Last week I downloaded the app for Zoom, the videoconferencing tool, and, since I've now had three prompts from friends to get my account fired up, I set about doing exactly this.
Filled in the online form to join up, and clicked the button to receive my email, so that I can reply to it and validate my account. What could be easier?
Well, my email didn't arrive. I requested a re-send, and it still didn't arrive.
I got on to Zoom's online customer support, and opened up the chat line. The chat line suggested I should check my spam folder, and maybe contact my workplace IT section for help. I confirmed that I had checked spam, and that I am my own IT support, and the chat line couldn't understand what I was talking about. "TRY AGAIN WITH DIFFERENT WORDS..." it suggested.
Tried a couple of re-wordings, and it became obvious pretty quickly that I was chatting with an expert system, and I was getting nowhere fast. I don't have a lot of time for this sort of exercise today, so I just said "Forget it for now - I'll try later."
To which the expert system replied:
"IF YOU USE LANGUAGE LIKE THAT, WE WILL BE UNABLE TO HELP YOU."
It's disappointing when an expert system has such poor expectations of its own customers. Maybe I will try again later - not sure.
The language problem, I think, is at their end - their chat line must have a very small repertoire of known words.
No worries. Maybe I'm due a return to Skype?
***** Late Edit - Happy Ending? *****
Credit where credit is due - I did receive the activation email, plus the 4 further re-sends I requested. They arrived at 03:11, which is 15 hours after I sent my original request.
OK - I'm probably operational now. I imagine the emails are sent by more robots. Thus my first impression is that Zoom's AI staff are not only sensitive but also remarkably slow. I have a couple of YouTube instructional vids to watch to get up to speed. Maybe later - my robot is still asleep.
A bit more Merseyside local history, I'm afraid - pretty ancient history, too. During lock-down, I am presently working my way through some of the old BBC TV Coast series on DVD, and enjoying them thoroughly - apart from anything else, it's nice to get a change of scenery, and to see people travelling about in the fresh air and speaking to each other!
Yesterday I watched the episode from Series 2 in which they discuss the North Wales coastline from Anglesey to Liverpool. One of the items covered was the Optical Telegraph, begun in 1826, I think, which was built to communicate between Holyhead, in Anglesey, and Liverpool. My interest was kindled!
Long before any electric telegraph, it was very useful to be able to pass messages back and forth, with news of arriving shipping. In those pre-steam days, most of the sugar trade from the Caribbean and the cotton from the USA came into Liverpool, and voyage times were very variable. When incoming ships reached Anglesey, they only had about 70 miles to go, across Liverpool Bay to the port itself. Ships passing Holyhead could exchange (flag) signals with the signal station, and then the telegraph system (invented, I believe, by an employee of the Liverpool Dock Company named Watson) would send news to Liverpool, where the shipping companies could make arrangements for berthing and unloading, and the local traders could make announcements in the Cotton Exchange and in the local commodity markets, and of course, messages to the ship could be sent back.
The Telegraph stations
The system used a relay of semaphore stations, sending coded messages which consisted of numeric signals, translated by means of a code book.
Each station would receive incoming signals from an adjacent station in the line, and resend as quickly as possible. I imagine the job of spotting a new signal quickly would be a demanding one, but the signal traffic was heavy, so there might be little chance to doze off! This sounds painfully slow, since someone would have to decode the numbers at each end, but it seems that 3 to 4 minutes from end to end was about average, which is impressive. During the BBC TV show, they made great play of the fact that there was a claim that the fastest ever recorded time for a message from Holyhead to Liverpool was 27 seconds. My reaction was to wonder how they could possibly have measured this, since there was no time signal or satellite clock to check it against. It took me a while to realise that it would be possible to time a there-and-back signal and response at one end of the line, but I have to say that still don't believe they could have done it so quickly!
Ruin of the station at Carreglwyd, abandoned in 1841 when the Puffin Island station opened
Puffin Island
Bidston Hill "Observatory" in the Wirral - telegraph station, and one signal flagpole for each shipping line!
If you want to know more, here's a link to a pleasing little history of the telegraph system - there seems to have been a gradual improvement in the technology - there are still traces of it around. I remember that when I was a small child I saw the signal pylon at Hilbre Island, just off West Kirby. Come to think of it, I never realised until yesterday what that site was!
One nice moment in the BBC programme was a reference to the fact that that one of the coded signals in the book, transmitted as a number, meant "do you have the code book?", which, of course, would convey nothing at all if you didn't.
This comes from a discussion I had with a friend on email - there is no trick to this, it is simply a bit of school physics, but I was surprised how much discussion it gave rise to. I thought I'd trot it out here - have a think about this...
A man who is working from home sets up an experiment with his children one afternoon, as part of their home-schooling. They like that kind of thing, apparently.
They place a boat in their (very small) swimming pool. The man climbs in, and takes on board a number of very large stones borrowed from the garden. When the ripples have stopped, his kids mark (very accurately) the water level on the side of the pool (not on the boat, on the pool side).
Once they have done this, the man very carefully drops all the stones over the side into the water. Again, when the ripples stop, the kids mark the water level on the pool side. We may assume that there is no loss of water through splashes, overflow, drainage, leakage or evaporation during the experiment, and that the kids can mark the level with unlimited precision.
OK then - when he dumps the stones overboard, does the water level in the pool
(1) rise
(2) fall
(3) stay the same
No prizes, obviously, just a bit of (supposed) fun. I won't publish any comments for a day or two, so as not to spoil the puzzle for anyone who cares - this will also allow me a couple of days before I have to reveal that there were no responses at all.
