Airing diversity

Head Rambles Posted on by 3

I am getting very tired of this diversity crap.

We are supposed to embrace every nationality and treat everyone as an equal which is fair enough if you are airing your views on Twitter or Farcebook. When it comes down to reality then things aren’t so simple.

For example, RTE wanted to do an on-air interview with a representative from the trade union Unite. They nominated a woman “who is of Polish ethnicity” [i.e. she’s Polish]. RTE requested someone else because they had an issue with her accent. This of course led to public complaints on the grounds of discrimination and “a ‘lack of understanding of the vulnerability’ of migrant workers”.

I don’t often jump to RTE’s defence but on this occasion they are spot on. What is the fucking point of putting forward a spokes[wo]man if the general public are going to have to struggle to understand her? She may be an expert in her field and an excellent debater in her native language but if people are going to find her hard to understand then what is the point of putting her on air?

I have my own views on immigration. My biggest complaint is the use of immigrants in areas where communication is critical unless they are fluent in the English language. When I phone some company and I am put on to someone who can barely string two words together I get very frustrated and generally hang up as it isn’t worth the struggle. On a phonecall however I do at least have the opportunity to ask them to repeat their last line of gibberish, but that option isn’t open to me if the speaker is on radio.

So fair dues to RTE. Their stance has fuck all to do with “inclusivity” [horrible word] and everything to do with lucid communication.

I wish other companies would follow their example.

Head scratching

Head Rambles Posted on by 14

Well, that was a fun twenty four hours.

Things really started on Friday when I noticed the cat giving the odd cough. It was a grand smoker’s cough to be proud of. ‘Furballs’ says I and thought no more about it.

Yesterday Cat was different. He wasn’t coughing so much but he wasn’t doing either of his favourite things. He wasn’t eating and he wasn’t demanding to go out. He just lay there, and when he wasn’t lying there he was lying somewhere else. His morning feed went untouched.

Herself was getting a tad worried at this point. Even I had begun to notice the strange behaviour. I phoned the vet and made an appointment there and then. I hauled out the cat basket thing that was buried in the garage, and after the loss of copious quantities of skin and blood I managed to get Cat caged.

I drove over to the vet with my hands wrapped in kitchen paper to soak up the blood. The vet examined him and scratched his head [the vet’s head not the cat’s]. Apparently x-rays were called for. So I sat and waited for ages.

Eventually the vet reappeared and called me in. He sat me down in front of a gigantic screen and showed me lovely clear pictures of the inside of Cat. The heart was normal. The lungs and diaphragm were normal and there was no fluid. The vet scratched his head again [his own as the cat wasn’t there]. The only things he could find were doughnuts. Yes – that’s what he said – doughnuts. If I peered very closely I could see what he was talking about – faint little circles in the lungs. Apparently this is a sign of a type of asthma and is very serious.

He then brought me to another room and there was Cat in a perspex box looking very dopey and apparently breathing nearly pure oxygen. I scratched his head [the cat’s, not the vet’s] and he seemed happy enough. Leastwise he didn’t attack my hand which is his normal reaction. I was told he had to stay in overnight and I was to phone in the morning to see if he had survived.

This morning, the alarm woke me at the crack of dawn and I phoned the vet. Yes, Cat had survived and could I call over. So I had my mug of tea and drove over.

It was a different vet. She brought Cat in and gave me pages of instructions, listing all they had done [oxygen, antibiotics, steroids, lucky Cat!] and all I have to do. My main function is to apply an inhaler every twelve hours [I’ll wear leather gauntlets and hope for the best] and to watch for a deterioration in which case I was to dash up to University College Dublin to the emergency vet. I think I draw the line at that though and Cat had better improve, or else…

I thanked the vet and went to pay the bill. It was then that I needed oxygen but there was none to be had. It has made a fair dent in the pension and even worse I had remembered that I had forgotten to add Cat onto Penny’s insurance policy. Fuck!

I have to bring Cat back on Monday to check progress but I have been warned that he may die before then

After all that, if the cat dies, I swear I’ll fucking kill him.

First refusal

Head Rambles Posted on by 11

I had a grocery delivery yesterday.

Normally I have the garage door open so he can trot in with his crates of whiskey groceries straight through to the kitchen and dump them on the table.

