The New Year: a golden glow of optimism

Posted on January 13, 2012 by BarryH

It’s Friday morning and things are looking good.  I sat having my early morning beverage, a lemon and ginger ‘tisane’ as Hercule Poirot, that most famous of Belgians fictionally called it, basking in the sun as it rose above the hill on the opposite side of the valley into a cloudless sky.  Though the overnight temperature didn’t drop below freezing (0.5oC) there had been a slight overnight frost which portends well for the weekend which is forecast to be sunny and cold.  Today at least there is the prospect of a wide-choice of things to do outside fuelled by a surge of optimism and adrenalin.  Maybe we will have a winter after all.

A golden glow of early morning suffuses the valley

And I have had my roof repaired.  The half-day I spent stripping off the tiles on the offending corner of the roof and attempting to solve the problem failed so I had decided to get a roofer to do the job.  I was quite happy to tackle it myself but working on my own, as an amateur, I couldn’t be sure of completing it in a day with the prospect of forecast fine weather turning out wet (as it has done on at least 3 days recently).  So last week I got a local roofer to give me a quote and baulked at the £1,000 he quoted.  A complete joke for the amount of work and materials involved.  On Monday morning I phoned up another roofer: he came within the hour, quoted £150 for doing exactly the same job and did it on Tuesday afternoon.  Done, finished.  Marvelous.  A real load off my mind.

But … a very big BUT …. not as much a load off my mind as successfully submitting my on-line tax return yesterday.  You can have no idea how much I dread that every year.  It’s not that my tax affairs are complicated; they couldn’t really be very much simpler.  It’s an irrational fear I’m sure, fuelled by having to locate the relevant bits of paper, remember the relevant codes and passwords needed to access the on-line process, and navigate around the huge form which changes every year.

This year the process didn’t start well as I had put my P60 in the proverbial safe place.  It took 1½ hours of searching before the vague memory of the sensible, rational place I had put it could be coaxed out from behind memories going back to prehistory.  I managed to retrieve the codes with not too much difficulty because, while searching for the P60, I had spotted the bit of paper on which the reminder of the key was scribbled.  I should explain that the core tenet of my security system is to hide things in plain view surrounded by gargantuan amounts of irrelevant rubbish.  I’ve got car insurance policy documents going back 15 years to disguise the current one.  It’s a system which clearly works because my car insurance document is still safe.  Somewhere.  And, after all that, finally I managed to navigate the on-line form and complete the process.

You have no idea the lights and bells which went off when the magic words ‘submission accepted’ come up on the screen.  A bit like the finale of the 1812 overture accompanying a firework display on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

I quash the monster which crawled out of the slime and whispered:  “but are you sure you did it right?  Perhaps you forgot something and you owe them money.  You know they’ll come and get you, send in the bailiffs”.

No, the euphoria triumphs.  My 2010-11 tax return is finished.  I can put it to the back of my mind for another year and just groan as over the next month I get the inevitable 3 letters from HMRC advising me that my tax code has changed.  Why can’t they get it right first time?

I have been reading ‘Etymologicon’ by Mark Forsyth recently, a very erudite and amusing investigation of the origin of words and the association between them.  So I mused a little about my fear of doing my tax return – ‘taxophobia’ I guess it would be.  It struck me that it could well be related to ‘taxidermy’  and that what I was really experiencing was a fear of being stuffed.  I checked, and it’s wrong.  But a nice thought all the same.

Posted in Reflections, Winter | Leave a comment

The New Year: forecasts and looking to the future

Posted on January 10, 2012 by BarryH

Average temperatures in the UK (however that is defined and however relevant the figure is) were higher in 2011 than any year on record.  Not that the weather was what most would describe as ‘good’.  Except for bits of April and May it was pretty grey and claggy.  Most would consider the Summer months to have been disappointingly poor.  As noted previously that marketing artefact for the British tourist industry, ‘The Staycation’, is now a pretty dead duck and even the carcase has been boiled down for soup.

The fact is that weather forecasts continue to be unreliable.  As I type it’s raining again for the second day running despite a forecast for it to remain dry.   ‘Long term’ forecasts remain the province of incurable optimists.  Families are prepared to waste on average £150 on the lottery a year with a 1:14 million chance each week of winning but not to gamble an average of just over £4,500 for a family of 4 on unpredictable weather on a 2-week holiday.  They have given up on UK summers and flock to the sun.

But what about the winter?  Personally I get turned on by extreme winters as well as by extreme summers.  That’s why I loved Canada so much last year and was only sorry that I missed out on another 2 weeks of real winter back in the UK.  By the time I got home it was warm and claggy again.

So far this winter has been exceptionally warm …. and claggy.  There have been some colourful sunrises over the hill on the other side of the valley but only one frost with a puny temperature of -0.2oC.  A couple of days over the weekend were almost spring-like.  I sat on the top of the mountain on Sunday and had a sandwich and a drink in the sun, though admittedly sheltering from the wind behind a rock and knowing it was only a brief interlude in the general greyness.

