Emergency misconceptions

Well it’s been a weekend of paperwork, report reading and the obligatory plumbing. All of this has been interspersed with a significant step up in Ms Nature’s game with righty in particular really punishing me. As an engineer in a predominantly office based role I can’t think what Ms Nature finds to get so nasty about if I spend my weekend crawling through lost spaces and bending pipe but she is not happy.

For those of you that see me this week can I remind you that I am right handed so always lead with my right. That should help to reassure you that the cuts and bruises on the knuckles of my left hand are not the result of scraping! For those who don’t know me, well you can continue to labour under your mistaken belief. The truth is that two knuckles got caught on a broken tile and the bruised one got in the way of a hammer, repeatedly. One of the marvels of the world is that it takes a brief inaccuracy to land a hammer on a knuckle but this starts a relationship where you can strike that same spot repeatedly and with astounding accuracy.

On Sunday morning I awoke in the early hours and checked on my hot water. This habit will sound odd to anybody that has not experienced a thermostat failure on an old style immersion heater but to those of us that have it is a sensible precaution. I discovered that the tank was cold and, because I am an Engineer, this set in motion an investigation. First off I changed the fuse, it was 5am and my fault finding wasn’t at it most adept, to no avail. I waved my volt stick around the cupboard and it found no volts, anywhere. Next up was the distribution board which again was devoid of volts, I have two distribution boards one for normal and one for economy seven.

Venturing out into the corridor I discovered that the timer had not switched and my E7 had not engaged. I pondered what I could do to fix the issue and then remembered I was naked so I gave the box a slap and retreated. This morning I called my supplier who explained that, because I had no heating, this was an emergency call. Apparently for “health and safety” reasons I have to be present when he attends, the switch is outside of the flat so I questioned this. The call centre advised that if they have to turn the electricity off then they need to have access to “ensure that it has come back on”. Clearly this has nothing to do with health and safety and it is simple enough to check that the the supply is re-established without turning a light on but I resisted the urge to argue.

Apparently they don’t do weekend calls so I agreed to leave my keys with friends for the ’emergency’ appointment which they could arrange for the fifteenth of March! Needless to say there was considerably more conversation before the call was moved to today! It is this sort of lunacy that causes people to automatically escalate all problems to emergency status and cost these firms so much money, oh for the days of common sense.

Finally I would like to share with you one of those oddities one sees on public transport. A young ‘man’ of probably 19 years was stood in the vestibule on the phone this morning, I would guess he was born in rural Essex to middle class parents. His call was conducted in a bizarre combination of gangster, African and gypsy which seems to be the rhyming slang of his generation. In amongst the expletives and gangster bravado I just caught the subject matter and smiled as I realised that our would be gangster had been fishing without a licence at the weekend. No guns and drugs for this dangerous criminal just an eliciting caught pike that was returned unharmed!

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The language of youth and devilish reversing

I am clearly no longer a young man and one of the ways this shows itself is that I do not understand the language of youth. I understand this, it is as natural as the creaking arthritis that is becoming a more constant companion and the desire to hear the words in music. I am not completely oblivious to the altered interpretations of language that the youth use, I don’t dive for a bucket when I hear them say that something is sick. For me the youthful adaption of the language is quite unpleasant, the desire to mimic cultural tones of those less educated than oneself demonstrates a sad lack of identity and confidence. But the youth, by their very nature, will always be younger and always trying to differentiate themselves.

There are some aspects of the development of language that are more disturbing as they creep into general use. I am deeply unhappy, for example, that welfare has become “pay” or “money” in the UK since this softens the reality that the state is sponsoring a person. For some reason I got to thinking if I could educate the world as to one piece of language what would it be. The answer that I have fallen upon is the difference between the words ‘want’ and ‘need’. I think that if we could educate people as to the true definitions of these two words the world would be a happier and more fulfilled place and, more importantly, I wouldn’t get so angry.  I set out to establish some easy examples and came up with:

• You ‘want’ chocolate’ but you ‘need’ oxygen
• You ‘want’ takeaway but you ‘need’ food
• You ‘want’ beer but you ‘need’ water

At this point I started struggling, I could find loads more ‘wants’ but struggled to justify more ‘needs’. A home came to mind but, as many prove nightly, that is not a true need. Human life is a simple mechanism that requires fuel and hydration to survive, if it’s not one of those then you don’t really need it. We have complicated our lives and I fully accept that we need to pay the mortgage or fill the car to get to work but we don’t need to go the pub or visit friends, they are nice things to do but not essential.

