Hooptedoodle #279 - Jock and the Lottery

I received word recently that my old friend Jock had died - in fact I hadn't had any contact with him for nearly 20 years, but that just means that the version of Jock I have lost is forever a younger, healthier version.

Jock was a very amusing man - a natural extrovert, without the grating excesses which are common to such people. I admired him a lot. He had a hideous-sounding job - he worked as a general trouble-shooter with the social work department of the local authority in Edinburgh. His patch was the roughest, nastiest council tenement block in the city - a place whose name was well-known for the amount of crime and drug addiction. Jock spent his working day - and many of his nights - helping some of the most wretched people in the city, making sure they got their benefit money, met their parole officers, ate some actual food - he worked tremendously hard, he loved his job, and he did work which really made a difference. And, of course, he didn't get paid very much himself. He admired me, I think, because I had some knowledge of science and mathematics - things that fascinated him, though his level of understanding was roughly what you might get from the Daily Express or the backs of cereal packets. He used to watch a lot of science programmes on TV, though he admitted he mostly didn't make much of the detail.

One evening, long ago, over a beer in the Canny Man's in Morningside, Jock and I were discussing the National Lottery, in which he was a big investor - he was constantly on the lookout for some magical "mathematical" system which would land him a jackpot. I was a big disappointment to him; I had no systems, I didn't even have any belief. I told him that I didn't gamble, especially on no-hope projects like the Lottery. I related to him the tale of some of the actuarial students at my work, who had calculated that a man aged 30, a British citizen in average health, who buys a Lottery ticket on a Monday has more chance of being dead by the Saturday than he has of winning a big prize.

Jock was very impressed by this - and he asked me a few more questions about it, and he even (I think) wrote a few notes in his Filofax (remember them?).

I didn't see him for a while afterwards. Eventually I bumped into his wife in the local supermarket. We exchanged greetings, and I asked after her husband. She told me he was well, but very busy, and then she asked me what had I said to him about the Lottery? I had no idea what she was talking about, but then remembered, and said that I'd simply mentioned how small the chances of winning were. She told me that Jock had been very thoughtful about this, though he had admitted that he didn't really understand it, but since then he had started buying his weekly ticket late on a Friday - just to be on the safe side.

I still treasure that - a worthy memorial for my old friend, I think.

Hooptedoodle #278 - None of My Business

It's nothing to do with me, of course, but it does seem that that nice Mr Trump hasn't had a lot of luck since he became the leader of the most powerful nation in the world. Not a lot of good breaks, really.

I was interested to see how he would get through his official reaction to the terrible devastation caused by recent hurricanes without any reference to climate change. He seems to have managed OK, which is a decent effort, I would say. [Does he have an official reaction, by the way, or does his incontinence on Twitter serve in its place?]   

Trump as Charlton Heston
($30m of his campaign funds provided by NRA)

Mr T's comments following the terrorist shootings in Paris included his opinion that more liberal gun laws in France might have helped to reduce the loss of life. The implication, I gather, was that citizens on a night out would have drawn their weapons and had a shoot-out with the terrorists in the street.

Now he has to react to this latest abhorrence in Las Vegas. It would appear that the suspect (who had 23 weapons checked into his hotel room) was not a terrorist, nor any kind of oppressed minority representative, merely a nut job. You cannot legislate for nut jobs, but we should recall that Mr T has already shelved Obama's initiative to restrict sales of weapons to people with mental health issues. No - that's right - there's no point being wise after the event, and, as I mentioned, it is nothing to do with me.

So, beyond my shock and revulsion, and my sympathy for the Vegas victims, I now wait to see how he will manage to circumlocute the delicate matter of gun control.

It is worth bearing in mind that it takes a very significant terrorist event indeed to exceed the death toll of the average weekend in Los Angeles' ganglands. Of course, as we are told all the time, those guns are already out there, so we have to ensure a steady flow of weapons to the supposedly innocent citizens, so they can keep their end up. One of those citizens seems to have accumulated an arsenal of astonishing size, and to have taken half of it on holiday with him to Las Vegas. Just a bad break. No one yet has suggested that it might have helped if the concert audience the suspect used for target practice could have fired back with their pocket pistols.

