of people riding quad bikes. It is decided that temporary possession of such bikes would gain us access to the unexplored mountainous interior of 'somewhere hot with a pool' , and to the far coast (SHWAP is a small island). So we rent a couple of quad bikes for the duration of our stay and have some great adventures, buzzing round the island.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIWmgRon0AKHzWMWjBzygrGuhpMnWy7whyphenhyphenuC0n3GmMhZaATw_JL0EczoGVfiq68Ky442lsDuXt7aSO6OupHU2xSg_7-yqbJCR-P5OIvgzHfBqpjFOhNpYqq6EvrdVMc2AJZZpVYW3qHI4S/s1600/CNV00007.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIWmgRon0AKHzWMWjBzygrGuhpMnWy7whyphenhyphenuC0n3GmMhZaATw_JL0EczoGVfiq68Ky442lsDuXt7aSO6OupHU2xSg_7-yqbJCR-P5OIvgzHfBqpjFOhNpYqq6EvrdVMc2AJZZpVYW3qHI4S/s320/CNV00007.JPG" width="320" /></a> Such activity is, of course, environmentally despicable and dangerous. Both dimensions give a small buzz - it feels naughty to be driving and it feels naughtier to be driving roads which the occasional massive lorry sweeps along. But we get to see some great things including a couple of ancient tombs that are unvisited by the mass of tourists and which overlook a spectacular valley. Skarra and I spend half hour excitedly discussing the location and building a picture of the lives of the people who would have built the tombs 3500 years ago.<br />
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RHB is less enthused by our archaeolgical enthusiasm but assigns herself to scorpion and snake spotting duty while we blunder through the unbdergrowth<br />
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We also explore some stunning bays and swim in (cliche alert) crystal clear waters<br />
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It is an idyllic time and utterly at odds with the experiences of the locals, who thanks to brutal neo-liberal policies of austerity are experiencing massive rates of unemployment, huge rises in the prices of staples and face a bleak future. These conditions, they have been told, have been imposed because they are lazy, have overpaid themselves in the past and because their Government has, egged on by them, added huge debt to the economy that they can never repay. It is via a discussion about this one evening at the poolside bar, that we, having fed the cats, meet The Racists. But that discussion - and all that arose from it - are for another post. For now, I will just end by saying that the conversation occurred at one am while we were being served by a local who had been working since before dawn that day and who didnt appear - at least to us - to be lazy or overpaid. <br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535783763281818827.post-29194640084013266852013-08-02T11:12:00.000+00:002013-08-02T11:13:07.368+00:00ROH3:DFYP 2<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In the last chapter, I noted that Ride of Hope 3 (ROH3), in common with previous ROH's was, comfortingly characterised by disaster/and or chaos. That this pattern should feature was evident right form the inception. Following RHB's strict instructions, and teaming up with Skarra, I rode to Beverley (about 12km depending on route) to purchase a holiday via a travel agent. Neither self nor Skarra had ever done this before, but it seemed like the easiest way to get the process over and done. Online holiday booking can be, in my experience, a black hole. When I have attempted to do this in the past, it has led to some great holidays but only after hours, days, weeks of considering the multivarious options available. I usually compile an excel project with seperate sheets on every holiday within price range, accomodation options, preferences of holiday makers, travel time, onsite expense, political freedom in the destination (UK has often been ruled out as a holiday destination because of this), distance to nearest airport, full UN reports on transmittable diseases in the locality, historical data, local transport sub-connections and full environmental report (I dont want to go somewhere they dont recycle, its very upsetting for some reason). Then I present the full report to my co-holidayers in brief report form which sometimes leads back to the drawing board and sometimes results in an even more complicated process of seperately booking planes, trains, automobiles and hotels. This time, we decided to make the process simpler.We would go to a travel agent, tell them we had 'x' pounds and our criteria were 1. hot 2. pool 3 baggage allowance and buy a holiday in the month of July.<br />
<br />
Skarra and I found ourselves standing in front of bubbly, blond Kelly.<br />
<br />
"We want to go on holiday" Skarra announced, with a degree of superfluity.<br />
<br />
"What, the both of you?" Kelly sang back. [Note; "The both of you" is what many English people say when they mean "You" or in this context "Together"]<br />
<br />
"Yes" we replied.<br />
<br />
Kelly sat forward with apparently increased interest and said "Let me look at The System" for you. [Note "The System" is what travel agents and railway booking clerks call computers]. Kelly click furiously for a few seconds and said "Where do you want to go?". The screen display of The System was turned away from us, but I noticed that a pink glow was reflecting onto Kelly's face.<br />
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"Er, we want to go with my wife" I said hastily.<br />
<br />
Kelly looked at me, and clicked furiously and the pink glow disappeared.<br />
<br />
"Where do you want to go? " she asked.<br />
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Skarra siezed the moment decisively "Somewhere hot" he said "With a pool. In July."<br />
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It is credit to Kelly that we actually ended up with a holiday at all, because this really was the only information we could provide her with. We reached agreement and I paid with my card. As the transaction completed, my cellphone rang. It was RHB.<br />