In part this fuels the welfare culture, this belief that we need Sky or we need beer or, perhaps most sadly, that our children need toys. The happiest children in the world have little more than the love and attention of their parents but society, especially in the UK, creates artificial aspirations and beliefs. So we have parents who believe that their children’s happiness and welfare is directly related to the volume of “Made in China” labels under the Christmas tree. An aspiration to provide toys for your child is normal and correct but this has been manipulated and mutated such that, for so many, it is impossible to achieve. So we end up with badly educated parents trying to achieve the unachievable, giving up and getting drunk.

The result of this ‘feast or famine’ style of parenting is that little Johnny is fed garbage all year in a vain attempt to pay the loans taken out to pay for last years Christmas. By the time this Christmas comes around little Johnny’s parents will despair that they cannot afford more junk so will slip into self pity. The truth is that with no loans little Johnny could eat better and he would be happier making jam tarts with his mum than watching a drunk dad racing cars on the X-Box that the family ‘needed’. Next time that you find yourself saying that you need something just stop and check if you mean that you want it.

That’s my early morning philosophy done for today, next up the devilish train operators. I find myself on the first London departure from Derby today as I have to head South for a medical, the train departs at 04:37. Now normally this is the 05:00 departure but before Christmas they took to retiming it and running it on a diversion route. Without going into the technicalities of the diversionary paths from Derby station I will just say that the train departs in the normal direction but then stops and continues the journey in the reverse direction. I know this and so I claimed a seat at the ‘rear’ of the train facing in the ‘wrong’ direction.

My traveling companions did not seem to be aware of this twist to the journey and so they boarded the ‘front’ of the train. The train crew clearly knew as well as I do that the position of a commuter’s seat is more important than the arrival time, they ‘need’ to be at the front. So before the train sets off the train crew announce several times that the set has been retimed but will follow the timetable after Derby, no mention of the reversing move. With the doors locked and the train setting off in the ‘right’ direction tickets were checked as normal. Then comes the devilishness, an announcement that the train will shortly “come to a stand for a few minutes whilst the driver changes ends and will then continue with first class leading”. This announcement generates a stampede to join me in the ‘rear’ of the train. The thing that I found so English in this whole scenario was that following the first station stop the tickets were checked again and every one of the ‘end changers’ was greeted with “can I see your ticket please” before their flustered look elicited a “oh did you change ends”. No matter who you are in life you will always have a chance to know more than somebody else!

Soggy ducks and cannonballs

A casual glance at my cell phone in the early hours this morning brought my current status back with a thud. As you all know I am currently ‘on hold’ with regards to life in general whilst I conclude issues outstanding from the accident. The email contained a job description that read word for word as if I had written it myself. The communication was the result of recommendations from a number of old colleagues, which is always nice. The shining glow on the email though was the location, Sydney NSW.

If it were within my gift I would have replies with a resounding yes, in fact the declining email was torturous to compose. I do hope that such opportunities will still be around when I regain my ‘life mobility’. This lost opportunity made me reflect on some other views from the weekend. Over the weekend I had noted, with a slight pang of envy, those that earn their living in the town. Not the business owners and operators but the day to day employees, in particular the bar staff. I know that for some the wages from this work are too small and I feel some sympathy for those youngsters trapped into a low wage cycle.

I have posted before about the general malaise in English youth that stops them travelling or working away. This is a generation with expectations that will never be met living in a country that won’t admit it. Anyway I have some sympathy just not very much. For me this is not bar staff, it’s not a career despite the recent trend for bar apprenticeships. Bar work is a wonderful experience and there is nothing like seeing youngsters confidence blossom before they fly the nest in search of a career. But young bar staff are not supposed to stay, they are a transient resource and that is right after all nobody has bar work as a career aspiration for their children.

But there is another group, usually older, that does stay in the pub world. It was this latter group that attracted my attention, albeit idly, over the weekend. It was the look of carefree satisfaction in a man setting up for work at 11:00 on Sunday with a view of the ocean. I passed him en route to the garage to pick up some test kit for a CCTV install and just marvelled at the air of calm. As I raced to complete my trip, concious of the need to write a report for work, I wondered whether such stresses ever bothered him.

