What are you doing tonight?
Me, I shall be in bed, probably asleep by 8pm, as has been the case for the past week at least. Mr BW has been struggling with a horrible bug for a couple of weeks and has been pleased to also embrace my Cave Witch routine over the festive break. Actually, he always goes to bed when I do, but he often watches TV quietly, or reads, whereas I just fall asleep as soon as my bed is flat.
I can’t remember the last time we went out on New Year’s Eve. In fact, I can’t remember ever going out on New Year’s Eve. We went to a carefully-chosen secluded beach in Dorset for 2000, and I suppose I probably went out when I was 20 or 30 years younger, but I can’t remember. It must be at least 8 years since we either invited friends round, or went out. Getting drunk and crowds just are not our scene, and we don’t feel the need to treat the passage of years in a significant way. And as for what passes as ‘entertainment’ on TV on New Year’s Eve, well… I suppose it’s entertaining to someone, somewhere?
Every year I hear (or read) people say, “Oh this year hasn’t been a good one for me, I shall be glad to see the back of it, and have a better year next year!” I say piffle. Every day is the next day of your life. Why wait until the bleakest, darkest time of the year to make changes, or draw a psycho1ogical line in the sand and start over?
This year was the year I finally learnt to say no without feeling guilty. I’ve always been quite good at saying no, but often felt guilty in doing so. Something significant happened around the middle of the year (that I never blogged about) that made me realise that, no matter how much you give to some people, it will never be enough, and they will happily keep on taking while you are happy to keep on giving (not necessarily deliberately), without the ability to perceive/reciprocate when needed. So, ultimately, there is nothing to be gained by continually saying yes when one means no. And sometimes one just has to cut one’s losses.
I still don’t like saying no, but I’ve learnt that it’s the only way to protect myself and not to keep ending up in a crumpled blue heap, which is no good to either me, or Mr BW.
Learning to say no, without feeling responsible for what happens when you do, has, I think, got a lot to do with reducing negativity and improving self-belief. I recently re-read a book I’ve been recommending to people professionally for years: William Glasser – Choice Theory. I saw more in it than when I read it the first time. Which, of course, is a measure of growth.
I don’t like Reviews of Years, as, depending on one’s state of mind at the time, it’s easy to slant things differentially. So, you won’t be reading one of those here.
And, New Year’s Resolutions, just make people feel bad, as they’re set up to make you fail, and feel a failure. I’ve been blogging about it since time immemorial (well, OK, since 2003, *nods right*, see archives). So, I shan’t get into that again.
It just remains, then, to wish everyone everything they wish themselves for the New Year, and to thank you all for reading, and especially commenting, over the last 12 months. As I always say, a blog without comments is just a website, and the internet is (over)full of those.
What are you doing tonight?
Month: December 2010
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
– Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures.
Reduced to just three programmes on BBC 4 starting at 8pm tonight, and continuing tomorrow and the day after.
Theme: The Importance of Size
Programme 1: Why elephants can’t dance
Programme 2: Why chocolate melts and jet planes don’t
Programme 3: Why mountains are so small
Nooooo. There should be at least 5 programmes, in the afternoons.
What is the world coming to?
I don’t appreciate people who know full well that I can’t eat wheat giving me chocolates or biscuits. Mr BW appreciates it, but I don’t. Look, I like gardening, and arts and crafts. How hard is it to find something pertaining to that? Or wine. Yes, I like wine. Just not wheat.
Which bit of reading the ingredients do they not get? I can’t even safely eat the green triangles in Quality Street now, as they seem to have changed them since last time I had some (at least a year ago).
Plus, I can’t even have the consolation of putting the coloured cellophane wrappers in my craft store as the box informs me that they will decompose if placed on the compost heap. Run the risk of decomposing artworks? I think not. Boxes full of things wrapped in plastic carrier bags that are now degrading into little shreds that need to be picked out is bad enough. Most of these bags aren’t even marked as ‘degradable’. Dreadful idea, degradable carrier bags. Thousands of tiny pieces to litter the environment and with the potential to choke unwitting birds and other wildlife to death.
What is the world coming to?
And we still have a thick iced snowy covering everywhere. Not much of The Grand Thaw happening here.
Although this morning is the first in about three weeks that the Feathered Familiars’ water hasn’t been a solid block of ice, so the temperature must have gone up a bit.
What is the world coming to?
