The beggars paid by business not to beg...

The other night I watched a program on the “Fake Homeless”.  We’ve all seen them – the ones who cover their face when you walk by.  Ellie Flynn the presenter was of course horrified that a man called Ashley Sims (of Devon) had taken to posting pictures of the fake homeless on the internet.  “How do you know they are fake?” she asked Mr Sims to which Mr Sims replied “The real homeless don’t beg”.  She then interviewed a real homeless man who explained that he did not want to live in hostels because they were unpleasant places – who says beggars can’t be choosers?  Honestly, these are the people who in the 19^th century would have complained about the workhouses.  Those were the days – when there was work.  A lot of the people she interviewed were begging to fund drug addictions resulting in posters from local police forces along the lines of “Give to beggars and Putin will use the money to manufacture Novichok” etc.  Ms Flynn was most shocked by this.  The beggars included a woman who openly said she regarded it as a “job” and informed us that there were not many options for people like her – it was this or “going on the game”.   No point in, as Mr Tebbit used to say, “getting on your bike and looking for work” when you can get paid sitting on the floor.   

Ms Flynn seemed to want to believe that no one would choose to beg but it seemed to pass her by that the reality is it is better paid for many people than working for the NMW.  To be fair none of these people had actually told people they were "homeless" it was simply a conclusion that most people jumped to - you're begging so you must not have a home...?  I would never beg but you can purchase my novels etc...

Meanwhile Mr Sims had been suffering a backlash against his shame the fake homeless campaign and had set up a “2^nd phase” to his plan – setting up his own hostel/BandB.  Ms Flynn interviewed some of the residents and seemed to get rather depressed that many of them seemed to be on drugs and that there might have been a few fights.  She took Mr Sims to task for this and for giving them money to buy their drugs with.  Mr Sims said that he was simply “looking after the interests of the business community” but the meaning of his words seemed to pass her by… She didn’t seem to comprehend that there was no real difference to Mr Sims giving them the cash for their addictions rather than the general public.  All Mr Sims had done was make the problem visibly disappear by inventing professional druggies.  That is ...people who are paid to sit in a house and be out their head rather than sit in the street and be out their head.  There being no real jobs for such people he had sort of invented them – paying people to stay out of sight.  Well, it’s a career…  Sadly the funders of this endeavour of creating reservations for the tribe of the methadone eventually decided they could not condone the endeavour forever... despite the fact it's almost a direct recreation of the systems many homeless charities use...

This being the well meaning BBC Ms Flynn told us that it was not that simple … although to the police it seemed far too simple.  Asked what happened if people continued to stay on the street after being repeatedly warned and moved on and refusing to move on one PoPo said simply “Prison”.  Well, it’s a home … of sorts.

Unexpected Lady Justice concealed in the Self Serve Area

The other day   I hadn’t shoplifted anything.  I hadn’t stolen anything.  I hadn’t attempted to steal anything but after I had scanned everything the red light had come on and assistant came over.  I’m sure that I scanned everything but the assistant told me politely that I had “scanned that one and that one but not that one and that one”.  So I had heard 4 beeps but only 2 had registered.  

I was found guilty or at least accused by the self serve checkout.

I felt I had to explain that I had scanned everything but the machine had got it wrong but did not.  And yet even though I hadn’t paid yet, even though I hadn’t exited the store and even though there was no mens rea… I felt protesting my innocence would make me seem more guilty than not saying anything at all.  Silence is the best defence.  It is after all only a red light.  Yet now I have broken my silence with this blog ...for if it really came down to a decision between technology and me would I really be okay?  Would justice really prevail?  We will never discover as the assistant simply reset the machine and rescanned the missed items and said as little as possible neither a "sorry" or a "you're falsely accused".

Does the appearance of the assistant mean I have driven through a red light or does the red light merely mean stop?  And why did the machine not stop the process?  It did not exclaim that there was an “unexpected item in bagging area”.  It did not stop bleeping like a dubbing mixer trying to remove the swearing from an episode of "You're Been Framed".  Yet when I had finished the machine was inflamed and flagged me up for potential moral turpitude.  It had decided that on the balance of probabilities I might be either stealing or incredibly stupid.  