Life for so many people is a stroll to work and just enough money to pay the bills. There are no engineering puzzles, no complicated reports or stressed evenings. Are these people luckier, healthier or more relaxed than me? Once they have settled into the principle that they won’t be changing the world or driving a sports car unless they win the lotto are they at peace? These people won’t have checked their email at 2am, there is no need. If they had checked they wouldn’t have found fantastic opportunities, they don’t happen. But this morning they will walk to work smiling and not stressing over missed opportunities.

I guess life is a pond and some of us glide gracefully along in small circles not making waves. Like ducks we are content to laze away our time in the pursuit of soggy bread. That is not for me, I cannon ball into the pool of life and generate huge waves, love it or loathe it I have no choice it is just who I am.

Balancing tunes and talking tape

I have always considered age to be like a set of conversational scales, allow me to explain. In one pan you have all of the people who, when you talk to them, understand the subject and on the other those that don’t. When we are young the scales weigh heavily in the favour of the ‘don’ts’ that language of youth differentiates you from the population at large because, quite simply, they don’t understand you. This is when the arrogance of youth tells you that your generation is unique and far superior to all those that passed before and will pass after.

As we mature so the scale starts to balance, when we have conversations we sit neatly bridging older and younger generations. This is actually more ‘our time’ than our youth, the subjects of our conversation are understood by the majority and there is the merest hint of weight in the other pan from the younger generation. I don’t know when this swing in your favour is maximised but I would suggest around the thirties/forties. As with so many things in life this is a fluid situation though and so the weight of youth gains and the scales swing again. The shift in balance is aided by a reduction on your side as you transition further along your path, the older you get the less people there are that are older than you and the more that are younger after all.

Before you know it you are more confused by items in a conversation and your own subjects are heard less often. Eventually you are looking at the majority of the population and wondering what the hell they are talking about, welcome to old age. I don’t claim to be there yet, I still have a few years in me, but how will I know the slide has gone that far? Well I have a suggestion for you, a measure by which you can gauge your travel along this path as it where. Select an item that was common place in all of your youthful conversations, it should be one that your parents paid some attention but never fully grasped and your grandparents never wanted to know. Occasionally review the item you have selected against a day or a weeks conversations, how many times does it come up?

I think that when you have to measure the time between uses of the word in years rather than minutes you will have reached the further end of the scale. My item is the cassette tape, beloved of my youth as a medium for that classic generation marker, music. When I was young there would rarely be a sentence that didn’t involve the word “tape” I notice now that more and more people humour me when I describe the item. I am not that old so there are still lots of people that remember exactly what I am talking about, of course then there are the youth who know nothing but MP3 but the later is growing in numbers. As the youth mature so they slip into my conversational environment, today they humour me and discuss “tapes” in order to fit in. Tomorrow there  will be more of them and soon they wont need to humour me. Watch out for your technology it ages us all.

 

Grubby and abused but not beaten

I have concluded that those of us that live on the coast have a differently calibrated barometer. Apparently we managed only 68 MPH winds yesterday while highs of 99 were recorded on the Isle. Such winds offer no challenge to those of us that live with an east coast wind it’s just another blowy day. Walking to the station I realised that it is not just the human stalwarts that shrug off the wind, the buildings do as well.

As I walked past the older buildings I saw no more than the odd jaunty angled television aerial. All very much a case of ‘nothing to see here’. But as I approached the pier I noticed odd pieces of felt and roof tiles littered amongst the bushes. The relatively recent flats had lost several pieces of roof. Like poorly prepared visitors they had not faired well against a mild storm. The roofs will now be repaired to a better standard and over time they will grow to withstand the environment. Sometimes the work will be too much and required too often and these buildings will lose the fight, when that happens the old buildings of town will watch in stoic silence as the newcomers depart.

As I walked past the development that surrounds the old pier hotel I thought again about our lamentable failure to secure a history for the next generation. The pier hotel was a marvellous building in its day and has had various uses since. Having closed it’s doors to the public the building was left to rot until a planning application was received to develop it. In what was either a travesty or outright corruption the morons that we charge to look after planning approved the development. Phase one of the development was to build new flats around the old building, phase two provided new public toilets to release more of the footprint and phase three redeveloped the original building for domestic use.

Phase one and two were completed before the shell company set up by the developers folded. Who could have seen that coming? The easy construction work completed and the quick profits realised the complicated task of sympathetically developing the old hotel was never tackled. To allow the building to have been raped like this is symptomatic of the lack of a reasoned planning policy. Development has to happen, of course it does, but why is it approached with such naivety? When a developer chooses to take a profit from part of a development then it is easy to control this and negligent not to. An arrangement should be made that profits are held in escrow until the task is complete, where the development fails the funds to be used to complete the original works.