<br />
"Have you booked the holiday?" she asked<br />
<br />
"Yes" I replied<br />
<br />
"When" she asked<br />
<br />
"In July" I answered<br />
<br />
"Shit" she said<br />
<br />
"What?" I asked<br />
<br />
"Jody's coming" she said<br />
<br />
"When?" I said<br />
<br />
"In July" she exclaimed<br />
<br />
"Oh" I said. <br />
<br />
Ulitimately this Gordian knot was resolved with me on a seperate flight than Skarra and RHB, four days after they left, albeit I had to arrange that flight independently so ended up with little idea of how I would get to them once I was "somewhere hot". In short what happened was RHB travelled to Durham to work with CCP and Jodi four days before the start of her holiday then travelled back to Large Mansions with Jodi, stayed for a night then flew out on holiday the next day with Skarra, Jodi meanwhile flew out the day after (to Rome) and I travelled to Liverpool two days later, then back to Manchester then flew out. <br />
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I wont go into too many details today, because I want to get on to the ROH3/holiday tomorrow and I have run out of time because a paper is demanded of the joint second best academic in the UK, but while RHB was in Durham,I was looking after a nieghbour's cat while she (the neighbour, not the cat) was on holiday. At some point the cat got into a fight. This is normal for cats (Toshack is forever wandering home nonchalantly with battle wounds) and usually the best thing to do is let the wound heal, at most cleaning it with water. But Dave's wound wasnt healing. In fact, three days after he incurred it, it started to smell and turn black. <i>[Two additional pieces of timing are relevant to note here: firstly, our own cats were due their annual booster shots and veterinary check up on the day that I would be alone in Large Mansions (ie the day after Jodi left and prior to my travelling to Liverpool). Also , the cats owner was due home on the day after that, in the morning which was ok because I was travelling to Liverpool in the evening. </i>] A decision was forced - Dave had to go to the vet, and it made sense to take him co-incident with my cats.<br />
<br />
I dont know if you have ever placed a cat in a cat box. Some cats enter meekly, others with less willing. In this case, Tosh, Calli and Dave were all reluctant. Now 'reluctance' is quite a mild concept when applied, as a description, to humans. "Reluctance' however turns when it comes to cats and boxes. 'Reluctant' becomes a knock-em-down-and-they-get-back-up, brutish, noisy scrap. Tails, legs, paws and fangs appear from nowhere, forcing lids off and preventing the door of the cat box from shutting. At one point, my arm was in the cat cage under Tosh, trapped in the door while he gnawed my elbow, so i sprayed his face with water, he bit down hard but at least then retreated and I slammed the door shut. I repeated the procedure with Calli, a smaller, more vicious version of the same fight. Then I went to my neighbours for Round Three with Dave. <br />
<br />
The taxi driver I had called refused to take the cats, so I set off the half mile walk to the vets with three cats in three boxes. The boxes swung from the handles, the cats miaowed and hissed, striking out through the doors. My flip flops (I have no idea!) flipped and flopped. AT the vets, Calli and Tosh passed muster, but the vet looked at Dave's wound and said "That's nasty". Three hundred pounds later, I took my cats home, returning for Dave that evening after his treatment, and packed. <br />
<br />
I will eschew an account of the career crisis which was running parallel with these events, suffice to say it has now been resolved. I will also provide no details of the nightmare flight, other than asking the reader to appreciate that of 238 souls on board, 237 of them appeared to be members of a fraternity or sorority loaded up with alcohol, hormones racing, overexcited about their first vacation without their parents. Except they were British. And the journey to "somewhere hot with a pool " from the airport in an unlicensed taxi at four am on cliff hugging roads need not be described here. Suffice to say, that at five am, four days after RHB and Skarra, I arrived. RHB had not wasted the four days, because as I settled on the ground floor balcony, exchanging news with RHB, slowly, from amid the vinyard opposite, there was movement in our direction, which eventually coalesced onto the balcony. RHB looked pleased.<br />
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"Oh yeah" she said to me " I've made some new friends"<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535783763281818827.post-75890751458189422852013-08-01T10:45:00.000+00:002013-08-01T10:45:20.493+00:00The Ride of Hope 3: Dont forget your passport<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
As I write, all in the world is back to something like normal: Burt and Grasshopper are back in NS, Joe and Anna are moving to another unfriendly city, the Legal Eagle is in Glossop. Further, RHB and I are impossibly broke, cats are smug and (self)satisfied, the UK weather's unpredicatable and its politics are predictably glum, Jody Culham's on her way to a conference somewhere, and I really have difficulty smiling with anything like sincerity with too many of the people I know. But the atmosphere at Large Mansions has changed, and not imperceptibly. This is probably the result of this year's Ride of Hope, the Ride of Hope 3: Dont forget your passport. (ROH3:DFYP)<br />
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It all started when Skarra, my regular co-rider on the annual Ride of Hope informed me "I dont think I can be arsed with the Ride of Hope this year". Such lack of enthusiasm is not uncommon in the relationships between Skarra and I. As well as Riders of Hope, we are also band members in Cheek to Cheek, a musical venture that more people have heard of than we have performed to, and few people have heard of us. In fact, since our inception, Cheek to Cheek have recorded no music and performed once in public
