Mixed messages

Head Rambles Posted on by 5

I am increasingly concerned about the future for my Grandkids.

The world seems to be sliding down a slippery slope and while I don’t know what lies at the bottom of that slope I feel in my water that it isn’t a good place.

Wherever I look there seems to be an ever rising level of chaos. There seems to be only two real religions – Health and the Planet. Everything must be sacrificed to appease both religions. We must destroy our economies “to save the planet” and are currently destroying our economy for the sake of Health.

One aspect of the current “crisis” seems to have escaped the minds of our politicians. The “crisis” is a virus which is running rampant, but surely a virus is an aspect of nature? We are supposed to be worried about biodiversity and species becoming extinct and all that crap, yet when nature throws a virus at us we go into panic mode. We must stop it at all costs, and those costs are astronomical.

Health and safety seems to be the ultimate aim these days. One of the worst clichés to enter the modern vocabulary is the mantra – “if it saves just one life then it is worth it”. I have heard that quoted so many times as justification for some stupid law or regulation yet it is meaningless. Maybe we should stop using electricity? Maybe we should outlaw the private car? Maybe we should fence off our coasts, our rivers and our lakes? Think of the lives that would be saved!

So let’s embrace nature. Let the virus run its course and welcome it as an aspect of nature that we are supposed to hold in reverential esteem. So it will kill a few people, but mainly those who are approaching their end of life anyway. If it chooses to bump me off then so be it. I shall go with my tongue firmly in my cheek.

Who wants to live a life wrapped in cotton wool anyway?

Party Time

Head Rambles Posted on by 4

Meh!

I had a change of heart.

I have certain standards as to what I post here. Maybe I crossed the line sightly.

But only slightly.

Still, standards are standards.

Post deleted.

Contrast and compare

Head Rambles Posted on by 3

I went out a couple of times yesterday.

First of all I had to drive up to the hospital. All the way up the motorway and beyond there were large signs telling me “We are all in this together. Stay safe” and “Support the frontline workers. Stay at home“. The hospital was all cones separating people into lanes and everyone running for cover if they saw me walking towards them. Hand sanitisers everywhere and countless warnings and notices. It was a vision [I hope] of the past insane panic. The only sign of normality was a woman sitting in a wheelchair outside the front door having a smoke under a No Smoking sign.

I then stopped off at the village. Shops are starting to open and there were fading markings on the pavement supposedly showing where people were supposed to stand while queueing. People weren’t taking that much notice of them and while not exactly hugging each other, they were staying maybe an arm’s length apart while they stopped and chatted to friends and neighbours. They were using that fast fading concept of common sense. This seems to be a vision of the present.

Later I took a long walk up one of the valleys. It was a beautiful day, calm and warm and the air so fresh it nearly made me dizzy. There were quite a few others up there. Some were walking briskly while others just strolled along. There were no yellow signs anywhere. There was nothing marking any two meter distances. There were no warnings or hectoring notices. People passed within inches. We greeted each other and commented on the weather. There wasn’t even a hint of a mention of The Virus anywhere.

I hope this is a vision of the future.

The Voice

Head Rambles Posted on by 3

Yes, I know all my geese are swans.

Five year old Granddaughter the Younger is however a bit more swanlike than usual.

For a start she always seems to be happy. The only thing that will phase her is the onset of tiredness, which isn’t often. The rest of the time she positively revels in the joys of life and never shuts the fuck up. I have never met a talker like her. If I pick her up from school she chats away incessantly and it doesn’t seem to bother her that I’m too busy navigating country roads to reply.

She is very confident and self sufficient. She will play happily with friends and will be just as happy to play on her own. When I visit, she is usually out playing with a friend and as I reverse up th the house [it makes for a quick getaway] she will come barrelling over to the door to greet me with a “Howya Grandad!”. Before I leave she always runs at me crying “Huggies”. Who can resist that?

Apart from all that, she has quite a voice. She doesn’t often sing on command but is very happy to sing when she thinks no one is around. And when she sings, she makes up her own words and airs.