In the meantime this building, and so many others, sits patiently waiting for some benefactor to see its beauty. Surrounded by an inappropriate development that has drained it of much needed commercial value the building retains a shabby elegance. On a morning like this morning I like to think that there is a sly smirk hidden in the grimy windows. Not a tile has shifted on the neglected beauty but it stands surrounded by roofing material stripped from the invading neighbours. Even nature seems to have more respect for our history than we do.

Hyenas, heels, and the avoidance of a creeping dawn

Having had a long day yesterday I retired early, in affect taking my seat for the theatre of a Saturday night. I have lived between the town and the ‘late pub’ for so many years that I see this as entertainment rather than annoyance, well mostly. Around 11pm the walk started and I know it would be a busy night. The two young women walking unsteadily past would need to move from shots to juice if they intended to retain what faculties they had. But behind them, like some unbalanced stalker, came a group of men discussing the merits of their view. It would seem that the drunken lurches synchronise so that, to the drunks, they seem sober.

Then came the couples, the second time around couples that is. Overweight older men with slim younger women who have clearly never studied physics. They can’t support the weight of their partner when he lurches into them but years of experience has taught them to roll with him, rather a bruise than a broken heel. Common sense would say it was far better to call it a night but these women know that they can enjoy the rest of their evening while the men disintegrate in a corner.

The youth quintet were keen to declare their love to each other. Not the insincere proclamations of lotharios or the heartfelt statements of lovers but the over earnest pledges of groups of girls. Nothing could break these bonds, no man could come between them, sisters against the world, for now….

Bringing up the rear a trio of confused pre-loaders. Already drunk they were still convinced that they needed more alcohol to avoid the costs ahead. Despite the desperate protestations of juvenile livers they necked retail alcohol rapidly, discarding bottles like a trail of breadcrumbs to be followed home later. I would point out that I didn’t sit and study the crowds, these were just the voices that made me look up over my book.

There are some nights when I hear a returning group, after closing, and smile. There are some nights when I hear a returning group and growl. Just occasionally there are the nights when I feel the need to check off the groups, last night was such a ‘bingo’ night. In ascending order of proximity to dawn, the scale will make sense later, I watched them return and alcohol was no longer their friend. By the early hours of the morning alcohol was the voice at the back of their head that scorned them for losing all their money or for not keeping up, laughed at them for the stains on their clothes and spun their internal compass at every opportunity.

The early young girls were in a bigger group in the return. The hair, makeup and clothes that had taken so long to prepare for the evening now disheveled and streaked. Hanging on to each other they stumbled forward avoiding the more lewd comments from their drunken stalkers. Whilst clinging to their strength in numbers they were clearly not as emboldened as they once were, eyes forward they marched on ignoring the calls.

The stalkers, for their part, were more confused than emboldened. Like a scene from Cinderella the pretty girls who they had been buying drinks for and dancing with had become a crowd and disappeared as the lights came up and the bar closed. Having convinced themselves that they were making inroads they were each convinced that if they could get ‘their’ girl alone she would stay with them. Of course whilst this made sense to drunken minds it looked like a pack of drunken hyenas looking for any sign of weakness in the pack.

The youth quintet was next but now as two groups. Stopping regularly to exchange abuse and yell at each other about lost money and dancing with ex partners. The proclamations of sisterhood distant memories as they offered to tear faces off and ridiculed each other’s dress. Their tantrums will either be forgotten in the cafe in the morning or will develop into a growing chasm as they feed an anger based on nothing more than confusion.

I nearly missed the pre-loaders as they crawled along the sea wall but then the sound of vomiting alerted me to them. Like an assassin with hiccups they slid along the shadows of the sea wall to avoid contact with other people. Successfully hiding from the fight club that the quintet had become until their stomach let way and, as if caught in a searchlight, all eyes turned to them. Brilliantly fight club was too drunk for much more than a leer and some shouts, if they had crossed the road I’m not sure that they could have made it back!

The couples, older so always last to leave stopped outside my flat. Holding their shoes protectively the women tried to convince the men to get a cab. They may as well have asked the tide to change direction, drunk men always dial up the macho after all. None of the men were prepared to acknowledge that the stroll home was too much for them and they set off at a lurch again. Not quite at the running stage but at the point where the kerbstone seems to be at least two foot high.