Perhaps what is needed is some of the cure-all ointment Mr BW found for me:
This was dusk last night:
I should dearly love to know what those blobs are that have appeared on all images in the past few days: nothing on the lens, and it shows on the camera screen too.
I usually get about 10,000 pictures from a digital camera before they fail… this one has only got to 3,600.
Fortunately as it was only new in April, it is still under guarantee, but, it means struggling into Large Local Town, which I don’t want to do (and indeed probably won’t do until the kids are back at school and all this ‘sale’ madness – aka shift junk that no-one would buy at full price – has subsided), and I know that the shop where I got it will just say it has to go back to the manufacturer, where it will sit for weeks, before they take 10 seconds to decide it needs replacing with a new one, and notify the shop, who will then call me to collect it… or they may fix it, but, either way, no-one is going to refund my costs of taking it back (2 journeys, 48 miles minimum), parking (£2.40 minimum), and the time it takes… it just seems to be a continuous hassle of products that aren’t made to last these days. I have a post way-down in drafts about planned obsolescence that I ought to pull out and resurrect…
The ‘snow’, now turned to ice, has gone from being a white blanket to settling into the tractor tracks on the field behind us.
1. The mice ate our FOTCR™ dinner. Well we assume they did. The patch of carrots left for the occasion had disappeared when Mr BW went to fetch them. And the two galvanised buckets full on the balcony were frozen solid. One made a puddle defrosting on the kitchen floor.
2. We didn’t open our presents until 1.30pm today. Lots of lovely objets, books and Mi1dred bits.
3. We went to bed at 6pm yesterday and today. We were very tired. Everywhere is still white. Blocks of ice white, not snowy white.
4. Kitten familiar had a bath in white sprit (self-induced, although Mr BW probably shouldn’t have left an old rusty thing soaking on the workshop bench in it). She’s not dead. Yet.
Br>
Merry Christmas!
(the cash registers have finished feasting, so now it’s your turn!)
Enjoy your day wherever you are and whatever you are doing.
But spare a thougt for those who have worked hard to make it all possible (especially the farmers and delivey drivers who’ve kept it all going in all this atrocious weather of the past few weeeks), for those who are working today in essential services, and for those with a loved one in hospital or hospice, or who have recently lost someone dear to them.
And then get ripping off that paper and munching those sprouts!
We woke early. Mr BW was excited coughing and sneezing. I tipped half a bottle of eucalyptus essential oil in his direction (excellent killer of all germs known to Witchkind, and keeperer-healthy of BW) and he turned on the TV to see what calamities had overtaken the world in the night.
After a few minutes Mr BW fetched and ate the last chocolate from the reusable advent calendar string. And BBC Breakfast started showing the Queen’s FOTCR™ Speech.
Nooooo. So wrong. This happened last year too.
Mr BW was so disgusted that he went and got his smartphone and sent them a message. I don’t think he’s ever done that before. Definitely sent to the correct email address, but he got an auto-response form Radio 5 Live. That’s one way of preventing audience particpation I guess.
2 questions today, then:
1. Should there be spoilers of the Queen’s Speech before the 25th at 3pm?
2. Do you watch the Queen’s Speech on FOTCR™ day?
Right about now, 18 years ago today (at a time when I’d totally given up on ever finding Mr Right), Mr BW and I met in a pub on the outskirts of Large Local Town.
We’ve been through a lot together in those 18 years, and, although this blog is nearly 8 years old, I don’t always write about everything, and there are still 10 years unaccounted for.
Lots of people we know describe us as soulmates. At a colleague friend’s 60th birthday party a few weeks back, one of her long-time friends, after talking to us on and off for a couple of hours, proclaimed that we were, “So calm and grounded and relaxed!” I guess that probably sums it up, most of the time (give or take the odd bad workman, episode of appalling service, injustice, or badly behaved/mannered other).
