Hooptedoodle #246 – Donkey Award – A Matter of Identity

I'm not quite sure what this man is doing, but the process of providing acceptable
proof of identity often feels very like this. I must get one of those hats.

Recently my mother has moved into a residential care home, and I’ve been busy selling her house and sorting out her various financial affairs – there are, as a trivial example, a considerable number of organisations who have to be notified of her change of address.

I have had Power of Attorney (PoA) in place for some 8 years or so now – for which I am very grateful – when the time comes for you to use it, it can come in a hurry.

A recurrent issue in the last few weeks has been the need to establish identity – usually mine (as agent or attorney), but – for purposes of money laundering and the actual sale of the house – proof of my mother’s identity has also been required.

Now this security thing is a weird industry – I know all about why this has to be done, why organisations have to be certain that they are dealing with the people they think they are dealing with, but it does seem that the traditional proofs which are acceptable are increasingly out of step with current reality. I’m only part-way through the task, but I’ve seen the same request for the same information many times. Someone will want to see a couple of recent (original) utility bills or bank statements with the individual’s name and address thereupon, and some form of photo ID which identifies the bearer – passport and/or driving licence are the norm. Often someone will also wish to see the original documentation for the PoA – a certified copy is often not accepted – which requires delay, hassle and return registered mail.

Well I can manage most of that, except that just about all my personal business is carried out online these days, so recent paper statements and invoices of appropriate solemnity are not so easy to find. I have been looking after a lot of my mum’s business online in recent years too, but her situation is worse in that she does not have a passport – hasn’t had one since 1985 or so – and she hasn’t had a driving licence for many years. Because she has been housebound she doesn’t have photo ID in the form of a disabled person's parking permit or even an in-force bus pass. This is not a trivial problem.

Example 1: I have attempted to set up an online account for her with the Tax Office (HMRC), since she will now receive her savings income gross and will have to settle the tax liability each year. I got nowhere – if she has neither passport nor current driving licence then the system cannot verify her against other government records, so she doesn’t exist. Thus paper tax returns it will have to be. Hmmm.

Example 2: Two days ago I phoned her pension supplier – the young man was quite firm that he could not accept notification of change of address over the telephone unless we went through the entire rigmarole of sending my PoA forms so that I could be formally registered as the attorney, so that I could notify them of a simple address update – since all the bank account and payment information is to remain the same, this seems a lot like the tail wagging the dog. We’ll gloss over how delighted the young man was to be unable to help me. While I was waiting to be put through to him, however, the voice server system had suggested that I might like to set up an online account with the pension fund. Bingo. Thank you very much – that’s the answer. I set up an online account for my mother (I have all the paperwork here) and simply changed her address online. No problem – I/she/we even got an email thanking me for my trouble.

Excellent. I am adopting the same procedure with her major utility suppliers – create an online account, and use it to notify a change of address and the cessation of the supply. These organisations are delighted that you are doing the work yourself – no-one seems at all concerned that I might, in fact, be an unauthorised alien making free with some poor old lady’s identity. I’m not going to make ripples here – if it works, let’s do it. My handling of her bank accounts is similar – all done online, though if I wished to do it over the counter or on the phone we’d all be frozen in amber until the PoA forms came back from The Legal People, who live far, far away.

My point is only that proving identity is becoming a central theme in our lives, that most people’s lives have moved away from a set-up which readily provides the traditional paper proofs, yet the identity checking built into online customer self-management is (usefully, in this  case) negligible.

How awfully silly.

Hooptedoodle #243 – Dear Mummy and Daddy

Clearing out my mother’s house has now reached a greater level of detail – I am now spending more time with my head in boxes of stuff, sorting out what should be kept. I take care to have my name and address written on the soles of my shoes, in case I need to be rescued.

Paper.

My mum seems to have every postcard that she was ever sent, and a great heap of birthday cards and letters, accumulated in large manila envelopes, with not the slightest trace of classification – a trip into one of these envelopes is just a mind-numbing exercise in randomness. She certainly has no idea what’s in there, and I’m not sure if she remembers many of the people who sent them, so it’s a little complicated – though interesting in its way.