The balcony gives a grandstand view of the sun coming up over the opposite side of the valley

Sometimes the gold is just narrow bands behind bars of black cloud

On Sunday a brief glimpse of Spring from the top of the mountain

So is that it for this winter?  The oscillations of the El Niño ocean current and its little sister La Niña, together with the effects they have on the upper atmosphere jet stream, determine broad seasonal patterns of weather which once locked in take a lot to shift.  So the probability is for more of the same.

But I haven’t quite given up hope.  The harsh winter of 1947 didn’t bite until 21 January and lasted into March.  The extreme weather coupled with post-war privations and the austerity programme to deal with it eventually brought about the fall of the Attlee government.  So maybe, just maybe, another late, hard winter coupled with the austerity measures to deal with the current recession may bring about the end of playtime for this public school government.  And, best of all worlds, would give a masochist like me the opportunity to go out and play in the mountains in the snow.

The winter of 1947 is not the only example of extreme weather in the second part of a UK winter.  The winter of 1963 started earlier but got particularly cold in January, the sea freezing over a mile out from Kent, and there were severe blizzards across the country in February.  In fact in meteorological terms February is on average the coldest month of the year (1.1oC cf 1.3 in January in Wales and above 2oC in both December and March).

I can hope but am not convinced.

As Alexander the Great (is reputed to have) said «Η ζωή αξίζει μόνο σαν πρόκληση», which, for the benefit of the few blog-readers who aren’t fluent in Greek, roughly translates as “life is only made worthwhile by challenge”.  With the absence of winter my enthusiasm has been fired to plan something completely different for a trip to Greece this summer. Rough idea at the moment is to fly to Athens, train and bus to the 1000-foot high pinnacle-top monasteries of Meteora and then down to the blood-feud peninsular of Mani in the far South before returning to see friends in the Dodecanese via Crete and Karpathos.

This proto-plan was given additional frissance on Monday (I’m plugging this Anglicisation of ‘frisson’) when I learned at the local blood-donor session that mainland Greece is now considered a health risk. Apparently migrating birds increase the risk of bird flu.  They obviously avoid flying over the Greek islands.  If it’s not ash clouds its bird poo!!!!

Isn’t life fun!

But seriously.  I learned in 2005 that life is completely unpredictable.  We go along unthinkingly, assuming that life is steady-state only to be pulled up short and reminded that we can’t count on that.  As I have several times quoted before the Bible says in Proverbs 19v9  “In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps”.  This is very much in mind as I look ahead to … and plan for … 2012.

Posted in Grey Britain, Winter | Tagged , | 1 Comment

New Year: sales, contrasts and looking ahead.

Posted on January 2, 2012 by BarryH

Christmas with the family and New Year with friends were good and Father Christmas brought me everything that I wanted.  But now it’s past: left-over food eaten; wrapping paper in the bin; house tidied up; shops returning to normal before they put Easter on display; facing the year ahead.

I guess I’m not the only person to suffer from retail-fatigue after Christmas. I can’t even bring myself to look at what’s on offer in the sales.  Two main reasons for that.  First is that I would inevitably find that the post-Christmas discounts are bigger than the pre-Christmas ones and it would irritate me to know the details of how much I might have saved had I bought Christmas presents after rather than before Christmas Day. Not that I would buy Christmas presents after the event I hasten to add.  Second, having a ‘make-do-and-mend’ philosophy deeply ingrained in my psyche (I’m actually an honorary ‘Cardi’, a hard-won accolade which makes even Yorkshire folk seem like spendthrifts) I know that I don’t really need anything at the moment so can’t even be bothered to look.  Meantime the rest of the world seems to be rushing headlong towards the sales and greater indebtedness.

So, Christmas over, no sales to visit, plenty of time to get up into the mountains.  Not so.  The weather and the conditions have inhibited rather than fired the enthusiasm.  Though temperatures have been unusually warm throughout November and December the inevitable concomitant has been rain and low cloud which seem to have been around for weeks.

We have always done something active on New Year’s Day so despite the weather I went out for a walk yesterday.  The cloud had lifted to just above the mountain top but it was raining most of the time.  However, what really took the gloss off it was the ground conditions, wetter, muddier, stickier than I can remember.  I couldn’t help but draw comparisons with New Year’s Day for the last two years.

New Year's Day 2010: on top of the ridge behind the house

New Year's Day 2010: the path down from the ridge

New Year's Day 2011: view across the frozen Bow River in the Rockies

New Year's Day 2011: even when it clouded over the view of Mount Rundle from the top of Tunnel Mountain was dramatic

New Year's Day 2012: on the ridge behind the house, surrounded by low cloud and rain

New Year's Day 2012: there is a pair of feet in there somewhere

I would love to go back to Canada but having looked into it post-Christmas, and being a card-carrying Cardi, cost is the sticking point. Being a lone traveller is expensive and it’s a simple equation: 2 weeks skiing = 4 weeks in Greece.  So, as Grey Britain has got greyer I’ve tried to put Canada out of my mind and my thoughts have turned more and more to going back to Greece.  I need to find a way to square the circle.