I love him very much and I can’t begin to describe why. But, I came across a passage from Thomas Hardy’s ‘Far From the Madding Crowd’ (appropriate in itself, given our preference for our own company most of the time) the other day that, I thought, rather nicely sums up what we have together:
“ This good fellowship – camaraderie – usually occurring through the similarity of pursuits, is unfortunately seldom super-added to love between the sexes, because men and women associate, not in their labours, but in their pleasures merely. Where, however, happy circumstances permit its development, the compounded feeling proves itself to be the only love which is strong as death – that love which many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown, beside which the passion usually called by the name is evanescent as steam. ”
As a child we were allowed to open our stockings any time we woke up, as long as we woke up after 6am. Then we had to be quiet until They chose to make coffee and put the dreaded turkey in the oven. We could then drag our laden pillowcases full of presents into Their room. Golden Boy my brother and I were then allowed to open one at a time, in turn, and tally was kept of who had sent what, so that, on Boxing Day, our fun could be spoiled by being made to sit down for three hours to write thank you letters for things that, in some cases, we weren’t at all thankful for. After that, we had to watch patiently while They opened Theirs, one by one, in turn. Then we were allowed to go and play with whatever we’d received until breakfast was ready.
Mr BW and I always spend the FOTCR™ at home, on our own, which is our choice, but also condoned wholeheartedly by his family, who got into an unbreakable ritual of who went to whose house on which date, when he was a child.
We used to open our presents in turn, early in the morning, but, as I always feel that the FOTCR™ is over the moment we have opened all our gifts, I now stare at them all day, usually until it’s getting dusk, when Mr BW makes me start opening them by putting one in my lap. We then open them in turn: our own ones first, and any for both of us after, according to who has run out of presents first.
Mr BW and I always get exactly what we want for the FOTCR™ as we have a pact with most people to spend the money they’d spend on presents for us, on themselves. That started about 5 years ago, when the realisation that swapping vouchers/cheques, or giving and getting presents that weren’t really needed or appreciated, was just stupid. For each other, we collect things all year. If we see something we’d like (eg a book, an objet), we give it to the other person for their ‘store’. And, while we both know where the other keeps things, we don’t peep (well, I don’t) as peeping only spoils the surprise. And it’s amazing how many things one’s bought during the year that one forgets about until they re-emerge on the 25th.
What’s the etiquette chez vous?
(Pointy hat tip to Z and DG whose posts on similar themes inspired this question)
How people who spin their cars off the road and into other cars, road signs, pedestrians (yes, I saw all three on my travels on the packed snow today) don’t understand a simple fact: the only things that cause such accidents are (a) excessive speed, (b) over-sharp braking, particularly when not travelling in a straight line and/or too fast, and, occasionally, (c) worn tyres (and other mechanical problems of a poorly maintained vehicle). No other excuses. Good advice on winter weather driving here.
While councils may happily be ‘saving money’ by not gritting/salting roads (they haven’t even gritted the main dual carriageway A road between small local town and large local town, meaning it is still at best only a lane and a half wide), insurance premiums will rise (and not just for the careless speed and up-your-bumper merchants who have and cause the accidents) which will increase the cost of road haulage and transport, and ensure that more people buy 4 wheel drives when they change their cars, so negating what (it seems like just) a few of us are doing to cut emissions. And we won’t even mention all the lost productivity at companies whose workers can’t get in.
How people (in the linked article’s case, the shadow cabinet, who, after all, had 13 years to sort the problem, and failed to) can blame the governmint for the chaos at airports, Eurostar, and on the railways. They are all run by private companies, who have only themselves to blame for lack of investment in infrastructure. They can do it in Helsinki, after all.
How an A level student thinks that this in an acceptable approach to a multi-national company for assistance with a project:
Dear whom it may concern
My name is Sam , I am currently persuing applied sicence at a-level at [a quite local school, written without capital letters and with the town name mis-spelt] , and for a vital peice of our final grade i need to work on [your company] , and i have e-mailed you to possibly find information.
I would like to know if it is possbile : a few people who are sceintifically qualified at [your company] and what qualifications they need e.g mechanics , sceintists etc.
yours sincerely
Samuel Black
I suggested that Mr BW reply, pointing out that e-mails to official outside organisations need to be clear, and require spell-checking and proof reading, and copying it to the head of the school and head of the sixth form, for information/comment.
How Parcel Farce and the postman got here yesterday (although not with my missing WitchDay cards), but not today (when it is 3 degrees C and the snow is fast melting), and how City Link, UPS and FedEx won’t, saying the roads are impassable (despite everyone managing to get out to work).
Why it was cloudy this morning when I should have been able to view the first lunar eclipse on the winter solstice since 1638. Did anyone manage to see it?
And, for those of you who enjoy a good pudding (eg Chris), here are some nice light desserts we have discovered recently. I haven’t got time to type them out (I’m supposed to be getting the remains of the utility and cleaning cupboards back in after 6 weeks in the middle of the lounge floor), so the links are to photos/scans. Download and print if you want.