I observe that a number of my recent blog posts will not display some of the images I inserted. I see this symbol instead of each blocked picture:
The picture is still in a library somewhere - hovering the cursor over the missing image shows a sub-caption with the name of a convincing-looking file name on a Blogger library - but I can't see the image itself, either as part of the published post or in a draft version if I switch to the editor. Oh yes - and I can't save it or open it as a separate link. For all practical purposes, the image has gone.
Hmmm.
I had a quick, rather nervous check back to 2011 or so, and I think my older posts are unchanged. This is something of a relief, since the status of my blog as one of The Wonders of the Modern Age would be severely compromised by having the pictures removed. Knocked on the head, in fact. The pictures which have been suppressed recently were (at a quick glance) some photos of book covers, which I nicked from Amazon's website, a couple of photos of items for sale taken from a 5-year-old auction catalogue, a photo of HG Wells playing wargames in his garden which I obtained from Google. My own original photos are unaffected, and I didn't look much further, so the evidence on which to base any heavy investigation is not extensive. However, not being easily discouraged, I have been pondering what's going on here.
I realise that the Amazon pictures are copyrighted, but my blog is not any kind of commercial venture, the photos could almost be described as promotional, since I was singing the praises of the books involved, and my readership is small (anyone over six feet in height, please excuse the generalisation). Quite apart from the fact that I don't suppose Amazon or anyone else would regard the inclusion of these photos as unreasonable use, or even be faintly interested in my activities, I am puzzled, if there has been a change, as to what that change is, and why.
Maybe this is an Apple thing? My desktop machine is a Mac, and my iPhone shows the same thing. However, my tablet, which is an Android device, shows this same NO ENTRY symbol, and they all do this on a variety of browsers, so this would appear to be down to Blogger / Google.
Hmmm.
Maybe there has been a tightening up on the use of unauthorised or copyrighted images? Since my own photos of my soldier collection and the games I play are all over Pinterest and TMP without any permission from me, and since I recently learned that I can order a mouse-mat, a mug or a poster from a company in the US which seems to offer a couple of my photos as stock designs, I can see some sense in this.
It could, of course, just be a glitch in Blogger - such things are not unknown. A number of the routine facilities which Blogger offers have stopped working for me over the last year - I think that this may not be unconnected with the fact that my principal sign-on uses an email account which is supported by a competitor of Google, but that's another story altogether.
Or it could be a change in Official Policy. They could be clamping down, in which case, as long as my entire blog is not wrecked, I have to shrug and say fair enough - probably not before time. If I've done bad things then it serves me right. [Drat]
To put this in context, I do not regard this as a free-for-all. I do try to behave responsibly in these matters - if I do anything that offends someone's rights, then it is normally accidental, I'll put my hand up and apologise, and remove the image straight away. It does happen, but not very often.
Some weeks ago, MSFoy received an email from a lady in the US, complaining that he had used a photo which was her property, without permission. I sent a humble apology and removed the photo promptly. I received a friendly acknowledgement - matter closed, I hope. What strikes me as a little odd about this is that the picture in question, which was in a blog post here some six years ago, was supplied by a library service I used until (I think) last year. For a while I owned a small publishing business - in fact I still do, though it is no longer trading - and I took out a paid subscription to an online library service which offered royalty-free, non-copyrighted images - clip art and photos - which could be used for small-distribution advertising and so on. It was not an expensive deal (as you would expect - quiet at the back, please), so I forgot all about it until maybe 18 months ago, at which point I cancelled my subscription.
OK - maybe that's all irrelevant, but the incident of the complaint seemed like something new. So perhaps Google have changed their rules? It would be possible for some algorithm to check the meta-data behind any image, and suppress it, I guess. I can see this would be constructive in the overall scheme of things. However, the algorithm will struggle with screen-capture images or scanned images, so I really just have to introduce an extra step to get round this. Save an image, display it in my Preview app and take a screenshot. Pick the bones out of that.
Anyway, this post has certainly gone on long enough, considering I am blundering around in the dark. I wondered whether anyone has had a similar experience recently, or if anyone knows if the law or Google usage has changed?
A long time ago, when I was quite a young chap, I bought a house in a very quiet terrace in the [legendary] Edinburgh suburb of Morningside. My neighbours were, almost without exception, elderly, and I'm not sure that the arrival of my family in the street was greeted with universal approval. I was aware that we were under surveillance for a lot of the time during those early months. There was a great deal of "curtain twitching" - it seems people knew a lot about us, though we hadn't really met anyone. They knew who came and went, they knew that I wore jeans on Saturdays, and I didn't attend Greenbank Kirk.
There are advantages in such a situation. One afternoon I took a half-holiday from work, and came home to receive delivery of a package of dinner plates. As soon as I had arrived home, the phone rang. It was Mrs Cruickshank, one of our most prominent local curtain-twitchers.
She was sorry to disturb me, but a parcel had been delivered for me that morning, and since my wife and I were not at home, she had agreed that the delivery man could leave the parcel at her house. She wouldn't normally have noticed such goings-on, of course, but she had just happened to be adjusting the curtains when she saw the van arrive. The parcel was very heavy, and could I please come and collect it?
Well, yes - certainly. Still wearing my official work suit, I went three doors down and across the road, and rang Mrs Cruickshank's doorbell. Mrs Cruickshank must have been about 80, I guess - very smartly dressed but very thin.
We introduced ourselves, and she showed me the parcel - it was my dinner plates, early, but safe enough. Mrs C offered me a cup of tea - I attempted to swerve this, but there was no way I was not getting a cup of tea, so I joined her in her kitchen, and she started looking for the necessary equipment. She opened a cupboard - no cups, but there was a cream cracker with some cheese lying on a shelf - also a sherry glass, half full, on a different shelf.