after three years of solid practice (and even then it was only me
becasue Skarra was too nervous/busy/not bothered); we
have six songs written, three of them with words, and one where we havent figured out the chorus yet. But Skarra word were not uttered with the blithe lack of concern that usually accompanies our conversations about rehearsal, closely followed by an analysis of SBeyonce's latest track. His eyes were listless, his skin pale and wan. He spoke with a weariness that told a story of mental fatigue, physical stress and emotional turpitude. And I was familiar with some of the reasons for this through my proximity to RHB who is Skarra's colleague: it has been a hard year in academia in the UK, particulalry locally. It was clear I needed to adopt a sensitive line.<br />
<br />
"Again" I said.<br />
<br />
"What?" said P (his alternate acronym)<br />
<br />
"You have to say 'I dont think I can be arsed with the Ride of Hope this year again'" I said, "Just so its clear who's fault it is. Not mine."<br />
<br />
Such was Skarra's condition that he did not even rejoin with a comment about who's fault it was we had got lost in a bog, fully laden with panniers, just outside Newcastle that time because someone wanted to see what off-road, fully panniered-up, mountain-biking-on-road-bikes, was like. Instead he just sighed:<br />
<br />
"I dont think I can be arsed with the Ride of Hope again" he said, tiredly. The lack of rejoinder on topic (or non-sequitur rejoinder about Shakira not being as good and artist as Beyonce) was another indication that this was a situation where I needed to conduct myself with Theory of Mind fully engaged, cognisant of, and responsive to, my co-dialoguee's needs and unspoken message. Which appeared to be some sort of attempt to initiate a conversation about how he felt; matters close to the soul men dont often discuss between themselves as readers may know. Consideration was indicated in how I reacted. <br />
<br />
"That's shit" I said "For me. I was really looking forward to a holiday this year. Specifically that holiday. It would have made me very happy. Now you've ruined everything. For me."<br />
<br />
We went on to discuss Beyonce, the origins of agriculture, Game of Thrones Season Three Episode Ten (GOTS03E10) before playing a few songs (it was a typical rehearsal), and the topic was not re-addressed. But the seed was sown. Four weeks later we were in a travel agents booking a holiday to somewhere hot. Our party had grown to include RHB because when I returned home to moan to her that he had ruined my summer we engaged in discourse:<br />
<br />
"Do you know that P doesnt want to do the Ride of Hope this year? Can you believe that guy?" I said "What am I supposed to do this summer?"<br />
<br />
"I've talked to P. about this" she said, "I need a holiday. So does P. Go to the travel agent and book it. The requirements are:<br />
1. hot<br />
2. pool<br />
3. baggage allowance that lets me take lots of books<br />
<br />
You can come if you want. Are you still here?"<br />
<br />
At this juncture two issues need addressing. The first is that regular readers might object to my identification of what is clearly a holiday as a Ride of Hope because the Ride of Hope is an occasionally annual bicycle ride. In response I would argue that the rules of the Ride of Hope do not specifically declare that any riding must be by velocipede, all that is required is that either I or Skarra go somewhere for a reason. I realise that this means that a bus ride to the local shops could be nominated as a Ride of Hope, and to be honest I cant rule that out as a possibility. The second issue is that disaster or chaos features prominently in Rides of Hope. As readers will learn in forthcoming entries, this essential requirement was not omitted in this, The Ride of Hope 3: Dont forget your passport. Indeed, the opening scenes of ROH3: DFYP which find yours truly at home nursing a $300 vets bill for someone else's cat, while struggling with an urgent problem that had potentially career ending implications, and entertaining JC on my own (not that I object to this - JC is brilliant) as a result of RHB's not consulting a calendar, while RHB and Skarra were jetting off to somewhere I had no means to get to and spending all our holiday money on feral cats, confirm this adherence to tradition. As did the rest of the holiday. But those tales are for the nest few episodes. <br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535783763281818827.post-13054217257279485602013-06-02T09:57:00.001+00:002013-06-02T09:57:45.175+00:00Strictly for the BoirdsAt the moment there are two inevitabilities in my life - transcription and cats. Everything else is change and chaos - weather, friends, the city and country we live in, the texture of greying hair, the loyalties in Game of Thrones, even our street. The change in our street is the type of change that is welcomed and is embodied in a public art project I have been involved in for the past year called the Street of Birds and Shadows and was featured in a recent local newpaper story http://www.thisishullandeastriding.co.uk/Street-s-bird-art-finally-landed/story-19132347-detail/story.html#axzz2UkukJvdR I was, however, reluctant to appear in the story for a number of reasons related to both the changinging and inevitable circumstances I described above in that I knew the weather would be rubbish (UK and climate change is a bad combination), it would interrupt my transcription, and a photo of my greying hair at the moment is a bad idea as I have not had the necessary, and dramatically sensuous, turkish head shave I usually have every month, and thus look a little 'wispy' in the bonce region. Finally, I really dont want publicity in a country where aggressive right wing thuggery is gaining ground and I am actively and vocal in my opposition to those thugs/fascists because I dont want my personal politics and a art poject involving our feathered friends mixed up by said right wings thugs (who arent very bright) and same thugs consequently attacking a piebald wren welded to a metal bollard in a misguided attack on leftists. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535783763281818827.post-6150827959243361842013-05-05T11:16:00.000+00:002013-05-05T20:25:33.402+00:00Jeremiah's Universal Glasses<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