Clearly the CCTV if there was any would have cleared me.  But ain’t no one got time to watch that. 

Having worked in shops, of course, I know that I am but one customer and there are hundreds, probably thousands such incidents a week and by the end of their busy shift dealing with up to six customers at a time the assistant on duty would have lost the incident in their memory.  I also have my trusty cloak of white privilege to protect me from mean spirited accusation.  And yet over a week later I still feel uncomfortable about it all.   

Perhaps it is that these creepy contraptions strangely resemble a mixture of Lady Justice to me – scales on one side, the red light of punishment on the other and no eyes between.  Or perhaps it is that they represent the mechanisation of justice – like speed cameras of shopping.   

I notice now the ones in Sainsburys do have eyes... or at least have a camera on each customer and a mirror LCD screen too so that we the customers can watch the supermarket watching us...watching us... watching us...watching us… perhaps they are trying to steal a person's soul? …or show us our own soul?  What profit it a man if he legally pay for his groceries yet loseth his own soul to a machine?

Annuity? Nah just give me the money

Another day...  Another incomprehensible pension statement in the post...   

This one offers me a staggering £1 and 2p a day to add to my state pension when I finally buy an annuity - Or £372 a year.   

There is they claim (inflation adjusted for 2038) £15300 in the fund.  They expect me to retire at 65.  If I live to the average male lifespan of 80 years that will mean the annuity would pay out a total £5,580 – about 1/3 of money I have amassed in it.   

I think I see a pattern emerging.  All these plans when it comes to buying an annuity only offer you about a third of the total in the pot.  Clearly this is because of the enormous risk that I should live to be 106 at which point Fidelity would start losing money.  If I assure them that I drink heavily and smoke large Cuban cigars might they perhaps accept that this is unrealistic and let me have some of the £9720 they’re unlikely to pay out before I pop my clogs.  These pensions seem to me to be a licence for financial institutions to accrue cash they never have to part with.

Congratulations to Cotton Traders for the most stupid freebie ever – a watch that does not work?

A man with one watch knows the time.  A man with two watches knows the one on the right isn’t right.  So congratulations then to Cotton Traders for the most stupid freebie ever – a watch that does not work. 

Now to be fair it is a lovely looking watch.  A large face.  Roman numerals.  A second dial in the centre which performs no discernable function whatsoever … but it rather falls down on the primary function of a timepiece …telling the time.  So worse that being useless it is actually a liability as it could make someone late for something.  Fortunately as it had come straight from Arthur Daley’s lock up in a broken box (I’m not saying it fell off the back of a lorry but I suspect it had a bumpy journey) I took the precaution of synchronising it with a timepiece that did work before I put it on.  Otherwise I might have been late for something important................ 

Unlike my grandmother I am not a collector of badly functioning timepieces so do not know what to do with it.  However, I feel in some way it is quite an achievement for anyone to manufacture a watch (presumably) regulated by a quartz crystal (well, it doesn't wind up?) that is ten times less accurate than a mechanical timepiece?  Could it be as simple as it has been in the back of a warehouse so long the battery has gone flat?  I could take it to Timpsons to find out but this would take time out of my day and it might be a speculative investment that does not pay off. 

I can’t return it for a refund because I never paid for it?

So what does one do with it?

I suppose I will have to give it as a present to someone I don’t like or have no respect for … which is presumably how it came into Cotton Trades possession in the first place… and then in to mine.   Or perhaps I could give it to a church jumble sale which is where my granny used to get most of her interesting but not-properly-functioning timepieces from.  I often wonder if, when her time came, they returned there…

Brexit negotiations latest...

Brexiteers: When we leave the EU we can negotiate our own trade deals

Ms May: Can we leave the EU but still remain in the customs union?

EU: Well, no, obviously you can't because your trade deals would compromise ours if you're going to then let in what goods and supplies you want regardless of our customs laws

Ms May: Can't you be a bit flexible on that?

EU: No, by defitinition for a customs union to work we have to negotiate trade deals collectively so we're all doing the same thing at customs?

Ms May: Can't you be a bit more flexible than that?

EU: We said you can keep all our people out and be racist what more do you want?

