Road Maintenance and Sarcasm

Over the weekend, one of the significant crossroads near us was completely closed for re-surfacing. The problem was that at least one route to get to that crossroads didn’t have any mention of said road closure.

Which means I get to send sarcastic emails to Norfolk County Council. (Again)

To whom it may concern,

I’d just like to congratulate the person(s) involved in sorting out signage for the road closure in Hingham this weekend.

If (as many people did) you took the road from Little Ellingham towards Hingham using Hingham Road->Little Ellingham Road -> Attleborough Road to the crossroads in Hingham, there was not *ONE* sign saying that the road ahead was closed. The signage was in fact before this junction (at roughly the spot of the red circle in this map)

This meant that anyone coming through on the route from Little Ellingham came round the corner to find the entire road closed off, and then had to turn round and go back. This also had the effect of stuffing a significant amount of the newly resurfaced road before the junction.

Of course, the road from Little Ellingham isn’t that heavily used. Except when Little Ellingham has its Vintage Working Weekend event- yes, the weekend just passed.

I look forward to any response Norfolk Council deigns to give in explanation of why there was no thought given to this route, or signage on it.

Sincerely

Lyle

I know it’ll do bugger-all good, but I felt better having written it. And that’s what matters.


Rural Weekend

This weekend the village down the road has their annual “vintage working weekend” event. It’s a bizarre thing – not quite a steam rally, not quite anything particular – but means that our road is pretty much constantly thronged by tractors running up and down.

Right now though there’s a parade of tractors going past the front of the house, some with passengers on trailers, most just being driven along as part of the parade. Completely mad.

So far there’s been about forty of the damn things…


Getting Work Experience

Over the last few weeks at work (roughly three months, give or take) we’ve been looking at recruiting a graphic designer – it’s the one area where the IT team lack skills, and with a lot of [currently unmentionable] big projects coming up, a designer is going to be a highly relevant part of the role.

What I wanted was a newly-graduated designer, looking for work experience, and getting them some solid commercial experience. I contacted two of the local colleges (including one with whom we’ve had a previous positive experience with getting in a web geek) as well as UEA and the STEP programme, both of whom have services for finding placements for graduates. Like a bell-end, I believed all the media pap about “[x] graduates applying for every job“. What a mistake.

The entire process turned into a nightmare. The colleges didn’t come back with anything – the one we’d previously used didn’t even bother responding – and UEA and STEP between them threw back ten applicants, of whom six were useless from the start, and not even qualified as graphic designers. Three of those had decided that “designing a new site” meant “developing a new site” – which it doesn’t and didn’t – despite us specifying that it was a graphic design role.

Of the four we interviewed, three were incredibly awful. I understand that they’re just out of university, but if that’s the level for recent graduates, it’s a real concern. Even the CVs they sent out were all formulaic and dull – if I’m looking at potential designers, I want to know they’ve got an eye for at least how a CV should look, something “designed” to make it stand out from the pack.

Now maybe it’s me being unrealistic – it’s certainly based on the other graphic designers I know and have worked with before – but if I’m interviewing a designer, I shouldn’t receive a blank look when I ask what things inspire their designs, or to name me a design that they really love. I wouldn’t have cared at that point whether it was something on cars, bikes, office equipment, technology, websites, anything – I just wanted to know what they thought of the industry they’d chosen to be part of, the sphere they had just graduated in. Three of the four responded to both those questions with a look of total incomprehension, no spark, no nothing. Not one of those three could name me even one designer they liked.  Me, I could whiff on for ages about certain designers, concepts etc. – I love design, I just can’t draw to save my life.

We have finally found someone who I think will be really good. His work stood out from the first moment – a CV with a design to it, even though I personally hated the image used, it was still designed – and the projects he’d done at university, including his final project which was fantastic.  In interview he brought in a portfolio (none of the others had) and could talk about what inspired him, the stuff he liked, the way he worked and so on. It was a reassuring interview after so many let-downs, and I’m really pleased that he’s come through.

It’s been an awesomely frustrating experience – one that’s put me to the edge of saying “Screw it” and going a completely different route. I find it utterly amazing how bad most of the people who applied for the role were. And it’s not even like we were trying to get the role as an internship, which seems to be the new ‘latest greatest’ way of getting work experience. We’re paying the designer – I believe that good work should be rewarded, not got for free as an internship – and while it’s not great money, it’s better than nothing. (We’re using the standard established STEP rates) So it’s not like we’re taking the piss, or taking advantage of the graduates – it just seems like they don’t know what the hell they’re actually doing.


Pick Your Own

Over the last two weekends, we’ve been to one of the local pick-your-own places twice for raspberries.  Sadly, they’re closed now or we’d be going another couple of times. We’ll know for next year.