First of all, I know the frequency has dropped off again somewhat. Life, after threatening to become completely miserable - thereby inspiring another round of excellent writing - has become barely tolerable again thus the writing has suffered. Amazingly, this post is alomost completely positive. <br />
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First stuff is that as you re all aware, another reason for paucity of writing at present is that I will not write about my experiences in research - which give rise to many humourous/notewrothy incidents - because I am researching <i>people</i>. I will not write about people without their fully informed consent in respect of many of the situations I find myself in because these situations very often reveal something personal or intimate about my research participants. <br />
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But I can recount an incident, where the main thing that is revealed is something about yrs truly, namely, what an idiot one is and how everybody should be taken down a peg or two from time to time. Incident occurred during the course of what I will refer to as my fieldwork, although of course its not in a field and doesnt seem like work. Actually, the incident has a precedent which I am minded I need to tell in order to proceed. That precedent involved the demon drink, myself and my perennial friend JJ (a former member of an otherwise, in too many cases, a lamentable profession - see Obama's sickeningly 'matey' speech to the US Press Corps at the annual Whitehouse Press dinner - I remain convinced that good journalists are an increasingly endangered species). JJ's professional status incidentally, is incidental. Anyway, self and JJ met one evening intending to consume a couple of beers while watching football and chewing the proverbial fat. Co-incidentally, both of us were experiencing work circumstances that were not ideal, so the football match watching was rapidly abandoned for a moan fest, and the couple of beers transmuted into buckets of the stuff - each drink a kind of ante post militant two-fingers to our respective employers the following day "Another ? Why not ! F**k them and so what if I'm hung over tomorrow". <br />
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Of course, it goes without saying that this kind of activity does absolutely no harm to the employer at all unless of course he is in a different pub cursing his workers with his friend PP, the ex-thought leader and getting similarly, but reflectively drunk but its unlikely that they are, because the type of people who rise to the head of the organisation we are both involved in, are they type of people who have plotted and planned to get to the top of this tiny organisation, and who spend most of their waking hours working out how to stay at the top or improve their position. These little bosses - 'petit boss'?- have not time to go and get drunk because their work (which isnt work at all but is actually self aggrandisement) is too important to them to waste any time on socialising. (ref also to Nickson/Large's Theory of Sociopathic Leadership). And these people, these bosses, do this manoeuvering, this ruthless venal self promotion within the confines of a tiny organisation that, when the corollary of "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire" is written about Western Democracy, will not even feature in a footnote about a footnote. All of which is essentially what self and JJ were saying because one of our respective bosses had been caught in flagrante with a lady of the night. Which itself is not such a bad thing - I personally dont problematise other people's sex activities - but the bosses organisation is an organisation whose mission includes, among other things stamping out the sex trade on the grounds that it exploits women. What we were railing against was hypocrisy, cant, hyperbole and hubris in the highest - and lowest - places. We were drinking the beer as a Socratic sacrifice in a fight that was fundamentally about justice. Plus, we observed, this particluar boss's breath smelt and he was ugly and stupid. And fat. And a twat. <br />
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After several hours of such revelry, we were extremely hungry, so we went to a local pizzeria, staffed mainly by migrants. It is not a particularly good pizzeria, but it is close. And it is not particularly cheap, but it is close. And , inaddition to being close, it is friendly. So it is friendly and close. Inside the pizzeria, there is nothing apart from a counter, two chairs for waiting and an amusement arcade punch bag. For some reason (er Beer? - ED) we decided that we would 'play' this amusement arcade punch bag. So we entered a huge amount of money into the pay slot, the punch bag lowered and we each had three attempts to hit is as hard as possible. It is at this stage that the inherent contradictions in the condition of being highly (self) educated working class, skilled trade, middle aged men, concious of too many cultural dynamics of liberalism that despise machismo but with enough remaining connections to background where the ability to punch was one with the ability to breathe as a survival skill and where