Ms May: Well, I think my backbenchers would like to be in the customs union but negotiate our own trade deals

EU: I thought we'd just explained that that that would make the custom union its self complete bollocks?

Ms May: Yes, you did but I don't see why you can't be a bit flexible.

EU: GO AWAY!

Ms May: I'm going to trade our right to negotiate our own trade deals for continuing membership of the customs union

Brexiteers: We're a vassal state!  We could have done it better!  Sack Ms May!

Labour: You know this could all be sorted out with a general election... we have magical powers that mean we could have got that Ms May hasn't

etc

Repeat until the UK crashes out the EU on WTO rules...

Angry Tortoise

The other day I thought I’d switch on the parliament channel in order to delude myself that I’m an intellectual or moral. It reminded me of why I’m no longer so fascinated by politics.  The older you get the easier it is to predict what politicians say before they say it.  Argument for argument’s sake.  Opposition for opposition’s sake.  And that awful smugness that can only come from knowing you’re absolutely right.  

 That said I was just getting into it when Norman Tebbit (now 87) stood up and said something.  It wasn’t anything about the actual legislation or the issue he’d just stood up to make a point about what people of his ideology thought.  Something about free trade.  He said his piece.  Everyone seemed to ignore him.  He sat down again.  It killed the mood.   

Everyone else who spoke had been trying in their long rambling way to understand the legislation and any potential flaws in it but Norman seemed not to be there for that.  He seemed to be there purely to state that he believed in free market economics.  Having stated his creed he resumed his seat.  There was something almost religious about it.  He stood up.  Said words no one really understood and yet they did.  And then he sat down again.  87.  These people seem to live longer and longer.  At least they live longer than the poor who have statistically shorter lifespans.  I’m now so old I remember Tebbit retiring … except Lord Tebbit didn’t retire … he got on his bike looked for people to bore.  It was like watching a very angry tortoise briefly pop his head out of his shell before pulling it back in again.  And then I switched over so don’t ask me what else went on.  

Do lots of lorries really want to park on a Croydon flyover?

I’m never really sure about the format of this blog.  Most things I write attempt to have some structure but this blog in just endless freeform waffle.  A sort of stream of semi-consciousness.  It deals with no important issues, it reaches no radical conclusions, it isn’t particularly funny and makes no great impression in the world.  

Today’s unimportant issue is that of the new parking spaces for lorries on the flyover parallel to the Whitgift Centre.  Croydon being an architectural dumping ground of concrete and tarmac that other towns wouldn’t put up with has 3 flyovers and an underpass.  So for clarity this is the one that goes north from Reeves Corner past Centrale-way and then heads off northwards.

Up until a couple of weeks ago this flyover had three lanes in each direction.  Now it has two and lots of parking places interspersed with chevrons.  Not quite understanding why I decided to park in one.  It occurred to me that this was probably not very safe since traffic is whizzing past at 40 mph on the drivers side so I had to wait for a gap in the traffic to open the door and rush out before I got run over.

Near to where I parked there was a sign telling me that if I parked there I should alight from the passenger side door as it is for authorised vehicles only.   

How one gets authorisation I don’t know.  I suppose one rings the Council and is then told to use their unusable website.  A sign further back seems to suggest they are for trucks and the most reasonable sounding answer I could get from anyone asking around is that they are “for trucks waiting for the town centre”.  

But why should any trucks be “waiting for the town centre”? 

Makee-no-sensee. 

Who on earth wants to park on Croydon flyover? 

Then I thought perhaps I am being cynical but I have now passed that way many times at many different times of day and I never see anyone parked in them.  So what are they for?

After much conspiracy theorising the first answer I came up with is that this is a thinly veiled excuse to make the road narrower and slow down cars.  After all a duel carriageway where one can do 40 doesn’t fit with Croydon’s 20’s plenty for people with no urgency mantra. But can it be more complex that that?  Let’s ask the question again.  Why would trucks be waiting for the town centre? 

I came up with two possible answers. 

1 When the Whitgift Centre is pulled down by Hammerwhatsit/Westfield to build their new tower blocks and shops then there will be a lot of building trucks bringing steel and concrete and taking away concrete and steel.