Recently I found some letters from me, written when I was very young. Mostly letters about forgotten trips, written by a child I cannot really remember having been. About the earliest of these dates from a week I spent in hospital – I had some stomach problems – certain foods made me sick, and the doctors decided that my appendix had to come out. To this day, I’m not convinced there was anything at all wrong with my appendix, but at that time the medical profession was just itching to separate kids from their tonsils, adenoids and appendices (?) at the slightest excuse.

Myrtle Street hospital, a few years after I was there

So my stay in the Liverpool Children’s Hospital, Myrtle Street, was one of the very earliest times I was separated from my mother. I have remembered some things about this episode, and more came flooding back when I saw the letter.

(1) A stout lad named Gordon, who was in the next bed – he had some horrifying sort of drain in his knee, but his main claim to fame was that he used to lend me some pretty raunchy American comics he had inherited from his big brother

(2) Ribena – aargh – they forced gallons of blackcurrant flavour squash down us – served up in aluminium mugs. Woe betide anyone who didn’t finish it. I still can’t stand the stuff.

(3) The smell of hot tar. It was fine, warm weather, and throughout my stay the City Council was pulling up the old tramlines outside in Catherine Street and Myrtle Street, and laying tarmac – a very big project. A week with an asphalt cooker outside your window is not recommended.

(4) Most exciting - we had a visit from Roy Rogers. Now then – my lifelong devotion to celebrities got off to a flying start. This is the thing I wanted to recall here.

Roy Rogers (1911-98), in case you are not old enough to have heard of him, was a very big deal at the time – children all over the world just loved him – it said so on his publicity posters. Born Len Slye in Cincinnati, he was a Western cowboy movie star, recording artist (he was, to be fair, not a bad singer if you like that sort of thing) and a complete merchandising operation – very impressive – he even had a string of restaurants named after him. Me and my mates were not too convinced about Roy. When we went to the Saturday morning cinema matinee (at the Gaumont in Allerton Road, which was a bit less rough than our local flea-pits), the cowboy films we preferred starred Lash LaRue (which sounds a bit dodgy now), Monte Hale, Rocky Lane, Tim Holt – we were definitely less keen on the more showbiz style productions starring Roy Rogers or Hopalong Flaming Cassidy – though Rogers’ movies were normally in colour, which was unusually luxurious for that market.

Roy was doing a European theatre tour at the time, and he visited Liverpool. It seems remarkable now, but this caused about as much excitement as if the Pope had come. Crowds lined the streets to greet him, and he and his trusty horse, Trigger, were accommodated at the Adelphi, which was probably Liverpool’s only worthwhile hotel at the time. It has become a matter of Merseyside folklore that Trigger had his own room, which I’ve always dismissed as celeb goss (darlings) – I assumed that Trigger had stayed in the Adelphi’s stables. However, it seems that he was installed in a room – at least the official records claim that he was. Trigger duly appeared on a balcony, to acknowledge the cheering fans below. You get the idea – these were rather dismal days, I guess, and Liverpool was pretty close to the Third World.

Roy and Trigger enter the Adelphi

Trigger signs into the hotel (surely not?), and visits his master, who was laid
low with influenza, apparently - maybe this disrupted his schedule. 

You may imagine the breathless excitement when Roy and Trigger were to visit the Children’s Hospital during my stay. The place was cleaned and then cleaned again – no comics or spare plates or anything were to be in sight – the nursing staff had their best No.1 kit on, starched and flawless, and everyone was very tense. Including me, of course – I was prepared to swallow my normal disbelief in Roy’s marketed persona, just to bask for a moment in the glamorous world of Hollywood. The word was that the Liverpool Echo would send a cameraman, and photos would be taken with the kids. How cool is that?

Well, it really turned out to be an early lesson in How Things Rarely Turn Out As You Hoped. The official party was 3 hours late. Trigger was not allowed in the hospital (probably just as well), and Rogers made a very fast pass through the wards. I had a brief, distant glimpse of a rather uninteresting-looking, hatless, middle-aged man in a pale grey business suit, who waved from the door of the ward (a ward which was about the size of a football field). So much for celebs. My contempt for the Roy Rogers brand was confirmed and reinforced – he was never forgiven.