Passion fruit and lemon pavlova (that one is off a yogurt pot: the grated lemon zest actually in the meringue is exceptionally nice, and also works with other citrus rind). Fig and orange syllabub trifle (I think that would work even better with mango than with the orange, although the orange is still nice; recipe photo stolen from a friend’s 60th party: it’s Mr BW’s hand, not mine). (Update: damn, the files are over a MB and too big to upload to my server, apparently, despite there being plenty of storage space left: I don’t want to reduce the size as they probably won’t then be readable; do leave a comment with a valid email address – which no-one else will see – or email me *nods to sidebar* if you’d like either or both of them.)
More snow is forecast. Bored with the white stuff now. But I have finished getting all the shopping, including food, for the FOTCR™; don’t even have to put the utility fridge on to fit it all in, it’s colder outside. *smug face*
And Happy Solstice to you all. The days get longer again now.
Very sad to read of the death of Brian Hanrahan, BBC news reporter, at the age of just 61.
Would that there were younger journalists of his calibre, integrity, knowledge, analytical skill, and unfailing gentlemanly professionalism to take his place.
“I counted them all out and I counted them all back.”
I sometimes (just very occasionally) find products that are fantastic.
This is one of those. I first saw (something similar to) these about 20 years ago, on the feet of a professional mountaineer who was staying in the same mountain hut as the group I spent New Year with walking/climbing in the Cairngorms. My memory of that occasion is limited to: (a) It was bloody cold, colder than anything I’ve ever experienced, even in so-called cold countries, (b) his boot grips were brilliant (he could run on ice safely), (c) I delivered a baby, born a month prematurely, because the ambulance service, local doctors, and midwife team couldn’t get through (it helped that I’d delivered lots of piglets and calves previously, and had drunk more than my share of a bottle of cognac in a spin-the-bottle-type game, and I don’t even like cognac).
I investigated these amazing boot grips at the time, but they were nearly £200 (and that was twenty years ago, in the early 1990s – grief, how can that be 20 years ago?). Now, they are yours for twenty quid. You can get them more cheaply if you shop around. The place I got ours from is currently out of stock, so I’ll leave you to do your own research.
Dusk on Friday 17th (just a few bits of frozen ice that fell on Thursday afternoon):
Dusk on Sunday 19th (far too much powdery and very cold snow):
How do you measure the depth of snow by the way? I have a suspicion that it is another of those measurements that people have a tendency to exaggerate. Although about twice as much as we had at the beginning of the month fell between 2.15 and 7pm on Saturday afternoon. 4 or 5 inches probably, more where it’s drifted. As it was more than minus 10 C here last night, it’s not going anywhere anytime soon, although I don’t think that there is any more forecast.
Which means no post again (we were 8 days without last time), and I’m still at least 4 WitchDay cards short – all of which were posted in good time: and you wonder why I hate the FOTCR™? Friend BW who works in the regiona1 mai1 sorting centre tells me that she has never seen such chaos in the 20-odd years she’s worked there. Most mail travels north to south by air, and, clearly it hasn’t been. She was sorting Amazon parcels with a date-stamp of 5th December on Saturday (18th) that had just come in (by road) from somewhere up north (they couldn’t fly and had been holed up at Edinburgh airport). And ‘Management’ have put up a marquee in the car park (at a cost of £80,000 for hire and heat for 10 days) to cope with everything that can’t be moved around the country. The sooner that particular service is privatised, the happier I shall be.
I wish I could tell you that no Feline Familiars were harmed in the taking of this photo, but I can’t…
I was cleaning out the hens on Sunday when Mr BW emerged from the workshop carrying the smallest. “Quick, give me your camera!” he called, “She’s struggling…” “Erm, what are you doing with her out in the snow?” I enquired, “I’m sure she was all curled up warmly on her blanket on top of the five bags of hen food you bought last week, in case of snow in-edness.” “Yes, but Debster will be asking for kitten photos!” he said. So, Dear Debster, if Kitten Familiar dies of pneumonia, I shall hold you responsible. Expect a corpse in the post. On second thoughts, given the above information, expect a rotting corpse in the post, sometime in February when RM have sorted themselves out.
