My Blog ThingI don’t know what it is, but all of my favourite foods begin with ‘ch’:
It’s uncanny.
I suppose it does speak volumes about me that these are my favourite foods. Yeah, that poncy stuff on Masterchef sure does look good, but when it comes down to it nothing beats a good bag of chips.
Well, at least Krispy Kreme are reasonably honest about their products…
… it’s just a shame they put it on the underside of the box so you don’t find out until your own sprog has eaten the whole dozen.
Now look.
Describing something as an “incident at Waterloo Station” does not do enough to satisfy my curiosity. Especially when it involves a fire engine outside the station and an ambulance parked in front of the ticket barriers. That’s interesting; I want to know what’s going on.
I first thought, maybe it’s something as trivial as someone getting trapped in one of the on-board toilets. As I have now discovered it was actually someone under a train, which obviously is a terrible thing.
This seems to happen to me a lot. A while back I was attempting to contact the Apple Store in the Bentall Centre in Kingston to chase up a repair and the hold message changed to ‘due to unforeseen circumstances this store is closed’. I wondered what the heck it was, maybe a bomb threat or something. It later emerged it was a woman who had tragically fallen from the top floor.
The reason why people crowd around accidents (or ‘incidents’) is because they want to see what’s going on. Most people are inherently nosy. That’s the inquisitive nature that got humanity so far… until it turned into the desire to hear celeb gossip, and now we’re mostly fucked.
There might have been a point to this post, but if there was it has temporarily escaped me.
–verb (used without object)
1.to make a distinction in favor of or against a person or thing on the basis of the group, class, or category to which the person belongs rather than according to actual merit; show partiality: The new law discriminates against foreigners. He discriminates in favour of his relatives.
2.
to note or observe a difference; distinguish accurately: to discriminate between things.
So, it appears that insurance companies are no longer allowed to discriminate against people based on their gender.
Interesting idea.
It won’t work, of course. The problem is insurance is an area where you’re allowed to discriminate. That’s the point. You’re working with odds, charging an insurance premium based on the likelihood that you’ll have to pay out. It’s what keeps insurance costs so low for low-risk groups. This is basically going to hurt people less likely to crash whilst helping those more likely to.
This worries me a little. Not because of changing insurance premiums, I haven’t owned a car since last summer. But I’m reminded of a favourite book of mine by Rob Grant called Incompetence, a detective story set in a United States of Europe in which nobody can be “prejudiced from employment for reason of age, race, creed or incompitence”. It’s a story – one of the funniest books I’ve ever read – which I often think of when Europe starts stopping us from discriminating against the people we should be discriminating against.
Discrimination is good, people. Not all discrimination obviously, but most is fine. We’re all different. People claim they want to be treated equally but they don’t really mean it; either that or they haven’t thought it through properly.
Single sex toilets are discriminatory. Disabled parking spots are discriminatory. Film ratings are discriminatory. Ten items or less checkouts at the supermarket are discriminatory (if you try to tell me it’s ‘ten items or fewer’ I’ll stick a spanner up your nose).
You see where I’m going with this.
We have to discriminate, because we’re all different.
The only good that might come out of this is it could spell the end of those horrible Sheila’s Wheels ads.
There is something about riding to the station in the morning. Unfortunately, I can’t remember what it is, since I had that thought as I arrived at the station yesterday morning, and it has since left me.
Never mind, because it did also remind me of another thought about bikes at stations: the lost bikes. Not bikes that are lost, or stolen, from the station (like Holly’s bike was last weekend) but bikes which are just left, and forgotten.
Most of the time, you don’t even notice them. They hide amongst the regular bikes like ninjas, not doing anything to stand out. Unless they’re missing a saddle. Or a wheel. But late at night, or early in the morning, or at weekends, when the other bikes are all at home, they stand out like sore thumbs.
Why are they left behind? Did their owner just forget about them on the way home from work? Did the owner die during the day? Or did they just – as I once intended to do – dump the bike at the station and let it rust?
Of course, if you’re just intending to dump the bike, why bother locking it down? My excuse was going to under the guise of a social experiment, after my old bike had its valve caps stolen whilst it was locked up outside Woking Station. I wanted to see how long it would last locked up with a cheap lock at a busy station. I never did in the end, so I dumped it in a bush, where it could still be to this day.
But the bikes at Twickenham Station are pretty securely locked – well enough that they haven’t gone anywhere in months, if not years. They rust, but otherwise the bikes are fine.
And yet Holly’s bike was nicked after being left there for a couple of days. Hey ho, she now has a new bike, but it is annoying nonetheless.
So anyway, if you’ve left your bike locked up at Twickenham Station for the last few months, it’s probably still there. If you need a bike, I left one in the bushes by my old house in Woking.