None of my business, of course. I did not vote for the chap, I don't have to live in his country. On the other hand, if his crazy exchange of football hooligan diplomacy with Mr Kim is going to get us all fried, I feel I might just be entitled to an opinion.

Quite how the US can have a president who would be banned from most UK pubs and golf clubs for the way he conducts himself is a puzzle for me. If I get just one brainless reference to the Second Amendment in response to this post then I'll simply pull it - it's nothing to do with me anyway.

Hooptedoodle #277 - Lunch with Sir Henry

This is really about the tricky little matter of accents - or ahxents, or excents, or....

A long, long time ago, when the world still had a little hope left, I was busily engaged at work on a hefty project which was installing new system development methods and tools. As it happens, the firm which employed me was successful and highly respected, and the project - which was a joint effort between Our Lot and an American specialist software house - became a bit of a flagship in the industry for a while. As a consequence, around about 1991 I found myself presenting a series of lectures at conferences - something of a road show, explaining what we were doing, and why everyone else should spend all their money on doing the same things. I was the tame customer expert, a rare and highly prized life form, and the software company shipped me off, with my lecture slides, to London, Paris, Stockholm, Atlanta, Lisbon and - erm - Glasgow.

In the middle of this period, I was invited to have lunch with my company's chairman, Sir Henry. This was not in recognition of my fine work, you understand, nor did it indicate that Sir Henry might just possibly give a rat's about what we were doing. He had recently been criticised in the business press for being almost invisible - in fact, I think the word "almost" was absent from the criticism. Accordingly, a very expensive PR consultancy was now doing a job on him, and one of the Great Steps Forward was that he should host occasional lunches, attended by randomly selected groups of plebs from his firm, so that he could keep up to date on their skills and their efforts to make him even wealthier, and they could come to see what a warm, caring, avuncular old bugger he really was.

It was, of course, a complete charade, not to say an irritating waste of time and money, but he had to be seen to be trying, at least (and he was, I promise you, very trying), and this was really just a small drop in a vast ocean of waste, anyway.

I had hoped that I would be somewhere down at the shallow end of the table for lunch, where I could nod earnestly and make vague, sycophantic "rhubarb" noises as the brighter little sparklers jostled to catch the Knight's eye. Alas (lucky white heather), I was seated at Sir Henry's right hand, and as the soup arrived he was already asking me what I did, and what I was involved in at present.

Taking care to swallow my (deliberately very small) mouthful of crusty roll before I replied, I spoke slowly and clearly, with what I hoped was a well-judged balance between calm enthusiasm and boring technicality, and with absolutely no inappropriate nervous jokes or hints of self-deprecation. It all seemed to be going quite well until I caught sight of Sir Henry's facial expression, which really put me rather badly off my stride.

Sir Henry was peering at me, blinking, as a man might try to peer into a severe gale from the deckhouse of a fishing boat. His back was hunched, his mouth hung open in a grimace of very obvious pain. This remarkable pantomime was evidently something he had perfected in the past, and the very clear message was:

"I can hear that you are speaking, and I recognise some of the words you use, but I fear you have an accent which is unfamiliar to me, and this is something of a problem; it is necessary for me to make a show of putting up with this for a minute or two, but you appear to come from a background which is outside my comfort zone, so keep it brief, will you?"

You see, I am a little challenged in the accent department. I was born and schooled in Liverpool, though my father's own accent belonged more to rural Lancashire, his ancestors being farming people from the Warrington area. At the age of 18 I went to University in Edinburgh (which is in Scotland, by the way) and I have lived in Central and Southern Scotland ever since. Thus my normal speaking voice has evolved over the years - it was probably a bit of a hotch-potch to start with, and then the need to make myself understood (to get fed, for example) required me to modify my vowel sounds and the figures of speech I used over an extended period, so that I am now instantly recognisable, wherever I go, as Someone from Somewhere Else. The Universal Foreigner.

My former schoolmates and my (very few) remaining family members in Liverpool will, without hesitation, identify that I now have a Scottish accent, a suggestion which would astonish my friends and relatives in Scotland, who think I probably sound as if I come from the North of England, though they might not be quite sure where. If I hear recordings of myself speaking, I would say I maybe sound a little like Michael Palin, or maybe Melvyn Bragg - that sort of thing, anyway - fairly vanilla, educated North of England, right enough. Nothing particularly memorable, nor likely to conjure up images of (say) George Formby, or Yosser Hughes. Nothing (I hope) that suggests I might be incapable of joined-up thinking, or might have a tendency to steal the wheels off your car.

