The Golden Path

Give us this Day our Daily Blog?

2008-07-18T19:17:42Z

How on Earth do they do that?

I really don't know. I am quite pleased to say that I am getting published more and more on different places around the web. Someone actually approached me and asked for some work! Wow. Clearly they haven't seen the state of this site lately. However as time builds writing other articles, time for blogging lessens. What I get published in future I will of course list here for your viewing pleasure......

But I'm alive I can report, and healthy, happy and busy. I guess all of these things are good.

I'm also it seems going into business. Or I'm going to do a big experiment into how my business idea does or does not work anyway.

I think that still counts!

Why is it they want to ban drinking on the tube?

2008-06-01T10:26:18Z

I caught the tube home yesterday and witnessed the last legal evening of drinking on the London underground. This was advertised on the radio as being promoted as a "leisurely, distinguished affair" simply a celebration of the the underground and London culture.

What I actually saw, was two very drunk young American guys dressed as beer bottles, racing at full speed down the platform alongside the carriage they had just fallen out of, and failed to get back on in time. They got up to quite an impressive speed considering they were dressed as, and were holding beer bottles, lol....

remind me again, why is it they want to ban drinking on the tube?

Things I have seen in London Today

2008-05-23T10:33:01Z

Things I have seen in London Today

A really nice house share. Most people who know me know I have looked at so many of these lately that I have officially given up and decided when demand is that high I should actually be joining the supply team…. Apart from today, obviously.

A really shitty houseshare. Random bunch of people who have probably all only been there two weeks in a house that looks like, umm, shit really. Sorry to be coarse. The junkie passed out on the doorstep next door was a nice touch.

A bunch of Chinese(ish) women on the tube at Acton Town, (with suitcases so they must have just come in from Heathrow airport afew stops along), grinning at me insanely. I think I may be (at 5’10) the tallest woman they have ever seen in there life. I smiled back, they’ll get over it by the time they get to Piccadilly Circus.

4. A big issue newspaper man selling the big issue on the train. They are not really allowed to do that. He was Latino I think and this is definitely a trend from less developed countries. I admired his entrepreneurial spirit as his young son followed him up the train 30 paces behind.

A conversation with my work mates about Boris Johnson…..

2008-05-06T06:11:14Z

Me:

Look, I’m really sorry… please don’t take offense if you’re a Tory… but Boris Johnson!

Me:

It started out as a joke. About seven months ago he was this comedy figure in public life, and then he said he is going to run for mayor, and everyone was like “ha ha ha have you seen the news – Boris is going to run for Mayor!”

For those who don’t know Boris Johnson is just like a really really big, 15 year old public schoolboy. He is a huge, light blond, foppish haired chap. Known best for talking absolute rubbish and not having the sense he was born with. He looks like the sort of man who would have no social connections with anyone who doesn’t have at least one member of their family in the Pony Club. Pony’s being a bit thin on the ground in London, he could probably really relate well to about 10% of his constituents.

Me:

But somehow it has actually HAPPENED! I can’t believe we are actually going to have Boris Johnson as Mayor. Boris the streetfighter who is going to sort out street crime in London!

(Boris looks as if he would survive about 5minutes on the public streets anywhere east of Liverpool Street).

Lisa:

Well to be fair Cath I don’t think he planning to combat street crime all by himself, he will probably have some people to help him....

Daniel:

No, no he’s not going to do it all by himself, he’s going to have …PREFECTS!

So that’s right folks. All police in London will be replaced by prefects with three stripes on their blazer, ASBOS’s* will be superseded by simply revoking the offender’s corridor pass. Why didn’t we think of that before.

It is actually all my fault. I missed the deadline to register to vote, and this is what happens when people like me don’t vote. Women starved themselves to death to ensure that I have the right to vote and I haven’t even used it. So for the next four years of drivel that it likely to ensue in London, you can hold me fully responsible.

*Anti Social Behaviour Order

Jostling for bar seats

2008-04-27T11:23:30Z

I was in a pub in London last night, I know that may not surprise you, but there it is.

Anyway, me and a bunch of the girls had been for Tapas, I had confused the waiters with my appallingly bad Spanish, and we had all decamped to the pub.

We sat chatting as the pub filled up around us, a couple trundled off and three of us, me, Marie and Naomi stayed. When we decided to leave half an hour later Naomi went off to powder her nose first vacating that holy grail of opportunities, a bench seat in a pub on a Saturday night. Thus it wasn’t long before three guys piled in with the standard “do you mind if we sit here”.

Naomi came back and we left, which means I hadn’t looked at my buddies, shared a moment of telepathic video conferencing jumped up and said, “it’s my round what do you want to drink”. We left with Marie protesting we were committing a grave error.

However the reason I didn’t want to stay is that although I respect these guys as people, in there semi balding, late 30’s, mediocrity, they were in fact, - Mingers.

Minger – Term from Northern England meaning person of minging qualities, that being; ugly, smelly, scabby, or spotty.

Ok they weren’t full on mingers but they were very mediocre. Which has got to be worse, (and I still say they were only after the seat anyway.)

Living on the Bright side of Life? – (You lot work to hard!)

2008-04-12T09:53:18Z

So boys and girls a long, long absence, I have not written anything for ages.

Excuses

1. I’ve been busy

2. I’ve been pursuing other writing related stuff in my spare time. Like writing for MookyChicks.

3. I’ve been pursuing other writing related stuff in my spare time. Like marketing for MookyChicks.

But ho hum, it’s just when I pack it in for a while that I get e mails from people saying they’ve been checking my blog!

So here’s a little update. Supertemps current incarnation is - working for what a friend is referring to as the worlds biggest drug dealer - and I’ve decided not to name it after all.

If I was to say “fast moving consumer goods” those of you in business now get it. If that didn't do the trick let me say any more hints and that would be painting it in big red letters.

You have brought this product. It’s a soft drink! 60% of the worlds population buy this product. When I pulled in on the ferry to Likoma Island in the middle of Lake Malawi, where they only had 3 cars, and two motorbikes, (one of the bikes belonging to the policeman, and one of the cars being the local ambulance), the first thing I saw painted on the side of a concrete block shop, was a sign for this product.