When, as I do, you live in the shadow of a major national sporting stadium, you end up with usually either one of two opinions towards said sport – either you love it, or you hate it. I still sometimes have trouble figuring out in which category I fall.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy rugby. I don’t follow it as closely as I follow the Arsenal, for instance, but I do try to keep up with things and have been to more rugby than football games in recent memory.
However, when whatever you want to do on a Saturday has to be worked around the presence of 82,000 people who are all wearing silly hats, or dressed like a bee, or are in extreme cases French, then it can be a little tiresome.
That’s not to say I don’t enjoy living where I do. I love it here, and when I’m actually going to a game it’s great to be part of the atmosphere. But you have to get used to keeping track of what games are happening when, lest your simple attempt to go home be thwarted by tens of thousands of people heading in the other direction (obviously far worse when you also have a bike with you). And when most people are offered overtime at work (in central London) they have to check with National Rail to see if there’s any engineering works. I have to check with the RFU to see if I’ll be able to get near my flat.
There are perks, of course. We live close enough to get the concerts for free, albeit with a little more reverb than one would like. And, if you’re lucky, the massive Tesco on our doorstep is literally empty of customers when a match is on (well, okay, there were three other shoppers. Quite a lot considering the car park was full, however).
The main problem I find is the police, who generally assume you’re a fan going to the stadium rather than a resident going home. But once they find out you’re a local they’re usually pretty good (they even let us cycle down ostensibly closed roads two weeks ago).
Still, Holly and I find it’s usually best when an England match is on to either hide in the flat, or go far enough away and try not to come back until everyone has at least made it into the pubs – or when the game is on, when the whole place is like a ghost town.
I only say this because, three hours before kickoff today, I still couldn’t move for people as I tried to get home for work. Still, as I type, I can hear the faint cheers as it all gets underway. If you’re watching the game, enjoy the show.
Just a quick note on so-called ‘full hybrid’ cars.
You don’t exist.
Simply put, ‘full hybrid’ is a contradiction in terms. It’s a bullshit marketing term that doesn’t mean what I think they want it to mean, and actually sounds worse than an empty gimmick tagline.
No wonder ‘green’ cars aren’t taking over the world.
That, and the G-Whiz, which is (was) the stupidest piece of shit to ever be allowed on the road. I’m all for saving the planet, I’d just rather do it without sacrificing my dignity.
Sorry, rant over.
As you will probably have noticed, I haven’t exactly posted much on here in the last few days (save for that quick little Beach Boys post). Don’t worry, I haven’t lost the blog bug, I had a very, very good excuse.
It’s been a hectic couple of weeks at work, some of which has already been documented. The pregnant woman project was actually completed on time, despite the time constraints. What I didn’t mention was that that week, the pregnant woman was one of three projects that had to be completed by the end of that week.
Last week, the Artsy Film. I had to screen that bastard six times in three days. Although, the first screening failed because the 16mm projector had a brief disagreement with me, resulting in something unwatchable, even for a film that I had previously taken 15 minutes to realise was running upside down.
Whilst I was busy with that, the system in one of our theatres (the really fallible theatre that I’m sure I’ve mentioned somewhere else before, but not sure where) blew up, meaning I came in the morning after to help sort things out, on what was technically my day off (I’m not complaining or anything, this is mainly for context).
Which all brings us round to Monday.
On Monday I interviewed at work for a promotion. Long story short, I got it. Although, as I write this, I can’t actually tell you. Until it’s announced officially, I can’t say anything, so that those I was up against can be informed properly (and trust me, having been on the other side of the fence and discovering my lack of success through the proverbial grapevine, I know exactly what it feels like). Of course, by the time you read this, it will be official, unless I accidentally publish this post too early. [Note: although it hasn’t been ‘officially’ announced, it is apparently common knowledge so I’ve gone ahead and posted this]
The problem with the interview was I had to both endure a 50-minute interview, and deliver a 10 minute presentation, all of which had to be prepared for. So ultimately, the reason why there’s not been much of me around is I spent Thursday writing my presentation, Saturday creating the slides and Sunday actually learning and rehearsing the thing. And Friday in the pub, but that’s neither here nor there.
To say I was nervous was an understatement. I had great trouble shutting my brain up to get to sleep on Sunday, and at some point during the night had a dream that I was in a bicycle race with Stone Cold Steve Austin, who resorted to elbowing me in the nose and leaving my bloodied in the road in order to win. Holly said that was perhaps one of my easier dreams to read, something about competitiveness and people fighting dirty. I dunno, I don’t really do dream reading.
Obviously it was all worth it, and now my brain isn’t chock full of potential questions and answers and the order of presentation slides, I can actually set it back to keeping my blogs updated. Oh, and the new job and stuff.
A quick note to those in the record industry. Yes, I understand you want to make it clear whether some of your older back catalogue is in stereo or not. Just, be a little more considerate as to your wording of such things.
That is all.
This should keep those health and safety types happy, shouldn’t it?
Don’t look at me. I didn’t do it.
Related: Oh Dear
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