She tried another cupboard. No cups, but there was another sherry glass - also half full, in there. She was about to go for another cupboard, but I spotted a framed photo on the kitchen wall - a young man in RAF uniform, and thus successfully managed to change the subject and end the cup hunt.
The photo, it turned out, was of her son, John, who had been in the RAF during the war, and had been badly wounded. His injuries had meant that after he recovered he could not stand the cold in Scotland, so he now lived in Malta, she told me. He had been dreadfully hurt, she said, and her eyes filled with tears. I'm not very good at that sort of situation - I suspect I was even worse then. With as much good grace as possible, I offered my thanks and took my parcel home - I never did get my cup of tea, now I think about it.
Mrs Cruickshank moved away shortly afterwards - I never saw her again, Whether she went into care, or hospital, or maybe went to Malta to live with her son, I know not. But I did find out subsequently that her ex-RAF son was really rather famous. There is a short bio on Wikipedia if you would care to have a look.
F/O John A Cruickshank VC
Something or other reminded me of Mrs Cruickshank recently (no - I don't think it was the sherry glasses in my kitchen cupboard), and I had a poke around online to find out more about John. It seems he's still alive, and - if he is - he'll be 100 in about a month from now.
So there you are - a pointless tale about someone you don't know and I never met, but I'll put a note in my diary to drink a glass of something in his honour next month, wherever he is. 20th May - anyone care to join me?
***** Late Edit *****
Apparently the BBC made a documentary film about this incident in 1995 - excuse the rough pictures, but here it is, introduced by the excellent Martin Bell [The Man in the White Suit - famous war correspondent and one-time destroyer of Neil Hamilton the Sleaze-Ball...]
I'm somewhat shaken
by recent communications with a painting service that I haven't dealt with
before. I have anonymised and tidied up our correspondence, and after much
thought I've decided to put some of it out here. The last thing any of us needs at the
moment is unnecessary aggro, so I may decide to delete this post at short
notice if I change my mind, and I may choose not to post comments, but I
thought this was a bit special. Perhaps the poor chap is under a lot of
pressure, butthis worries me - I admire
anyone who takes a stand, but I'm not sure if I wish to have further dealings
with someone quite so alternative. Just being angry doesn't seem likely to help very much.
I have done
regular business with two other painters over the last 10 years or so,
but one of those is not taking on any work at present, understandably, and the other has a big
backlog. A friend recommended a painter I hadn't heard of previously, so a
couple of months ago I made contact with this chap, and we agreed in principle
that I would sent a trial batch.
The weeks passed,
and my own arrangements for painting soldiers changed somewhat, with the
self-iso business. Eventually I thought I might check to see if we could still
go ahead with this batch. After all, it is a sort of contribution to protecting someone's livelihood.
Enquiry from
me, 20th March
B--- - I was
about to prepare a shipment of soldiers to send for painting, but am not sure
whether you are working at present - are you still open, or painting at home?
Hope things are
not too bad in your area.
Regards - M---
And back comes
a quick response:
Reply of 20th
March
My dear M---, l
refuse to be frightened by a flu bug that the media and our beloved leaders
have turned into a crisis.
Goodness
gracious M---, an average of four hundred thousand people die world-wide each
year from flu. No one closed the world down for last years flu. Why is this one
so different?
My studio will
remain open until/if l am forced to close and then l shall paint from
home.
Just send your
parcel and l will get to it asap.
Obviously take
the usual flu symptom precautions.
And Keep Calm and Carry On!
Best
always,
B---
Rather unusual viewpoint, but fair enough. Defiant to the last, obviously. I
spent a couple of weeks working on my own painting, so didn't really have time
to prep figures to send. Eventually it was time to think about it again. Since
the pandemic had obviously moved on a bit in the interim, I thought I should
check:
My email of 2nd April
Hi B--- - not
sure if you will have adjusted your view of the virus situation, but I guess
you have probably been required to close your shop? I'm still planning to send
you a parcel of soldiers, if that's OK, for painting - should I send it to your
home address?
We are in
isolation here, but that's rather easier in the country. Keep well.
Best regards
M---
And he's still
out there, fighting on:
Reply on 4th
April
Hello M---.
Glad to hear your all well.
Haven't really
altered my views on this flu virus very much.
Perhaps the
media fear spreading is deliberate Government policy to keep people away from
each other and thus help kill the bug?
If so it's a
good thing. But on the other hand it's also doing untold damage to people's
mentality and ruining economies World wide.
My business has
of course closed, but l am busy painting commissions at home.
So yes, please
send your parcel if you wish to, to [postal
address follows].
If you do
decide to send it, can you add one of your painted pieces so l can match what
you have with those l paint for you?
Should you wish
to pay me via PayPal it will be fine, or a cheque to B--- D--- is equally OK.?
Maybe this is a more general problem - here's the trailer for another of my very favourite films (if you've never seen this, I recommend it) - a French postal worker is traumatised by learning that he is to be transferred to Le Nord....
This movie, by the way, is the biggest laugh ever...
A couple of days ago I was listening to BBC Radio 3 at breakfast time, as is my current routine; there is a show where listeners may text in suggestions for music selections. The host of the show (I suspect that on R3 they may still be "announcers") at one point said (announced?),
"I have received a text from Theresa, who is in Burnley, up there in Lancashire - Theresa would like to hear some Scarlatti..."
OK - no problem - there are probably a lot of people who don't know where Burnley is - or Lancashire, for that matter.
A few minutes later, the link was,
"I have a nice message from Tom, who is in Streatham, and today Tom is busy doing his accounts..."