Oh – and – if you’ve ever wondered if you can clean rugs with snow? Yes, you can. It works fantastically, even for Dyson owners. No dirt came out (that was visible on the snow, anyway), but the pile was rejuvenated, and the colours are back to their original 15 years ago ones. So, no excuses, if you can’t get to work because of the snow, get your rugs out there and jump on them. But not in your boot grips. Obviously.
Mr BW has managed to get to work, despite the first 3 miles being sheet compacted ice as there has been no treatment yet again. He has a new boss starting today, although why he needed to go in to meet him I have no idea – we’ve already found everything about him, and listened to several presentations by him, courtesy of FB, Twitter, YouTube and all the other social and business networking sites that I avoid like the plague.
Now, off to thaw the Feathered Familiars’ water, again…
It’s my WitchDay.
To celebrate, we are having three Friday Questions today. One for each group of 16 years. Grief! How did I get to three sixteens? When I hear of other people being three sixteens, they seem really old. I, of course, am still one sixteen mentally (but that’s a one sixteen of the 1970s, of course, not one of today’s).
I hate shopping with other people, even Mr BW. I’m like a raiding party when I go – decide, research, plan, go, get, pay, get out and get home asap. Shopping is absolutely no pleasure to me. It’s never been any different. It’s probably why I love C0stc0 – buying in bulk means fewer shopping trips, as well as better value. I particularly dislike the experience at this time of year: not least because I can see trolleys groaning under unnecessary loads that willl never be eaten, and credit cards bending under unnecessary expenditure that will be lucky to be repaid by next FOTCR™.
Q1: Do you like shopping?
I’m amazed by the number of FOTCR™ trees people seem to have these days. One family I know have six – four artificial and two real. We’ll have one small living one, in a pot, covered with a bit of old sacking secured by a gold wired-ribbon bow, with a few LED outdoor lights, on the balcony. House Rules state that it can’t go up until after my WitchDay. The tree will be watered, fed, and reused until it drops (the previous one lasted four years: it’s still alive, but the hens ate its needles, so it may still recover by next year).
Q2: How many FOTCR™ trees are there (/will there be) in your house?
The Patchy Ladies know that I dislike the FOTCR™, so they kindly make their patchy FOTCR™ projects during the meeting in the week we go to Northumber1and every autumn, so I miss the day. This year, the new vicar in the village where the group meets decided that he’d like every group to provide a FOTCR™ tree for the church, decorated according to their activities. Easy for us Patchy Ladies, less easy for the yoga and bridge groups. Being the group’s ideas and colour guru, I got the job of designing our effort. The Patchy Lady who co-ordinates the group told me weeks ago that the tree had to be up by Friday 17th. I rang her on Monday lunchtime to check the arrangements for its staging. “Oh, I thought we’d do it on Friday!” she said cheerfully, “Then we can see what the other groups have done.” I reminded her that Friday was my WitchDay, and that there was no chance that I’d be caught dead (or alive) (a) in a church, and (b) dressing a FOTCR™ tree on that day. She’d forgotten that it was my WitchDay and laughed. So we sprayed twigs and pots gold on Monday afternoon, and scrumpled up silver foil. I showed her how I suggested the material items were located on the arrangement. I’ve left her to disassemble it from her workroom and reassemble it in the church on her own today.
Q3: What would you suggest I do on my WitchDay that you think would annoy me most?
Outdoor Solar Powered Christmas Fairy Lights.
Given that it’s been raining ice here this afternoon, and judging by the fact that our solar panel is struggling to heat our water by even a few degrees at present, I don’t think there’s a snowball’s chance in hell of there being enough light to power such a joke.
Some Greeny will have bought them though. Save the planet by lining some pockets? Ho hum.
“There is only one of two purposes for any human behaviour: to gain advantage for oneself; or to take care of others.
Societies dominated by the first are characterised by market forces, greed and war. Societies formed with regard for the second are characterised in their compassion for their elderly, their sick and disabled and in the thriving of their children.
If a person were to live on their own on a desert island, the only care and compassion they would be able to show would be towards themselves. There would be no advantage to be gained over others either.
Human beings are social. Their behaviour is how they create society. There is no other device for this. All conscious thought is pre-verbal and pre-behavioural.
It is in our thoughtfulness that we transform society and move from a dominance of advantage-seeking to a dominance of care-giving.”