Posted in Canada, Grey Britain, Pontypool, Winter | Tagged | Leave a comment

Christmas: marketing, hints of hysteria …. and the odd bit of TV

Posted on December 26, 2011 by BarryH

In bleak economic times it is hardly surprising that most national retailers have been offering significant discounts in the run-up to Christmas.  Pre-Christmas sales account for a disproportionately large part of annual turnover for many businesses.  Marks & Spencer’s plea to other retailers this year to ‘hold their nerve’ and not discount fell on deaf ears.

At least one major electrical and computer national retail chain had a sophisticated series of adverts on TV offering 3-figure discounts and with a countdown of the days to Christmas Day, culminating on Christmas Eve with “you still have a few hours left to get a real bargain and make sure of the best Christmas ever” , or words to that effect..

Outdoor clothing retailers have been particularly hard-hit by the record warm temperatures in November with sales of winter clothing well down.  This resulted in bargain prices on even major brands in order to generate cash-flow to pay for the next batch of orders placed with manufacturers in China and to clear the racks and shelves ready for Spring deliveries.  Most shoppers respond to what the weather is now, not what it is forecast to be or might be.  But offers of ”an extra 30% off” were too good to miss.  Rather than blanket reductions (pardon the pun) at least one major outdoor gear retailer offered different discounts on different brands each day to keep you going back to get fleeced (again, pardon the pun, it is Christmas after all).  But if you had the time, and the stamina, and knew what things were really worth, there was good value for money to be had.

Another clever if somewhat morally cynical advertising ploy has been to recognise that people with financial pressures are becoming less inclined to be self indulgent and spend money on themselves.  So the marketing trick is to convey the message that it is both heart-warming and even virtuous to spend lots of money on others.  One advert portrays a young child eagerly waiting for Christmas morning not so he can open his presents, he leaves them at the end of the bed and rushes past them, the camera lingering on them fleetingly, and goes to his parents room where he hands over a huge gift-wrapped parcel.  Very heart-warming, very devious.

But by late Christmas Eve, when all stores had final shut up shop for The Duration, TV adverts had changed.  There is a new marketing ploy.  TV was suddenly not only advertising the post Christmas Sales beginning in-store on December 27, or even on Boxing Day, but making a feature of the fact that you could go on-line straight away and order yet more stuff at yet bigger discounts.  What better way to spend your Christmas Day than scouring the internet buying stuff.  It’s still midnight, you haven’t yet opened your presents and don’t know what you’re getting, so why not go and buy something.  The marketing tactic implies two things “buy it now before we sell out” and “satisfy your craving to part with your money …. you don’t have to give-up-for-Christmas”.  This latter is a particularly cynical marketing ploy given that in respect of some types of goods, especially furniture, it’s offered in conjunction with “ …. and pay nothing for 18 months and then interest-free for the rest 5 years” .  You don’t even have to part with cash, you can buy it on plastic and it won’t even hit your actual cash flow until well into the distant future by which time you’ll have a banker’s income.

Some of the big supermarket chains have begun opening ‘local’ shops now that they have succeeded in driving the old corner-shop out of existence.  Simply meeting the needs of communities you might think.  But not so.  The size of them is carefully chosen so that they fall below the limits set by the Sunday Trading Laws ….. which is why you will find them open on Sundays.  And on Christmas Day TV adverts were telling us that we can resume our food shopping on Boxing Day at theses outlets, just in case the cheese has gone off or we need more mince pies or the dog has munched his way through his rations.

This increasingly sophisticated marketing reflects the fact that there is less money available, and that there is increased nervousness about spending it in face of uncertainties about continuing employment prospects.  To my mind it also reflects an increasingly hysterical attitude among Big Retailers.  It looks as if they are spending more on marketing and advertising and offering bigger discounts.  They are looking at a brick wall and know they are on a collision course.

This analysis excludes bankers of course.  Their banks may continue to lose money or to just about stay in the black but bankers themselves still get their bonuses.  Therefore businesses focusing on niche markets like diamond encrusted neti pots will still do well.

I have to battle over this whole marketing stuff because my instinctive reaction is to be nauseated by all it all and take to the hills.  But it is the case that, if there is something I need, now could be the right time to buy it.  Three years ago at the beginning of the recession we bought a new carpet for the downstairs in the January Sales on the basis that “half-price carpet with an extra 70% off” was better than earning  ¼% interest on savings in the bank.  And I’ve just bought a couple of books on Kindle for 99 pence … money is no object!

Much of manufacturing these days is concentrated in China and other countries where labour costs are low.  Retailers buy it for pence and sell it for pounds, the mark-up is truly massive which is why the discounts are so massive.  But only for companies big enough to order in bulk and move stuff on the internet and through multiple store outlets across the big cities in the UK.  Local traders are going to the wall unable to price-match.

Just a brief mention of TV.  I spent Christmas Day with the family and no TV.  Peace and quiet apart from being trampled on by 4 rampaging grandchildren.  It was great.  I saw bits of programmes over the last 3 days but frankly the majority of programmes were unwatchable rubbish. One Channel seemed to have been given a boxed set of the complete Carry On films which it showed back-to-back. A line of dialogue did stick in my mind.  In one drama as the family TV was being re-possessed on Christmas Eve the character said: “I just want a typical Christmas, turn on the TV at 7 in the morning and turn it off at midnight”.  Hyperbole I know, but it has become part of the cliché of Christmas. However, a couple of programmes were well worth watching.

