A night to un-remember...

A busy week of meetings, appointments, pending work, haircuts a week late, politicians, a physiotherapist, a flat car battery, break failure on my bicycle, being happy most of the time but missing that certain someone more than ever.

So last night sort of brought everything to a head.

I wore a shirt and a tie and felt ultra uncomfortable. So much was my unease with my attire that I think the endless tugging at my shirt collar, the piss poor effort made putting the knot in my tie, the frenetic tucking in of my shirt at the back and the rolled up cuffs might have been a give away.

I couldn't have cared less about the politicians and the faux debate and the unionistic thou-art-my-brother attitude of the 'delegates'. I just wanted to get some work out of one of the firms attending.

The problem is, you can't be you, you have to be them.

I like to be me, but I wore a shirt to look the part.

I'm not a shirt & tie kind of guy.

To summarize:

A politician with a mouth like a dogs arse hole.

Being sat on my arse listening to politicians for so long that it feels like it's been bitten by a dog.

A dog of woman who's a politician who talks out of her arse.

Good food gone to waste.

Food for thought or just a waste of time?

Time that could have maybe been spent better elsewhere.

Elsewhere, a better time could have been had with my ex, maybe? She leaves for Greece in two weeks and I might not ever see here again.

That pisses me off.

Remind me, just why did I go to that event last night?

Excuse me while I kiss this guy

I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with Zero7, a bunch of guys who churn out some of the most amazingly chilled tunes. But today I found a hidden lyrical gem in the song, Destiny from the album, Simple Things.

This particular song is so mellow and reminiscent of summer time, once I've listened to the sultry tones of the female vocalist, I need a spoon to ladle me out of my chair.

Anyway, the lyric caught me out, because I'm that guy who picks up a spoken word or a song lyric and turns the thing into something .. shall we say, less reputable.

So on hearing this, I jumped into iTunes and scrubbed the play head back to listen to the words again. And, sure enough, they are indeed: "I'm watching porn in my hotel dressing gown."

Quite...

Flying high...

Or not, as was the case of Jessica Starmer, 26, from Wareham in Dorset, England. A pilot, who in the last year became pregnant.

Jessica is claiming indirect sex discrimination against British Airways because they will not allow her to work 50% part-time.

Instead, they have offered her only 75% part-time working hours.

Jessica told a tribunal that British Airways "family-unfriendly working practices" reinforced male-dominated traditions.

Anyway, she won her case and to be honest, I'm not sure if this is the right thing or not.

On the one hand, being a pilot is a demanding job. If you're a woman, then chances are, you've seen off enough of the male-orientated practices to get where you are, so well done!

But on the other hand, to go and get such a prestigious job and then decide to start a family seems to me that Jessica really doesn't have a clear grasp of her priorities.

Which means more to her and her husband? Children or the job she says she loves?

She told the hearing: "BA's lack of accommodation for working mothers works to exclude females from its pilots and to reinforce, rather than reform, the traditional male dominance in its workforce."

But then what does she expect? Being an pilot of an aircraft isn't like working on a supermarket checkout. I'm sure there's a great volume of technical knowledge that she needs to keep abreast of, which working part-time would, in all likelihood, hamper.

I'd say that in her line of work, she can either be a really good mother or a really good pilot, but not both.

Now, the situation for British Airways is much clearer; any less than 75% part-time working hours for such a junior pilot as Jessica means that she is unlikely to accrue the required flying hours needed to fulfill the basic safety requirements of being a pilot.

After all, lives depend on the likes of Jessica being able to do her job properly .. there's no road side assistance in the air.

"In April last year she was given a more detailed response which cited a range of reasons, including the impact on reserve pilots covering for colleagues unable to do their shifts.

The first officer also told the tribunal that BA said her request represented a health and safety risk because she was a junior pilot."

However, it seems that British Airways didn't do themselves any favours; "... [Jessica] told the hearing she found it incredible no one had asked about her experience at any time during her application."

Being inarticulate isn't the failure of the rules & regulations as laid down by British Airways, but more the fault of those interviewing her for the job.

Discrimination is a way of life and as I said earlier, for Jessica to have got where she has, she's likely to have trodden on a lot of male faces getting to where she is.

So in the minds of men who work all of their lives for such a coveted position, to see a woman seemingly squander the opportunity, it isn't hard to see a motive for discrimination, should there be one.

When all is said and done, in this case, I really would have to find in the favour of British Airways, even if there was a possibility that someone behind the scenes was pulling strings to make things difficult for Jessica.

The safety of the lives of hundreds of people is more important than the needs of the individual...