Maybe

Maybe

No

No

However, it seems Sir Henry remembered our brief chat, and subsequently his secretary sent a message to the head of my Division of the company, asking him was he quite happy that someone with my accent should be acting as a spokesman for our fine organisation. My Director, bless him, said that yes, he was quite happy, though he also made sure that I got the message about Sir Henry's discomfort, so we'll give him only a qualified blessing.

So what on earth was all that? Sir Henry had no idea what I was talking about, partly because it was below his horizon but also because he was too frigging dumb. However, he unerringly managed to pick up on the fact that I might not be one of the Chaps. I filed the incident away - I was a little indignant, I guess, but I was quite a tough fellow in those days. I did not propose to be mortally wounded by a posh old tosser like Sir Henry, and I forgot about it all very quickly.

Now, having remembered him, I checked to see what Sir Henry is up to. Perhaps, I pondered, he is no more? - certainly he has, once again, become invisible. A friend and former work colleague confirmed that he is still alive, but, alas, is not keeping very well. The old fellow is now in his mid-eighties, suffered a major stroke some years ago, is confined to a wheelchair, and has great difficulty with speech.

I find that very sad. I was hardly a close friend, obviously, but it is always tragic to witness the downfall of the mighty. One can only hope that he is still wealthy enough to ensure that all the people who care for him and look after his needs do not have regional or Eastern European accents - at his stage of life he most surely does not need the strain of having to pull that face again.

Hooptedoodle #276 - Supellism: from a Dark Place

A previous blog post of mine was intended to be about the labelling of children's clothing, but it accidentally strayed into rather more touchy areas such as stereotyping in society, and prejudice.

I found the experience particularly uncomfortable because, privately, I have recently been troubled by growing doubts about myself. I have never really spoken openly of this before, and I find it hard to write about. Obviously, one has to maintain appearances; one's career and standing in society depend very much on being accepted, and there are clear implications for the interests of our families, but one also has to be at peace with oneself. It is very hard to live a lie.

Let's cut to the chase: I am becoming more convinced that I am not as I may seem to others - in my heart I am - well, to be blunt about it, a wardrobe. I realise this may give rise to some incredulity, but it is true; I am now almost sure that the real me, the me that the everyday world does not get to see, is a fine, handsome wardrobe.

There, I've said it. It wasn't as hard as I expected. I'm not sure that a blog is a good place to discuss this, but I have previously raised the topic with a couple of close friends and their reaction was disappointing, though maybe predictable - exactly the sort of unreasoning, stereotyping behaviour that we have to expect, that so-called social norms instill in people. It was pointed out to me that I do not make it as a wardrobe on a number of counts - organically, materially and functionally. Not even the most devout follower of Thomas Stahlberg could dispute that I fail on one of the key facets of being a wardrobe - i.e. no-one can keep clothes in me, at least not to any useful extent. I am not discouraged; I feel I have to stick to my guns, to follow this through. 

This self-doubt thing is not entirely new. For years, to all outward appearances, I was an actuary working for an insurance company, but there were many occasions when I seriously thought that I would rather be almost anything else. Once, on a flight to Frankfurt, having drunk too much Lucozade, I woke up convinced I was an Eccles cake, but that is a story in itself.

Another story

Naturally, I have looked around on the internet to see if there are others who feel like this, and I have been reassured to find that supellism, as it is called, apparently, is surprisingly common, especially in the USA, though most of the people affected there seem to regard themselves as sofas. I have avoided the self-help fora thus far - too easy to get sucked in (or plumped up), and too many tales of tragedy for my taste. This has to be a positive change, or I'm not going to proceed with it.

I was genuinely flabbergasted to learn that my local County Council - here in rural, unsophisticated Scotland - has a trained, specialist counsellor in exactly this field. That does seem a remarkably long shot, doesn't it? As it happens, she has been on holiday in the Farne Islands for four years, but the message on her voicemail service assures me that she will be in touch as soon as she gets back.

You can have an operation. I don't know too much about this yet, but it seems that it is carried out in stages. The first step is to get yourself veneered - I thought a nice, traditional, satin-finish, light oak would complement my personality best, though I am still thinking about it. I have written off for a leaflet.