This clip is maybe a little more like the sort of extravaganza I expected to see during the visit. Not a bad singer, but as a tough-guy cowboy hero he was a bit of a girl's blouse, wasn't he?

Grateful Thanks from the Wilds

Strange couple of days here - our local electricity supplier has seen fit to do some line upgrades, which is always a good idea, but the result has been that we were without power during daylight hours for a couple of days. We are, of course, in a very rural area - probably only about 14 or 15 households affected by this work - but why November? The first day coincided with the gales and freezing rain associated with the northern fringes of Storm Angus (which was a lot less severe here than further south). It also coincided with the day that Dod the Gardener was coming to trim down the top of the second of our juniper trees, so that our exciting new wireless broadband service may have an uninterrupted line of sight connection from the main transmitter on Traprain Law. The second day, probably fortuitously, prevented the broadband installation anyway, so Dod and the Broadband Men (I have all their albums) will get a second chance at all that tomorrow.

Why November? Is it just that we don't matter much here, or is there some ancient tribal vendetta at work?

Anyway, we've got through the two days. No, the downtime was not restricted to the promised hours - there was a period of overrun yesterday, after dark, when there was not much to do but sit and stare at the log stove (see photo), which is very therapeutic, in fact. Brandy helps, too.

I thought I'd take this chance to thank everyone who pitched in after my plea for help with some Hinton Hunt hussars (see here). Many thanks to Clive, Matt, Simon, Ian, Martin S, Chris and a few others for advice and suggestions, and especially to Roy, Andy T and Old John for providing castings. If I've forgotten to mention anyone, then thanks anyway - this has all been very heartwarming. The project to produce an actual unit of the Husares Españoles (to replace the unit which I currently have-but-hate...) will proceed with dignity and care, rather than speed, but I shall certainly see it through. The tricky bit will be the production of convincing command conversions. You will hear more of this, be sure of that.

Thanks again, anyway - very much indeed.

You may have observed that my previous post on the subject of Trumpo has now been suppressed. I was asked if I had been threatened or imprisoned or anything, and the answer is, of course, no. I thank everyone who contributed comments and balanced appraisal - I simply decided that if I am to be off-blog for a while, I would rather not have a post about Trumpo hanging around as a lasting legacy and reminder. I really don't find Trumpo very amusing at the moment.

Hooptedoodle #234 - Donkey Award - The Auld Firm

My mother has been having worsening problems with her mobility, and on Saturday I was obliged to call in an emergency doctor, who agreed with me that her difficulties with vertigo required some prompt investigation, and suggested that a visit to hospital would enable this to be checked out, and would also allow the Occupational Therapists to see if it might be possible to get her to walk with her zimmer frame with more confidence.

Accordingly, he arranged for her to be admitted to the Western General (in Edinburgh), and for an ambulance to collect her from home. Since it was about 10pm when he arranged this, we were led to expect the ambulance to arrive around midnight. We packed a bag for her, and waited for the ambulance.

And waited.

And waited. From about 3am we started getting calls from the ambulance control team, to apologise for the delay - apparently they were having an unexpectedly busy night, and, quite rightly, any 999 (emergency) calls received take priority. Such was the flood of 999 calls, in fact, that it was 7am before the ambulance came, by which time my Mum (who is 91), was not very well or happy at all.

Can't really complain - money is tight, we are lucky to have the services we do have, and the doctor and the ambulance crew were all marvellous. So what strange thing was going on in Central Scotland on Saturday night then? - was there an outbreak of Dengue Fever, or had an aeroplane crashed on a city centre? Was it the Great Fire of Bathgate? How could this be?

The answer, of course, is the Auld Firm game. You probably could not care less, but the two biggest rival soccer teams in Scotland are Celtic and Rangers, both based in Glasgow, and both drawing fans and support from all over the country. Since some financial difficulties (too complicated to explain here) resulted in Rangers' being demoted to the lowest division a while ago, there have been no league games between the two for some 4 years or so.

However, cream always rises to the top, as all sewage workers will testify, so Rangers very quickly won promotion through the lower leagues, back up to the Scottish Premier, and on Saturday the magnificent tradition of the Auld Firm match against Celtic was renewed. Terrific.