Thought of the day

"Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen."
~ Leonardo Da Vinci

Things that really .. really piss me off: part VIII

As I emerge from the newly-hewn path at the foot of the woods, I catch a drift of that distinctive odour.

Further on a ride until I come to the pond at the far corner of the wood. I round the old mine ventilation shaft and there they are, a man & woman huddling together lighting cigarettes, shielding themselves from the bracing cold wind.

I cycle past and into a cloud of filthy smoke billowing around them.

By this point, I was pretty fuckin' mad.

I was in two minds as to whether to pull over and berate the pair of them.

I'm a mile or so from the nearest house or road and I still have to put up with these dirty bastards wandering about, flicking their spent matches and fag ends all over the place.

That really, really pisses me off...

Random excerpts & interludes, part II

The woman at my door

I peep through the curtains. Pulled to the side just enough to squint through and down onto the drive.

A middle-aged woman quickly sweeps her well-kempt blonde hair back and rolls her shoulders. Just enough to straighten the top of her blouse and coat.

I sigh as the realization of her purpose resonates through me.

She's a door-to-door religious saleswoman selling her faithful wares.

How do I know this?

How do I arrive at such a point of pin-head accurate clarity about her reason for being on my front door step, after only the briefest of glimpses?

The way she's dressed.

Her hasty door step preparation.

The way she holds herself.

Her replete handbag hung off of her left shoulder.

And last but not least, the fact that I never heard the gate she had to pass through to get to my door.

A sure sign of unwelcome stealth.

I'm actually quite busy, but this could be a good chance to get into the mind of such people and see just what it is that motivates them.

I suspect many things, and many of my theories have proven to be correct, but this is my chance to gather empirical evidence -- as it were -- from one of the many 'client facing' operatives who ply their trade from house to house.

I appear at the door, standing there with the door just ajar, holding my dog back with my left foot, with only the cursory and customary sniffs of the air as she attempts to satisfy her canine curiosity.

The woman smiles warmly, but falsely.

She is wearing a very strong but not unpleasant perfume, which I'm sure is all part of the presentation.

Like most people that come to my door, when I answer, they look straight to my feet.

Much of my day at home is spent barefoot. I have no need of slippers or socks or other such things.

This distracts her momentarily, but she recovers enough of her faculties to begin with her patter.

I allow her to spew forth her spiritual sales spiel. I do not smile and do not unfold my arms.

I lean against the frame of the door. I do not invite her in and I maintain my austere demeanor.

I choose to make her work for my time.

When the moment arrives and mood takes me and when my conceit gets the better of my fairer, wiser self, I made my beliefs very clear to her.

I have chosen to follow the unimpeachable path of logic, I proclaim in so many round, clear words, careful to speak slowly and thoughtfully.

Slowly enough to make it clear I'm not the ordinary householder she would come up against in her daily travels. But not too slowly as to appear patronizing. A self-indulgence of the English, or so I'm told.

"I'm an evolutionist, not a creationist", I add.

This she understood and leapt upon with glee as she thumbed instinctively to a page in the bible held loosely in her left hand.

Am I so predictable?

Probably not. Maybe I skipped a few of regular stages of the conversation, but her method is to her so well known, she was able to meet me there.

She read one passage after another and I quickly returned with an instant dismissal in each case, which while catching her off guard for a moment, she interpreted as a challenge. Or misinterpreted, rather.

I had arrived at a clear grasp the woman quite quickly. She was a foot soldier. The woman in the field.

I tried to explain to her the elementary failings of her unfocused and waisted belief, but she wasn't to be budged.

Each and every time I pointed out the child-like simplicity of all religion, not just her christian faith, she repeatedly saw this as a chance to dip into her now dog-eared and clearly well-read bible.

Inside, I sigh.

I indulge my cruelty: "I'm not at all religious, but I am a very spiritual person."

Her eyes glaze over as she attempts to process what to her at least is a complete and utter contradiction in terms.

To the majority of the religious, they believe that they are the curators and the owners of spiritualism, and such things are merely an extension of religion, rather than being separate to.

She stutters for a moment and then mentally scrambles to find some relevant passage from the bible that might head me off at the theological pass. But I stymie her attempts with curt, simple and withering rebuttals.

I've been here before, only most other times, these exchanges become charged and angry because I will neither concede ground nor accept what is to me unacceptable.

I sense she feels I am being truly dismissive of her faith and she asks if I have ever read the bible.

I shake my head. But that is a lie. I have attempted to read the bible on more than one occasion, but I find myself either frustrated by the impenetrable structure or word use, or offended by the unrelenting arrogance.

