Is that you Mabel?

If I am brutally honest then I am not the most ‘enlightened’ soul on the planet but then I am but a result of my life.  I cannot be sure whether this post will be understood or is simply a result of my old age and failure to understand, and embrace, the modern world but hey it has never stopped me before!

Over the course of last weekend I had cause to walk along the high street, so far so good. Walking in the opposite direction was a little old lady, who must have been in her eighties, discussing plans for the day with her companion and this is where it gets weird. The companion must have been in his sixties and was dressed as a woman!

My concern with this is not that he was dressed as a woman, far be it from me to conclude that clothes are designed for specific sexes, after all if fat men can grow breasts why can’t they wear bras?* What confused me was that the decision to dress as a woman appeared to kick in at 60.

The application of make-up and difficulty in walking were clear indications that this was not a practiced individual So what on earth makes a guy of 60 decide that not only is he tired of dressing as a man but that he has always rather hankered over the idea of being an old lady? If you were giving him marks out of ten for style and execution it would be zero all round, in fact were it not for the make-up I would have accepted the story that he was blind and got dressed in his mother’s room by mistake.

Whilst I have never had any inclination to adopt the clothing of the fairer sex I am guessing that any desire to do so would be fuelled by pictures of models in glossy magazines. Surely the prospect of messing about in complicated articles of clothing and the shear inconvenience of having to select items from a wardrobe on anything other than a ‘what’s next ‘ basis would have to be traded against the concept of cleavage relief** Not for this fella, all he wanted in life was woollen cardigans, lavender scent and thatcher handbags.

The final part of this conundrum was that the bloke was a good six-foot tall, his companion would be lucky to stretch to five foot two, so I am not entirely sure that she was aware what was happening. Clearly she was not labouring under any misconception that her companion was a dapper business suited gent but I am not sure that, from all the way down there, she realised the car crash in a make-up case that was alongside her.

I imagine at her height her companion appeared to be a little unsteady on ‘her’ feet and perhaps she even thought that ‘she’ had let herself go but I remain convinced that she would have been as shocked as I was to see a face that was some odd combination of Margret Thatcher and the Joker from Batman. It is, as they say, a funny old world or perhaps more accurately a perfectly normal world filled with funny old people!

 

 

 

*See I can be politically correct!

**The means by which speeding tickets disappear  

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Gotta love a cold call

I have to share with you my first cold call of 2015 I am rather proud of it. My apologies to anybody who has read the shortened version on facebook. Many years ago I had laser eye surgery from one of the national chains and they obviously have my details still. The operation was a marvellous success and I still have 20/20 vision.

“Good morning, how are you?”

“I am good thank you”

“Good, I am calling from *** with a special offer for you as a valued customer”

“Brilliant, I’ve been waiting for this! How much? do you need a deposit?”

“Well that depends on the procedure sir”

“Top shelf all the way, I want the x-ray option”

“Ha ha oh yes sir that would be nice, do you need glasses for reading?”

“No, not unless its her next door’s copy of Fifty Shades”

“Do you need glasses for driving?”

“No I am pretty much 20/20″

“Are you sure sir, prescriptions change with time”

“Pretty sure as are you, your firm did the work and you have my prescription”

“Oh there seems to have been a mistake”

“No they told me I would get 10% off when x-ray was available, as a valued customer, I’ve been waiting for this call now do you need a credit card”

“Ha, well of course we don’t do x-ray sir”

“What? that’s false advertising, I wan’t the x-ray option stop messing around”

“Well sir it’s been nice speaking to you”

“Look I have had the super hero costume for years now finally they will stop laughing at me for wearing tights to the pub”

“Hello”

“Are you there……..”

Box of voices and doggy greetings

I shall start this post by saying that everyone needs a job and some of them, well they are just rubbish. Not for one minute do I begrudge a person a wage or criticise them for earning it neither do I try and make it harder for them. There are enough people in this country living off welfare as it is, anyone that tries to earn a crust should be encouraged. I am the sort of person that is polite to the traffic officer that wants to fine me for not wearing a seat belt or driving with the window down or whatever stupid rule he can enforce. This is not a job for me, but then I like people and don’t see the fun in the challenge of making every living thing detest me, but hey each to their own.

I can understand that some, rather stupid, companies believe that there is a place for ‘direct marketing’ or as we know it ‘cold calling’. These are companies that have not moved with the times but that is no crime, they are not alone. Just turn on the TV for more than an hour and you will be assaulted by the moron that owns a window company yelling his catchphrase at you. Seriously this fella does his own advertising despite looking like a paedophile that hasn’t washed in a month! But, back to the case in point, they have now farmed call centre work to the third world so you are never quite sure if the call originates in Calcutta or London since both sound the same these days.