She didn't say, "...Streatham, which is in South London...", presumably because everyone is expected to know where Streatham is. Funny that. It doesn't bother me in the slightest, but there is something a little retro about the episode. This is a national radio station, bear in mind. Faint echoes of Two-Way Family Favourites on Sundays on the BBC Light Programme, back in the 1960s. If Gunner Arkwright's family come from Rawtenstall, make sure that we mention that this is a long way from the Centre of Things - it's company policy.
There was no offence intended, obviously, but it is still an instinct on national radio - some gentle apology needed for reference to the Provinces (though, of course, there are a lot of new Tory MPs up there now, which must make a difference, you would think). Some reflected glory in demonstrating that the BBC is able to transmit to (and even has some kind of an audience in) the far-flung reaches of our Sceptred Isle.
Anyway, I had a laugh at it, and there is no harm done, but it reminded me of this clip, which I still find hilarious - apologies for the poor picture definition - best I could find.
Last night I was clearing out the spam folder in one of my secondary email accounts, and I came across this message...
I see this dates from 2016 - goodness me! - just think, I may have missed out on a fortune. It just reinforces some recurring theme I haven't quite put my finger on yet, along the lines that big changes in our lives and fortunes might, at any moment, hinge on some unseen stroke of luck, or a message from a stranger.
By an astonishing coincidence, this spam folder contained quite a lot of messages like this - all from different people. A superstitious person might believe that this was more than mere chance. Do you think that, in some mystical way, I might be blessed? Since I would rather not dwell on the possibility of having missed out on several fortunes over a relatively short period, I am thinking that maybe I should treat this seriously, and consider resuming my research into developing a foolproof algorithm for predicting Lottery numbers.
I mean, it makes sense, doesn't it?
I do wonder what happened to that money, though - and it was a shame that the man's daughter was killed like that. And his wife. Tragic.
Why don't we all email Mr Daamba, and wish him all the best?
This is the cleverest person in the UK. This may now be official. If there is anything he doesn't know, he will get online and will be an expert later today.
He is, of course, the chief advisor to our Prime Minister, which means, given the disappearance of any viable opposition parties, he effectively runs the country.
OK.
(1) Did you vote for him? I know I didn't.
(2) Does he have any real mandate for all this? Is he answerable or accountable for anything? You may know - I don't.
(3) Have you any idea what he's up to, now and/or long-term? I certainly don't.
(4) As I understand it, the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer has just resigned, because he felt unable to carry out a directive from the PM to sack all his aides, who apparently had concerns about the policies of the man in the picture at the top. Do you feel a bit scared? I think perhaps I feel a bit scared.
(5) This might be the last post on this blog - it may be shut down in the next day or so.
This is rather a whimsical post - I wasn't sure
whether to publish it. Maybe I'll delete it later.
Recently I've been corresponding with a
friend about memories of childhood - especially about family get-togethers, in
an age when it seemed everyone lived locally, and almost the entire family could be
assembled from a small area. My friend and I had some laughs about social rituals,
things that our families always did (and said, and sang), and about how the
roles of various family members have changed. Since he and I come from
different parts of the UK, it has been interesting to note the similarities and
the regional differences.
Terraced street in Aigburth, some 10 years later than my tale
I got to thinking about the New Year
parties at my grandparents' house, when I was a kid (that's my dad's parents,
in Aigburth, South Liverpool). I think we only attended a few times, mostly
because my dad would normally have fallen out with one or other of his siblings
during the previous year!
The gatherings were large - a lot of people
crammed into a small terraced house. They were good-hearted folk, in a tough,
noisy sort of way. We must have been at that itchy post-war period when the
working class had a bit more money, and everyone was becoming keen on what they
saw as middle-class status symbols and values. It was all a bit competitive,
and all of it was loud and in-your-face. My posh Auntie May had definitely
"rose up", and she had married the boss/owner at her work,
developed a new Hyacinth Bucket accent (see clip, below), sent her kids to private
school and moved to the Wirral. In a strange, ambivalent way, the family were
proud of her, yet envied her, and really hated it when she drove over for New
Year in the new Vauxhall, even though they bragged about it when she wasn't
there, and stood in the freezing cold to watch it drive away when she left.
Vauxhall Wyvern
At this time, everyone still had their feet
and their roots in traditions that were, at the very least, Victorian. The
family would come on various buses (only May had a car), some would walk, bearing
biscuit tins filled with sandwiches, home baking, even bowls of trifle. When
people arrived, all the big winter coats would be piled on the bed in the
upstairs room at the front of the house (the smell of moth-balls was stifling),
and everyone was issued with the regulation cup of tea to warm them up.
And, I guess, a good time was had by all.
Occasional neighbours would appear (though the family was not noted for being
very open to strangers), and eventually there were boyfriends of my various
cousins (my cousins were legion, and they were all girls, now I think of it).
If there were enough newcomers to the family throng, the inevitable party games
in the kitchen after the tea-party would include a game called The Obstacle
Course. I think my participation in this game came when I was about seven,
after a number of years of non-attendance (politics). It was a game you could
only play once, but when you could no longer take part you could be involved in
the organisation and, of course, spectating.
Even by the prevailing standards, this was
an unusually noisy game - it must have been audible a good way up the street.
It was necessary to have a minimum number of first-time visitors to play -
maybe 3 or 4. There was an element of initiation in it, to be sure. The
family's taste in jokes and fun activities was always dominated by practical
jokes, some humiliation, just a whiff of sadism, and giving a newcomer the
opportunity to demonstrate that they were a "good sport", prepared to
laugh at themselves - certainly to be laughed at by others. Maybe this was a
test to see if they were going to fit in...