– Taken from an education forum I read
For those of you who have small kiddies or grandkiddies (poor souls; being paid to attempt to teach others’ over-excited sprogs individually wears me out at this time of year, such is their level of excitement and anticipation), here (courtesy of The Rotating Ladies’ Party Activities) are two nice little very low/no-cost activities you could do:
Firstly, hats: strips of wrapping paper, strengthened by covering a 4cm band of thin card, then decorated with any nasty wrapping adornments you haven’t stuck to all your glitzy parcles (or bits of holly, ivy, cut-off fir tree etc).
Secondly, ange1s: made from cut-up p1astic mi1k containers (if you’re careful you can get several ange1s from each container):
Remove sticky product label (most of them will pull off easily). Cut out the bottom and top (and discard them), and cut vertically right down one of the four corners, so that you have a piece of opaque plastic with 3 folds.
Draw an ange1 shape on a piece of paper, fold it in half vertically, place the fold into a corner of your piece of opaque plastic, draw round it with a pen before cutting out (or just cut out if you can hold it still enough).
Draw a pair of wings on a piece of paper. Put a 4cm (high) x 1cm (wide) ‘tab’ on the lower middle surface (to act as a tab to attach them to the body). Cut out from remaining plastic. Wings could face up or down, and have ‘frills’ (cut lines into the plastic). Bend and crease slightly so that the wings will face outwards from the body.
Attach wings to body by cutting two 1.5cm horizontal lines in the body and threading the tab on the wings through.
Decorate with glitter glue (if liked – I don’t, but I was made to) etc.
Either stand it up (cut a triangle off each side of the lower body to lean it forward if it is top heavy) or make a small hole in its head and thread a thin string or piece of cotton through. They look very effective hanging en masse, on different length strings – hang from a light fitting, on the tree, or from a curtain rail etc.
Then do a quick spell, and Hark, the Herald Angels Sing!
When we have arrived at the question, the answer is already near.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
In the early hours of Sunday afternoon, fire swept through The Coven Henhouse:
An eye-witness said, “The fire appears to have been started deliberately. The Daily Wail, The Sun, and the News of the World were at the scene, together with some well-used white spirit.”
Meanwhile, in another part of The Coven Grounds, the inhabitants of the henhouse munched contentedly on a saucepan of rice with added hen vitamins (a fantastic product, only available from the linked supplier), before going to bed in their brand-new henhouse.
If you have a bad infestation of red mite (which you almost certainly will have if you have people living nearby who have jumped on the, Eglu and TV good-life programmes induced, “Oh wouldn’t it be nice to have a couple of hens in our ten foot square back garden!” bandwagon, and know nothing about proper hen husbandry and the constant necessary pest control) the only way to get rid of it is to burn everything wooden and start again. We have been keeping hens for 14 years, and never had any problem with red mite until the summer before last. We battled it valiantly for eighteen months, using every supposed cure known to man, but it would have been cheaper, and much less hassle, to cut our losses and burn the house at the outset. The minute you get any split grain or rotting wood (inevitable in older henhouses) there are places for the tiny red mite (not the same as red spider mite) to hide. There used to be a cure – creosote – but, of course, it’s banned by the EU now. Given that it killed red mite when nothing else would, that may or may not be a good thing. Even a blow torch (which kills buzzy familiar baddies) wouldn’t touch red mite.
By Monday morning, only a small pile of ashes were left, ready for The Next Project. Because we’d hate Mr BW to be bored over the FOTCR™ break 🙂
And before anyone asks, no kittens were harmed in the fire (although by the look on her face, she’s plotting something of her own…):
According to a recent study today’s college students are 40 percent less empathetic than graduates from two or three decades ago…
… in today’s fast-paced and technology-driven culture, people’s self-absorption leads to more narcissism – and, consequently, less empathy. “I think we have become a society where we rate status over relationships. We relate image over character and when you do that, you place much less emphasis on the skill or the ability of empathy.”
– Allie Grasgreen
Finally got the utility sinks and worktops back yesterday, 24 days on from templating, rather than the 7-10 we were promised. They are now manufactured to my written Witchy Specifications and not some fabricator’s idea of what we might require. Well – almost – they have managed to make the remanufactured upstand 10mm too tall, despite having taken the measurements on two separate occasions, which requires that the plug socket be moved up. Luckily it will only cost us a back plate and half an hour of Mr BW’s time, and not the electrician’s fee that most people would have to pay.