Now if you are calling from another continent I don’t believe that I should feel obliged to give you the same respect as I do the locals. I hate cold calls but I have noticed that they are becoming harder to deal with. I was told, years ago, by a friend that if you were offensive they had to block your number for staff welfare reasons. The Judicious, if embarrassing, use of offensive language did indeed deal with the issue for some time but then it stopped. The reason it stopped was that when they shipped this work overseas they empowered the operators, now they fight back. But how can you tell if you will get a fight or offend somebody? Well, thanks to an early hours call yesterday, I know how.

I have a few means of dealing with cold calls, I adjust them according to the caller. When I receive calls for my ex wife I patiently and emotionally explain that since she has passed away she can’t be reached on this number. This is most successful especially if you upgrade it with a distraught “if only you could speak to her, you could tell her how much we miss her”. The blatant sales calls sometimes have some entertainment value, I’ve enjoyed explaining to SKY that I don’t possess any televisions. After some tenacious debating the girl gave up when I started whispering that I couldn’t have a TV since the voices in the box “told me to do those terrible things”. If you get the ambulance chaser call then it’s always a challenge, should you have time, to come up with a new ailment that they can assist with. If you get this technique right you should be able to get the caller to laugh, my favourite that was ever since I walked into a street lamp I had an uncontrollable urge to sniff dog’s bums. This caller held it together, with sympathy, until I explained how I had to learn to surreptitiously stroke their bum and then sneak off for a sniff then she broke.

The latest ploy is to place the phone on speaker phone and leave it on the side. This technique will either lead to the call terminating when they realise that you are not responding or, more interestingly, will lead to abuse. If you have a foreign call centre this technique often drives them over the edge and they start to yell and call you names. Now let me share something with the foreign call centre staff, a little secret from me. If you call me and wake me up to talk rubbish then don’t for one minute think that you are angry when I don’t respond, I am the angry one. In truth you have suffered no inconvenience whereas I have and I’ve suffered it because of you. If you want to learn offensive English language step right up because you are in for a top notch lesson.

I share this because I think sometimes we all need a carefree rant to clear our thoughts. If you are the most timid or shy person then give this a go, remember the other party is on another continent and paid pennies so he’s not going to chase you. Best of all because they start the argument all you are actually doing is following their culture, you are actually being multicultural. Go on get stuck in and do your piece for world peace!

This post was brought to you by some god forsaken claims company at 6 am on Saturday!!

I might not want it but it’s free

This morning there was a coach load of Chinese leaving the hotel early. Travelling parties of Chinese rarely fail to entertain, especially at 5.30! The hotel had arranged ‘take away breakfasts’ for them, stacked on a trolley in brown paper bags. There was no need for the night porter to point them at these bags after the first person. Person one stands as a beacon calling his friends to the gift, soon replaced by a friend and eventually by a sort of crowd knowledge.

The breakfast contains a carton of juice, a cereal pot and a yoghurt. When they glance inside their paper bag the sound of disappointment is clear. But the Chinese are nothing if not ingenious so they leave the women with the spoils before marching out to smoke in the car park. It’s a great image as they turn their nose up at the healthy breakfast and march out to chain smoke. Something about horses and water comes to mind. . .

But the Chinese are no more immune to the lure of hotel freebies than the rest of us. Having secured what they viewed as an unsavoury breakfast they had to keep it. So it was that the foyer was awash with men growling directions at the women whilst they repacked their belongings. Transatlantic trips with families generate a lot of luggage and we all know that you take back more than you left with. Clothes, toiletries, gifts and the obligatory electronics were stacked and restacked to allow the addition of the free breakfast. I saw bags repacked three times to no avail but when I left they were still trying.

The army often say that no man is left behind, in hotels the same is true of freebies. One interesting observation is that whilst the Chinese appear disorganised and chaotic they are actually well ordered. Whether it was due to their communist roots or some sense of morality they didn’t try and push the gift. Nobody looked in a bag and rejected it in favour of another choice and nobody took more than a bag per person. I have to wonder is it a result of such a huge population drawing on limited resources that somehow curtails the development of greed.

Note to all using Heathrow today, the fruit juice cartons exceed the stazi fluid limits for flying. Expect to be delayed while 50 Chinese repack their luggage again!