one's friendships were also always predicated on the notion that at some point you might have to have a punch up between yourselves emerge. If you have successfully parsed the proceeding sentence, you will realise that what I am saying is that while pretending to take the game in a light hearted fashion, we were also, at the same time, deadly serious. So while my friend JJ pretended that his headbutting of the bag was just 'daft", on my turn, which came next, I felt obliged to perform a spinning drop kick - instantly lethal - 'just for a laugh'. Indeed this continued not for one ridiculously expensive 'go' but until our pizzas were ready. The pizza staff handed us our pizzas with broad grins - we had provided them with quite a show. Executed by a drunk, a spinning drop kick is not the seamless manoeuvre of a trained assassin, but is more like the stumbling chaos of an elephant recovering from a tranquilizer after emergency medical attention. <br />
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The next day, showered and excited, the booze melted away as I was, that day, supposed to be addressing a local college about my work - all part of my participatory approach to research. The local college has a large ESOL (English teaching) provision and staff and students were to attend my lecture and so far the research programme in the college had gone very well. On the whole, my research is performed at a small level - groups, individuals etc etc. But I also like to report back to college where I have researched the results of that research (for obvious democratic and participatory reasons). The manner of report back is up to the college and on this occasion, the college had chosen a lecture setting - big hall, big screens, big powerpoint - as the most appropriate venue. Such an occasion demands some pomp, some ceremony (this is England after all) , so I was re-introduced to the assembled throng - ESOL learners, teachers, Head of School etc. - as the returning lecturer/researcher from Hull University. My research was described (correctly) as a 'first', and internationally reported and presented. It was a big build up. I stepped on to the podium. I have to admit that I was somewhat inflated, in the sense of ego. While the introduction sounded like the type of impressive thing that is said about other people, it is actually true, I thought to myself. Then I probably though "Wow. I'm great". A quick glance at my notes, and I - the internationally renowned academic and lecturer stepped forward to deliver my brilliant summation. It started brilliantly. "Hi" I said. I started to talk. <br />
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After about five seconds I noticed three familiar faces in the front row. The familiar faces were grinning in a manner which can only be described as 'widely'. They were also miming a sporting activity. Collating the previous three sentences into a summary, the three faces were the staff of the pizza parlour from the night before and they were miming 'boxing' from their seats and grinning widely. They did not see a distinguished visiting lecturer, they saw a drunken bum imitating an intoxicated elephant. I was brought back to my earth properly and quickly. I managed to get through the lecture without 'corpsing' and my ego was deflated to the proper size. And I think the students enjoyed the whole research process - I am still getting emails from students who wish to be interviewed. <br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535783763281818827.post-34663804034335512892013-04-07T11:04:00.000+00:002013-04-07T11:04:10.177+00:00What to do in Winter ...Well here at Large Mansions, most of winter has been spent lying under comforting duvets eating. It has to be said that the phrase "lying under comforting duvets eating" is usually concluded with "...and watching television.." but this winter has been so crap that at times we havent even mustered the energy to watch television <i>and</i> eat. It was when we realised that we had actually been utilising out heating for six months of the year - last year it was barely three - and that we had accomplished almost nothing of interest that I decided to act.<br />
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The question of how you know that you have accomplished almost nothing of interest is itself an interesting one: how do you actually know? I mean most people are not really interested in what other people say and most conversations are just spent waiting for the other person to finish so you can tell the other person about yourself. This means that when you meet someone, perhaps in the street, even if you have just returned from the moon in a spacevehicle that you have built yourself and tell your neighbor about this extraordinary escapade, your neighbour is just waiting for you to finish describing the Sea of Tranquility so they can can you how well little Ben is doing at school and while all the other kids in his class' reading is Key Stage Two his is already at the next Key Stage and they have high hopes that his younger brother will be as good because he can already say 'treacle' without a 'w' pronunciation and dont you like his cute hat and your wife is a psychologist isnt she so she will know all about how impressive Ben's achievements are. Even if you patently explain that the Sea of Tranquility is some 380,000 kms away (which is further away than Ontario is) and repeat for the 2556th time that RHB is not a child psychologist (also knows nothing about Psychic powers, counselling or prisoner rehabilitation, teaching and does not regard the period that the students do not attend University as a 'holiday' and is therefore not 'off' all summer) and that neither of you are interested in child development (an entirely seperate and worthy but massively misunderstood by the authors of children academic discipline) it is futile. Note that I didnt , in the foregoing - qualify how far away Ontario is from what. Those of us who have been there will understand that this is because to do so is unnecessary.<br />