Anyway I’ll be good, ok. Never one to bite the hand that feeds me. (Maybe they check the blogs! Maybe there is a giant 1984 Webspider trawling the web!! OMG!)

n.b delete all key words)

Magda darling, it’s probably best if you don’t post this particular article on the magazine!

Amusingly more people (i.e my green friends) give me more grief for working for this lot than they did when I worked for a bank. I’m sure the countries banking institutions have their fingers in far more sticky pies than even this lot. Possibly only just, and I wouldn’t say I’m very proud of working for them, but hey, charity begins at home.

That is a crap, cop, out, self centred capitalist expression. But I never said I’m not a capitalist. Not outright. Anyway, that is not what this post is about.

The biggest of the big cheeses obviously need first class administrative support (that’s me) and they are prepared to pay for it. The bank balance is looking better, flights to Morocco have been brought.

But I have to say this: you lot work to hard.

I don’t get it. Why do people do it? What’s the point in earning above 50K a year if you never have time to spend it??????

Seriously, do you just want to die rich??? (What happens if you died tomorrow?)

It cracks me up honestly. It’s a marketing department, it’s a very high level, very well paid marketing department. Marketing is known for being fun, dynamic, vibrant, and the people I work with generally are just that. Problem is some of them are all buried so deeply underneath their workloads that some of them don’t have time to look up from there desks.

6 o’clock, 7 o’clock, 8 o’clock, sometimes 9 o’clock, they’re all still there, bless them.

WHY?

What’s the point? Here’s a bit of cynical independent and objective comment. It’s a new department. They are all trying very hard.

Personally I consider it my honour bound duty to run from my desk at exactly 5.30,in order that they have a reasonable point in time from which to measure how many extra hours they are doing!!!

Well it’s their choice. It’s their choice and I shouldn’t give them grief if that’s what they enjoy.

I’ve done it too.

I have!

Never again though, not like that.

Nowadays it’s the opposite. I try not to go out to often on a work night, but Monday before last was a smasher. One of the best nights out I’ve had lately. I love my weeknight dance classes, and I make sure I get the exercise in once a week after work.

I just honestly wonder where they get the chance to spend the money they earn! Big houses I guess. I hope that makes them happy.

Thankfully not everyone there is that bad all the time. I have a made at least one very good friend already in the short time I’ve been there. There are quite a few people who are fun. We are beginning to have more fun in my office. Luckily it is actually in my job description to make people have fun! It is also a part of my role that I take very seriously.

And sometimes more people come along, who are professional, fun, well travelled, polite and have actually got their work / life balance sorted.

It can only be a good thing.

Spread the love people.

One life, live it.

Everybody's Looking for Love

2008-03-01T15:04:43Z

Valentines Day this year has come late on the 29th of February.

Christmas, which also seems to have happened to me this week, has come even later.

I was going to write a post a couple of weeks back, when everyone in the world was going all soppy for Valentines, (my married housemates certainly were, I battened down the hatches in my room and had an early night). A post about love, and how everyone is looking for it.

Everyone is looking for love. Anyone who says they're not is either lying, or have already found it. Granted, some of us are looking harder than others. Many young professionals in my world now are clearly not that bothered, the age of marriage being a necessity and a social mandate, are to us well and truly over. We do have that slightly niggly feeling sometimes and worry that we are, well you know, going to die alone and be eaten by cats, but there are quite a lot of us out there.

Love should be, and at it's best is a very simple thing. However it can be tricky to find the right balance.

Generally it takes two people, who actually like each other the same amount. They also have to want to shag each other. That being not that complex in principal, its a shame we don't manage it more often.

It's the liking people the same amount which is the most difficult bit. Some of us tend to yearn after people sometimes, who don't like us, or treat us badly, while beating ourselves up because nobody falls in love with us.

This is all summed up by the modern phrase "they're just not that into you". When we are just not that into someone, it's not going to work. We brush them off, sometimes with little consideration to their feelings, and rather than taking their affection as a compliment, it "doesn't count" as, sometimes unbeknown to them, we never liked them anyway.

In these cases I highly recommend you firstly, let the person know in as nice a way as possible that you are "not that into them", and secondly treat them with respect. You never know, next time the boot might be on the other foot.

Case in point, the other time of the year people go all soppy and start wondering about the cat eating scenario is Christmas.

I had two guys contact me around Christmas, one was K, who I met in a bar when I came back from traveling and was talking to everyone in the super friendly way that I still do. The other guy illustrating perfectly my "unbnownst to them point" was the guy I now refer to as my "singular worst date ever"............ "climb out the bathroom window bad" to give you some idea how interested I was, I can't quite remember, oh that's it, I remember his name now, and it started with, no I'll have to change it, lets call him N.

(For no no no, not ever in a million years?!)

Meow.

I digress. Shame on me, I picked this one up while I was jogging and he was stuck in slow moving traffic. Lets just say he looked better in his car.

The thing is with these guys that because I was not, (even ever remotely), that into them, they didn't count, and were dispensed with, in one case in a slightly merciless manner. Nothing too bad, but the inability of some men to take NO for an answer does occasionally bring out the machine gun toting feminist in me.

To me they were just tiny distractions buzzing around to be batted away without much thought. To them I suspect getting in touch with someone they liked was a slightly bigger deal. Sad isn't it. In our collective humanity we have trouble getting it right.

Last night I thought I was going to a birthday party. When I arrived in the pub in Notting Hill Gate, one of my best friends is standing there in a floor length white dress.

That's a bit formal for a West London bar, I thought - telling her she looked lovely, which she did.

She looked at me for a couple of seconds in this, "can't you work it out?" kind of way. The cogs in my brain had just started moving when she smiles and says, "I got married today Cathy".

This caused me to burst into tears and sob hysterically, which may not have been the exact reaction she was hoping for, but certainly it was a genuine one. I was tired, and it was kind of like a blow to the solar plexus.