Well - to a point. Scottish football undoubtedly needs teams with the drawing power and wealth of the Glasgow giants (I nearly said cyclops twins), but the traditions of these clubs, I regret to say, also involve a history of religious and sectarian bigotry (and we are speaking here of Ulster history, rather than Scottish), and a century and more of mindless, drunken conflict. I am confident, I hasten to add, that a lot of very decent people take their kids to the big games in Glasgow, but they are not the ones you see or hear. The Auld Firm game is, mostly, as far as you can tell, about hatred, and about such topical themes as the Battle of the Boyne and Irish Republicanism.

Depressing. Saturday served to remind us of what the tradition really consists of. Not that it matters an awful lot, Celtic won 5-1, which probably turned up the heat a bit. My Mum's ambulance was delayed by the need to look after critically ill people - people who had suffered heart attacks, people who had been injured in accidents - no problem with any of that. But by far the majority of the unusually high demand was football fans, in the aftermath of the big match; guys who had alcohol poisoning, guys who had hurt themselves falling down in a drunken stupor and - most of all - guys who had spent the evening in a frenzy, kicking lumps out of each other.

Thank you, my friends. Thanks for everything. It is a pleasure to share a planet with you.

Hooptedoodle #232 - First Recognition at Last

My good friend Francisco Goya emailed me to report that this blog - this actual blog you are reading - is now blocked to passengers using the wi-fi on First buses in the UK, since it contains inappropriate content.

Good heavens. Whatever next. Etc.

My first reaction is that, since I was brought up to trust that responsible business corporations cannot possibly be wrong, First are almost certainly correct to take such action. Further, it pleases me to see that protection of the feelings and moral values of their customers should figure in First's strategic gameplan. Good for them.

I am not well placed at present to research just why I am off the official reading list, but I am free to play games in my mind, and to imagine some story which happens to suit me. I may look further into this, but I sincerely hope that First still allow their passengers to visit the website of The S*n, plus various dating agencies and gossip fora, to keep their views clean and patriotic.

I may not lose a lot of sleep over this.      

Hooptedoodle #225 – The Joy of Private Euphemisms

A couple of lempules?

Long ago, when we were kids, my cousin Dave and I used to amuse ourselves by inventing our own words for things; I’m sure that most children do this. Apart from the thrill of being able to persuade ourselves that we were operating in an excitingly secretive manner – like spies, with coded messages, Dave would claim – it was interesting to study the reactions of people who were not privy to our silly little game. Dave was much better at it than I was – he gained lasting fame at his school when he was given a detention for calling one of the prefects a lempule. As far as I am aware, this particular effort has no accepted meaning at all, unlike some of his less successful inventions, but the prefect took exception to it and punished him. Since he could not bring himself to write (or spell?) the dreadful word – maybe scared that somehow he would be tainted forever by association – the prefect simply wrote in the detention book, “Insolent behaviour and abusive language”. It’s easy, isn’t it? – there are situations in which, whatever you do, it will be interpreted in the worst way possible. People will hurt their own feelings to save you the trouble. This particular lempule, by the way, went on to become Bishop of Dunwich, which just goes to prove something or other.

Some of our private vocabulary, I regret to say, accidentally turned out already to exist in the sensible world, occasionally with unfortunate consequences, and one or two of our alternative terms of abuse (such as a favourite of mine, twonker) I find are now in fairly general use. I don’t think we can claim copyright or anything – personally, I blame the Internet. We used to come up with new words – especially descriptions of people we disliked, and we would work on them – perfect them, gradually and with great precision, until they were just right – and we would laugh until we ached.

My family, and a few of my former workmates, have made extensive use over the years of “That’s nice”, as a euphemism for the worst, most contemptuous put-down imagineable. This is the art in it’s highest form; the future bishop must have realised that the description of him was not intended to be favourable – the context and (probably) the construction make it obvious. It is interesting to surmise that he maybe just assumed the word was a reference to some personal shortcoming of which he was already aware. On the other hand, no one is going to take offence at a mere, limp pleasantry, which is harmless enough, if a little soppy (or fembrous, as Dave and I used to say).