To a larger degree, I am being truly dismissive of her faith, but I then point out to her that to dismiss the bible, or indeed any religious works in their entirety would be to dismiss the efforts of a great many people.

That would be foolish. As a model of moral & ethical governance, most religions at the very least form a working template.

For me, questions are healthy. Questioning things is an integral part of what I do. For every problem, I try to find at least three viable, efficient solutions.

So if I can offer any advice to anyone, then that would be to question everything you're not sure about. Be veracious and unrelenting in your pursuit of the facts. Accept no halve-truths and after all of this, if the bearer of the facts imparts to you with visible angst and resignation, then you've probably reached your goal.

To this woman, her belief is such that she believes her religion is the panacea to all questions. To me, religion is a veneer of conformity and merely a platform for yet more questions, most of which are either entirely answerable or so withdrawn into their own hand-me-down dogma as to be a contrivance and nothing more.

I smile. I make my excuses and we part company.

She quickly dips into her handbag for some leaflet. A picture of some guy in a christmas sweater leafing through the bible with a look a pretentious, staged earnest adorned the cover.

I politely take the leaflet, smile and I close the door.

I lock the door, jog upstairs and into my room.

I throw the leaflet into a corner of the room. Into and amongst the pile of letters and various unsolicited correspondence I receive over the course of the day.

I return to work...

Digging in the dirt

You guys up for a little British history lesson?

Ready for some truly mind-blowing figures?

Good, then read on...

Some time in the nineteen sixties, a review of the coal industry found that Britain sat on top of over three hundred years worth of coal reserves.

In nineteen seventy-four, the National Union of Mineworkers went on strike and brought down the then Conservative government and ousted the Prime Minister Edward Heath.

Over the next twenty five years, successive Conservative governments waged a war with the NUM which they finally won on October nineteen ninety-two when over thirty two coal pits were closed and over two hundred thousand men lost their jobs.

This figure does not take into account the loss of jobs in businesses related to the mining industry, or the loss of jobs in local villages & towns where the likes of small, family-owned grocery shops had to close.

Nor does this figure take into account the immeasurable loss of faith, hope, identity and the cataclysmic loss of community across the whole country.

If you've been paying attention, then you'll have realized that the obvious question has an obvious answer, that answer being revenge, pure & simple.

Fast forward to two thousand and five.

The Rover Group has come to a close after over one hundred years of car production. There is no more interest from the Chinese and over six thousand men & woman are to loose their jobs.

Now, why do they think my dad has little or no sympathy for these poor bastards, who in the main, have been consigned to the economic scrap heap?

The now Labour government are to put together a one hundred and fifty million pound redundancy package to help said poor bastards get by.

My dad was fortunate. His mining career had done for his knees and his back years before, so he managed to land and very comfortable office job which allowed him the dubious pleasure of seeing his pit dismantled and turned into scrub and heath.

My dad got his redundancy, but many didn't.

Where was the Conservative government on October nineteen ninety-two?

This isn't some kind of party political broadcast running up to the election in May this year. This is me wondering how implicit rights & wrongs seem to be weighed in pounds sterling and in the satiation of negative emotions rather than in the interests of the lives of the men & woman who form the backbone of this once great nation...

Doctor, doctor! It hurts when I do this...

Me: "Hi! I'd like book an appointment to see the doctor."

Receptionist: "When would you like one for? You see, we're all booked up today. You're best bet is getting an appointment either tomorrow or next week."

Me: "That's what I had in mind. Either tomorrow or Monday, please."

Receptionist: "Well, we have one ten thirty this morning."

Eh? She's just told me there aren't free appointment bookings today.

Me: "No, I couldn't make that, anyway. I've damaged a tendon in the back of my left ankle. So either tomorrow or Monday would be better because I'd need to get someone to drive me down, you see."

Receptionist: "Oh I'm sorry, you'd have to book on that day."

Me: "Why?"

Is this old bird for real, or what?

Receptionist: "We're only accepting emergency appointments today and tomorrow and all next week."

Quite...

An image speaks a thousand words...

With summer closing in on us and the sun making a decent fist of things right now, I'm feeling in an unusual, conspicuously good mood.

So I decided to hunt down my collection of summer photographs from last year and share them with the world yet again.

The following photographs are from around where I live.

For all those stricken with Seasonally Affective Disorder, consider this therapy.

My invoice will be in the post, shortly...

Things that really .. really make my day: part III

The unconditional love you get from a dog.

No matter how your day has been. No matter what has happened, your dog will love you...