2 When Brexit happens and we’re thrown out the EU on WTO rules and the trucks are backed up from Dover to London trucks will need more places to pull over.  Could this be a piece of post-Brexit contingency planning?

In the mean time they remain conspicuously empty and the only person I have ever seen being foolish enough to park in them has been me.  Maybe nobody has been “authorised” yet?  I wonder if they ever will be?

If you too have a conspiracy theory to explain these parking spaces and white lines that are at both ends of the flyover ... probably best to keep it to yourself in case people think you're not all there.

The sound man is deaf

After writing to the Council to ask why my noise complaint has been met with total silence ever since the man came round to measure the sound with no equipment and stood around my bedroom in peculiar poses before stating with scientific rigour “it’s worse when you stand over here” I have finally received a reply from the council.

The passage of this letter to my doorstep was fraught with all the civic complexities inherent in managing a quality service.  Firstly the young gentleman wrote to say that he would drop a letter round.  Notice he did not say he would post a letter – after all that takes time and would not be delivering at pace.  Therefore he delivered it in person.  Except of course as I live in a flat and he doesn’t have a key for the main door he could not get in.  Following this failure to see the big picture a new direction was set and someone at the council decided that spending 56p on a second class stamp represented civic value for money.  Eventually then the letter arrived with all the expedition that can be gained by collaborating and partnering with the Royal Mail. The letter states that the case has now been investigated and several visits have been made but on no occasion was a noise nuisance witnessed.

This makes me recall a previous email in which the young gentleman’s boss wrote "Important to note also that myself and Linda Johnson ( Pollution Team Manager) inspected the fan at 02.15 on Sunday 30th September. At the time of our visit we did not hear any impactful noise.” Why they inspected at this time when I specifically told them in writing that the unit only switches on at 5am was at that time a mystery to me but I suppose it is one more visit to add to the “several” they have made before they can ignore the problem.  I have made an important note of it and filed it in my folder of important correspondence.

Interesting the Council’s claim that they have noticed nothing at all in several visits is patently untrue and explicitly contradicted by their communication of 9^th of July 2017 in which they impart

“ Thank you for your email and for taken the time to meet with us last week.

After our meeting we tried to engage the shop but the manager was not available at the time.

We did however, had a meeting at the shop this morning with the manager to discuss your compliant and the possible mitigation measures.

For the extractor fan , they have been advised to install the unit on a vibration mount and to have the unit service on a regular basis with consideration to any planning condition thereof.

With the noise from the fridge unit affecting your bedroom, they have assured that it will be switch off at 7.30pm so not to affect you at night.

I have also requested a detailed programme of operation and service record of the units.

I hope these measures will be adequate to control any noise likely to affect you.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you wish to discuss matter further.

Kind regards”

To be fair.  I have two complaints.  The extractor on the wall below the kitchen and the freezer noise from below the bedroom but it seems disingenuous of the council to pretend that they have said nothing at all about either. 

After imparting that the department can take “no further action” as “on no occasion was a noise nuisance witnessed” – a statement that seems at odd with my own recollection of my conversation with the council minion who came – the letter goes on to advise me that…

“The law allows you to take your own action against a person that you feel is causing noise nuisance.  I have enclosed a Guidance Note explaining how could do this if you want to.”

Most peculiar.  Since when did the Council go about issuing gratuitous free legal advice?  Still... enclose a leaflet they do with considerable detail about how to pop down the Magistrate’s Court and do their own work for them.

Anyway, with winter setting in so the freezers don’t have to freeze as much I think we can put this issue on ice for a while but here for your edification is the Council’s free advice on how to take your neighbour to the Magistrate’s Court for sound nuisance… at your own pecuniary risk of course…to do this you must decide whether you are an average person.

Having told us they can do nothing the Council rounds off the letter by telling one not to hesitate to contact them.  Make up your mind mate!  I suppose one can talk to them as much as one wants (if one disregards the fact that when you phone the council it tells you to use their webstie) but if one wants them to do anything they fall back on the fact this is a discretionary power and they use their discretion to do nothing.  Very odd though for the goverment to around offering free legal advice.  Whatever next... one suspects the number of insoluble problems must be quite large in order for them to do this... or maybe the cupboard is bare... Or... Maybe they're just lazy.