Not so yesterday.

I had everything ready when he arrived but he refused to come in. He stood there outside the open gate and wouldn’t come in any further.

Frankly, I couldn’t blame him. You see, we have had quite a drop of rain lately and what happens is that the water all flows down the length of the lane picking up muck on the way. It then flows in my gate and floods the front driveway. As a result, there is now a very large area of very sticky and messy mud inside my gate, and anyone who wants to enter has to wade through this shit.

So I nipped back indoors and put on some boots. I then had to collect the crates of whiskey groceries from the lane and wade back to the kitchen. After the delivery was finished I then had to mop down the kitchen floor as there was mud everywhere.

So herein lies my problem. I don’t know what to do about this marshland that periodically cuts off entry to the Manor. How many other visitors have decided a visit to Grandad isn’t worth the effort?

To stop the water flowing in I would have to build a dam across the lane but I imagine the neighbours might have something to say about that? I can cross that off my list of solutions.

I could build some kind of drain or channel or something inside the gate to let the water flow into the North Wood, but that would just fill up with silt and mud within days. That would be a very temporary solution and I don’t fancy digging a new trench after every rainfall. Anyway, driving out across the trench would collapse it anyway.

So I am stuck with my muddy isolation. As a temporary measure I’m thinking of raising the level of the entrance using gravel. I don’t know how long that would last.

More hard work……

Groundhog Day

Head Rambles Posted on by 5

In a little over three weeks we are to have a General Election.

*yawn*

For those of a foreign bent, the setup here is pretty simple. There is Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael who are basically the same party only with different names. Their manifestos are almost identical and the outcome is basically down to which can promise the most outlandish claims, which can find more dirt on the other and a reliance on the stubbornness of families who wouldn’t change allegiances if their lives depended on it.

The rest of the candidates aren’t worth considering as none can beat the Big Two. Labour committed suicide by going into a coalition with one of the Big Two which is always the death knell for a party. The Greens suffered the same fate [thank God] so we will at least be spared the mud-huts and diet of nuts and grass philosophy. Sinn Féin are another also ran as they haven’t a chance of a majority and no other party will go into coalition with them.

The fighting has already reached the point where Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael [commonly referred to as FFG] are digging up as much shit on themselves. This is easy pickings as each side of the party is wallowing in tons of ordure. Fianna Fáil is of course the mob famous for back-handers and brown envelopes which dumped us squarely into a massive recession and debts of billions due to their promises to bond holders. Fine Gael s very slightly less dishonest but its record in government isn’t exactly squeaky clean – a housing/homeless crisis, a health service which deteriorates by the day and is way past its sell-by date [not to mention a two billion Euro hospital and a one million Euro printer!] and farmers bringing Dublin to a standstill over beef prices.

So the outcome is a foregone conclusion. FFG will win. Big businesses will be well looked after with tax breaks and the like. The health system will continue to rot away. The homeless will remain homeless and the rest of us will be lumbered with loads more taxes.

As for all the promises they’ll make over the coming weeks … Hah! Dream on.

A wee case of Deja Vu.

On having a breakdown

Head Rambles Posted on by 3

The central heating is doing weird things.

It works all right but only when the thermostat on the boiler is set at its highest. As a result the house is only roasting. If I turn the thermostat down even a little bit, the system goes into a sort of mockery mode where it makes all the right noises but the radiators go cold. It’s doing it just to annoy me.

I set it to high about an hour ago. I’m still freezing. This time I gave the pump a kick and the light on it went from white to blue. The radiators seem to be heating up at last. Who knew that a colour could be so important?

Then the microwave went on the blink. I put in some stuff to heat, set the time and pressed the start button. The inside lit up and started its turning. The machine made its usual noise. it pinged at the appropriate time and switched off. The inside was still cold.

As a test, I put in a pot of cold water and gave it a good run for its money. It did its thing and when it duly pinged I took out the pot of water. Still cold.

The microwave is easy to fix – I’ll just replace it. God be with the days when you could just whip off a panel somewhere and change a fuse, or solder a loose lead. Now the whole yoke is just replaced. I have had that microwave for about twenty years so it’s had a good run for its money.

The heating is a different matter. Time to call in the expert. I have his number somewhere.

Now where did I put it?