Escape seemed so real except for the cracker

I travelled back from Chippenham by train today and have to say it was a delight. I think I really would love to be a travel writer, albeit an alternative one. There is something so emotive about listening to the destinations on the Great Western, Penzance, Truro and Exeter to name a few. Looking out along an empty pair of rails, no congestion and no spaghetti of overhead wires, leading off into the Southern most depths of the country.

This is diesel country, billowing smoke these industrious beasts ply their trade. Worn coaches and aged equipment don’t prevent full catering facilities accompanying those that travel from the furthest southwest. Theses are not commuters hardened to a way of life and the drudgery of travel. This is destination travel, holidays, visits and experiences.As much as the railway forms so many childhood memories the smell of diesel must surely be the gold plating. Little faces excited by discovering the city of London pass equally excited faces eager to build sand castles and explore rock pools.

For me, with life on pause, it is all that I can do to complete the journey. Whilst waiting for my train I am fighting the urge to divert to Cornwall and explore. Do I really need the Paddington service or could I slip onto the St Austell one? As we roar along the track I fall repeatedly in love with the idyllic scenes laid out alongside me. Each and every one of these would present an opportunity to restart life in a country idyll. If I depart mid route could I not join that lazy river on a barge and never look back or perhaps set up home somewhere on those rolling hills.

It seems that even the rolling stock itself is teasing me to another world. As I recall fondly the BR double arrows and smile at the modifications that have been shoehorned into the aging HST fleet. As we speed closer to London it seems that the world changes. Construction and congestion tell me that we are approaching the capital and, in some strange way, normality. Here comes the routine, the things that we have to do but also the things that bind us. I read an excellent passage in a book today. The character was looking at a yacht on a mooring and wondering why he didn’t sail off and explore the world. The logic of the character was that whilst he had travelled the world he had never explored. How strange that at some times in our lives some things speak to us so clearly

Public transport remains the gift that keeps on giving and here are two gems from today. First I present the sticker applied to my Hammersmith and City train. The sticker depicted a police officer and a helicopter under the banner of the British Transport police. Is it only me that looks at this and gets a childish smile. How James Bond would that be? To call the police on a subway and get a helicopter response?

The second is a crossover between trains and obesity. The rather oversize woman who sat opposite me opened a tub of small crackers. You know the sort of things, small dime sized salted crackers in a plastic tub with a screw top lid. I think she was confused regarding the relationship between calories and exercise, perhaps that explains the extra mass. My reason for asserting the confusion? Well every time that she wanted a cracker she unscrewed and removed the lid, selected a cracker, placed it on her lap and replaced the lid. I understand that this is often suggested as a diet tip because it makes you contemplate every bite, perhaps this was her plan. The flaw in her plan was that whilst her right hand repeated the ritual her left hand kept feeding her face. It was such a sight to witness, almost as if her right hand was surprised that the cracker had disappeared and so repeated the ritual to replace it. I swear that she didn’t look at what her hands were doing once, it was like the hands were two independent minds competing with each other.

It’s not a secret its just in code

I have my blog installed on my phone, which should lend itself to drafting my thoughts when they are still fresh, but unfortunately the power manager shuts the blog down without saving anything so its less than ideal. I have now taken to emailing myself little memory jogs for the next post but I appear to be struggling to collate all of the individual emails in my inbox hence the delay in posting Friday’s shopping experience, well better late than never.

Fridays, as most of you know, involve a return through Stratford where I will have up to 30 minutes to fill depending on how efficient the staff train was from the depot. I could get closer to my destination and lose time there but at Stratford there is a large, dry, warm shopping centre so it wins hands down as long as the train service is not disrupted. This Friday there were two items on my shopping list, I grabbed some deodorant from Superdrug and a hoody from JD sports, checked my watch and still 20 minutes until my train so I started the aimless walk around the shops. Not being female I am not programmed to window shop, I really can’t lose time like that, shopping is a task and not an experience. In a shopping centre with no purpose l resort to charging around without any direction, the only thing going for it is the exercise rather like an oversized hamster wheel.