The Obstacle Course game required the
identification of suitable (first-time) participants, and then my Uncle Harold
and Cousin Joyce (who were the loudest of all) would take charge. The players
would be led into the hall by Joyce, where they would be prepared for what was
to follow, and while the course was set up. When everything was ready, they
would all be admitted to the kitchen (living room), and would be shown an
improvised obstacle course, which they had to memorise as best they could; then
they would be taken out into the hallway again, and would be given some
additional instruction on rules and so on. All the non-playing family members
would be seated around the walls of the room - they would be the spectators,
and later would vote for the best performer.
1950s clothes horse - we used to call ours a "maiden"
The course itself featured all sorts of
household items, arranged in time-honoured constructions that you had to crawl
under, step over, wriggle in-between - there was a horizontal broom handle,
supported on boxes, to be stepped over without touching it, there were all
sorts of cunning arrangements of sofa cushions, the wooden clothes horse,
covered in rugs, a step-ladder, stacks of food tins - a lot of ingenuity came
into play. And, of course, you would have to negotiate the course blindfolded,
with plenty of instruction from Harold - and the spectators, obviously.
The participants (or "explorers"
as they were termed) were solemnly blindfolded, and led into the room one at a
time. Others went in ahead of me, and the noise was indescribable - the main
object of the game was that everybody shouted at the same time - support,
conflicting instructions, occasional sympathy, lots of banter. My turn came - I
was completely blacked-out. I could hardly breathe, in fact.
The door closed behind me, and Harold said,
"righto, Tony - come forward two steps - that's good - a little further -
very good. Now, the first obstacle is you have to walk under the step-ladder
without touching it, so stoop down a bit - right a bit - no not so much - good.
Now edge forward slowly - good - a bit lower - right a bit more..."
And from the onlookers came a deafening uproar
of "lower - not so low, turn left a bit - keep your elbows in" and so
on.
After the step-ladder I was sweating profusely,
but was pleased to have got past it. There was loud applause. Harold shouted,
"OK - now you have to step over the bucket of water, so you need to turn
left, where you are - righto - stop when I tell you - now - stop - two little
steps forward - stop - now - you're going to have to turn sideways for this
one..."
And so it went on. In spite of all the
conflicting shouting from the sidelines, I did remarkably well, wriggling
through sofa-cushion tunnels, tiptoeing through little mazes of tins, stepping
over things, all without touching anything. At last, clear so far, I had to jump right across a little hearth-rug,
without touching it. In a blaze of glory, I managed to do this. The applause
was fantastic - I was as pleased as I could be. Then I was allowed to take off
the blindfold, and I realised that the room had been completely cleared,
apart from the spectator gallery around the walls. All my gyrations and extreme
high-stepping and wriggling had been in an empty room. Of course I was
embarrassed, but I got to join the audience and watch the last competitor in
action, and I have to say it still seems to be one of the funniest things I
have ever experienced. Cousin Pauline's new boyfriend, in his fashionable new shoes, keen to make a good
impression, earnestly stretching his legs to impossible angles to avoid a
broom-handle which was no longer there, all to the accompaniment of riotous approval.
Harold did a virtuoso performance as
ring-master, no doubt. Fantastic noise, tears of laughter - it is sobering to
realise that probably only about three or four of the people present are still
alive - where did all that noise and camaraderie go? Of course, there are
dozens of descendants, but they live in Australia, Singapore,
Canada - even London. I have no idea at all about my extended family now -
certainly it would be impossible to bus them all to my grannie's house - it
might not even be possible to trace who they all are. Changed times.
I also remember that everyone that took
part in the Obstacle Course that year got a prize. The bad news was that it was one of Auntie Laura's
home-made rock cakes, left over from the festive tea, and quite rightly so,
since anyone who had eaten one before would know to avoid them.
There has always
been plastic during my lifetime. 40-year-old kids' toys, Bic pen caps and trash out of Christmas crackers were the sort of things you found down the back of the sofa when you were looking for lost money, TV remotes, passport etc - I am sure that one day
archaeologists will dig up a complete layer of plastic that defines our
civilisation. Yet something has changed - about 10 years ago I bought a small
(but very handy) mp3 player which somehow deteriorated - it became
sticky and disgusting, and eventually I threw it away. Over recent years, between us, my family
have had loads of plastic hairbrushes, each of which lasted about a year
before it became sticky and unuseable. I had a rather expensive pair of
noise-cancelling headphones I bought in the USA - one day they turned
sticky and then they broke. There have been other incidents - as it
happens, all these items were black - a matt-finish material. A couple of cheapish travel alarms did this and (infuriatingly) the plastic parts of my current
Pure pocket DAB radio are showing signs of doing the same thing - same problem - matt-black, rubbery plastic becomes sticky and
unpleasant to touch.
Most
serious of all, my wife's sunglasses - the ones she likes for driving -
have started to go the same way. The frames are quite heavy - dark brown plastic - she bought
them from Boots about 2 years ago for £60 or so. Sticky - if you wash them in soapy water it helps a little, but the stickiness comes back again.
What's going on here?
Have plastics changed? Are they now made from some cheaper or more environmentally friendly ingredients, which have a limited life? Are plastics now required to be biodegradable in some way?
I have always just assumed that plastic was forever - a belief which was shaken in the past by
(2) a horrifying adventure with a vintage guitar I owned - this was a 1948 Gibson ES150 - the post-war version of the old Charlie Christian model. I got it cleaned up and restored, and it was a lovely old thing, but the original pick-guard (scratch plate) was made of bakelite - an ancient organic plastic made from resin and bone dust. This plate began to decompose, and it gave off fumes which would corrode steel (strings, for example) - it took me a while to work out what was happening, then I got a luthier to make me a replica plate out of modern plastic. Bakelite - occasionally I see antique radios or domestic items made of the stuff advertised for sale - don't touch them. Toxic.