A nice, burred oak - tasteful, restrained, dignified

I have also been warned that a number of people and institutions, Her Majesty's Department of Work and Pensions being one, may react unfavourably to my coming out as a wardrobe. No-one suggested this was going to be easy.

I am not going to bombard anyone with this topic, or give daily updates, or become evangelical about it. I shall pursue it quietly, in my own way. I felt that airing the matter like this would give me a further opportunity to examine my own feelings about it, and maybe bring comfort to others who might share my situation.

If you find that you gain great solace from extended visits to the furniture departments of large retail stores during your lunch-breaks from work (in my case, coincidentally, it was usually John Lewis), that might be a clue. If, like me, you are mystified that the bar staff cannot actually see you waiting to be served, that might be a clue. If, again like me, you find that standing motionless in a corner of the bedroom for hours is surprisingly liberating, that might definitely be a clue. And - finally - if you have already looked for Thomas Stahlberg on Google then you should try to get help as soon as you can.

One more thing. If you find any element of this post tasteless or offensive, go and have a big drink of water, look at yourself in the mirror and breathe deeply a few times before you send me a flamer.

I feel better now - still troubled, but better.

Hooptedoodle #275 - Which Side Do You Dress?

BBC Radio 4's Today programme is the way my day begins - I wake up when my radio alarm decides it is time for me to start listening. It's good in a number of ways - I get to keep abreast of the news, and it is excellent therapy to be exposed to rational, articulate people who do not curse or communicate in txt-speak. Unfortunately the content is not necessarily going to improve my blood pressure. Never mind. Each new day comes with no guarantees - just be glad you lived to see it. To misquote Forrest Gump, life is like a box of chocolates - it is bad for your teeth and you don't like most of the centres.

This morning I am, of course, mostly impressed by the continuing adventures of Messrs Trump and Kim. I have been keeping a gentle eye on the betting odds against The Tronald completing his term of office - just for academic interest, you understand. Now I am wondering what sort of price I could get on none of us being alive by the end of his term of office. Problem, as someone will point out, is that I would have difficulty collecting my winnings.

To brighten things up a bit, I stayed with the programme this morning, and was confronted by a spokesperson (female) from a fine single-interest group called Let Clothes Be Clothes - they are committed to campaigning against what they term gender stereotyping, and their target area is eliminating the distinction between boys' and girls' clothes. She was celebrating the fact that John Lewis, the very famous and successful UK department store, have removed the signs from their children's clothes - all clothes they sell for children aged up to 14 are now just clothes. Now there's a mighty step forward. I have a 6-foot-tall, 14 year old son who would be prepared to headbutt you in the mouth if you suggested that he may no longer wear boys' clothing, and I do not believe this is entirely due to stereotyping or conditioning to which we have unreasoningly subjected him.

Initially I listened to the item to see if it were a wind-up, or if someone was about to pour a pail of water over the spokesperson's head, but - no - it was for real.

Now, of course I disapprove of stereotyping or prejudicial behaviour of any sort - at heart I even disapprove of my own stereotyping of women with irritating voices on the radio early in the morning, especially women who have the answer to where the human race has been going wrong for some thousands of years.

I don't really care what people wear - if they are comfortable with how they look and with the reaction it produces in others, and if it doesn't upset anyone else or break any laws then that's fine. If a medical examination indicates that an individual is male but he chooses to wear girls' clothes that is fine too, but I would be happier if he bought them in a girls' clothes department rather than having all the rest of us pretend that there is no such thing.

For my liking, this is all too soon after some other worthy on early morning radio was enthusing about the need to encourage young children to reject their default gender if they wanted - there will be a queue of volunteers to help them, counsel them - maybe sign them up? Perhaps individual councils or schools will score points according to how many defenceless children they can trap into making some blood-curdling mistake?

I fear I am not selling myself well here, but I am worried. Coping with individual preferences and exceptional life choices is positive and necessary; making such minority lifestyles into a new mainstream, and/or forcing the rest of us to change to fit in - that's maybe not so positive. If there is a serious market demand for unisex clothing then that's a different thing - let's have shops that cater for it. That's well and good.