For sensible and personal reasons my friend hid it from everyone except the witnesses. I managed to persuade the photographer to show me the unedited wedding pictures on the camera, and it looked beautiful. Fairy tale white dresses, happy bride and grooms, beautiful children, perfect locations. Chauffeur driven, (by the witness!) in a 1969 VW Camper Van, which they are now going to take their honeymoon in. How cool is that?!

I am a bit of a sceptic when it comes to marriage and not very good at gushing statements on it, what I said was "I'm sure it'll be cool, and that's more than most people get out of me", which it is.

As for me and Christmas, I wandered into my latest assignment this week, and I am now at least at the moment working in the kind of place, team and job, that I have been wanting to for a long time. I have also been wondering aside from work about how nice it would be to have a lap top and thus, I am sure, be able to write more. However there is no way I can afford any lap top that is worth buying.

About four hours after walking in on a temporary contract, after they showed me the company Gym complete with free aerobics classes, they tell me, "so you'll be taking my old mobile, and this one will be your lap top".

Thank you Santa.

So there that's my belated Valentines post, all about love, and the reason why for me it is also Christmas.

The month of February had an extra day in it this year, due to the leap year, and the last and 29th day of that month was yesterday. So I guess that also makes Corina and Ash's Day even more special.

I do enjoy seeing true love. It's not dead in the world. In fact, it's alive and well, and living in London.

Secs in the City

2008-02-14T14:15:16Z

It has occurred to me today whilst I am reading other peoples blogs, ahem, I mean utilising the internet to seek contract opportunities, that I am not posting much as I have decided not to post about the temp work I have been doing.

Well, I cant resist any longer it's just too tempting. Imagine if you could randomly walk in and out of other peoples work environments, compiling observations, watching other peoples work trauma, making the occasional character assassinations and meeting some really nice people too? Well, I'll do it for you....

Besides do you have any idea how many Catherine Baker's there are? It's not that easy to find this blog....

People do ask me why I temp, including at job interviews, and sometimes I feel like replying to some power crazed bimbo who considers being personal assistant to Mr B Cheese as being the absolute pinnacle of her entire being,

"because I buggered off traveling last year, I'm not risk averse, I've got a brain and I always get work..... you should try it sometime and maybe you'd have a reason for living too".

Instead I smile politely and say "oh I just haven't found the right thing yet" which is true to some extent

The real reason I temp is

1 - It pays good money, PA's in London can get 30,000 - 40,000 pounds even on temp rates, yes not all the time but hey, what you going to do, don't be so scared of life.

2 - I might actually find a decent job through it.

3 - It is liberating knowing that you are very dispensable, and it's a two way thing.

4 - If I don't find a decent job I have the flexibility to bugger of traveling again or do anything else I want to.

5 - I took a "proper" job a couple of months ago but the boss was a tyrant and a bully, who stamped around swearing at his staff all day long, so I resigned, (because I can just go and temp!)

oh and 5 it pays better money and is far less grief than what I am actually qualified to do, Environmental Sciences, where the job description often reads something like

Very Worthy Job

Duties and responsibilities

- Must be prepared to give up your first born child

Renumeration

- two peanuts per annum, three if you're really good

By the way, let the record show that I am still wearing my pajamas today and have given myself a week off for good behavior. When was the last time your boss did that?!

Paradise or Bust

2008-01-24T22:17:25Z

I have been much pleased to be working of late with the splendicous Mooky Chicks of www.mookychicks.co.uk

Below is an extract of my recent interview with Ben Keene of tribewanted.com, about his eco tourism project on an island in the South Pacific.

So, Monday night found a very swanky London bar awash with Hawaiian style flowery shirts, young men in sarongs, and an extremely large bowl of Kava.

Ahh… more fancy dress! I hear you cry, but no, not an extension of the fancy dress club night craze sweeping London of late, this was the opening party of the TV Documentary series “Paradise or Bust”. The series is about British entrepreneur Ben Keene’s dream to build an ecologically sustainable village on Vorovoro Island in the far away South Pacific.......

Is it really loves green young dream, or just some schoolboy’s pratting about with campfires and scout knots in the sun?

Click here to read the full article: http://www.mookychick.co.uk/travel/tribe_wanted.php

Chicken Shit

2008-01-10T22:30:40Z

And so we’re back to the chickens. Old time readers know this is a favourite theme and if you look back in the May Archives you’ll see why.

Today Jamie Oliver, top TV chef geezer and friend of Jimmy of Jimmy’s Farm, (who incidentally was in my class at university), has today slated the top supermarket chains, i.e (lets name them shall we, yes lets,) Tescos, Sainsburies, Asda, Morrisons, Waitrose and Marks and Spencer, for being utterly spineless and pulling out of meetings he had scheduled to talk about factory farming. Too chicken shit scared to come and answer to the camera then?

I guess the big chains want to keep the general public in the dark, and feed them on shit, kind of similar to a battery chicken.

So any way it seems there are two more chicken champions on board.

The question is this, are the big supermarket chains that sell all these nastily raised sufferation filled animals responsible for the welfare of those animals?

Should they be?

This is going to be an exercise in getting the general public to open their eyes.

I have just watched Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s (he of kill your own animals and eat all the bits at river cottage), programme “Hugh’s Chicken Run” in which he is running, quite literally side by side, a battery farm and free range farm to compare the welfare and results of the birds in each.

Jamie Oliver is set to follow this up on Friday with “Jamie’s Fowl Dinners”.

We watch with interest.

So far Hugh is bearing up well, he only had to kill about six little chicks this week, the first weeks show during which he set up the experiment. They were so cute, but they but they weren’t financial worthy enough to warrant a vet. So he broke their necks.

More info / sign up to the campaign here

www.chickenout.tv/

www.jamieoliver.com/

You can’t get a horse down the escalators….

2008-01-10T22:42:01Z

I wonder if now I am back home I should rename this blog, “Tales from the London Underground”. Quite possibly I should, as the most interesting things that happen to me, do seem to happen on the London underground. Someone else actually has a blog titled “ I never leave my house without incident”. Sometimes I know how she feels.