There was the Grumpy Guide to Christmas, some of it a bit close to blasphemous disrespect for me but by and large it hit the spot.  With BBC iPlayer you can catch it at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00pk61h/The_Grumpy_Guide_To_Christmas/

Another was a remake of a Christmas Carol with Ross Kemp, playing on his hard-man persona but showing his acting skills too.  This makes the point that repenting of your misdeeds is not just about changing what you do but involves a complete change of heart.  Again at: http://www.itv.com/itvplayer/video/?Filter=200599

The third programme was late night Christmas Eve, really at 01.00 Christmas morning.  It doesn’t seem to be on ITVPlayer but if you can find it somewhere it’s very clever and very funny with a Who’s Who of British acting talent – The Flint Street Nativity.

But enough of the cyncicism.  To those who are reading this I offer Congratulations!  You have survived yet another long ramble.  And you have survived yet another Christmas.

Posted in Grumpy Old Men, Reflections | Leave a comment

The lead up to Christmas: stresses, strains and challenge

Posted on December 19, 2011 by BarryH

That Christmas is widely regarded by most people as a time of stress is by now a matter of cliché, as seen by cynics like me at least.  Mental stress from rushing around trying to cram in shopping for presents and food, writing cards, wrapping gifts.  Stress on the wallet or bank balance.  Physical stress from overindulging in food and drink.  For many families, emotional stress from being cooped up with people they had to invite, for others coping with loneliness.

A good bit of what little Christmas-preparation stress I am subject to is now behind me.  I’ve bought, written and posted my Christmas cards.  I’ve bought all except one of the very limited number of presents I will be giving without blitzing my current account (cheapskate that I am).  A slight though very timely frost has sweetened up the sprouts and parsnips in the garden ready for Christmas dinner.  Things looking good.

For many years I made a number of Christmas cards for family and close friends but with so much more to do now I’m on my own I had to give that up 2 years ago.  Nevertheless, this year I’ve prepared a Christmas Blog Card – so Happy Christmas to all blog-readers.

Not a star rising in the East but a 'sun dog' as the sun sinks in the West and shines through billions of tiny ice crystals in the super-cold air high in the Canadian Rockies, photographed 18 December 2010

However, there are often other stresses not related to the preparations for Christmas but coming at the same time.  The rest of life doesn’t stop just because it’s the so called ‘Season of Goodwill’.  After the very unpleasant week when my boiler was out of action and my cowardly retreat to the warmth of the North of England, it was finally repaired last Tuesday and at the moment seems to be working fine.  I’m now warm again and, to the relief of those with whom I come into olfactory range, I can have a bath.

Long absences in Greece, Canada and exotic Stockport have meant that maintenance and decorating of the house have been neglected for the last two years.  So having taken giant strides towards my very limited preparations for Christmas I got to grips with it and stripped, repaired and painted the stairwell down to the basement room.   It’s very nearly finished and I was beginning to feel quite satisfied and maybe a little smug.  I was getting on top of things.  Stress free a week before Christmas.

But then we had pretty violent gales and heavy rain and I discovered two very unwelcome facts.  The plan was to move on from the stairwell to the decorating of the basement room.  That was when I discovered that there is a leak from the roof over the extension into the corner of the room, so bad that it is dripping down the walls.  On top of that I found that last winter’s hard frosts had loosened the cement haunching around a now redundant chimney and the recent gales had dislodged chunks of it and water is pouring down the chimney into the boiler cupboard every time it rains.  Builders are not interested in either job.  The chimney is very high and exposed.  Using a ladder it would probably be an E4 or E5 in rock-climbing terms, and my limit is E1, most builders’ rather less.   The roof repair is a maintenance not a rebuild job so not worth the hassle for a builder.

What has this got to do with stress?  Well, for a start it’s down to stresses on the fabric of a building in a cold, damp, windy climate.  No building in any climate is free of stresses and strains caused by a combination of age, climate and other natural forces.  That’s one of the reasons I would think twice about owning a second home even if I could afford one – there would be responsibility for two lots of maintenance.

And in this case there is the stress in knowing that the repair work is going to be down to me.  But here’s a strange thing.  Sure, the fact that the house is leaking and further damage being caused is stressful.  But at what point and under what circumstances does stress become challenge?  It’s a long story which I won’t bore you with but yesterday I began to help dismantle the scaffolding erected on next door’s chimney and abandoned when the company went out of business.  Never having dismantled scaffolding before, nevermind a structure 30 foot high, that is a challenge: giant Meccano working from the top down with thick metal poles 10 and 20 foot long.  It’s stressful in the sense that it’s essential to make sure that you don’t fall off or that the structure doesn’t collapse and take out the power cable to the house.  But I put that in the category of ‘challenge’.  Which is what keeps me sane in a generally boring world.  And the really fun bit is going to be when, having finished dismantling it, I get to mantle it again on my side of the fence to try to repair the haunching on my chimney.

So, stress or challenge?  I guess it’s all down to attitude of mind.  I must try to get a more positive attitude towards Christmas.