Fembrous

In an idle sort of way, I wondered if anyone has any favourite family or personal euphemisms of this type which they have found useful? The trick is to have an armoury of words which sound harmless, but which are full of wicked intent in the ears of those who know. I’m always on the lookout for good ones.


Late Edit...

It's off-topic, but the idea of meaningless words reminds me of of one my greatest personal heroes...

Ah yes - basic Engly Twenty Fido - remarkibold!

Hooptedoodle #224 - Donkey Award - The Donkey

Guido Fawkes is most famous for failing to do whatever it was he was planning to do back in 1605 (there is still some debate about just what he and his chums intended), but it is pretty certain that if he had succeeded he would have had the sense and the good taste to refrain from turning up at Westminster a few days later to gloat.

I was determined to avoid a rant about Europe – it’s a fait accompli now (foreign expression meaning “done deal”), so we must make the best of it. However, this Farage chappie takes the biscuit (foreign-derived word meaning “cookie”). Having had the effrontery to turn up in Brussels yesterday (a rare enough event – he has the second-lowest attendance record of all active MEPs), this sneering, shape-shifting hypocrite saw fit to accuse his colleagues in the European Parliament of never having had real jobs. I am aware that he was once a commodities trader, but I understand that of late he has mostly been a professional politician – certainly since 1999.

It would be interesting to know, in light of his minimal commitment and his constant hostility to the institution, just who has paid for his involvement in the European Parliament, how much he has pocketed and what we have all gained from the experience – apart from a lot of collective embarrassment, and the polishing of the ultimate, nightmare English stereotype, to our eternal glory.

Perhaps he could give us all a break now, and disappear into deserved obscurity? – or maybe he could appear on top of the odd bonfire from time to time?

Hooptedoodle #223 - Donkey Award - Daily Telegraph

It would be unkind to criticise the Telegraph - that's a bit like criticising someone's senile auntie - but misinformation (a fashionable commodity in these pre-Referendum days in Britain) is always a bit hard to stomach, and I thought I'd speak up on behalf of those poor people in London, who may be being misled again.

I was looking around for details about the construction of the Channel Tunnel, including numerical data - cubic yards of rock shifted, how long it took - all that. I found some interesting stuff, including a couple of good articles on the Telegraph's website. In the middle of one of the articles, up popped the advert at the top of this post. I realise that newspapers have to suck people into things like fake opinion polls, to score some advertising revenue from some completely irrelevant supplier.

However, I thought the questions were kind of interesting - mostly because they made me wonder whether there are any grown-ups working in the marketing area at the Telegraph. I can see that the construction of the Tunnel was quite an achievement, though I'll duck any further discussion about who the Telegraph thinks might be coming through it at the moment; don't get me started on the London Bloody Olympics, which was yet another bulk transfer of funds from the Provinces to the capital, with the odd personal fortune for Lord Snooty and His Pals thrown in; the one which caught my eye was question 3.

Just a minute - Britain won the Rugby World Cup? I didn't think Britain had ever entered the Rugby World Cup, though I do recall England winning it. Don't tell me the Braying Jeremies at Twickers read the Telegraph?

I gather this advert predates the most recent Rugby World Cup. Anyway, no matter.

Hooptedoodle #221 - Barry

This is not Barry.

I spent a number of years playing in a jazz group with Barry. He was a professional bass player – very politically active for the rights of your artisan, blue-collar musical intellectual, and endlessly contemptuous of amateurs like me.

I quite liked the guy – sometimes his attitudes made him a hard person to warm to, but when he forgot himself he was affable and amusing company. There was a specific amount of alcohol required – after a couple of drinks he was relaxed and articulate, a few more and he was aggressive and paranoid.

“The big problem I have with blokes like you,” he would tell me, “is that you are just playing at it – you are taking work away from hardworking professionals, who earn their living at it, and who are mostly better than you.”

“You mean to tell me,” I would respond, “that if I were to pack in my day job – today – I would instantly become a better player and you would take me seriously?”

And Barry would mumble vague obscenities and shuffle off for a drink.