In the mean time, over the two visits we got something like 17lbs (nearly 8 kg) of raspberries, which cost us the princely sum of £45. (£2.65 a lb)

From that little lot, Herself has made 55 jars of raspberry jam, and we’ve still got more in the freezer for general use. All told (including fuel, cooking gas and so on) it’s cost us at most £1 a jar – quite a difference to the usual price we pay. (I like the Bonne Maman stuff, which is usually about 150% of that price)

I’ll freely admit I’m a fiend for raspberry jam, and I reckon this little lot will probably last around nine months. Just in time for the next season, in fact…


Harvest

Around us at the moment all the farmers are harvesting the wheat/barley/cereal crops.

Norfolk’s pretty rural- you may’ve noticed – and harvest season is a big thing. There’s the cereal harvest now, and there’ll be the sugar-beet one early in 2011, as usual.

The downside of the harvest is the sheer number of effing tractors, combine harvesters and other assorted farm machinery that’s out on the roads at any given time of day. It fucks up the traffic completely – farmers preferring to be moving between 8 and 10am, although whether this is out of practicality or sheer mean-minded pettiness is up for discussion.

This morning I had no less than six different tractors in front of me on various occasions. It’s a pain in the tits – you overtake one, then five minutes later you’re behind another of the fuckers. Even the school run’s better than this. Grrrrr.


Public vs Private

In my post about the mileage I’ve covered this month, Gordon pointed out

I use this invention called ‘the train’. Saves adding miles and miles to your car (cost).

And that’s a perfectly valid point. If I could, I’d use public transport – and particularly trains – a lot more. But there are some reasons why this month I couldn’t/didn’t/wouldn’t.

Among those reasons are :

  • Hound
  • Cost
  • Convenience
  • Time
  • Practicality

Let’s look at just one of the journeys I did – taking Hound down to Berkshire – Wokingham, to be more precise – and compare driving to trains.

  • Hound : There’s no way Hound could go on public transport without being muzzled. In the temperatures that were around when we did the journey, that’s just not going to happen – she’d be unable to pant properly or anything. She’d also be a complete pain in the arse – not just to me, but to everyone around – for the entire journey. And taking Hound through the London Underground while changing stations? You’re having a fucking laugh. In the car, she just slept in her basket, cool in the car’s air-con atmosphere.
  • Cost : The cheapest I could do the journey, for a return ticket is (at the time of writing) £48.40. That’s not including getting to the station nearest home, or the cost of getting from station to kennels at the other end. (And back again)  The 300 mile round trip in the car cost me about £30 – £35 (I can’t remember exactly) all in, door-to-door.
  • Convenience : Again, door-to-door vs. all the fucking about of train travel, getting to station, travelling, three changes, getting from station to kennels, and back again. All while carrying dog stuff, my stuff, and the dog basket. Yeah.
  • Time : Just for the train journey is four and a half hours. One way. Driving? Three hours one way. Door-to-door.
  • Practicality : I’ll let you figure out which one’s best on this score. And we haven’t even touched on delays, travelling with other people, the ability to have peace and quiet while travelling, so on and so forth.

The trip to Manchester(ish) is an even better example, even if Hound’s not a factor…

  • Hound : N/A
  • Cost : Train (return ticket) £80.80 – best I can find. Car : £40 fuel.
  • Convenience : Train ? Office to Bury St Edmunds Station. Three changes. Manchester to Oldham. Oldham to [Village]. Car? Door to Door.
  • Time : Train (again, train only, one-way, not including sodding about) five hours. Car? 3 hours.
  • Practicality : Car wins. Again.  And I don’t need to fix everything around when the trains run.

I would use public transport more. But when you look at the factors in this way, you can see why I don’t…


Buzzy

I’m sure I’ve mentioned this in previous years, but in Summer our house gets a real influx of houseflies – particularly in the kitchen, but really through the place.  And they drive me mad.

We can’t find a reason for them coming in – the walls have been filled with cavity-wall insulation, the kitchen units have been replaced, nothing’s dead/rotting/stinking/festering in the kitchen or house at all, and yet every year we get all these sodding flies. It’s not quite “Biblical Plague” of the buzzy little bastards, but it’s enough to drive me mental.

Hound’s not keen on them either – collies are renowned for their fly-chasing activities, so she keeps on chasing them and trying to eat them – and in that aspect I guess I must be part-collie. I use a fly-swatter rather than trying to catch the little flying shitbags in my mouth, but I admit I can get quite obsessive about it.

I don’t know what else we can do, though. Fly-paper is bloody ugly, the ultra-viole(n)t bugzappers are monstrous on power, and fly-spray’s even worse than fly-swatters- although spray doesn’t leave bug-bits on the walls/ceiling.

I think it’s just one of those things with living in the area – other people we know have similar issues here, so it’s not just our place. That’s some kind of reassurance, I suppose. Not much, though.