I wish my new washing machine was as thick as the old one

My washing machine has a very high energy rating and naively I thought this somehow related to how much energy it uses.  It does and it doesn’t.  There’s such a thing in business as the cost-quality-time triangle.  A theoretical construct suggesting that there is geometric relationship between cost, quality and time whereby if one side of the triangle is cost, the other quality and the third time then total area of the triangle represents the total amount of bullshit talked by management consultants during the progress of the project.  Therefore in order for the triangle to maintain the same area if one changes the cost one must change the time and quality accordingly, if one changes the time one must change the cost and quality accordingly and if one changes the quality one must change the cost and time – otherwise one will end up with a quadrilateral and even Pythagoras don’t know what that means.

I always thought this was all bullshit until I bought an eco-friendly washing machine.  Although the washing machine is friendly to the environment it is decidedly unfriendly to the user.  Naively I had believed that the eco-friendliness of the machine was related somehow to how well it cleaned clothes.  However, it turns out that instead of making the spin more effective, the drying faster or cycles shorter it seems to manage to be eco-friendly by running extremely long programs.  Worse, it doesn’t tell you what it’s going to do before it does it. 

Instead of, as my old washing machine used to, running through a fixed but variable set of processes it has a number of options which seem, as far as I can work out, to weigh my washing before it starts and then decide the type of program its going to run with virtually no input from the user at all.  It really doesn’t give me any options between selecting the program and calculating how long the program is going to take or what it’s going to do during the program.  You put your washing in and it’s like a game of washing roulette to discover how long the program’s going to take. It does its own thing and woe betide any human with their own opinion.  Seriously it's smugger than Siri.  The core of its job snobbery is that will not allow one to separate the spin cycle, the washing cycle and the drying cycle from each other.  "Oh no I can't dry only," it seems to intone, "I'm a Wahser-Dryer".  Drying Only would make me a dryer and that's beneath me," seems to be the crux of its job snobbery.

It seems to me that my washing machine achieves it’s eco-friendliness by taking potentially forever, doing lots of complicated mathematics that it considers me too thick to want to know about and generally being as bossy as the late Nora Batty.  I wonder sometimes that it doesn’t chase me out the kitchen with a broom and demand that I stop getting under its feet all day.   

Honestly, it thinks it’s Jeeves but I’ve yet to see it reading any Spinoza.  Then again maybe one day that will happen.  Perhaps if I read it some philosophy it will tell me how it does my laundry.  At the moment it will not tell me as I only have an "undergraduate degree" in Physics - not an MSc or a PhD so couldn't possibly understand.

Barnier Get Your Gun

Theresa M: Anything Brexit can do, I can do better.
I can do Bexit better than you.

Jeremy C: No you can't.
Theresa M: Yes, I can.
David D: No, you can't.
Theresa M: Yes, I can.
Boris J: No, you can't.
Theresa M: Yes, I can, Yes, I can!

Repeat until UK crashes out of the EU on WTO rules...

With no other higher moral authority being available I thought I’d draw my line where West Ham do…

I have to admit I find Facebook’s block button it’s most magical feature allowing one to banish from one’s life people who one would not hang out with in real life or who one does not like to listen to the views of.  This might be creating my own echo chamber but I don’t want to depress myself listening to people who bang on about how awful I am or other people are.  I know this already.  Some people I have blocked simply for posting wild conspiracy theories.  You meet them in real life and they seem like perfectly reasonable people and then you listen to their views and you think … yeah you’ve got a problem, mate.  Some people I block because I know them and don’t want to spoil their illusions about me.  A minority I block for peddling porn.  And some people I block because can.  For let’s face it …it’s as one near as one can get to ...being Ip Man?

The other day I blocked a football loving comic for posting about how the DFLA and their march were misunderstood.  Now I'm not a branding expert but if you don't want to come over as a bunch of knuckleheads ...maybe a better logo lads?

 

The DFLA logo - a fist ready to thump someone.