Posted in Canada, Reflections, Winter | Leave a comment

A bad time of year: dogged by failure

Posted on December 12, 2011 by BarryH

It has been suggested that in the last blog-post I misinterpreted the instruction on the trains completely.  Instead of requiring customers to place litter in the bins they are instead required to dispose of the litter which is already in the bins, presumably placed there for the purpose by rail staff.  This interpretation is perfectly logical and backed by some evidence, albeit circumstantial.  I’m afraid I was blinkered by the assumption, based on prejudice I admit, that organisations seek to place responsibility for action, and blame for failure to comply, on customers rather than accepting it themselves. It may indeed be the intention of the rail company to overcome the burden and the cost of disposing of the litter itself by passing the task on to customers.  After all, individuals can dispose of waste for no additional charge on their Community Tax whereas commercial organisations have to pay commercial rates for disposal.

I shall check next time I’m on the train whether the uniformed guys going around with black sacks are filling up the bins or emptying them.  Maybe rather than failing to put litter in the bins I have in fact been failing to empty them.  And, dreadful thought, it may be that this is what is putting up the cost of rail fares.  Few things are more demoralising than finding out that you have been failing in the wrong way, that you are the wrong kind of failure.

Long-time blog junkies may remember that at some stage in the past I banged on about the problems I have been having with my ‘new’ combi boiler.  I remember it because following that post I received e-mail correspondence from quite a few people telling me how good theirs was.

But for us the early omens were not good.  Installed on 31 January 2007 the boiler didn’t work.  At all !!!  We had no heat or hot water until 5 February when the manufacturer’s service team came and found that the mother board needed to be replaced (these combi boilers are very high tech and computer controlled).  For all of that time we made do with the log fire, a kettle and a tea urn borrowed from church and balanced on the end of the bath on a wooden frame which I knocked together.  Not very health-and-safety but at least we could have a bath …. of sorts.

From that point on there have been constant problems with the boiler, in particular with getting hot water.  Engineers have been back to try to resolve the issue many, many times.  Couldn’t even get a reliable flow of hot water into the kitchen sink which is only 2 metres away from the boiler.  It was absolutely pointless trying to use the downstairs shower.  It was such an embarrassment offering apologies when visitors came to stay that I have decided to spend a not inconsiderable sum of money on running armoured high tension cable around the outside of the house and installing an electric shower down there.

However, the problem is not just with my boiler because I think there is a fundamental flaw with the whole concept of combi boilers.  The stock joke is that they are called ‘combination’ boilers because they are a random combination of working and not working.  In my case the problem was made worse by the fact that last year I had a water meter fitted.  My water bills dropped from £57 a month to £15.  But, unless the central heating is on, I’m pouring vast numbers of gallons of water down the drain just to try to fill the washing-up bowl.  This is because the water heating is triggered by turning on the tap.  Turn the tap off, the sensor in the boiler then switches off and the heating stops.  So the entire cold water contents of the boiler have to be poured down the drain before any hot water comes out of the tap.

The only way to overcome this wastage is to turn the central heating on thereby filling the boiler, and the pipes and radiators, with hot water.  But it cannot be very efficient to turn the central heating on just to do the washing up!! Or wash my hands!!!  It saves water but wastes gas.  I haven’t done the sums to work out which costs more but I suspect that it’s the gas.  I don’t like wastage of any kind on principle.  Months ago I gave up and started using a kettle.  Crazy!

But I digress.  The problems with my particular boiler have just suddenly and unexpectedly got immeasurably and dramatically worse. A failure of epic proportions.  At the moment I have no central heating and no hot water.  At all !!!

The reason?  A visit by an engineer two weeks ago to try yet again to sort out the water heating problem and to repair a leak from the boiler succeeded for the first time in getting a steady supply of hot water to the kitchen sink. As long as the central heating was turned on.   Which was very good.  A major step forward in this protracted saga.  But after he left the leak seemed to be worse.  I had to position washing-up bowls underneath to catch the dripping and had to empty them every couple of days.

Temperatures were forecast to drop below zero on Friday night.  The house is cold and becoming colder despite having a log fire in one room and a gas heater in another room.  I can’t have a bath and can only wash by boiling kettles.  This is worse than when I lived in a terraced house in Salford with no bathroom or inside toilet.  At least then we had a galvanised bath which we put in front of the fire once a week and boiled water in an old blackened kettle and saucepans to fill it.  That was always enjoyable, luxurious even in front of the coal fire.  Looking back from my present predicament to that time perhaps my whole life has been a failure.

Adversity cannot be ignored and I faced the issue squarely.  I ran away back up North for the weekend to a warm house where I could have a hot bath.

Posted in Grumpy Old Men, Reflections, Winter | Leave a comment

English as she is ambiguated: please read carefully

Posted on December 9, 2011 by BarryH

Those who travel regularly on Arriva Trains Wales from South Wales to the North, Manchester or Holyhead, will be familiar with the following request, really an instruction because of the moral overtones of failing to comply:

“Would all customers please dispose of litter in bins provided on trains and stations.”