Things that really .. really piss me off: part VII

Malt vinegar, salad cream, marzipan, any sweet sauces for savory dishes and any / all sweet & sour dishes.

And no, I'm not a faddy eater .. I love my food. But non of the above qualify as being edible.

They all share one quality; being about as pleasant as licking dog piss off a nettle leaf.

All of the above are just deeply, deeply wrong and should be made illegal without exception...

No place like home?

For some, having to tell someone where they come from can be a little embarrassing.

In some cases, more than a little embarrassing.

A fellow 'blogger and all-round media-friendly lass touched upon an interesting thought or two which prompted me to Google up some light-hearted amusement.

Consider the poor, unfortunate souls who hail from the likes of Felch, Michigan, America or Cunt, Elazig, Turkey.

Or those from the homely and welcoming Dikshit, India.

And let's not forget those from Minge, Nivelles, Brabant Wallon, Belgium. So the logical collective soubriquet for such people would be Minggers, presumably?

Or on the other hand .. or on any hand that takes your fancy for that matter, those from Wankers Corner, Oregan, America.

As a point of fact, I live a little over eleven miles from Penistone, South Yorkshire, Great Britain.

So the next time you bemoan the boring name of your hamlet / village / town / city, be thankful you don't come from Fucking, Tarsdorf, Austria...

Music sounds better with you...

Or so the song goes...

I love my music, and I use iTunes to store and play my music.

Casting my mind back to the few times I've worked as part of a team in an office environment, music was always a contentious area, and in one case, the boss of one company who I used to do contract work for actually banned the radio.

To me, this made perfect sense.

"Ban the radio? But why?!", I hear you cry.

Because the radio is usually a fuckin' pest, that's why.

So once you've all decided which station you want to listen to .. which typically starts out cheerily enough but soon descends into venomous exchanges; one staff member slagging off each other staff member about his / her 'lesser' musical tastes, and witheringly bitter remarks about social standing and the like.

You somehow manage to placate the likes of me who never, ever listen to the radio .. typically because it is an unsavory collection of vacuous 'pop' tosh, punctuated with derisory DJ talk-speak and other assorted auditory diarrhea with all of the entertainment value of watching a pair of side-ironed, bry-nylon trousers drying on a clothes line.

You've all agreed a truce on one weekday when you all get the chance to bring in a tape or a CD of your own moozak that everyone else has to listen to .. but only ten songs each, and begrudging loud speaking and the obligatory: "Will you turn that bollocks down?! I'm on the phone!" are to be kept to a minimum.

After all of that...

There's the inevitable: "Oh yeah! Turn the radio up, I like this song.", sez one staffer.

"What? It's shit! Turn it down!", sez the other staffer.

Meanwhile, overall productivity tumbles and work suffers and the wheels come off the poorly held lines of the office truce and you're back to square one.

So this article really did bring back all of the troubles I've had the pleasure of witnessing over the years.

Music isn't just about personal tastes. In the work place, the like or dislike of a particular genre / group / artist / song can either make you or break you...

Work, sleep, work, sleep, work...

My time of late has been somewhat compressed.

What with me extending my normal jog by about a mile yesterday, I was starting to fall asleep by seven in the evening.

Normal service due to resume shortly...

Thought of the day

In keeping with current events, and as a foil to much of the faux religious fervor sweeping with world right now...

The Riddle of Epicurus
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

Oh what a night!

Or so the song goes...

One of the lads had his birthday bash last night.

Went in various fancy dress.

I looked like a complete moron in 60’s garb, but made the damn thing look good .. if I may say so myself!

Anyway, photographic evidence soon to follow, I’m sure.

One of the lads went as William Wallace / Braveheart, complete with one side of his face painted dark blue, one as St. George and one other as one of the Three Musketeers, including ‘tash & beard.

While me, my nephew and his mate went in 60’s suits. One red, one white and one blue. Oh dear!

Much fun to be had getting into the nightclub later on.

The three period costume guys had to declare their weapons at the door .. seriously!

While St. George really did hand his cloak in at the cloak room, which inspired some japery.

So that’s me goin’ out TWO weekends in row .. weh-hey!

Could be habit-forming.

I managed to get some womans’ number, or rather she asked birthday-boy for my number because I’d tootled off looking for somewhere to eat.

I honestly can’t quite remember her name.

She was Asian and very pretty, but unfortunately for me, she had a name that was comprised of more than two syllables.

So while not drunk, my booze-addled mind has chewed her sumptuous name up into something else entirely.

Oh, what a night, indeed!