Topic 2 - Jury Service Citation
Today got off to a bad start. I got a phone call about 9am from the care home where my mother lives. This is not likely to calm my nerves first thing in the morning, so I steeled myself for some bad news. In fact it was a fairly mundane call - my mum has been sent a citation to appear for jury service at the Edinburgh High Court in March. The home has obviously completed an Electoral Roll return for all their residents. They cannot deal with the citation themselves, since they have no power of attorney or authority to act on my mother's behalf, so would I please look after it.
Well yes, of course. The court office is closed over the weekend, but I'll contact them on Monday. It is famously difficult to get exempted jury duty, but anyone over 71 may choose to be excused. My mum is 94 now, and badly afflicted with dementia, so getting her excused should be straightforward. I fear that I may have to send a written request, which may require me first to submit the original documentation for my Power of Attorney, which is a hassle - mainly because of the eternal risk of the stuff getting lost in someone's in-basket. That sounds like an addition to Monday's do-list, so no worries there.
It also occurs to me that I could just ignore the citation, in which case we could have a brief moment of fame when they attempt to prosecute her for non-appearance (the Sunday Post would love such a story), or - better still - send her along to the court for jury service. That would be interesting.
No - on reflection, I'll phone up on Monday and see what we do next. Ho-hum.
A few weeks ago I was recounting a daft old story for the benefit of the Contesse, and I enjoyed it greatly - though the Contesse did not say much about it, come to think of it.
I'll give a short version of the tale, mostly to fill out the post a bit.
The Original Tale
One Saturday morning in Spring, long ago, it seems I had something of a falling-out with my wife of the time - not an uncommon event, to be sure. On occasions like this, I sometimes used to go for a drive on my own, into the Highlands (I lived in Edinburgh at the time), to calm down. I can only add that traffic was lighter in those days - nowadays I would get stuck behind a caravan, and it would not calm me at all.
Citroen BX - this was so long ago that cars were monochrome
I remember the car I made this particular trip in - it was a Citroen BX - the second of three Citroens I owned. The reason I liked Citroens was that one of my sons used to get very travel-sick when he was a little boy, but he never got sick in a Citroen - something to do with the clever hydraulic suspension, which gave a ride like a hearse. The point is that this car dates the trip pretty accurately to 1988 or 1989.
Loch Lubnaig
On these trips I mostly used to head off towards Stirling - I was a big fan of the collection of vintage sports and racing cars at Doune - now all sold off and gone, alas - and I visited there regularly. On this occasion I headed north-west through Callander towards the Trossachs area. The A84 takes a twisty run along the shores of Loch Lubnaig - we may argue about where the Highlands really start, but this is good enough for me. It began to rain very heavily at this point, and when I got past the loch, as far as the village of Strathyre, I decided to stop for some lunch. There was a pub in the Main Street - I have always thought that Strathyre is a satisfyingly wild-sounding name anyway, so what could be better than to have a warming lunch in a Highland pub?
Strathyre Main Street (the A84) - looking south
I parked on the wide pavement outside, and went in. It was very dark. There was no-one in the bar. No log fire, nothing. As my eyes got used to the gloom, I observed that there were McEwan's tartan towel mats on the bar-top, such as I had not seen in use for maybe 10 or 15 years. I also noticed that I could smell the plumbing very distinctly. I assumed someone would appear soon, so I had a look at the old photos on the walls - grouse shoots from many years earlier, stuff like that, and I became aware that there was some evidence of life in the back room - so I knocked on a door and went in. Two locals in filthy overalls were playing pool - they seemed to have beers, so that was a good sign, I thought. When I entered they stopped playing immediately, stepped closer together, and approached me - quite aggressive - a bit like a phalanx. I backed off a pace or two.
"What are you wantin'?" asked one of them - I am ashamed to admit this, but the man had a glass eye, and I was so fixated by the idea that it must have given him problems playing pool that I was put rather off-balance. Also, alas, I wasn't quite sure if he was speaking to me.
"Er - I was looking for the landlord..."
"How? [Why?] Who are you, like?"
At this point I wasn't very sure, to be honest, but I explained that I was just a customer. The barman appeared in the room with us.
"This guy's looking for you," said Glass Eye. "He stopped us playing."
"What's the problem, then?" said the barman.
Fearing that this wasn't going very well, I went back into the bar with the barman, who took up the regulation position behind the taps.
"Are you wanting something?"
"I was wondering if I could perhaps get something to eat? Some lunch?"
"You couldn't make me a sandwich or something? Any pies?" - as I said this, the word salmonella appeared like a subtitle.
"Crisps." The barman never blinked, I noticed.
"Erm - could I have a cup of coffee?"
"Nah - the machine's broken. I can sell you a beer..."
"What have you got on draught?" I peered into the darkness.
"You can see what we've got - the taps have signs on them, with the names of the beers."
"Oh yes - sorry - can I have a half-pint of Guinness?"
"It's off."
I was suddenly quite scared - I turned on my heel and ran out. I was delighted to get back into the rain and the fresh air. So much for my Highland idyll - I turned the car round and drove straight back to Edinburgh. At least when I argued with my first wife I knew what I was getting into.
I've always thought my Strathyre Lunch could have made the basis of a good mystery story - the stranger who disappeared. The man who was ritually murdered because he asked for lunch - the police never bothered to investigate, naturally.