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How then do you know what you have/have not accomplished? Self and RHB know we had accomplished very little because I am in weekly Skype contact with people who PG Wodehouse describes a 'the ageing p's', namely my parents. The initail enquiry on both sides durng these conversations is "What have you been up to?" and the discovery that the answer from us is 'much less than a pair of octegenarians' is salutory. If we cannot achieve at least the same level of activity of someone (my father) who by his own admission fully expected to be dead twenty five years ago, then we have problems. <br />
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Back to the decision, which was to rock our world with some noteworthy achievement or other. We both had our projects. RHB would take the unprecedented step of doing something domestic - baking. And I would fix a Newell post. I imagine that some are currently reeling in shock and confusion. Shock , because RHB's tolerance for domestic - particularly traditionally female - tasks is legendary in its negativity. Even when attempting a standard cook of a single meal, I will often have to repair the kitchen wall (after eating a usually acceptable meal) of stab marks from the kitchen knife. Actually I exagerrate - I say "often" when I have only had to repair the wall twice in living memory - although "twice in living memory' is also the amount of times RHB has cooked. Nevertheless, baking - on the grounds of providing us with lower fat and zero-processed-sugar cakes, cookies and so forth- is the task that RHB set.<br />
<br />Confusion may have reigned over my stated project which was repairing a Newell post because you may not kn ow what a newell post is. The image below not only shows a newell post it also shows why I need to repair it:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsBKecNBRKWz2bdu7dEunOWVPjQMJfMnGc07aFlj-FwCtsaDIw2vo9eKiV4ilS5-gtgNXy2GJzn3YKbT3FLmTWl2gKKNt0Fclf3V5KUaf8FiNW_KCfuClpyNhV_GcbD-Lf1x6P8aV2wk05/s1600/IMG_0010.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsBKecNBRKWz2bdu7dEunOWVPjQMJfMnGc07aFlj-FwCtsaDIw2vo9eKiV4ilS5-gtgNXy2GJzn3YKbT3FLmTWl2gKKNt0Fclf3V5KUaf8FiNW_KCfuClpyNhV_GcbD-Lf1x6P8aV2wk05/s1600/IMG_0010.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
Thus a newell post is the most sturdy part of a stair rail / bannister/spindle construction. It is the first post you will find when encountering a set of stairs. often ornately carved it is built into the structure of a staircase -it cannot be merely decorative. which is why I could not simply rip this out and replace it, because it is part of a structure that passes through two sets of (finished) floors and eventuates (I have the Boris Johnson - that c*** b******* C*** b888**#@! who is also probably the most dangerous politician in the UK right now - to thank for the word 'eventuate') sub floor attached to the foundations. It is, in one sense, just a post, but it is a very important post.<br />
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Despite this post's importance, it had been viciously hacked by the previous denizons - or the landlords who owned - what we now know as Large Mansions. This had been done during some 'repairs' and fall under the general category of "architectural crimes of the Eighties". This activity was perfect. It was indoors, quite difficult but not impossible, indoors, satisfying and most importantly indoors.<br />
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We called a house meeting to notify the other inhabitants of Large Mansions of possible disruption and negotiate the terms of said disruption. The inspiration behind calling a house meeting came, perhaps surprising, from encounters with some people we have met in the street who consult and negotiate with their children on important family issues. I know of someone who wanted a weekend away, over a Bank Holiday weekend ( no work Friday to Monday inclusive for non-UK readers) , for some recreational hill walking and who had to hold protracted negotiations with his eight year old child to obtain permission for such an absence. When terms were finalised they included that my friend should bring back presents for the child on his return, spend extra time with it doing crap child things when he got back, promise not to go too often (this was the parents' first solo time away in eight years and was possibly the first and only time he would be allowed to do this in eighteen years), a nd cut his part of the weekend short and change his planned itinery so as to be back in time to watch Mr Dibbles (or something) on tv on Sunday afternoon thus missing a whole two days hiking. The parent seemed quite relieved that he'd been allowed to go hiking at all so was quite happy with his side of the deal. The child obviously (presumably because of the negotiations) coped well with the absence because, returning anxiously on the final day (while the rest of us enjoyed a glorious day in the hills) to watch Mr Dibbles with his child , the parent discovered that the child had fucked off to a friends to play football and would'nt be back at all that evening as the kids were having a sleep over. <br />
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Actually the house meeting was a bit of a damp squib. The cats didnt care have any particular objections to our plans and we were very impressed with the grown up way they not only attended the meeting but kept awake for a small part of it. People talk a lot about child development but in the field of feline development a cat that has holds its attention on one thing, at someone else's behest, for more than three seconds is a remarkably focused, driven individual. With approval from the whole household, I set about restoring the said newell post over the next few weekends. It involved carving tiny little bits of wood to approximate sizes, gluing these on to the old post using matches as dowels, sanding and filling, resanding, filing. It was an intricate, three dimensional puzzle and utilised the finer skills I had accumulated over twenty years in theatre and furniture making etc. This is the process in some of its stages:<br />
