Homeless
Posted: Wed 21 December, 2005 Filed under: Cynicism, Festering Season, Thoughts 1 Comment »
As some regular readers may recall, around this time last year I did a bundle of photography (and got paid for it!) for a charity in Manchester that worked with the homeless and prostitutes.
This year, my eye was caught by something in one of Herself’s magazines that deals with nursing and care. It was talking about a document called “A Christian Response To Street Homelessness” (I’ve saved a copy on d4d™, it’s an 810Kb PDF if you’re interested) which has a lot of suggestions and ideas, primarily for the London area of Westminster.
The final page of the document is called “Ten tips to help a rough sleeper in Westminster”, and one of the suggestions made me absolutely howl with laughter…
Think about what subjects you might talk about and read up on them – remember that very few rough sleepers have TV sets, so talking about the latest plot of ‘Emmerdale’ might not work.
I mean, how stupid would you have to be?
“So, you’ve been homeless for 8 months, and sleeping on the street?”
“yeah”
“Blimey, that’s rough. So, did you see Emmerdale last night?”
Leo
Posted: Tue 20 December, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts Leave a comment »Oh yes, and RIP Leo McGarry. Oh, sorry, I mean John Spencer.
Other than the strange parallels between Spencer and his best-known role as Leo McGarry in the West Wing (both were recovering alcoholics, both threw themselves into their work, and McGarry had a major heart attack in S6 of West Wing and recovered, while Spencer died of a massive heart attact) I think one of the strangest/saddest things about this is that he was only 58 when he died. I’d always thought he was at least ten years older than that, for some reason.
But damn, carking it at 58? (ok, nearly 59, but who’s counting?) That’s definitely not good.
‘Tis the Season
Posted: Tue 20 December, 2005 Filed under: Festering Season, Thoughts 3 Comments »So seven viewers complained about Gordon Ramsay slaughtering turkeys live on his Channel Four program, The F-Word.
Several points occur to me.
1) Only seven people complained? Blimey, that’s good going. According to unofficial viewing figures that edition had 2.5 million viewers. Seven complaints equals (breaks out the calculator) a whopping 0.0000028% of the audience that complained. Fucking hell, what an outrage.
2) Hmm, it’s not really a shocker, is it? Gordon Ramsay has always believed that any publicity is good publicity. Even if he’s remembered as “Gordon Ramsay, the man who killed turkeys on live TV”, he’s still remembered. And if people don’t like the way he works, that’s their problem, not his.
3) Equally, Channel 4’s never been exactly publicity shy, and tries to push the envelope where possible. So they’re not going to be upset at all the free advertising in the press.
4) As Gordon said, if you’re going to be offended, why keep on watching? You’ve seen one get killed, the odds are the rest are going the same way. Switch over, or switch off. Otherwise it looks like you’re the kind of prissy mealy-mouthed Mary Whitehouse type who watches in order to find something to be shocked about.
Personally, I wouldn’t want to see turkeys slaughtered on TV any more than I’d want to see cows slaughtered. I’ve seen it before – it doesn’t bother me per se but it’s not stuff I’d want to see. That’s what the other channels are for. Or even the off switch. But, as Ramsay has been saying all the way through, the killing is part of the process. He was using it to show his children the way the world works, and it’s really no surprise that he’d extend that to showing other people. I suspect that a large majority of people never think of their christmas turkey as being alive, or the killing and work that takes place before they get to the shelves of Tesco or wherever.
And to me, the more people that start basing themselves in reality, of knowing how these things happen before they get to their nice little hermetically sealed package on the shelf, the better.
Snowy
Posted: Mon 19 December, 2005 Filed under: General Leave a comment »Despite being closed, it’s fun to see that, apparently, it’s snowing in Uborka-land. Wintry cucumbers ahoy…
That Was The Weekend
Posted: Mon 19 December, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts, Travel 1 Comment »So – the weekend. All went well, the drive was OK, and I ended up doing the entire bit from Bracknell to Stafford Services before Herself took the wheel. So the driving stints are getting longer, and the motorway driving is (he said, modestly) pretty much sorted. Next weekend we’re driving to Norfolk, which’ll be fun too. I’m beginning to get into it after all…
Anyway – once Herself was driving it fell to me to navigate, which all went fairly well. As always, we took the wrong turn off the M6, although it’s never too bad a problem – we still end up on the intended M56, it’s just via an A-road instead of direct. One day I’ll get that one right. Maybe. Central Manchester was no problem either – even without a map. I suspect I’m really sad (In Oh, So Many ways) in that I can easily navigate places like that, despite never actually having driven in them. So we got to the hotel and car-park without any mistakes, and all was fine.
We were staying at the Alias, which was OK. There were good bits and bad bits about it, and while I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to people, nor would I say “Oooh, never go there”. It was OK. I’ll probably write more about it later.
Anyway, we had a good time – central Manchester was utterly rigid all weekend with people doing shopping and so on. I’d kind of expected that, so I think I only achieved three “For Fuck’s Sake”s at people all day on Saturday. Which is impressive. But we wandered around most of the centre : Affleck’s Palace, Market Street, Arndale (AKA “The Chav’s Palace Of Earthly Delights”™, Triangle, King Street, and the European markets in Albert Square and St. Ann’s Square.
Meeting up with friends for drinks in a bar called Moon was a grand idea, followed by a meal in Eden on Canal Street.
All in all, a good weekend, and more thoughts about it will probably follow.
We did a lot of talking about some business ideas and so on for 2006, which I’m not going to go into ’til they’ve started coming together – and yes, you will all know about that one when it comes through. But that’s for ’06, and not before.
The drive back was uneventful, but it was definitely good to be home, and to collapse and die a bit last night before the joys of the last week before Christmas.