Subsequently
After telling the story to the Contesse, the other day, I decided I would do some Internet poking-about, and see if the pub is still open. I forgot about the matter for a couple of days, but this morning I remembered, and I find that the pub - at least nowadays - is The White Stag. It looks quite nice, in fact - I'm sure it's been under new management for decades now. While I was surfing, I came across a bad review of the place on TripAdvisor - pretty spectacularly bad, in fact - and I came across a pretty heavy response from the current owner - I attach them here, in case you find them as entertaining as I did.
Maybe my mystery story is still a possibility - I'm sure the man with the glass eye would have sorted out any trouble-makers - I hope standards have not dropped since 1988.
Of course, we didn't have scope for giving bad reviews with such high visibility then - in those days you had to look people in the eye - real or fake - and deal with them. What an impoverished world it was, now I think about it.
Here's a bit of Jimmy Shand to provide some closing music - serves you all right. Have a good New Year anyway.
Last year, because of various family problems, we didn't celebrate Christmas here at all. Today the Contesse and our son and I sat down for Christmas lunch together, and I must say it was very pleasant. Eating a cooked meal together as a family is very therapeutic, no question - also, this was the first year I can remember when I could actually have a glass of wine with lunch, since previously I have invariably been required to get some elderly relative or other back home afterwards, before their personal curfew.
Anyone who has fought battles on this table may be interested to see its peaceful use - this, of course, is why scenic flock is banned from the house...
Not a very ornate set-up today, I admit it - very subdued, but the Contesse provided an excellent meal, which I enjoyed thoroughly. Although this room was only built in 2005, it's sobering to consider the guests we have entertained here who are no longer with us - hmmm. The Ghosts of Christmas Past.
On the subject of Xmas nosh, the Contesse and I were discussing how fashions have changed - she says that, when she was a kid, they usually had chicken at Christmas - we always had a goose, as I recall. To my knowledge, I never ate turkey until I was grown up and had left home. What happened? Did we just miss out on the mainstream, or did turkey become a major Christmas institution relatively recently? Surely it can't have been implanted from Thanksgiving?
Anyway - time to get in some logs for the stove and see what's on the TV this evening. The WSS soldiers are stored away upstairs, so no hobby work for a couple of days [well, maybe a little reading].
This morning I was half-listening to the
radio, and there was a phone-in discussion going on about people's private
rituals - things they do every day as part of their lives, in that strange
cross-over area where planning and commonsense checks start to shade into
superstition and even obsession.
There were a lot of predictable items - one
guy plays football in his local Sunday league - he always bends down to touch
the grass as he walks on to the pitch - this is because his team once had an
unexpected win in some competition or other, and since then he has come to
believe that if he fails to touch the grass as he walks on then things might
work out badly. In other words:
(1) it's become something he does on a regular
basis
(2) it might do some good - OK, maybe
unlikely, but it does no harm, so the safe bet might be to carry on doing it.
We probably all have a few of these
wrinkles, though we might choose to claim that there is some rather more
straightforward explanation. I always carry my penknife and a couple of guitar
picks in my left-hand trouser pocket. I know where to find them, I can tell straight
away if I've forgotten to pick them up from the tray on the bedroom chest of
drawers - it's OK - it's a habit, but it's conscious organisation. You bet.
I knew a fellow years ago who played soccer
to a decent amateur standard, and he always used to wear his "lucky"
vest under his team jersey. He would claim that he was not superstitious, but
panic would arise if he found his mother had this vest in the wash on
match-day. The vest, by the way, was a total wreck, he had been wearing it
since school. It was a relic.
When I was a kid, my dad, when he closed the front door, would tug the lock 10 times to check it was locked. If anything interrupted this procedure, he would start again. One morning (to my ecstatic, though secret, delight) he broke the lock. He would have maintained that he was checking the lock was secure, to keep his family and his possessions safe. Other opinions did exist.
Anyway, to the point. I was reminded this morning of a little
conundrum that bothered me for years - not because it was a problem, but
because it seemed there was an obvious need for some sort of simple strategy and -
though you would think that such things were capable of numerical analysis, I
never really managed to think it through.
Let's go back to the 1980s. At this time I
lived in Morningside, a suburban district on the south side of Edinburgh, and I
worked for a financial institution, whose offices were bang in the business
centre - near St Andrew Square.
Each working day I would set off from home on my walk
to the bus stop. It was about a mile to the bus stop - for the last half mile of
this walk I had a straight view down to the main road ahead, crossing at right
angles, where the buses I needed would pass from right to left.
These days the Edinburgh buses are a
different proposition altogether - they have computer displays at each stop,
which show you which buses, for which routes, are coming, and when they will be
there. Everything is monitored. In the 1980s, the best I could do was to have a
copy of the timetable on the notice board in the kitchen - I knew the times by
heart, of course.
The problem was this last half-mile, during
which I could see the bus route in the distance.Now - a quick ponder on the nature of bus
travel:
Suppose the buses ran every 15 minutes at
this time of the day - officially, there might be a bus from my stop at 7:30am,
7:45am etc. Now, the traffic was heavy on working days, and the buses did not
run on time - this was not any kind of symmetrical distribution - since the
drivers got into trouble if they were early (because passengers would miss the
bus), the buses would tend to be late. If I left home at 7:05, say, and it took
me 20 minutes to walk to the stop, I would arrive five minutes before the 7:30
was due. Thus I might catch the previous bus, if it were running late, I might
even, on rare occasions, be in time for the bus before that one, if it was very
late indeed. Failing this, I should be in time for the published 7:30, though
it could really turn up at any time after 7:30. The safest approach was to just
assume that there was an irregular stream of buses, and that their arrival was
pretty much random.