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Initially when we bought this house I did think that most of my work would be such fine work and the lumpen work would be subcontracted out to those more used to it. That didnt happen, we have done everything. The next stage is paiting which is RHB's job.<br />
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I have to admit the photos arent the best and because of the differnet colours of filler wood and so on it looks very patchy, but I can assure you the post looks brand new. The best way to see what has been done is by looking at the second photo in the sequence of five above. It shows how near the top part of the post the urved detail is completely missing. The photos subesquent show that detail replaced and restored. Once RHB has painted I will post agian. <br /><br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535783763281818827.post-40569377405068993772013-03-23T14:42:00.003+00:002013-03-23T14:42:36.072+00:00Red Letter DayIt is three weeks until the start of the cricket season. It is the time of year when you begin to think of summer and sitting outside all day in a pleasant village green, sipping a gradually warming pint of Old Marsden's ale, watching men in white flannel strike leather balls with willow bats. Mid afternoon you might have a snooze in the sun while butterflys flutter-by then towards evening, as swallows swoop over the field, and it eventually turns cool-ish, you slip on a light jacket, applaud the players from the field and return home, languished, pleasantly snoozy, civilised.<br />
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Toshack wakes me at five thirty as usual, mithering to be allowed out to play. Not for the first time, I curse the fetish for insulation that prevents me from installing a cat flap which would allow him a degree of autonomy, but I get up anyway, wander downstairs accompanied by a constantly miaowing cat (who seems to think that I might be in danger of forgetting exactly why he awoke me with a precisely inserted claw up the left nostril) and head for the back door. We open the door together, Tosh pawing at bottom, me using the handle and I chuck a few dentabite treats into the garden so he can forage. Three weeks before the start of the cricket season, the treats sail into the air before landing in four inches of virgin snow. It is not just cold in the UK right now, it is 'bitter' and it wasnt until we returned here six years, three months, fifteen days and seven hours ago that I truly appreciated (or perhaps remembered) what 'bitter' means. It is not cold, it is Cold. The Cold in this part of the world, even at only minus 1 or 2C is wet, flaccid, heavy and slow. It does not make you want to go out and fool around, it makes you want to be somewhere else. If a door opens, the Cold floats in, like a bad smell, and hangs around - it is not dispelled by the warmth inside, it infects it, wetting it, cooling it and loading it. In short, it puts me in a very bad mood - Cold has a purpose, sure, but on March 22nd, that purpose is long gone. It is time for Warm. <br />
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Today though, I dont mind the bad mood, as I have some letters to write. In true British style, they are all letters of complaint and the bad mood will sharpen the words. As an aside, and in truth, I cannot remember the last time I wrote a letter that was not of complaint, although I am sure I have done so at some point. But while in the past , I would write letters of complaint at unscheduled (though hardly spontaneous) intervals, these days I tend to consider the task of complaint letter writing a unitary activity - each letter feeds the other until the general mood reached can be described as apoplectic. It is very satisfying.<br />
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While the mood has a unitary flavour, though, the technique for each complaint is slightly different. For example, I start with a letter addressed to a whole row of houses outside of which a driver attempted to kill me and (worse), damage the Crosstowner. The reason the letter has to be addressed to the whole row of houses is that the car that was driven (very badly) cut in front of me to access the driveway that leads to a parking area behind this row of house. In doing so, it cut across me, and the sidewalk at about twenty miles per hour, missing the front wheel of the bike by about five inches. I fell off, of course, but by the time I had regained my feet, the car had disappeared into the parking area which has residents only card access. So I could not reach the driver to talk to him or her about their idiocy. Therefore I decide on a tactic of writing to every house (about twenty) that has access to the parking area. The letter is deliberately handwritten, and (returning to a theme regular readers will recognize) will be badly photocopied - deliberately so that it will stand out from the junk mail everyone recieves. The technique here is to be angry and cold, definitely unthreatening, superior and matter of fact. Dont say "hazardous driving" when you mean "murderous stupidity". Dont say "I would advice you to consider your actions" when you mean "You should not be allowed to drive". There's no attempt at dialogue - you are just telling someone they are an idiot and expecting no return. Be offensive (as in 'this letter will offend someone's defensive sensibilities' but not coarse and dont exagerrate) you are not trying to critique or engage in constructive criticism, you are simply pointing out that someone has irredeemably sinned because they are (objectively) a dickhead. <br />