I shall not bore you with the rest of the details (even though I know that there are at least two of you who love such posts); suffice it to say that the operatives (not the original ones we were told were coming at 8am, but ones that chose to turn up at 9.25am, making Mr BW late for a very important meeting, and me late for my Thursday texti1e class), damaged a door getting it in, and we’ve now finally discovered why the kitchen sink (fitted 11 days ago) has been gurgling and leaking (they failed to seal the overflow pipe onto the outlet) and we’ve discovered joins where they shouldn’t be. The Works’ Manager’s response to our email pointing out the problems, sent from his Blackberry in the middle of the night? “[tantrumy pathetic excuses and abuse deleted] Do not contact me again.” Never mind, I have the mobile phone number of the Technical Director of the company who manufactures the sheet and appoints quality assured suppliers/fabricators/installers. This company have only just acquired their supplying status, and will, I strongly suspect. be losing it again by the time we have finished. When one buys a high-end product, with a high-end price tag, one expects decent customer service. Expecting to be kept informed and for telephone calls and emails to be answered in a timely manner, and for products to be made to our written agreements, and supplied in good working order, is hardly being unreasonable.
Of course, it was always going to happen; these things always do, to us, so I am neither surprised nor upset. It could have been worse.
Anway, my attention now needs to turn to tiles for the utility.
When were in Northumber1and a few weeks ago, we went to a small local art exhibiton (texti1es, art, sculpture) and saw some gorgeous hand-made 4″ square pale coloured tiles with carved-in leaves and flowers. £16 each. Or maybe it was £14, I’m not quite sure now. I nearly bought one, but decided that £16 was a bit too much for a coaster.
On reflection, I thought that we could make tiles like that for the utility as it isn’t a large area. then I changed my mind, and started looking around. I found some quite similar, but mass-machine-made tiles, including some feature tiles with leaves (although in the wrong plane, as I want them laid diagnonally, as we had before: it makes a room look bigger). But, at £8.29 per feature tile, and £61 a metre for the plain tiles, I decided the Zanzibar White weren’t quite right.
I have now found a local supplier of clay, who will also fire dried completed tiles for us.
I’m tempted to have a go… I’m good at rolling pastry evenly, and can draw and design, after all… Mr BW is brilliant at carving/sculpting (so could do the feature tiles from my drawings) and tiling. Got to stay one step ahead of Kitsty Allsoppy, haven’t we? 😉
I know that several of you do clay work… Any thoughts, tips, ideas, pitfalls to avoid, when making such tiles, please?
And in case the thought of hand-made clay tiles scares you, how’s the weather where you are? It’s 2 C here today, overcast, but not as cold as recent days. There are tiny patches of iced-up snow left in tree- or hedge- sheltered parts of the field behind us, but we’re otherwise clear of snow now.
I care passionately about education. It says it in the sidebar and has done since the beginning of BW at the beginning of 2003.
To qualify, I believe passionately in *appropriate* education. In common with many other people of 40 and over who have given their lives to education, what I see now in schools and colleges and what I hear from friends and colleagues shocks me.
There is no coherence. There is no relevance for many youngsters. And it’s not surprising that these young people want to kick and scream, or simply opt out. I used to have answers for teachers and parents to help them support such youngsters. There used to be ways to work things out for individuals, rapidly, and before the disaffection/rot set in. Now there is so much red tape and the ever-present excuse of ‘Health and Safety’ that no one dares to do anything creative and outside the norm that isn’t officially sanctioned and signed off in triplicate: which, of course, takes months and months, whereas what individual youngsters with problems (be they short-term or longer-term) need, is an answer (way forward) yesterday. And this is the case in independent (ie fee-paying) as well as in state schools. Twice recently I’ve advised parents to do something that I have only ever once before suggested: to move their child to a different school. There simply is no point fighting intransigence and non-acceptance of responsibility for individual pupil failure within a school system.
Earlier this week there was ‘noise’ on many of the education forums about a YouTube animation about the deconstruction of education and testing in this country.
If you have 11 minutes and 40 seconds to spare, do watch it if you’re interested in either education or animation.
There was little in it that was any different to my own thoughts on the subject actually. Interesting end though… and not in a positive/good/reconstructive way either.
It’s all too easy to point up what’s wrong with a system, but much harder to actually do something about it. While such an animation got people ‘at the chalk face’ talking, I was shocked at the low level of much of the discourse. Not to mention the spelling, grammar, and lack of capital letters.
I do I hope serious thought will be given to that subject by those who fashion education policy, now, given this:
You can read more about it here.