On one of my laps I found myself outside Victoria’s Secrets with a rather enticing storefront, now I have not used this store before but its a common feature in US novels so I guess it wasn’t really a secret but hey it said so on the sign. As I wandered through rails of underwear I was writing a review in my mind, there was no reason for this its just something that I do when I have no other purpose in a store, and noting that some of the items were rather boring but then if your brand of choice is Sloggi I guess it doesn’t take too much to be provocative. I leave one earphone from my iPod in while I am shopping, partly because it means I don’t lose them in my shirt and secondly because it deters some of the less determined hawkers selling Sky TV, but this sales assistant approached from the other side:

Sales Assistant – “Can I be of any assistance sir?”
Me – “No I don’t think so thank you”
SA – “Do you know your partners sizes?”
Me – “No I am single actually”
SA – “Erm, oh sorry its just that… Well is it a gift that your looking for”
Me – “Nope”
SA – now looking rather nervous, backing away and trying to size me up “We do stock some less common sizes”
Me – “Well that’s good to know should I ever meet any less commonly sized women”

At this point she turned tail and fled although I am sure that her ‘odd customer’ was the source of much discussion over coffee later. For reference, if any sales trainers are reading this, there is no need to apologise to me for the fact that I am single it is not your fault, and the fact that I am male does not preclude me from browsing female clothing.

To finish my mental review I would say that there is a good range, its overpriced but you expect that with the brand and to be honest there was no secret, I didn’t learn anything that I didn’t already know.

As I was writing this all the old jokes about sizing your partners breasts by comparison to the assistants came to mind, you know the ones about trying to buy a bra whose cup size is ‘about a handful’, and it occurred to me that one of the benefits of sisters is that I have never been shy about shopping for women and its afforded me some fun over the years. When I was called upon to visit Ann Summers* some years ago I obviously combined it with another task, taking my young son to the cinema, and was quite astonished when they asked me to leave the store. The toy section is discretely placed and not immediately obvious, I don’t believe that seeing underwear was going to corrupt my son so I really don’t think that it was wrong to take him in there in fact I think it was funny when he pointed at the chocolate genitals and asked for chocolate. Perhaps its the secret thing again, when wifey is buying provocative clothes she doesn’t want to be reminded that she is also mummy? Women’s minds eh, go figure.

On a visit to collect my son a few years back I had been asked by my then girlfriend to purchase some tampons, not an unreasonable request but one that requires more information than I had. My son and I located the appropriate area in the store and the. Realised we were in women’s world, its like trying to chose a paint sample, different brands, styles, sizes and even scents how in the hell do you chose? Did I need ones with skirts, what benefit that produces I have no idea I thought skirts were an outer garment, ones with pearls? I fail to see what a pearl can do in terms of absorption it really is all designed to confuse and confound. So I called the girlfriend “do you want small, medium or super soaker? With pearls or without? With a gun or self applied?” Before answering she asked where I was to which I replied, fairly obviously, that I was in the store she screamed that I can’t talk about that in public and put the phone down on me.

My son and I were discussing our predicament when a sales assistant asked if she could help, oh yes I said thank you for offering ‘I am horribly confused and my girlfriend won’t answer the phone now she is about your size but about 5 years older than you with longer hair that is dyed black, I am guessing that your about the same size so which tampons do you use and I will get the same for her’
I don’t know whether it was seeing a grown man and an 11 year old looking her up and down, comparing her with the girlfriend and keenly awaiting the answer or whether there is some sort of female code that prevents them speaking on the subject, or perhaps she couldn’t remember without checking the tag, but she fled. So it was, with such an absence of support, that I had to purchase one of every size in 2 brands in the comfort of home this made for much hilarity and I believe I kept several women in tampons for some time, but really couldn’t they just put age or weight on the box?

*for those not in the UK this is a hideously overpriced store that stocks poor quality clothing and sex toys but has an extremely popular party sales plan

Ms Nature v James Bond

I have spent a week this week being healthy, I have consumed a sensible diet, I have exercised, I have shunned alcohol and retired early. The result of this sensible lifestyle? I am exhausted, I have woken every morning tired and having to drag myself out of bed, my shoulder aches and righty is steadfastly refusing to dry out. Come on Ms Nature, we both know that we are never going to be freinds but what do you want? Can we not find some compromise? Unless you know something that I don’t then you are stuck with me and from what I see there are a lot of people out there that you can play with so how about you give in?

An honourable mention goes today to the guy at Highbury and Islington for making that greatest mistake you can make in public, forgetting your not alone. I have no idea what you were listening to on those headphones but it had you convinced. The proud marching along the platform followed by the classic James Bond spin to take out a sniper with your double hand pose was a sight to behold. Anyone on that bridge stood no chance of avoiding that well placed finger did they? I think we don’t play enough in this world, there is too much seriousness and not enough frivolity, the world would be such a different place if we all played at James Bond on a train station or Captain Jack Sparrow at the grocery store. Sadly until a more frivolous approach is widely adopted people will continue to avoid and cast odd glances at late 40 year old play actors, but you stick with it fella your just an early adopter.