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The letter of complaint to the Rail company - First Hull trains in this case - needs a different approach. You want a response in the form of compensation for their actions in cancelling every train (without notice) one Sunday evening, effectively stranding you in London overnight. However, you dont want - because it infuriates you beyond apoplexy, beyond stratospheric, and definitely beyond sanity - a marketing driven "Customer Services", mangled syntax (non-deliberately), mealy mouthed, insincere, meaningless...............[and yes, I know there is the occasional Philosopher, Scientist and anthropologist who read this blog and objects to the word meaningless but I would argue that meaningless - as in 'insensate and lumpen' - is entirely appropriate because when these English customer services departments send these apologies, they may as well send a sample of laminate flooring instead, because the words bear about as much relationship to any action they may take, any emotion they may feel, any lesson they may learn or any message they wish to convey as an entirely unrelated, randomly chosen, useless artifact would]............where was I... oh yes..... insincere, meaningless, drivel-atious, anti-poetic, generic plops of language apology, especially one that starts "We are sincerely .....".and includes the phrase "..for any inconvenience you may have ......" . I mean, of course, I was incon-fucking-venienced, I would'nt be writing if I was not. So the trick is to try to get the money and dissuade the rail company from apologising and/or thanking your for being a 'customer". So the letter here has to imply that you will take the matter further through appropriate channels if you dont get satisfaction so thus has to have an air of authority and confidence. And it also has to be logical, evidence driven and factually correct. If it can also be sarcastic to the extent that the company doesnt want to apologise to you, that is a bonus, but you also want to establish a dialogue - albeit a short one - in which you get some compensation. It is a fine balance and takes time but that is ok because the time it takes makes you more angry and the angrier you are, in preparation for the next letter, the better.<br />
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The next, and for today, the final letter, is a letter that addresses an issue wherein I have not been paid for work done. Not being paid for work I have done is an issue that drives me past apoplexy, beyond stratospheric anger and into the realm of searing contempt (for the non-payer), while not loosing the aforementioned apoplexy and anger. If it is not immediately obvious to a reader why non-payment for work is about the worst thing you can do to someone - outside of illegal activities like violence and murder- then you, dear reader, are probably living in the kindom of searing contempt as a contemptee, although having said that, the kingdom of searing contempt is quite big and includes provinces where contempt is also focused on people who have made others unjustifiably redundant, denied wage rises or dub themselves 'thought leaders'. Here though, it is doubly complicated, because you also want, need actually, to work for the person on subsequent occasions (employment does not grow on trees even three weeks before the start of the cricket season), and you want/need the money. It is a horrible letter to try to write: do you go with the apology approach, whereby you apologize for any misunderstanding and offer to take whatever the contemptee will give you? Or do you try to draw a line in the sand: the "I'm worth something to you and this is the way its gonna be.." approach? In my experience, neither work (with any reliability) because the reason the contemptee hasnt paid you in the first place is a reflection of what they think of you ( which is not a lot) and anything you write either puts you in the position being someone who is thought of as 'not-a-lot-and-a-pushover' or 'not-a-lot-and-a-pain-in-the-ass'. I half consdier going with apology when RHB announces she is going shopping, and can we afford to buy 'X". The anger rises "Why the F*** am I apologizing to them c***?" , so I draft a work of art full of righteous anger. The result is beautiful, dripping with sarcasm, vague references to the legal position (actually in the UK there is nothing you can really do if someone choses not to pay you), commentary about the social contract, allusion to the Tolpuddle Martyrs. It is angry, full nostrils flared angry, rising from the sea and smiting angry, Hammer of the Gods angry. And it is contemptuous - 'how petty over such a small sum', 'doubtless their dentist bill is paid' (they have very bad teeth), and it threatens social sanctions - 'surprised because I had heard they were good community members'. I am about to send, when RHB returns and I read it triumphantly. "Well, that gives them every reason not to pay you doesnt it?" she notes. I re-read, she is right - it is brilliant but it is a declaration of war. I go back to the letter and , exhausted by Cold, apoplexy, photocopying and the action of actually using a pen to write something, I draft an 'apology' for putting myself in the position (by dutifully doing work over a period of three months) where I had placed them in the very awkward position of having not to pay me for the work I had excelled in, and an apology for not understanding that they were not going to pay me, a misunderstanding (on my part) that led to me unnecessarily provoking them with requests for the money they had no intention of paying which I had (mistakenly) thought I had earned. I press send. <br />
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