So, recently I caught the tube home with Robin Hood.

When I wandered into the tube station at Mornington Crescent, in north London after a nice boozy dinner with my friends I noticed him standing outside. I hardly batted an eyelid, as this is London. Every one in London is used to everything, so cosmopolitan are we.

Old aged pensioners quite often wander past nuevo trance punks, with twenty piercings in each cheek and comment little more than, “pie for supper then love or shall we just go past the chip shop?”.

So Robin ran into the lift I was in, which lowered the two of us down to the platforms, and as we were now at closer quarters I pointed out to him that he was leaving himself wide open to sarcasm, wandering around the tube at midnight dressed as Robin Hood (complete with Bow and Arrow).

Robin thoroughly agreed. In a kind of reverse damsel in distress scenario, we decided he had better pretend that he was with me, as although Londoners will not be very surprised to see Robin Hood on the tube at midnight, that doesn’t mean that they won’t completely take the piss, (and completely taking the piss in London does sometimes involve grievous bodily harm). Anyway Robin, who declined to give his real name, (I told him I had a blog), and I, mulled over life on the way home. As well as being a medieval celebrity he was also some kind of TV producer, I think, something in TV or films anyway. He is English but lives in Sydney Australia, and travels to various other places quite a lot by the sound of things, was jet lagged and had about 20 hours earlier arrived at Heathrow, to be dragged off, hooked up with friends, be inserted in a pair of knee length pixie boots, have a rather fetching dash of eyeliner applied, be furnished with a bow and arrow, and taken out to a party.

Something is going on in this town at the moment. EVERYTHING is fancy dress.

So Robin was basically wasted. Very very very tired. He felt quite bad about bailing out on his friends and ending up on the last tube home with me, but needs be.

It gets me thinking. Right now I have got the travel bug. Big Time. Right now I wish I was standing on a roof top in India, sweating with the heat, sniffing the warm air over the city with a glass of something alcoholic in my hand. By this time I would very probably be hooked up with someone like Belinda, who mails me from Cape Town this Christmas, or Ori who mails me from Israel, Or Ali, who was last heard of getting on a boat to Columbia.

The question is does travel make us happy? Sometimes. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it scares the shit out of me, but often it makes me happy. It’s true that adventure is sometimes much more fun after it’s finished. Take for example the one about the policeman with the automatic gun in Malawi. However it’s often just as good while it’s happening, particularly the party nights out in Antigua, Guatemala.

Travel is more than that though. For some it’s a yearning, for some an addiction. Wanderlust. For me, right now, to an extent, a stubborn habit. An overkeen interest in the horizon.

So Robin and me found common ground quite quickly. Travellers don’t take long to work each other out.

Most of us know another thing though, besides the Wanderlust. Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz who clicks her heels three times and says “there’s no place like home”, sometimes there isn’t.

Sometimes you drink so much and party so hard you wondered how you stayed vertical.

Other times you find yourself wearing knee length pixie boots with a bow and arrow in hand wandering around north London at midnight, and think, sod this, I'm just going to go and get that last tube home.

The No Bag Lady

2008-01-24T22:24:53Z

Three words which you can use to help save the world...

No Bag Please

Repeat after me, lets practice;

No Bag Please
No Bag Please
No Bag Please
No Bag Please
No Bag Please

You might need to say it in different ways, like quickly......., oh no bag please........

or slowly, N o B a g P l e a s e

You will almost always have to say it more than once, "No Bag Please", repeat with smile, "NO... BAG... PLEASE..."

You may have to hold up the queue, (don't worry because this is allowed.)

You may have to take back out all of the 5 items which the cashier has just stuffed in 5 plastic bags and put them all into one. You will normally at least have to take out the lettuce, which was on top in the basket and so is now getting squashed in the bottom of the bag, and put it in the top of the bag.

The important thing, is to keep on repeating your new mantra;

No Bag Please

No Bag Please

No Bag Please

You can practice in your car, or in the shower, you can do it. Believe in yourself.

There is a bit of preperation involved. The less technical of you may find this a problem.

You have to try to keep a plastic bag with you at all times.

Men have crossed continents and gone to the moon. I bet you don't go out the first time you look to get laid without a condom? Work on it like that.

It did take me a while to perfect, I admit.

The bags that is.

Now I carry two.

You need to find a place where the plastic bags live. Mine live in the front pocket of my handbag. They used to live in the dashboard of my car when I had one, which I don't any more.

Plastic bags and packaging suck.

It's a fact. FACT. You know, like you will not be likely to improve your health by smoking cigarettes, or 9 out of 10 women going for cosmetic surgery have low self esteem.

Plastic bags and packaging, really suck.

I was discussing this with Dave, a Canadian guy I was house sharing with a while back. We were saying how you can seriously reduce the amount of packaging you use, just by not picking it up in the first place. Here in the UK you have little polythene bags hanging on dispensers all around the supermarket fruit and veg department, and you find the same thing most places in the world.

The thing is you don't need to put an onion in a plastic bag, it comes in it's own skin, a ready made package of cellulose, but everyone does it anyway. Other things which you don't need to put in a plastic bag in my opinion are, carrotts, potatoes, peppers, broccoli, garlic, courgettes, aubergines, bundles of green beans......

Even the green beans will not grow legs and run for it.

They will sit in the trolley together, quite happily, and the cashier will pick them up in one handful, and they will go in your, hopefully reused, carrier bag in one handful. Oh and by the way. The cashiers don't even blink when I do this. Those at the supermarket seem to be different to those in a flurry of bags at fast moving tills. Either that or they're onto me.

Dave told me he doesn't even use plastic bags for his tomatoes. So I stopped too.

The fact is the more I think about it the less packaging I pick up. I have about 10 plastic bags in my life and they're like old friends. I'm sure I've even got one from Asda in Roehampton somewhere, and I moved from there in August.