Right. So about 10 minutes after leaving
the house I would get to the point on my walk where I could now see the buses
passing, in the distance, and I would be able to see them from that point on.
If a bus passed, I might be able to hazard a guess what official time that bus
was supposed to have arrived, but it was not a particularly useful thing to
think about during the final ten minutes' trek to the stop.
When I was still half a mile from the stop,
if a bus passed, up ahead, then I would just shrug it off - it wasn't a bus I
should have been on, the behaviour of subsequent buses was not affected in any predictable
way. As I got nearer and nearer to the bus stop, this started to get more
pressing; if a bus passed when I was, say, a hundred yards short of the stop
then that would be a bit irritating, since a quick dash would have enabled me
to catch that one. So the passage of buses at the end of the road became more
important as I got nearer to the stop. Obviously, if a dash of a hundred yards
would help, I could do this dash at any point during the walk, but that's not
the instinct. What the dash might protect me from was not so much the risk of
being late (since I should have plenty of time to get to work, and since
getting earlier to the stop would simply put me into an unknown (earlier) bit
of the sequence) - what I was protecting myself from was the frustration of
having missed a bus when it was within my power to do something about it. This last bit is important.
Of course, I could just leave earlier, but
that doesn't really change the unpredictability, or I could run the entire
mile, which is not ideal if you are wearing a suit and office shoes, and maybe
a top-coat, and maybe carrying a case - especially if you are going to spend a
bus-ride jammed onto the lower deck - standing room only.
In practice, every day I would jog the last
quarter mile - I felt better that way. Then, if I just missed a bus, I would
feel that I had tried. I never jogged any previous quarter mile on the way
there, because at that distance it doesn't seem like the correct thing to do.
None of this was ever really a problem - I
can't recall ever being late for work. What bugged me was the suspicion that
deciding to jog, every day, at the point where panic was beginning to set in
felt a bit like dumb behaviour. There is a mathematical problem in which
a man cuts diagonally across a square field, and a bull in the field charges at
him from one of the other corners - it always heads straight towards him. The
problem is to identify an equation for the path of the bull, and identify the
limiting conditions, but the important, inescapable truth is that the bull is
so damned stupid that it fails to realise it can catch the man by taking a
short cut - taking a straight line to head him off rather than always just
running directly at him.
I always had a feeling that I should have had an
advantage over the bull, but it didn't feel like it.
My mother (courtesy of my address) received a letter from Aviva Insurance last week. She has a whole-of-life assurance policy still in force - this policy was issued (I think as a contribution towards funeral costs) many years ago by Sun Life, whose business was absorbed by a succession of larger dinosaurs over the years, the current incumbent being Aviva.
The letter explained that this policy was to become free (i.e. no more premiums) since she is now 95, and that the cash-in surrender value would now be equal to the value on death. This is the same procedure we recently went through with Prudential - eventually these old "industrial" policies cost more to keep in force than they are worth to the insurer, so this is pretty much standard practice - except that the shut-off age is usually 90. My mother is currently paying £5.95 a month for this policy - at a rough estimate, she has paid about two-and-a-half times the death value in premiums over the years, but no matter - she is lucky to have lived this long.
I rang the customer help desk number given in the letter, and spoke to a very helpful chap who accepted that my mother was not well enough or aware enough to be able to write, nor speak on the phone, and that I had Power of Attorney (PoA) for her affairs (though I am not registered as such with Aviva). He also suggested that surrendering the policy now would be a smart move, since my mother's potential funeral costs are trivial compared to the cost of her care while she lives - and we agreed that I would send in my PoA documentation by registered mail, so that we may proceed with the surrender.
It cost me some £4.55 for a small parcel, to be signed for on receipt, and the PoA stuff went off to them with a covering letter and photocopies of the policy and their original letter. This morning the paperwork came back, with a letter (a standard letter with customer details inserted) which explains that the PoA material is not acceptable, for a whole pile of reasons - basically that the document must be either a signed approved copy or else the original.
Naturally one has to do these things correctly, but I'm well practised in this stuff - the Certificate of Registration I sent is a signed, approved copy and the PoA documents are originals - on the official OPG embossed paper. I believe it is completely legal - it has previously been accepted by HM Revenue and Customers, the State Pensions Department, two separate private pension funds of which my mother is a member, Bank of Scotland, Royal Bank of Scotland, Trustee Savings Bank, Santander, National Savings and Investment, Prudential, East Lothian Council, and all manner of traders and utility suppliers my mother previously had accounts with. These documents have toured the UK over the last 10 years, at some expense.
What, you may ask yourself, is special about Aviva?
My irate descriptions of the company this morning may have included some potentially unusual elements - I fear I rather offended the Contesse with my views. I shall phone them on Monday, after my blood pressure medication, and see what we should do next. I am reluctant to send the documents again. The policy, I must add, is only worth some hundreds of pounds, so, since it will eventually become payable when my mother passes away I am tempted to forget about surrendering the policy. I'll try to phone them on Monday - see how it goes.
I suspect there is nothing very special about Aviva. I think it is likely that some dogsbody in Legal Life Services (so it says) saw the unmissable opportunity to get out of doing something by throwing the carrot back into the customer's court and - maybe? - to spoil someone's day while they were at it. I shall shrug this off. If Monday doesn't go well then I'll just forget the surrender offer - I'll check that the premiums stop, you bet. I'll write myself a note about what has happened, and dig the policy out when my mum dies.
If there was ever any remote chance of my ever doing business again with Aviva (after the house insurance pantomime...) then I guess it just vanished.
