Festerous

While Terreus writes about Samhain and what used to be the traditional end of Summer, I can’t help but notice that 1st November now appears to be the retail market’s official Start Of The Festering Season™.

Upon entering the local shopping centre this morning, not only are all the twinkly lights and “festive” greenery decorations hung every-bloody-where, but there’s a fucking nativity scene in the main atrium. Yes, a nativity scene. In November.

Words fail. Although “For”, “Fuck’s” and “Sake” may have been promoted to the front of the queue.

Stunned

Regular readers should probably be sitting down for this one. On Friday, my train actually got me to Reading 90 minutes earlier than expected. Yes, it’s true. But perhaps I should explain.

Working on the principle that my normal train is invariably delayed, we’d decided to go with the assumption that the same would be true this time. So I’d said I would be there for about 9pm. However, the occurrence of half-term meant that I got into the city centre a whole lot quicker than expected, and belted up to Piccadilly hoping to get the earlier 15.55 train. Fuckety cunt, I got there at 15.55, and no idea which platform it was going from, so I look at the departures board. Bonus – Manchester to Reading train, platform five, should depart at 15.55 – running ten minutes late. Excellent. Nip in, get a couple of drinks for the journey, and plonk myself on the train. 30 seconds later, beepy beepy beepy go the doors, and then off we go. Stonking.

Even more amazinlgly, it actually ran smoothly. It took precisely the amount of time it should have done. The train was ten minutes late leaving Manchester, and got into Reading ten minutes after it was supposed to. So yes, exactly the right number of minutes, just not quite “on time”.

It wasn’t crowded (well, not ’til Birmingham, but even then it wasn’t rigidly busy)and the journey was smooth. It’s been a fair while since I’ve been able to say that. I think this definitely classes as “exception that proves the rule“.

999

I tried to not comment too much about the idiot Cambridge student who called 999 to get some paracetamol because frankly anyone that lazy and stupid doesn’t deserve the publicity. However, Reynolds then spoke about it a bit in his blog and it was interesting to see it from the point of view of an ambulance driver/paramedic too.

Anyway, after that I was thinking (and yes, I commented on Reynold’s blog too) about what would stop people from calling 999 for fucking stupid non-urgent calls. Personally, I would think about having a charge that could be levied (in the same way that some parts of the Fire Brigade do) for spurious calls – a charge of, for example, £250 would soon stop a lot of people from calling for stupid reasons. The other alternative was to charge a smaller fee, say £10 or £15 per callout (with some age limits, so that certain age groups/demographic sections weren’t charged) would still stop people making non-urgent 999 calls.

Both have pros and cons – personally I don’t like the £15 per callout idea as it heads too close to the US’s “pay for every medical service” model, but the £250 “penalty fee” could stop some people from calling even if it were an urgent call.

So – discussion time while I’m away for the weekend – what do you think would work?

Air Freshener 2

Harking back to earlier in the week, I can now understand why the air-freshener spray in the toilets at work has “Do not inhale” written on it.

The thing bloody stinks. In fact it’s worse than the original odour.

Pink stuff

While I’m not necessarily one to blither about every single charity day, I do think that Wear It Pink day is a good idea. (Even if the site is a piece of shite that only really works in IE) It’s part of the Breast Cancer Campaign, which has always been a worthwhile cause.

And it seems like a pretty good occasion to point out the Walk the Walk charity too – I’m planning on doing the London event (although I don’t plan on wearing a pink bra to do so) next June, and publicity is always a good thing…

Bank of Mum and Dad

Over the last three or four weeks, BBC has had a series called “The Bank of Mum and Dad“, where people who are hugely in debt get advice on how to budget etc. from their parents. It’s been an interesting series in a way, although I also consistently find myself being abusive to the idiots who have run up the debts.

I find it interesting the way they seem to have no concept of debt, that when they owe thousands of pounds in loans and so on, they have to be paid back. But I also find the psychology of it fascinating, that so many of the people seem to spend in order to feel better about themselves. It’s a very materialistic way of living, and in some ways it’s not something I really understand, although I know I can be careless on occasion – but I know also that I owe very little money to anyone. I think that’s the difference.

There’s a lot of background that’s never really explored; particularly the obvious parent-child relationships that are on view. However, even with the abuse I hurl at the idiots, it does make for an interesting programme.

Daylight Saving

Oh God, it’s THAT weekend again. The clocks go back at 2am on Sunday, and suddenly we’ll be heading home from work in the dark, and it’s definitely winter. I’ve been noticing over the last month that I’ve been getting more sluggish, not feeling as bright, and the SAD is slowly coming in again.

Daylight bulbs go some way to helping, and they’ve been in for long enough that I think I might get away with deceiving the brain a little bit again this year. Coupled with that, there’s a lot of other stuff where I need to be staying busy, and perhaps that’ll help take my mind off it.

Last year I tried staying manically busy, and that didn’t work. I’m not going to be doing that this year, although with work, interviews, and travelling I’m still going to be pretty busy – but I’m going to work on avoiding the manically busy stuff, all the same. We’ll just have to see how this winter goes – but it can’t be as grotty as the last one.