More facts about plastic bags:

1. Plastic Production uses 8% of the world's oil (Waste Online)

Forget bitching about the figures. Plastic bags are made from oil (and other stuff), oil is a petrochemical, petrochemicals are by definition hydrocarbons. You know, that stuff that cases global warming.

2. Plastic bags go into land fill. They are not taken away in the majority of recycling schemes in this country. I have yet to see a domestic scheme that takes them. This will be either because they produce a low grade product when recycled that is not very useable, and/or because of the cost of collecting them up, (petrol, lorries), and melting them down (heat, energy), is greater in financial and environmental terms than the recycled product is worth.
(Please do correct me if I am wrong.)

The answer is, don't f***ing use them in the first place.

As an aside if we carry on putting waste in landfill at the rate we are, we will have literally no room left for it in this very small country of ours by about 2050.

Oh yeh, biodegradation.

3. Plastic bags don't, biodegarde that is. Plastic, put very basically is designed not to biodegrade. Plastics take between 100-1000 years to biodegarde. The most opptimistic estimates I have seen on a bag degrading is about 20 years.

Even then they fail to return to there organic elements in the same way as wood or paper do. They kind of disintegrate into a million little pieces, and float around in soil and aquatic systems, thus making there way into the food chain which means animals, including us end up eating them.

4. The UK uses around 2.8 million tonnes of plastic waste every year and this figure is rising by 2% a year.
(www.newport.gov.uk)

Sounds like an unimaginable figure to me, but you know how much you use right? I read somewhere that if you laid all the plastic bags used in London in one lunchtime end to end, it would be enought to stretch in a straight line all the way around planet earth.

But that's not what really pisses me off.

What pisses me of are the easy things.

What pisses me off, is how some people will still throw everything in the normal rubbish, even when they have doorstep recycling. When they throw stuff in the bin which is recycleable, even when the rubbish bin is sitting right next to the recycling box.

When they do not use their recycling box as there is "no room for it in the kitchen". When they leave there heating on full whack all winter with the door wide open for ventilation.

When they seem to be in a competition to gather and throw out the biggest quantity of plastic bags in the whole world.

It is not easy to cook all your food from scratch. It is not easy to use absolutley no packaging at all. It is not easy to stand at the bus stop in the rain on the way home from Tescos, foregoing your car if you have three toddlers to control.

But it is, really, really easy, to say,

No Bag Please.

Man has sex with bicycle!

2007-11-22T09:09:27Z

Yes folks, that's right!

A man aged 51 has recently been convicted, repeat, convicted, of having sex with a bicycle.

Hilarious as this may be, (and we don't know all the ins and outs of it), sorry, we can say for sure, unconsenting sex - wrong, children - wrong, animals - wrong, but the main point here has to be that,

I AM SURE THE BIKE DIDN'T MIND!!!!!!!!!

They placed him on the sex offenders register! Obviously a quiet week for crime up in Glasgow!

from
BBC News 24
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/7095134.stm
Wednesday, 14 November 2007

Bike sex man placed on probation

Cleaners caught Mr Stewart simulating sex with a bike

A man caught trying to have sex with his bicycle has been sentenced to three years on probation.

Robert Stewart, 51, admitted a sexually aggravated breach of the peace by conducting himself in a disorderly manner and simulating sex.

Sheriff Colin Miller also placed Stewart on the Sex Offenders Register for three years.

Mr Stewart was caught in the act with his bicycle by cleaners in his bedroom at the Aberley House Hostel in Ayr.

Gail Davidson, prosecuting, told Ayr Sheriff Court: "They knocked on the door several times and there was no reply.

"They used a master key to unlock the door and they then observed the accused wearing only a white t-shirt, naked from the waist down.

"The accused was holding the bike and moving his hips back and forth as if to simulate sex."

Both cleaners, who were "extremely shocked", told the hostel manager who called police.

Sheriff Colin Miller told Stewart: "In almost four decades in the law I thought I had come across every perversion known to mankind, but this is a new one on me. I have never heard of a 'cycle-sexualist'."

Stewart had denied the offence, claiming it was caused by a misunderstanding after he had too much to drink.

The bachelor had been living in the hostel since October 2006 after moving from his council house in Girvan.

He now lives in Ayr.

Queue Jumping - Attempting to bypass or otherwise disrespect the order of the queue.

2007-11-19T16:17:50Z

One thing I always tell people about life in Britain is that the British love to queue.

Personally I will fight to the death for my place in a queue, and so will most Brits.

We are however far too reserved to actually say something when people queue jump. We will instead engage in a non vocal mind game of aggressive body posturing, and psychological dagger throwing should a culprit, normally a "foreigner", fail to comply with the sacred congo lines in which we parade up and down the country.

A problem comes occasionally when we are faced with a situation where we do not know where to queue.

My journey home on Wednesday illustrated this perfectly.

Having not a bean in the house, I wandered off to Waitrose supermarket on the way home. This particular branch is in Knightsbridge, a pretty flash area, but that is not of special interest as the British love of queuing cuts through all class divides. It's a Patriotic thing, like Black Taxis and the Union Jack.

Queuing confusion is normally avoided in Britain by lots of nice signs reassuring us we are in the right place, saying "please queue here", with little airport style posts with stretches of tape to herd us happily around so we all know we are indeed queuing in the right place.

Queuing in the right place is very important because if you were to queue in the wrong place and be served before someone queuing in the right place, that would constitute first degree queue jumping, just as terrible an offense as trying to walk past the queue in the direct form of queue jumping.

So there I am happily queuing. As were the two people in front of me. The nearest being a late 30's quite athletic looking city type male. Neatly trimmed hair, long grey coat, office suit.

Then we (the queue) notice, off to our right, a potential queue jumper.

This lady was standing in front of the cashiers, whereas we good citizens were clearly queuing by the side of the cashiers, I myself just emerging from the start of the vegetable aisle.

The man in front of me stiffened. It was baked beans at dawn.

The woman did look like she might be a non brit, most likely, as a respectable British woman in her 50's would of course always queue. She was rotund, dark haired, olive skinned, and held only in her left hand a glass jar of honey.