As the train pulls into all the larger stations the announcement is made over the tannoy and appears in a slightly modified form scrolling horizontally across the neon message strip above the doors at the ends of the carriages:

“Would all customers Please disPose of litter in the bins Provided on Trains and Stations.”

This strange mixture of upper and lower case letters rightly recognises that most of us find it easier to read lower than upper case but its execution in this instance is inhibited by the fact that ‘the line’ below which tailed letters, g, j, p, q and y, would appear is the bottom of the display strip.  To overcome this the letters would either need to be 33% smaller or the neon strip 50% deeper.

But as usual I digress.  The message conveyed is the same in both cases.

The first task is to find some litter if you haven’t any of your own.  This is rarely a problem as there is usually some close to hand.  Or foot.  The next task is to find a bin on the train and then, rather more challenging, leave the train in order to locate one at the station.  This is because the use of the conjunction ”and” in the instruction means that it is not sufficient merely to dispose of litter on the train but necessarily also in bins on the station.  Those who have not reached their destination station must then get back on the train before it leaves.

The problem is acute, created by the fact that the injunction applies to ALL customers, not just those who are leaving the train having reached their destination.  Because of the risk of failing to get back on board the train before it leaves it may be better to take luggage with you when you get off the train to locate a bin.  Luggage left unattended may of course be taken away and the subject of a controlled explosion.  Not unsurprisingly there is not usually a rush of people to get off the train clutching litter and in search of bins, presumably because the risk of being left behind is just too great.  It could take several successive trains and the entire day to complete the journey to distant destinations like Manchester with a large number of intermediate stops.

One key point worth noting, however, is that it doesn’t apply to all passengers.  The use of the term ‘customers’ (“a person who buys goods or services” OED) rather than “passengers” (“a traveller on a public or private conveyance other than the driver, pilot or crew” OED) means that it applies only to those who pay their fare. Fare-dodging passengers are not customers and so are excused the requirements of the injunction.  It could be that a defence against a charge of travelling without a ticket is that the stress which would be caused by the obligation to comply with the injunction is just too great and all you were trying to do was maintain your equilibrium, and in extreme cases, to protect your sanity.  And you were in any case bent over your keyboard when the ticket collector came along.

REFERENCE: See  “English as she is spoke”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_As_She_Is_Spoke

Posted in Grumpy Old Men, Reflections | 1 Comment

Looking beyond Christmas: dealing with boredom

Posted on December 5, 2011 by BarryH

It’s generally a pretty drab time of year.  Autumn has given way to Winter.  Grey skies.  Short days and long evenings.  Cold and damp.  Difficult to get on the soil to do much in the garden.  Mountains often lost in claggy cloud.  Christmas looming.  Surrounded by forced jollity.  I sometimes think that the only people who genuinely look forward unconditionally to Christmas are those trying to sell us something.

As well as the general greyness and the prospect of Christmas I’m faced with a great backlog of maintenance work on the house: leaking taps; leaking boiler; painting and decorating; purging the back porch of 3 years of detritus ……  And on top of all this the mundane, everyday chores: cleaning the loo; dysoning and polishing; cleaning the kitchen …… Things which need doing over and over again forever.

The temptation is to crawl into a hole and pull it in behind me for the winter. This time last year I was looking forward to going to Canada for a month in the Rockies around Christmas.  I loved it over there.  Looking back now from a claggy, Grey Britain I must admit that in some respects I envy the bears which I didn’t see in the Rockies.  I didn’t see them because they go into hibernation when the temperatures plummet and the snows come, emerging only in the Spring.  What a great life!

Canada isn’t going to happen again for me this year.  So I have started to focus beyond Christmas and have started ruminating about next Summer and going back to Greece.  Day dreaming about what I would like to do: fly to Athens and visit Meteora by train; spend some time in the mountains in the Peloponnese; visit Kavala and island-hop down the North Aegean and the Dodecanese; go back to Amorgos and the islands and people I know; walking again in the mountains with the sun on my back and swimming in the Aegean.  It’s important and helpful to look ahead to something bright and challenging, lay plans and put things in place.

But it all set me thinking.  You can’t live life like that, doing nothing but looking ahead.  Life is generally pretty boring and mundane for most people.  We have to learn to cope with the humdrum of the here and now.  Why should I expect things to be any better for me than anybody else?  In fact this morning I read that very thing in Chapter 45 of the book of Jeremiah.

Thinking about it, two practical things struck me. I need to mix the maintenance stuff with doing something creative.  And I have to try to draw some satisfaction from doing the boring stuff as well.

The latter is probably the hardest.  It’s difficult to knuckle down to cleaning the loo, swapping the kitchen floor, dysoning the stairs and so on.  So I’m trying to take a positive attitude towards chores.  Same as I did with driving the car.  Because a few years ago I was in danger of losing my licence for speeding, I decided I had to slow down.  Problem was that I get bored very easily and when I get bored I nod off to sleep.  Not good behind the wheel of a car.  Driving fast kept me focused.  So I set myself the challenge of maximising my fuel consumption.  It worked.  Applying this to household chores it struck me that I should aim for maximum efficiency and effectiveness, cleaning the kitchen floor in the shortest time while getting it as clean as possible.  This fits with my growing obsessiveness about cleanliness, tidiness, orderliness.

