Breaking wind online

Head Rambles Posted on by 22

I got a rap on the knuckles yesterday*.

Within minutes of my typing efforts going public, I got a comment from Ed P – “When there are column inches to fill, any old nonsense will do!” and sadly he [or she, or it; one never knows these days, but I’ll stick with the male assumption for now] is absolutely right [but see the bottom of this post! GD]. In my somewhat pathetic defence I will make two points:

The first point is that I generally refer to my outpourings as brainfarts. Now there is a remarkable similarity between a brainfart and the other sort. If you have one of the latter pending it can be difficult to restrain it, even if you’re in a crowded lift or at a funeral at the part where they ask for a minutes silence to reflect on the deceased. If you have to let rip it can be difficult to restrain and inevitably you let go, giving those in your vicinity the full benefit.

Also like its rearmost cousin, one never knows in advance what the content of a brainfart will be. It could be the equivalent of an SBD [the best kind in a crowded lift] or it could be a full blown drawn out blast in three part harmony [which is the worst kind at that silent bit of a funeral] . One tries to restrain oneself but one frequently fails and a bad one slips out. For some reason [my age?] I find urges for both sorts far more common these days, sometimes to the amusement of my readers or sometimes to the amusement of the Grandkids and the annoyance of my neighbours [depending on type].

The second point is a simple one. I refer to the title of this site. In retrospect it’s a damned good title as it gives me free reign to ramble and meander just about anywhere. It might be a short little stroll or it might be a full blown mountain hike. The ramble can just be whatever crosses my mind at the time, and the older I get, the stranger the ramble. Sometimes it’s an idle thought or something that has caught my eye or sometimes it can be an experience or something that annoys me.

I have said before that I have no idea where the name Head Rambles came from. I didn’t copy the idea from anywhere nor did anyone else suggest it.

It just rambled into my head which is somewhat appropriate?

* Erratum: It has been pointed out that I was [possibly] wrong [a rare event] and that Ed P was in fact referring to the article in the Times and not this. My humblest apologies Ed P. In my defence I will say that I haven’t shaken off that damned virus yet and the brain is somewhat scrambled.

 

Sartorial elegance

Head Rambles Posted on by 13

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 14

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 7

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?