Daughter heard her the other day. She was washing her hands in the bathroom and belting out one of her weird songs. The gist of the lyrics seems to be that nobody loves her but she doesn’t care! Very weird as she is much loved by everybody and she knows it.

Excuse the quality and the jingling in the background. That was disabled Big Bother who loves her singing and starts rattling his rattle with joy.

Best of luck making out the lyrics!

ET made it look easy

Head Rambles Posted on by 5

Getting a phone for Herself has been a nightmare.

I mentioned in passing my previous trials and tribulations with Three and their fucking hopeless website. That eventually was sorted. The three dud orders were cancelled and the money was refunded. Then Herself got her release and we decided she didn’t need a phone anyway.

Then of course last Thursday came along and we were smacked bang into an urgent need for a phone again.

Thursday afternoon was fairly hectic and it wasn’t until evening that I got to thinking about phones again. I assumed that a major company like Three would have fixed its fucking site especially as they had been relying on the Interwebs for their business.

They hadn’t.

I very carefully placed an order on-line taking notes at every step [just in case]. When it came to paying I discovered I had lost my credit card. That didn’t exactly improve my mood. So I paid using Mastercard. The fucking cunting shitting site failed again! At this point it was well after closing time everywhere so there was no point in a) phoning around the shops to see if they had found my credit card or b) trying to contact Three.

I was not my usual cheerful self by bedtime.

I set the alarm for the crack of dawn so I could start phoning about my credit card. The alarm didn’t wake me as I had a rotten night and was awake anyway. Getting dressed I discovered my credit card which was in a different pocket from the usual. That was a relief. But I still had the phone fiasco hanging over me.

I decided to take another tack. It was time for the direct approach and go the old fashioned way. I drove into Scobieville where Three have a shop. I got to the shop and found the door was locked. There were people inside so I just guessed that if I stood there looking miserable enough they would let me in. There was a gale blowing at the time and Scobieville has a depressing Main Street anyway so a combination of gale and grey street had me standing leaning into the wind and my hair a beard flapping around my miserable face. I hoped I looked pathetic.

They eventually let a customer out and let me in. They locked the door behind me to the disgust of the people who had started to collect behind me in the street.

The bloke was very nice and reasonable. For the craic I told him my website woes. He rolled his eyes and said something extremely uncomplimentary about the site that I couldn’t possibly repeat here in public. I gather I wasn’t the only one having problems. He checked my order and found it. He said it was in Limbo and I had better contact the office. He gave me the number to call which I didn’t even bother noting as their phone system is impossible.

Seeing as I was there, I decided to buy a phone.

So I had the phone I had been looking for all along [a Nokia 2720] and went home.

I knew from bitter experience that phoning Three is impossible. It has endless menus, horrendous wait times and unhelpful staff when they finally answer. The website did offer a Chat facility that told me it would answer my query promptly. It transpired that it was manned by a robot [seriously!] that gave me a choice of four completely irrelevant questions. If I typed anything it didn’t like it just replied that it didn’t understand and sent me back to the four questions. It didn’t even understand “go fuck yourself, you cunt” which I imagine a lot of people type.

I eventually found an obscure page right in the bowels of the site which seemed to offer a different type of chat. I typed “Hello there” and to my delight and actual living breathing member of the species Homo Sapiens replied. So I lashed in all the details I knew he would require – my name, address, email, pone number, date of birth and how many pills I had taken that morning. I also told him the order number and what I thought of their fucking website. He replied saying that yes, he could see the order but that it was stuck in some fashion. He also said he agreed about the site but that “they were working on it”. I told him to cancel the order and asked for a refund. He said that was no problem.

Shorty after, I received an email informing me that the order had been cancelled and the refund was being processed. Oh joy!

I dropped into the hospital yesterday afternoon with a case full of clothing for Herself. I tucked the new phone in too with some instructions I had written on how to use it. She phoned a while later to say she had found it [obviously as her new number was on my screen]. She loves it!

Now she has started phoning me every ten minutes starting in the early hours of the morning and giving out about the hospital, the staff, the food and anything else she can think of.

I’m beginning to wonder if the phone was a good idea.