There’s plenty of scope for creativity.  I have had a rolling 5-year programme in the garden since we moved here in 1975.  When I got back from Greece in September I set to to rebuild the unimproved bit of the stone-terracing in the vegetable garden. I now have the start of a herb garden along its edge.  On Saturday I completed the rebuilding and replanting of the rhubarb bed.  There is more stone terracing to rebuild and new paths to lay, an arch to complete at the entrance to the Greek-style wall around the fruit garden, obelisks to reposition …. and many other creative things in the garden to compensate for the interminable weeding and clearing.

I really must get to grips with making more clocks.  I have now sold all my clocks except 3 and I dread people coming across my web site and phoning me up for a clock as a Christmas present as has happened every year since I started making them.  I have a couple of sculptures which are part finished and untouched for a few years. And photography is always there.  Since I was in Greece last Summer I carry my Canon S95 with me virtually all the time as it fits into rucksack, pocket or hand so easily.  I got up this morning to yet another great sunrise over the ridge on the other side of the valley.  Sometimes the bright side is there to look on.

Looking across the valley from the back window, a bright beginning to the day

Just before dawn black clouds sometimes have a fiery lining

Problem is that in the last couple of years, with the exception of photography, the creative urge has left me.  I need to get it back. 

Posted in Canada, Grey Britain, Grumpy Old Men, Winter | Leave a comment

Coping with Christmas: a season of neon lights and frustration

Posted on November 28, 2011 by BarryH

Christmas is not my favourite time of year, particularly now I have to deal with the whole card and presents stuff on my own.  But I try.  Admittedly I defer doing things as long as I can but then I finally grit my teeth and take a positive if somewhat reluctant step.   If it doesn’t work out first time it often gets deferred.  Had a shot at buying cards and gave up.

On Thursday I met some friends in Cardiff and had a bit of a mooch around the shops for a couple of things I wanted but with no spark of enthusiasm for present-shopping.  Instead I killed some time by wandering around the city centre with the camera, a tourist in an alien world.  It was very colourful.  Very neon.  Not my world.

The folksy market and craft stalls around the city centre church

Lights along the castle walls

City Hall all it up.

This years high-rise whirly thing

All the glitz of roundabouts and helter-skelter

An older gentleman looking on in bemusement

I have never been any good at knowing what to buy as presents for children and so look to parents for inspiration.  A week or so ago it was suggested that waterproofs would be very welcome for the grandchildren  so when on Friday evening I received an e-mail from a major outdoor gear chain reminding me of the offer of 20% off everything in store, ending on Sunday, that made my mind up.  Too good an opportunity to miss.  Focus replaced dither.  Galvanised into action I quickly formed what I smugly thought was an elegant and efficient plan of action.

I would go down to Cardiff on the bus, visit the outdoor gear store in an out-of-town shopping centre and then continue to the city centre to collect something there. I was very up-beat.  This was going to be good. I could sort out nearly all my presents in this one trip.  In and out like a snatch squad.  Real blokes’ shopping.  I reckoned I could be home and finished by 16.30.  I haven’t been as galvanised as this about Christmas shopping for a long time.  Not since before I retired in fact when every year I would go down to Cardiff after work on the last Thursday before Christmas knowing that I had two hours of late-night shopping to complete everything.

Unfortunately, this turned out to be a disaster of epic proportions.

My elegant plan and positive mental attitude took a first knock when the bus pulled over onto the hard shoulder on the M4.  The driver had been taken ill and couldn’t continue.  We then all sat there until a relief bus could be sent out to pick us up and take us the rest of the way.  Timetable already set back significantly.

But that was just the beginning.  The plan unravelled completely.  The saga would drag on for more than 24 hours. I quickly found that in order to receive the 20% discount I needed to have printed out a coupon from the e-mail.  I hadn’t read that far.  I had only scanned the headline not the small print.  They couldn’t help me.  No point in staying.  I was mad at myself and at the inflexibility of the system.

I left and caught a bus into Cardiff centre, and by shooting around at very high speed, an infuriated, truculent man on a mission, I collected my package and was on the bus home at 15.15.

Relaxing a little on the bus I decided to go back to the outdoor gear store early evening in the car having first printed out the coupon. The reason for turning round and going straight back was that Sunday was forecast to be sunny and I wanted to walk the ridge to Abergavenny and listen to the jazz at the Hen and Chicks, always a very enjoyable day out.   So after a quick snack and a coffee I did a bit of food shopping in the local supermarket and then headed for Cardiff, arriving in the store car park at 18.18.  It was closed.  Open until 20.00 in the week it closes at 18.00 on Saturdays.  I was trapped, hovering between depression and fury.  Again I hadn’t read the web site carefully enough.  I could do nothing but turn round and come home yet again, empty handed and frustrated.

I was sorely tempted to say “xxx it”, knock the whole idea on the head and buy a wheelbarrow full of jelly babies.  But Sunday morning I went back in the car, coupon printed out, store discount card in hand, and bought the presents.  Relieved at having finally got it sorted I headed back home.   No way that I could walk the ridge to Abergavenny in time to catch the jazz but at least I could spend the afternoon on the mountain.