Aha! we (the queue) thought, "she is going to try to queue jump because she only has one jar of honey!!"

No no, never! This is not the way of the queue! In a darting leap just as the cashier became free, city man barged past her. Nearly toppling her out the way.

But she persisted.

It was just me and her.

At this point, I reasoned she must clearly be an unknowing foreigner, and thus made a big decision. For the first time in my life I decided to CONCEDE my place in the queue. I allowed her to be served first.

Chaos erupted.

This, you see is why we have queues!

More people had already queued unknowingly behind her, they noticed they were queuing in the wrong place, but when they realised I had been there first, they did of course welcome me into the bosom of the front of the queue. As this happened, a mother who had proceeded with her child from the front of what was now queue B, realised she had queue jumped me!!

STOP she screamed, ok she didn't scream, but she might as well have. She had queue jumped in front of her child!! She was a BAD MOTHER, "no, please go first, please please!" "I'm so, so sorry, I didn't realise" she said. Being British I again conceded my place to her, as to go first would have indicated that she had intentionally committed a genuine offense against the queue.

As I passed her outside the shop I was forced to apologise, because we really do like queues here that much , and say that I might have actually been queuing in the wrong place myself!

She apologised again, and off we both went, rosy cheeked and happy that we had met such lovely fellow queuers in the supermarket.

I padded on down to Knightsbridge tube in the dusk of the London skyline, and meandered through the tunnels to the platform.

Than the dread words boomed over the tannoy... "ladies and gentleman.......the Piccadilly line is now suffering severe delays". I stood on the platform as it became more and more packed. People stood in rows and sighed and swore, we all knew what was coming. It got hotter and more crowded.

The London rush hour requires clockwork timing on the part of London Underground. If you get a delay of more than 1 minute the volume of people coursing through the arteries of the below street tunnels, soon causes the commuter equivalent of deep vein thrombosis. The normally mild mannered grey city folk start stabbing each other to death with umbrellas and stilettos, and battering each other round the heads with their briefcases in the pressure cooker that ensues.

The platforms pack out as throngs of people almost nudge those at the front off the edge. There are no queues as there is no where to form a queue, however there is still a queuing order. Even down there, you may not be able to see it, but it is there.

As the carriage finally pulled in a young blond European non Brit elbowed, (and I mean she violently stuck her elbows in to me), her way past me, and ploughed towards the doors before anyone could even get off her train. Another grade A queuing offense and in the British book of queuing, and another from of queue jumping as well. She was blissfully unaware that this was the equivalent of slapping a large angry bull around the face with a red blanket. My vision blurred as I managed the anger, and resisted breaking various parts of her.

She didn't get on the already packed train and neither did I.

As the train after that one pulled in I stood there thinking.

You do occasionally hear on the underground the rather fatalistic announcement, "ladies and gentleman there are severe delays on the Piccadilly line due to a person going under a train...."

My eyes narrowed as I earnestly wondered how many of them had just shoved past someone, whilst trying to elbow their way to the train doors at the front of the platform....

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing" Edmund Burke

2007-11-19T16:39:40Z

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing" Edmund Burke.

A colleague of mine arrived at work yesterday and asked me if she'd done the right thing.

For those of you who don't know I am currently employed doing what I'm told the socialists call "Working for the Man", in the city of London.

The man is, or rather are, huge international corporations which make there living by sucking the life blood out of the rest of us.

The thing is the man pays me better than anyone else I've ever worked for, and now I have completely sold out, I have done it properly. Enough of my blood has been sucked and I need some pumped back in.

Right now I work for a bank. Worse still, I work for the lawyers in a bank.

My colleague is a lawyer. She is also petite, pretty, white, English and very middle class. She works for the man too, however it seems even those of us working for the evil ones still have some decency left.

So picture the scene. "Rowena", lets call her was on the train, on the way to work. Next to her were sitting two very glamorous looking ladies from the south of America.

The ladies were talking loudly about how America was being too influenced, and was trading too much with the rest of the world, and how that was causing all of Americas problems. America should just bring it all back home, not worry about anyone else, (if only they would), and it was all the foreigners causing the problem. Obviously with themselves being in what they clearly thought of as the 51st state, they kind of misjudged their passive audience.

They then proceeded on to a passionate conversation about Indian people, the racism of which Rowena explained "went off the scale."

Now, it has always amazed me that people will be willing to stand by and do nothing while things ceratin events are taking place. No one wants to get involved and when things are really bad people assume that someone else will "do something". However not many people will.

People have stood by and watched serious assaults taking place because they all thought someone else had called the police, in America it is legal for the KKK to hold meetings, another colleague of mine fell over recently on some stairs, she was badly hurt, and people actually stepped over her to walk on by regardless of her evident pain, while she was lying in a heap on the floor!

Fortunately there are some people out there who are still willing to "Do something". I for my sins am one of them, and I have also been grateful of help from some others at times. What Rowena did, I told her, is simply something that separates her, and other people with the intelligence and enough good sense to "do something", from the rest of the common herd.

Loudly expressing strongly racist views in public is not on, but I guess they felt safe enough doing this even though the two ladies surely knew it is offensive.  As they continued on and on, little Rowena carried on reading her novel, but steam was starting to escape from her ears.

Just imagine those two American ladies surprise when after quite some time during which they further proclaimed the advantages of the white race over the asian, 5"2 Rowena finally looked up at them, being able to take no more, took a deep breath, and snapped in a very clipped English accent....

"Excuse me, but I find what you are saying extremely offensive and if you want to carry on with your isolationist and racist drivel, I suggest you go and do it somewhere else!"

They looked at each other, visibly extremely confused, and then moved.

Read here, (or not!) for more on "not doing anything".

http://www.engr.wisc.edu/wiscengr/november04/bystander.shtml

Armageddon, or Just Tuesday Lunchtime?