For those of you who are unaware of the DFLA it’s an offshoot of the FLA – the Football Lads Association.  The Democratic Football Lads Association.  The FLA / DLFA split was a bit like the NUM / UDM split but without any industry or work being involved or any meaningful cause being attached and 20 years later.  I also wondered if there is a Democratic Football Ladettes Association.  Funny one never hears about Ladettes anymore.  I miss the days when they were a great stride forward for feminism.  However, those days seem to be gone.  I’m not saying the title is misogynist but… Okay, I am.  Not that I’m a feminist but it’s enough to make you wonder if there’s something to it…  But simply saying you can see the point of view of the DFLA is not what annoyed me of what he said...  What annoyed me was …the people trying to rationalise with him beneath his posts and his comment that he had a wide variety of friends with differing points of view on the DFLA. 

At that point the ghost of the Saint Jimmy Hill suddenly appeared before me in a vision and spoke unto me saying: “Look mate, this bloke thinks you’re his friend.”  And then it hit me … this man thinks because I’m a Facebook friend I’m a real friend and he doesn’t actually seem that friendly?

Then I looked at his friends.  One of them had posted a video that was a parody of Blur’s Parklife but with the substituted lyrics that all the white people were branded as far right.  It was very well done and quite amusing but it left an unpleasant taste behind in my mind.  Now, I’m not exactly a music fan but I did a bit of google to find out how closely it matched to the original video and quite a bit.  Then I started to think well, it is a parody but it’s also a bit close to stealing someone’s material.  It had a man in it with a toothbrush moustache who wasn’t Charlie Chaplin and soon, like Phillip Larkin, I started to feel one of the less deceived. 

Then I thought to myself I’m over-reacting.  Just because this man apologises for a bunch of football casuals doesn’t mean that he is one.  Except that he did seem to say on a blog somewhere a few years back that he had been imprisoned for “fighting at football”.  “Millwall. I got attacked. I was defending myself. It’s not something I’ve ever hidden,” he said to a friend of mine who ghostwrites gangster autobiographies.  Sadly the judge did not see it as self-defence just offence but it’s good to discover that everyone in prison is still innocent.  The again, who knows?  Maybe he was just offside.

Okay fair enough I suppose… he isn’t hiding it … but then again it’s pretty hard to hide that you were jailed for nine months and given a six-year football banning order when it’s on the BBC News website.  In that situation the best one can hope for is to hide in plain sight.  Then again what do I know?  I’m “ignorant”.  I wouldn’t mind so much if he hadn’t had the cheek to ask me what exactly it is about football that I don’t like.  Well, … apart from it being as boring as watching paint dry … you.

So where does one draw the line?  Using google I discovered that West Ham had suspended a youth coach who had been on the march.  With no other higher moral authority being available I thought I’d draw my line where West Ham do…

The Sound Man and Great Dane

The other day sound man from the Council came to listen to the noise from the various freezers in the shop downstairs that invades the bedroom.  The low audible hum lasts from 5:30 in the morning to 8pm at night.  I did ask the owners what happens after 8pm at night and they said “a shutter comes down and holds all the cold air in”.  Well, it must be a damn good shutter.  A domestic freezer might hold the cold in for 12 hours with the door shut but that great big thing?

I’ve been complaining to the Council about the vibration for ages and after lobbying my MP have finally achieved having a youth from the Council come to stand around my bedroom in the early hours of the morning in different positions.  He asked me if the sound was annoying me.  I replied that I hadn’t asked him round for the pleasure of his society.  I can find more interesting things to do in my bedroom at 7am.  He listened in various places.  He had a meter but didn’t use it.  I felt as if he was going to ask me to talk about my feelings or something and became worried it might turn into a psychotherapy session.  Luckily his didn’t happen.

He said that he would write a report but I haven’t heard anything yet except the low pitch hum/groan that always seeps into my bedroom so the plebs can eat ice cream and avail themselves of frozen dinners.  It makes me think of all those science fiction films and TV programs where the spaceships always make background noises.  If I was Doctor Who I’d tell the Tardis to shut up with all that whinging.  And I’m sure Captain Kirk could done something about his pneumatic doors. 

I used to live on the Lower Addiscombe Road and could never open the window because a car would pass every sixty seconds.  Somehow this is worse.  Oddly when you open the window you don’t hear much at all so the vibration must be being carried in the brickwork.  How I don’t know.   