Not to be.  Stowing away the clothing ready to wrap in the early hours of Christmas Day (it always seems to work out like that) I noticed that the sizes shown on the labels inside 3 of the 6 garments I had bought were different from those on the hangers on which they were displayed in the store.  I got back in the car, by now beyond frustration or anger and overcome by weary resignation, and went back to the store for the fourth time.  One of the store assistants ventured the view that such problems arose because American sizing was different from UK sizing.  I barely had the energy left to object to this but she clearly regarded me as an aggressive troublemaker when I pointed out that children’s clothing is sized in months and years, 18-24 months or 3-4 years for example, and that, as far as I knew, America had the same number of months in a year as the rest of the world.

I got home at 15.30, put my boots on and went up the mountain.  It would be dark in an hour but at least I was somewhere I wanted to be.  Christmas frustration and neon lights receding into the past, put into perspective by the peace and calm of the mountain top and the sun setting impressively beyond the ridges to the west.

Sun setting over the western ridges of South Wales

Thin clouds making the sun look like an impressionist painting


Posted in Grumpy Old Men | Leave a comment

Familiarity breeds selective cognition: trying to see what’s under your nose.

Posted on November 22, 2011 by BarryH

For a few days last week I was doing the ‘school run’ for my two older grandchildren.  This entailed collecting them and driving them to school for 09.05, picking the younger one up at 11.35 and the older one at 15.20.

It’s important to be punctual.  Doors are locked after a very short window of opportunity at ‘delivery’ time, necessitating a visit to the school office if you’re late with consequent official reports for repeated lateness.  Needless to say this not only goes on the child’s record but, more importantly, has a negative effect on young and impressionable minds …. kids don’t like it.

I have always been a stickler for punctuality but this regime means I’m paranoid to make sure that I’m on time.  It’s 1½ miles as the crow flies but when I’m doing it the school run entails driving more than twice that distance from my house to theirs through the centre of Pontypool with very unpredictable traffic.  Some days it can take half an hour, other days only 15 minutes.

One of the problems is that the local authority in its wisdom (or lack of it) decided to turn the local secondary school serving the surrounding community into a Welsh language school with a large catchment area necessitating bussing all the pupils in every day.  There is only one road up to the hill-top community and the result is a fleet of old buses dismissed from scheduled services and now belching and grinding up and down the steep, winding, narrow road in convoy.  A more inaccessible location for a school with a wide catchment area is difficult to imagine.  Get behind the convoy and I’m late for the school run.

I don’t like the idea of children being taken to school by car but in this case the distance between their house and the primary school is such that, aged 3 and 5, they are just too young and walking isn’t a choice.  There is a convenient scheduled bus route but the convoy to the secondary school means that the timings of scheduled services are disrupted and can’t be relied on.

Soooo….. what’s all this rambling in aid of?  How does it relate to the title of the blog?  Simple.  To avoid being late to pick up the kids to take them home I make sure that I can be there 5 minutes early even if traffic is bad which means that some days I have 20 minutes to kill.  Mostly I sit in the car and listen to the radio but one day the sun was shining and the sky blue so I decided to take the camera for a short walk.

The footpath from the main part of the community to the school goes through the grounds of the old church.  Most of the community, a modern housing estate, is not particularly photogenic but the church and its grounds would not look out of place anywhere in rural Britain, not even in the Sarf East.  There are even wooden sculptures here and there, good examples of unpretentious public art. As I ambled along the path through the churchyard with the camera I became acutely aware that I was doing something regarded as abnormal.

It was clear that the parents, mostly young mothers, walking along the path to the school were looking at me with both puzzlement and suspicion.  They obviously wondered why anyone should want to walk around their patch taking photos.  I guess it’s true of most of us that we are so familiar with the place we live that it ceases to have any particular interest for us which makes us want to photograph it.  We don’t see the view which hangs together as a good composition even in good light and with blue sky.  It’s somebody else’s patch which sparks the imagination not our own patch.  Walking through the churchyard on a sunny day the church and its setting were very photogenic.  But not if you live in the community and walk it every day.  C’mon, anyone who walks around with a camera is a bit suss!!!!

It may be different if you live in a tourist honey pot where trippers, tourists, come in all the time to gawp and snap.  In St Ives or the Isle of Skye you expect to see voyeurs with cameras.  But not in a hilltop housing estate in the Valleys.  I guess I was simply regarded as weird rather than dangerous partly because I was known as one of the grandparent substituting on the school run but also because I was pointing the camera at buildings and landscapes not at people.

I suppose behind the suspicion is the inability to see what is interesting in our own locality.  Buildings, townscapes, landscapes, colours, details.  The challenge is to try to look at the everyday with fresh eyes.  Then we might better appreciate where we live and understand why others sometimes want to point a camera at it.

The path through the churchyard

Freshened up weather cock

The crow lands having helped out by measuring the distance

One of the wood carvings along the path - passed by most with scarcely a glance

 


Posted in Art, Pontypool, Reflections | 1 Comment