Imagine: you have a 12-year-old son and you wish to buy him some new shirts for school. Seems straightforward enough. OK - where will you buy them? If he is forced to buy a gender-free, non-stereotyped "child's" shirt, which way will it button? How will it line up with his school uniform regs? What other issues have not been thought through? How much trouble are we saving up for the future in mental illnesses and young people being unable to adjust to society - not being able to understand what they now are, what they should relate to? Frankly, I do not care how much of a personal triumph the squeaky woman on the radio felt this is - I think it is a mess.

The Mad Padre recently summed this up with his customary breathtaking precision. I shall attempt to give a resume of what he said, though I am by nature more verbose and less precise. The problem with so-called political correctness, he said, is that it is nominally aimed at increasing tolerance, yet in itself it is completely intolerant; it is decreed absolutely that you will show and offer tolerance to such and such a group or personal status, and here are the strict, inarguable terms and conditions, and here is a list of the things we shall do to you if we decide you have been intolerant.

I'm keeping a bucket of water handy.

Hooptedoodle #274 - Opening of the Queensferry Crossing

 

An exciting day out for all the family - we were invited to attend the opening weekend of the new Queensferry Crossing - the road bridge across the Firth of Forth which is to supplement the Forth Road Bridge, which itself was opened in 1964 and is starting to show its age.

When I say invited, a few months ago there were adverts in the Press, inviting applications from the public to walk across the new bridge when it was opened, before the traffic started. Some one-third of a million applications were received, and a ballot reduced this to 50,000 attendees, divided into the two open days, 2nd and 3rd September. We were lucky enough to be allocated places on the 3rd, so we went along this morning. The security arrangements were impressive - passports and photo-ID were needed, and all applications were carefully vetted. Limitations were placed on what you could carry, and all bags and possessions were checked. Our plan of action was

(1) Early morning train from North Berwick to Edinburgh Waverley, then take the Stirling train as far as Edinburgh Park (only two stops, in fact).
(2) From this station - out in the suburban world of banking head offices [boo!] - it was about 10 minutes walk to our official bussing point.
(3) Through all the security and registration procedures, and then onto a brand new bus (no expense spared) and a 25 minute run to the southern end of the new bridge, near the town of South Queensferry.

We then were free to join the crowds walking over the new bridge. A marvellous experience - we were very lucky with the weather, too. There were people in fancy dress, raising money for charity, folk in wheelchairs - many thousands of visitors - a great day out for all. The numbers are bewildering - the bridge is 1.7 miles in length, and it cost some £1.35bn - there are also endless statistics about how much concrete was required, how many people worked on it, how much traffic it will carry, and so on and so on - if you are interested, please check online - there's tons of the stuff (I won't tell you how much...). We took about an hour to walk across - taking our time and capturing a great many photos - and then were taken by bus back to Edinburgh Park, from whence we started our train trip home.

Excellent. Also it was free to the participants, and this is really quite a production - I guess that a portion of the project budget is set aside to ensure that the taxpayers are happy with the thing.

What was it like? Well, it was great, but a little odd. I have to say that I was surprised that there was not a great sense of being on a big bridge over an arm of the sea. If this seems a strange thing to say, it is probably a testament to the skill of the design. The superstructure is only in evidence if you look up (and it is most certainly very much in evidence then!), and the transparent windbreak panels cut down on both the view and the breeze, so the overall impression is of being on a straight piece of modern roadway.

I've reproduced a selection of our photos, and have added some borrowed from the media, to give a better context, and a better idea of what the thing is like - when you are on it, there is surprisingly little to see of it!

Strangely foreshortened zoom-lens shot from the Guardian, rather hides the fact
that the new structure is 1.7 miles long!

Windbreaks - West Lothian coastline in the background

I have to confess to an OCD nightmare fantasy - obviously the cables go up, though
a hole in the pillar and then down to anchor into a matching socket on the other side
- what if you've nearly finished and you find you're short of a socket? - you've got
them all one out, like the buttons on the duvet - now what...?

At the end of our trip, I am now fired up to walk across the old Road Bridge, a thing which I could have done at any time in the last 50 years - it should be a rather better spectacle, and will definitely give better views of the Queensferry Crossing.

My compliments to the heroes who built this thing, and to the Scottish Parliament for arranging the open day. It will take me a little while to appreciate what I saw today, I think. It will certainly be nicer to drive across than its bumpy old uncle next door.