Barry was a Glaswegian – with matching chips on both shoulders. As a musician, I thought he was sort of OK – maybe I never saw him at his best, but I would not have taken much trouble to book him myself. When he was a young chap, he got busted by the police for possessing cocaine, and they made a deal with him. If he told them who supplied his stuff, they told him, he would not go to prison.

Classic double-cross. Barry told them everything they needed to know, and they put him in Barlinnie anyway, and when he came out there were people looking for him. So he worked on the P&O cruise boats, and he worked for a while in London, and then he went to live in Zurich. While he was there he played with a lesser-known elder statesman of the English Dixieland jazz scene – Bob Wallis, and his Storyville Jazzmen, no less. Wallis may have been in political exile too – I have no idea – but Barry had some wild tales of Zurich and of tours with Wallis’s elderly band of alcoholics. Bob Wallis had only one eye, and he used to carry a variety of glass eyes with him to suit the occasion; apart from having one which made a pair with his good eye, he also had a red one, a plain white one and a spectacularly patriotic Union-Jack one. He also used to feature the tune Please Don’t Talk about Me, One Eye’s Gone. Must have been quite a show – apparently the band were very popular in Russia.

Eventually Barry got married, and Wallis retired in ill health and broke up the band (he returned to England and died not long afterwards). Barry decided that things in Britain were probably calmer now, so returned to his homeland – which is when I met him.

Barry was always very nervous – he always owed money to the Union, or the taxman, or somebody or other, and – of course – there was still a faint echo of Glasgow from the old days.

One day someone phoned him from the Performing Rights Society. Sorry to bother him, but they had been trying to trace one Barry Shaw, the double-bass player – was this him? No, said Barry, instinctively, from years of practice – never heard of him. The man apologised for any inconvenience, and left a contact number, in case he somehow came across the right Barry Shaw.

After a couple of days of being encouraged by various drinking friends, Barry phoned the man at the PRS. He had just remembered that he was, after all, Barry Shaw the double-bass player.

The man was delighted – could he confirm, then, that he had played on the original Tubular Bells sessions with Mike Oldfield?

In fact, I knew something of this. Barry used to tell of a nightmare booking he had once received, where he was required to play double bass at a “pop” recording session full of “upper class hippies”, in “a ****ing castle in Oxford or somewhere”, which experience he still recalled with a shudder, though he understood the record had been quite successful.

Ultimately, Barry was delighted, too – Oldfield’s record had, of course, been a very considerable success, and at the time – in error! – Barry had signed for a share of royalties instead of a cash fee – something he would never normally have done (since he always needed cash). The PRS now had a cheque for him in respect of his back royalties accumulated since 1973. Barry had only been a makeweight on the session, but his share was still many thousands of pounds – far more than he would normally see in years. I don’t know how long it took him to drink his way through this windfall, but I know he gave it a serious go.

Eventually the years of bad living caught up with him – he had increasing problems with his joints (which we all thought was most apt), caused by excessive alcohol intake and many years of poor diet, and he suddenly died of pneumonia, one winter following a fairly insignificant illness. He was only in his early 50s, but old beyond his years.

That’s all a bit downbeat, I guess, so I’d like to end with a story of Barry which he used to tell about himself. Once he was established back in Edinburgh, he received a phone call one day from a well known firm specialising in double glazing and conservatories. They asked him to confirm that he was Mr L B Shaw of 56/3 King’s Road, and – guardedly, I imagine, he admitted that he was.

In that case, he was told, he was in luck, because the firm in question was looking for sales in his postcode area, and if he would be prepared to allow it to be used as a showhouse for a year, they had decided that his address would be ideal for their purposes, and they would build him a conservatory at only 50% of the normal cost.

This may be what Barry imagined...

Barry played along with this – he said he was really quite interested, but he wanted to know more about the type of conservatory – what would it be made of?

Well, they said, you can have one in Canadian Cedar, or Lacquered Pine, or just straightforward white UPVC – all weather-proofed and double glazed and insulated to the appropriate British Standard, naturally.

Sounds good, said Barry, but what about the legs?

What legs?

Well, since they knew all about him and his postcode, and had selected his address specially, they would also know that he lived in a 2^nd-floor flat, so he wanted to know what the conservatory would stand on.

The phone went dead. Barry said he was actually very disappointed. Cold callers, eh?