2007-10-13T11:56:49Z

Reasons not to talk to Dave

2007-09-30T17:13:16Z

One of the side effects of coming back from traveling is that you will talk to anyone. Anyone at all. You have spent months on end in the company of no one that you know, and are now quite happy to converse with other travelers, bus attendants, beggars, drunks, and any other random people you happen across.

This is probably why, when Dave staggered up to me shortly after I got back, and announced "People keep being orrible to me today", instead of moving away, I asked him if he was having a bad day.

This encounter took place on a bench, on the platform of a train station in Forest Hill, South London.

To be fair Dave was more than a little unsteady on his feet. He had that rouge blushed effect that goes with all the best alcoholics, wild eyes, a shock of ginger hair, and was about six foot.

He looked pretty much like your average unemployed, dressed in non descript black jeans, and something like a bomber jacket. He looked about 38 to me, pocked skin that had suffered the ravishes of his lifestyle. Although he swore blind he was only 22!

He was with out a doubt, completely out of his face on something, if not several things.

As he stumbled along the platform people took evasive action, glancing away before they met his eyes and hiding their faces in their newspapers. He came to sit on the bench next to me, and "bad arse young man" at the other end.

He wasn't very happy.

If I was Dave I wouldn't be very happy either. It can't be nice being shunned by the general public so blatantly. I think that's how he came to the conclusion people were being " 'orrible" to him. Bless. The thing is, it crossed my mind in my wisdom, that if people are only ever 'orrible to you. You are unlikely to be anything other than 'orrible back.

Anyway, me and Dave had a bit of a chat, he wasn't actually doing any harm, just muttering a bit to himself in a slightly erratic manner.

I asked Dave where he was going... "I don't know..." said Dave.

I pointed out that as he was at a train station, and about to get on a train, he must, theoretically, have some idea where he was going.

This got a laugh. He was going to see a girl. He thought she liked him, but he wasn't quite sure. He also wasn't quite sure where she lived. At a guess I would say it was somewhere north of Forest Hill.

He really was quite sweet in some ways, was Dave. Battered by life, but I'm sure there was quite a lot of good still rattling around in there somewhere. I got the feeling I might have been the only normal person he had spoken to in some time. i.e the only person who was operating in the same reality as 90% of the world, not one entirely soaked in and addled by drugs.

Dave then decided that he liked me. I wasn't terribly surprised. If you talk to odd people you have to expect them to act in slightly odd ways.

Dave had a bit of a set to with "bad arse young man" while we were waiting for the train, but I managed to calm him down.

When the train arrived Dave had started to get a bit to close for comfort. I liked Dave, but I didn't think we'd be keeping in touch. When the train arrived I realised that I might have a bit of a problem. So I tried to walk into the carriage the opposite way to Dave and took a seat next to two extremely large Eastern European guys.

I can't remember the precise ins and outs, but I had hoped Dave might just not follow me. Of course he did follow me.

The two Eastern European guys didn't really share my ethos of being nice the socially down pressed, and after about two lines more conversation, during which Dave didn't seem to pleased with me, looked at Dave quite clearly and told him, in no uncertain terms "You. Vuk Ofv".

Dave was not to be put off of course, so this soon escalated to, "Vuk Ofv, or I killl you."

Figuring I had kind of got Dave into this situation and not wanting him killed, I took him further down the carriage to sit with me. He carried on acting like a complete loony. He did a remarkably loud impression of someones baby that was screaming, and I had to calm him down again. I then decided it really was time for me and Dave to part company and employed my classic London strategy for avoidance of loonies on the train/tube.

I waited until the train pulled on to the station, waited for the doors to open, suddenly jumped off the train at light speed, ran down two carriages, jumped on, and hid. In the crowd I cannoned past the two Eastern European guys and said thank you to them as I sped by.

After the train doors closed again and the train pulled out of the station, I saw Dave out the window, he had got off the train. I think he was a bit confused about where I had gone. He wandered off up the platform and up the steps. Hopefully without bumping into the Eastern European guys.

So although I am still that strange variety of Londoner, that will talk to people I meet while I'm out in the outside world, you will still find that most Londoners, when on the train/tube/street, will talk to no one. Preferring instead to stare steadfastdley into space, in complete and utter silence.

And I do have to admit, that in some cases, there's a reason for that!

Goodbye Country Hello Nightclub

2007-11-26T02:07:05Z

Oh Boy, I'm back.

I haven't posted for so long most of you have probably stopped reading. Maybe I'm talking to myself here? Well it's never stopped me before.

So I did it then!!!

Not only did I do it in fact, but I did it, and am managing to do most of the things that I wanted to do when I came back. Including move nearer the city center.

The housing I must admit is not entirely sorted out, and it did take quite a long time to sort out to this stage. (Thanks Miguel!). I have in fact taken dossing on peoples floors to a whole new level. But now I have a roof, bed, wardrobe and broadband connection of my very own.

In the same way as when I was traveling, my life is still changing. I like it like that and me and bruv have got tickets to Groove Armada, possibly the best artists in the uiverse ever. OMG!!!! Maybe life is perfect after all. I don't think it gets much better than that!

So what do you get out of it at the end when you've dragged yourself across a new continent, pushed all your personal boundaries, and generally had the time of your life?

An overwhelming feeling that anything is possible.

La Fortuna, Costa Rica, Two more weeks in pictures

2008-01-23T20:49:03Z

(Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica)

Still going.....

Our new dog, alert and attentive (Puerto Veijo, Costa Rica)

My brother is here now for the last leg.

The crater of Volcan Irazu (Costa Rica)......

Sloths at the Sloth Sanctury

Met these sweeties yesterday, they live outside the house of the guy who rescued them and fly around freely.... aww!! (La Fortuna, Costa Rica)

It´s a hard life I lead, I really miss work........

(This bar forgot what our tab was!!!!)

The funniest thing I have seen today!!!

So he is driving with the other hand right?!!!

(La Fortuna Costa Rica)

Medic! Medic! Blogger Down!

2007-07-01T03:43:54Z

She Lives!

Hmm so I have been "muy enfermo". This explains the lack of posts.