As the street scene quietened I settled down for the night listening to the uninterrupted sounds of the ocean. I was awake at 6am to a glorious breaking dawn and I realised then that I had missed one of the returners. One of the two young women that I had seen early I had not been in the crowd. Was this my photographic memory at work or some subconscious ‘lassie’ call that somebody was in trouble? No it was the hurried but wobbly footsteps rushing past the flat, the walk of shame. No makeup, hair a mess, last nights clothes and shoes in hand the need not to see anyone was almost palpable. Somebody didn’t switch to juice, somebody didn’t wake up in a happy place or certainly not a place they could stay.

David Attenborough could get a series out of my views of the world from here. For me it suffices to watch the ocean and the disappearing back of that young lady, drink my coffee and say a silent thanks for not being young anymore.

Tired and old but still my jewel

My trip south on Friday was improved no end by the first train company’s failure to sell me a ticket. I tried at every available opportunity without success but I like to think that offsets the fact that the second company offered no off peak discounts. I had the opportunity to travel on the drain to waterloo, something I haven’t done for years. I fail to see how anybody could not be enchanted by the drain (waterloo and city line). This is a railway that has only two stations but is also the only fully subterranean metro in London, with the road being dug up to lift trains in and out. Doesn’t sound enchanting? No I guess not, but what about when I add that there is a long tunnel to the platform, offered as a choice of stairs or travelator, and no ticket office! I know there are signs saying ‘ticket holders only’ and I know that we’re all oyster card users nowadays. But today I watched a family, having bounded down the stairs, distraught at the prospect of returning to the top to purchase tickets.

This small design decision is a well known source of humour. In the midst of the rush hour there is nothing like having to force back against the flow because you failed to followed instructions. As a means of education humiliation works brilliantly and I doubt any tourist makes the mistake twice.

I arrived at Portsmouth less than 3 1/2 hours after leaving home, a fairly impressive time by my reckoning. Dave was about 40 minutes behind me which gave me a chance to stand at the railings at Gunwharf Quays and watch the traffic. I remain thoroughly enchanted by the island, like a child with the first glimpse of the sea I feel the stress melt away as I reach the coast. Portsmouth is but a staging post for me with every minute spent there spent waiting for the ferry. I watched the FastCat, the car ferry and the Hovercraft and remain convinced that this is the way to commute. I guess that I have always justified working away by saying how lovely the coast is, it’s all about working to live not living to work after all. The island is just an extension of this.

In fairness the hovercraft is not a viable commute, it starts too late and finishes too early. The FastCat is the commuter vehicle and the 7.24 train on Sunday morning had us safely in Portsmouth by ten past eight. Yes it’s a long trip to London but what a gem to come home to on a Friday. Ours was a drunken lads weekend, thoroughly enjoyable of course, but still an opportunity to enjoy being ‘home’. I have done my winter research into trade volumes on the island but I was very surprised by the state of the seasonal uplift. Obviously we all know that tourism is in decline and that is witnessed by the lack of development in coastal resorts. The rate of decline does seem to have accelerated dramatically but I am not sure if this is because the island economy is so visibly tied to tourism. We found quiet pubs, even the Driftwood was far from busy, and empty hotels which is not a good sight in the first week of August. I will certainly be studying the tourism data but simple numbers don’t show a whole picture. For the licensed trade it is also important who those visitors are, there was an awful lot of Chinese tourists, certainly not a pubs best friend.

It is sad to see harsh economic reality taking livelihoods away, every closed or abandoned building is an employment opportunity lost after all. Sadly UK planning makes the loss so much more visible. The Wight city complex closed for good at the end of last season but planning difficulties mean it has been left as an eyesore, a sadly common way of encouraging consent. It doesn’t take much to maintain a facade but the failure to do so drags an area down. A conversation with one of the girls at the hotel revealed that as a ‘jack of all trades’ living in and pretty much always on call she earned £210 a week, paying £3.95 a day for food. As a lifelong island resident this is a good job but shows the inescapable cycle that is so destructive for our youth. There is no progression in this role, the business couldn’t sustain it, and in truth there is no future. Once a grand hotel the occupancy is low and the fabric tired, when the current owners give up the business will close. Where do all the young staff go then? According to the Daily Mail up to 40% of children in coastal towns are in singe mother families, a career choice perhaps? Scarily birth rates rise in depressed areas whilst financially stable families tend not to have children because of concerns over their future stability.

Of course nothing will change this stubborn old man’s view, I adore the Island and it will be my home just as soon as I am able.