Sartorial elegance

Head Rambles Posted on by

So now our modern pampered generation need instructions on how to dress?

New-gen workwear: How to dress for your return to the office.

Personally I would have thought this was pretty simple: just wear what you wore before the Madness hit.

Dressing for work never bothered me much. Bottom half = jeans or cords with runners or boots on the feet. Top half = shirt and maybe a jumper or sweater depending on the outside temperature. The ensemble would be topped off with a jacket or anorak mainly because I needed something with enough pockets for my pipe, matches or lighter, tobacco and keys plus whatever junk I might accrue over a period.

Now that I think of it, my work was what you might call dirty for the first couple of decades, in particular when I worked on the cable television stuff. I would do a lot of lugging aluminium ladders and fiddling with electronics in dirty places and I used to end the day in a fairly filthy state.

One time I was on the road lugging ladders as usual when I remembered I had an interview. At the time I was employed on what they called a casual basis, meaning I was effectively employed day to day. They wanted to make me permanent and in typical Semi-State fashion this meant the “vacancy” had to be advertised publicly and I had to apply for my own job and do the interviews and the whole palaver. So at the appointed time I turned up at Personnel to do the interview. There were two other candidates waiting and they were dressed to kill – the whole shebang of three piece suits and ties with shiny black shoes. I was as usual wearing filthy torn jeans, an old shirt and tatty runners and my hands were black from lugging ladders and equipment. The two candidates looked at me with smug smirks, presumably writing me off as a definite failure. Needless to say I got the job.

When I moved into the computer field I was, for the first time what you might term an “office worker”. Being now officially a Nerd, my rigout had to reflect my new status – tatty jeans, runners and a t-shirt!

Of course I don’t have the problem of returning to an office after six months of working from home, but it wouldn’t bother me clothes-wise. Why would anyone worry? Why would anyone need suggestions in a newspaper article?

Personally I would go for the leopardskin, the pink handbag and the shoes with the gold chain anklet.

I think they’d suit me.

 

It’s about time

Head Rambles Posted on by

I like clocks.

I’m tempted to say that there is something timeless about them but some puns are best left in the box.

Sadly they are becoming an endangered species, or at least the analogue version is. It really saddens me that kids these days are unable to even read analogue clocks, relying instead on digital.

There was a time not so long ago when clocks were a bit of a rarity. There would be the mantelpiece clock in most households and adults would likely have wrist watches but that was it. Nowadays, timepieces are everywhere. Within a few feet of me now there’s of course the time on my laptop screen, my phone and the analogue version on my wristwatch. In Herself’s room there is the television, the satellite box and a media player all dependent on time. Naturally Herself has a watch and her radio is synchronised with the Wide World. Behind me the microwave oven and the main oven both have digital displays and then there’s the central heating control and my one bit of proud history – a Smith electric office clock.

The Smith is far older than myself, as my father got it about ten years before I was born which makes it eighty years plus. It has a mains phase driven motor which makes it uncannily accurate and is unusual nowadays as it has a smooth sweeping second hand. Modern clocks tend to jump the seconds. I dropped it a while back and the glass broke, which is a shame, but it still works perfectly.

Setting the time on a clock used to be a bit of a ritual. The only accurate way of setting a clock was to listen for the timing “pips” on the radio or watch for the clock on television, but of course nowadays half the timepieces are connected to the Interwebs and therefore are perpetually accurate.

Broadcasting stations of course have to be extremely accurate about timing. Most processes are timed to the second and [in theory anyway] programmes have to be scheduled accurately. In the sub basement in RTE there was a rack of boxes containing the central timer. This was connected to Greenwich and was [supposed to be] accurate to a hundredth of a second and all the clocks within the organisation were synchronised with it. I used to set my watch there occasionally which was slightly anal but what the hell.

I don’t bother with accuracy so much these days. I do confess to a certain smugness when the short case clock in the front room chimes six just as the Angelus* bongs on the television. I’m happy if my watch is accurate within about five minutes either way as the only use I have for time is to know when shops are due to shut or the weather forecast is coming on the television.

I have another short case clock which is in pieces. I keep meaning to work on it [there’s a problem with the escape ratchet] as it has a much nicer chime. It’s one of those projects which keeps getting put on the long finger.

Maybe I’ll work on it when I have the time?

* For the heathens amongst us, the Angelus is a dreary bell being chimed to remind Good Irish Catholics to pray. They bang it out at midday and six in the evening. It’s a sort of Catholic Mullah shouting over the airwaves. It pisses me off as it’s just a daily reminder of the Bad Old Days when the Archbishops ruled the country.

 

On being schizophrenic

Head Rambles Posted on by

I went down to Doc on Wednesday.

I had had enough of the pain, the itching and the burning. I had been dosing myself with Nurofen, Solpadine and ordinary Paracetemol. None of them had any effect whatsoever. To say I was pissed off is a massive understatement.

Anyhows he prescribed a tablet. One a day in the late afternoon and I should be grand. I was sceptical but feckit, at this stage I would try anything.

I took one that evening. I waited. I got tired waiting and watched television instead. I then realised that the pain had gone and I was no longer tearing my hair out [literally].

Yesterday morning I woke to discover that the pains and burning were back. I know he said one a day, but fuck that – my body, my rules – I took another tablet. Once again the pain receded and I had a reasonably quiet day. I even went down to the village for a coffee [and chicken for Penny]. That evening I took another and again had a reasonably peaceful evening.

So now I am on two of these marvellous yokes a day. Life is becoming liveable again. What the fuck were these great tablets that worked when everything else had failed? Time to have a chat with Doctor Google. I found them straight away. Apparently they are for the treatment of epilepsy and schizophrenia.

Now I know I don’t have epilepsy.

Is Doc trying to tell me something?

 

Happy days

Head Rambles Posted on by

Your schooldays are the happiest days of your life.

Bollox!

I don’t know what cretin thought that little nugget up but he [or she] obviously never went to my school.

I think I can honestly say that my schooldays were the unhappiest days of my life. I dreaded the start of term and hated every day until the next break. I hated the tedium and the boring uninteresting subjects. Most of all I hated homework. Fucking hell but homework was an abomination. Every teacher seemed to think that his subject was the most important and we should therefore fill our evenings doing his prescribed torture. It wasn’t unknown to have to write an essay in Irish, another in English and yet another in French. And all that on top of a ton of maths.

Then of course there were the beatings and other sundry punishments. The beatings weren’t too bad when you got used to them [and the palms of your hands developed callouses]. Far worse was one particular teacher who didn’t believe in physical punishment. He was the worst by far as his favourite was to pick a book at random and then demand that pages X to Y were to be written out ten times [by hand of course and no photocopiers allowed!]. If you failed to supply the resulting pages next day, for any reason whatsoever, the amount of repetitions was doubled.

No. My schooldays were miserable.

I would be hard pressed to say what the happiest days were. It’s not that I didn’t have happy days – of course I did and many of them. But it’s hard to class them into one period.

I suppose my college days could fit the bill, but I don’t really remember that much about them as they passed in a gentle haze of alcohol and marijuana. The days that I do remember were brilliant though.

I have had so many fantastic days since. Getting married, having a daughter, buying houses [though they brought some pretty stressful moments too], amazing holidays and all the happy days in between.

I wouldn’t mind too much if I had to start my life all over again.

Except for school.

[This nugget was inspired by For the Fainthearted!]