The last week seems to have only been about three days long. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday all seem to have blended into one day, and not even a long one at that. Shame really because it really was a smashing Saturday night!

"It" started on Sunday. I though it was alcohol poisoning at first. Then I thought it was food poisoning, when it got to Thursday I thought it might be time to stop self diagnosing and get to the quack, (doctors to my international friends). People had been trying to get me to see a doctor before that, but I had a bit of trouble in the state that I was, explaining in Spanish that I could not actually walk more than 20 meters without passing out.

I now know that I have an unspecified virus. I am a lot better now, and I can do stuff like..... Stay Awake!! Read!! and ....surf on the internet!!! My enthusiasm for life in general is also gradually returning. I do all this with the aid of large doses of sugar provided by Antigua's most lovely deserts, and yes there are a lot of them to choose from. I don't consider I am that hard done by, because a sickness that necessitates my sitting around eating lots of cheesecake and pecan pie is a pretty good lot given the selection to choose from.

I think whatever it is must be reasonably nasty, as the drugs they have given me cost $20 US, which is a hell of a lot of money over here. I have even taken to giving a few Quetzals to the disabled beggars in town. (Generous to a fault me...) They after all do not have the benefit of my Visa card and the GBP - GTQ conversion rate to help them out, (aprx 15.32 to the pound).

Reasons I am Unlucky

1. I got ill right in the middle of my Spanish Course, and had to pay half a weeks tuition fee for Nada!

v

Reasons I am Lucky

1. Antigua is the probably the most developed place in Guatemala, they even have ambulances here, it is a very good place to get sick.
2. Antigua is one of the most beautiful towns in the world. With the time and the money, you could quite happily waste away the rest of your existence here. Some do! So it is a nice place to be ill on that front as well.
3. I have got lots of friends in Antigua, who are looking after me.
4. I had my own room in a really nice homestay when I was really sick.
5. Jose is not going to take students to the bullfighting any more because of me being sick!!!!!
6. I am not poor and I can afford food without working for it, (well here anyway), and medicine.
7. Ad infinitum

Yes so the only bad thing is I have lost out a bit on the Spanish Tuition. However I was overjoyed at the end of last week to find I was actually able to communicate, (a bit) in another language. It really was coming on quite well. Not only can I now order food, but I can complain if I don't like it and send it back! I can remember saying a few weeks ago that if I could get to that point, that I would have cracked it! (It's not really as difficult as I thought to be honest). However this really does not mean that I can have "a conversation".

So if I can find some more enthusiasm, cheesecake and energy, more Spanish hopefully next week. I might even be able to elaborate on the current speech pattern of a five year old child.

Number five on the list above leads to another story.......

On the same day that I started at the Spanish School, (the week before last) I was most dismayed to find out that the school I had signed up to runs excursions to Bullfighting.

Yuk.

A lot of you know I am a vegetarian, in two years I will have been vegetarian for more than half my life. (Only 11 years then!!!!) I am unashamedly, but with a heavy dash of reason, "Militant Animal Rights".

Repeat after me...

I am not against medical research, but I think......

So anyway, I wasn't´t too happy about the gleeful terrorisation and tearing apart of innocent animals as an extra curricular activity for my language school.

I didn't adopt my normal, feet, vote with, policy because I was told that all the Spanish schools do bullfighting, which is how I still came to be with Ixchel Spanish School when the dreaded lurgee struck.

Me and Jose who manages the school ended up talking a lot about how much money I should pay, for which we reached an amicable agreement, and other subjects, like was I going to die of plague in the schools homestay? So we basically became quite friendly. An ideal opportunity to discuss the subject of bullfighting!

I have been incredibly disappointed on this trip at the number of (stupid... naive...ignorant...young idiots) people I have met on this trip (Ori), who although they would completely condemn bullfighting, cockfighting and other horrible practices at home, are more than happy to participate in them here.

Personally (Ori), I think this is completely spineless. Although traveling does entail a strong element of the voyeur, you should not forget that your actions, omissions, and tourist dollars have a massive impact on the places that you visit. One should have a greater sense of responsibility than to blindly blunder along with an attitude that often comes down to little more than "can´t be bothered".

Other people are fast to point out that you can not take your western, and personal, values and try to enforce them on the rest of the world. They are right. However considering that animal, and also humanitarian welfare issues are often largely due to lack of education. You can always respectfully show people that there is a different way.

So when all is said and done me and Jose had a pretty open conversation about it bullfighting, and Ixchel Spanish School in Guatemala are not going to the bullfighting anymore. I´m not saying I´ve converted the man himself, but it seems I have talked him in to adjusting the school program.

The fact that I was out with Jose till three o clock in the morning last Saturday, and he does like my hair, (no of course I didn't,) may indeed be a factor, but does that matter given the result?

Never, ever, again, he promises me, and I believe he is a man of his word.

Ta da!

I don't have anything else majorly exciting to report. Well I do, but you have to understand that to some extent at least "loque pasa en Antigua, se queda en Antigua". Isn´t that right Belinda?

So I cant give you the details of everything...... suffice to say

..............maybe I'll tell you next week.

Here are a few more pictures of La Antigua instead.

Incidentally, its called La Antigua as it was once the capital of Guatemala, i.e Guatemala City. Now there is the new Guatemala City, La Antigua (the old city), or Antigua for short is referred to as such.

Tuc Tuc, the only way to travel!

It´s rainy season now, so I am also looking forward to the last spending splurge next week in Costa Rica and Panama, where it will be hotter. Antigua is quite cool. Big bruv has gotten jealous and decided it´s time for a holiday and is coming out to meet me. Then its homeward bound, to the city where the streets are paved with gold, good old London town.

Preferably before I file for bankruptcy.

The adventure is not over yet however, and don't worry, once it is I will continue to inflict my opinions on the world at large, about anything I like.

Phew, now there´s a relief to you all....

(I do just have to thank Darling Ali, The Tartan Angel, for the soup runs and the endless sympathy and help. I would have been lost with out you honey.)