It’s one of life’s mysteries like the fact that Great Danes only live to about 8 – 56 in dog years – which just goes to show you how rubbish vets are.  If I was a Great Dane I’d think there was some kind of plot there.  Or take legal action.  If you back calculate that there have now been 6 Scooby Doos. For some reason Mystery Incorporated don't seem to think the death of all Scooby's relatives in late middle age worth investigating... if you ask me it's a bit suspicious.

Anyway … I suppose the connection with dogs dying and my sound problem is something to do with quality of life.  Is it okay to breed dogs that will have short lifespans?  Am I complaining about nothing with this sound?  No it reduces my quality of life.  When do decide that quality of life has deteriorated too much? and ... Not to the point where I need to be put down but to a small degree…

I wonder if I will ever hear back from the Council  …

hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

See it's even annoying written down.

Your sympathy please tor the most bullied woman in the world...

"I could say that I'm the most bullied person on the world," the first lady said

(Translation: I COULD/CAN say it but it's obviously not true)

"You're really the most bullied person in the world?" asked presenter Tom Llamas.

"One of them..." (TRANSLATION : Okay that was bullshit)  

Our thoughts and prayers are with you during this difficult time chosing a sympathy card

The other day an acquaintance – a jolly old soul who had retired from industry to watch a large plasma TV and used to postscript his emails with “not to be used in an article or on stage” – died. 

Sorry mate, got to earn a living…  unfortunately.  Like a true narcissist I've somehow managed to make it all about me ...again.

Not a huge surprise.  He’d been sending lots of emails saying he was going into hospital.  Whenever I saw him – which was increasingly infrequently – he was walking with a frame.  He had severe spinal problems and I guessed he was in a lot of pain.  In the last 12 months he’d accelerated down the hill of slow physical decline towards the cliff edge of death.  Eventually he got there with the inevitability of a car that has been driven off the end of a pier sinking into the sea.  Terrible metaphor but I don’t really want to think about it anymore…

Anyway I wondered should I send a card?  And then I realised that there is something worse than death – the politicisation of death.  What if I send his bereaved wife a religious card and he or she’s an atheist?  Or I send her an atheist card and she’s religious?  It’s hard enough to decide whether it’s an appropriate thing to send a card at all without dealing with an extra layer of nonsense.

I had a look in Clintons and a dismal load of sympathy cards they had.  I mean really … whenever I try to buy a birthday card it’s all lame ageist jokes about being one year older or an old fart so you’d think the least they could do is manage to find one joke that’s actually funny about being actually deceased for the big stop grow.  Seriously though their cards were so bland I don’t know how anyone could be bothered to send them.  And abstract – when God’s taken out of it you can put almost anything on.  Quite a lot were of nature.  I almost got one with flowers on but it kept reminding me of the phrase “pushing up the daisies?” 

What happened to all this trendy “celebration of a life stuff” we read so much about these days?  Like it’s just another birthday...?  Happy death day…?  Surely if people really felt that it would filter through to some of the cards.  But… somehow when the big day comes no one’s got any originality.  No one comes up with anything funny…  It’s not a joke.  That would be RIP trolling. 

Then I vaguely remembered him trying to get me to go to church once so decided he must have been religious.  So I tried the local churches and found some cards that were religious… but somehow I thought even if you were religious the last thing you’d want is a picture of Jesus… or worse… Mary.  Or is that just me?  Even if you are very religious a picture of God or his mum seems a bit on the nose...

Eventually I found one with that didn’t look too religious or have any sectarian overtones.   I signed it and decided there was nothing to say and posted it. 

If it was a close friend you’d find something to say … perhaps… but even posting it you wonder do they want to be reminded?  Then again is not sending a card rude?  Death etiquette … it’s difficult …when to send the card too?   I thought immediately would be too soon but on googleing it was sternly told “don’t be late”? 

Messed that one up then…

Lyft

Hi Anthony,

Turn your car into your career.

Time to be your own boss.

Turn your car into a source of income and see how much you can make.

Become a driver

Sincerely,

Lyft

Hi Lyft

You seriously misunderstand the meaning of the word career.

Thank you for your offer though.

Yours sincerely

Anthony