And the worst thing is, I’ve seen it happening over the years, and have shouted endlessly. But no-one has listened. Many have agreed, but no-one has listened. And now I’m too worn out and disillusioned to keep trying. Therein, of course, lies the problem – anyone who cares has already got out, because it is truly soul destroying to see the hard number-crunched evidence of what we have all thought.
UK schools have failed the 2009+. Our 15 year olds, assessed against 15 year olds from 65 other countries, were ranked: Reading = 25/65; Maths = 28/65; Science = 16/65. The curriculum and skills taught in this country are clearly not fit for purpose. After a decade or more of schooling, 20% of our 15 year olds are functionally illiterate.
And, while the US come 8 places above us for reading, they’re not in the top 30 countries for maths, or the top 20 countries for science, so they need to be having a hard think too…
I haven’t managed to find the test papers the 15 year olds sat, though: that might be interesting too.
Google may be more benign than Microsoft but their influence is no less pervasive.
– Ham April 14th, 2003
Mr BW has just reported from deep in the French Alps that it is 15 C. At 10.30pm at night. They did have snow last week though.
“Across the whole country there are 12.9 million dependent children spread across 19.1m non-retired households, an average of 0.67 children per household. But when you look at the distribution of children across each household income level, you find that households in the bottom 20% of incomes have an average of 1.03 children, while those in the top 20% have an average of 0.34.
What that means is that the poorest 20% of (non-retired) households have over 30% of Britain’s children. Whereas the richest 20% only have 10% of the children. That is a pretty striking contrast – our economically least successful households have nearly one-third of our children.”
At last, some figures to back up what I’ve always known/seen with my own professional eyes (and been fried for in the comments for pointing out on more than one occasion).
Given such compelling supporting numbers I wonder why (soon to be Lord) Howard Flight felt the need to apologise over his remarks to the Evening Standard about child benefit cuts recently: “We’re going to have a system where the middle classes are discouraged from breeding because it’s jolly expensive. But for those on benefits, there is every incentive. Well, that’s not very sensible.”
As the linked article says, “The gross income of the bottom 20% of households before taking account of welfare benefits averages just £7600 pa. Cash welfare benefits add a further £6300 pa.” I’d love to see some statistics on the proportion of children born to the long-term unemployed. Because it’s those people, and their ever-increasing pool of offspring, who will keep dragging the country down if someone doesn’t grasp the nettle, and soon. Cycles of disadvantage (deprivation) as Michael Rutter pointed out in the mid 1970s.
Hundreds of issues in there… but they all come down to the same thing. People need to take responsibility for providing for the children they procreate and not expect others to work to provide for them. And I have a suspicion that ‘nudging‘ isn’t going to be enough to achieve this re-education.
Now let me see… thrown into the pot (*nods down*) for annoying me in the last week:
Royal Mail – no delivery since last Monday.
TalkTalk – ‘forgetting’ that they promised me 6 months of free service for the long period without broadband last summer, and reinstating full price after 3, and then taking 41 emails (yes, 41, although some of them were me resending the previous ones when they hadn’t replied after 24 hours) back and forwards to agree to reinstate what they already promised (in writing).
BT – for sending me a letter telling me that my 12 month renewable contract would continue ‘at the same low price’ if I did nothing, and that only if I wanted to cancel (ie get an increase in price of nearly £5 a month) did I need to ring up… and then increasing the price to the ‘if you cancel’ price anyway, because, I was told, by 3 separate people, they didn’t know that I wasn’t going to ring up before the current contract runs out – today – to ask for a £60 a year price rise… 1 hour 10 minutes on the phone, 2 English, 1 Indian, then an English who sympathised lots and gave me the current price, plus an extra £3 a month off. And told me the magic way to get something resolved in 5 minutes next time. Still trying to decide if £36 for 70 minutes ‘work’ is a good deal or not…
Every courier company – for claiming it was impossible to get here for most of last week (3″ of snow, tops), when Mr BW was going in and out quite happily, in a tiny vehicle cf theirs.
HP – for insisting on sending me (from Germany) a new (ie reconditioned, clearly not new) printer to fix the lines-across-print or only part-text-lines-printed problem in my top-of-the-range 11 month old HP OfficeJet Pro 8500 (which is sold as an office machine rated to many times more than the 5,500 copies I have done in 11 months), rather than the print heads I told them were required. Oh, and, worse than this… omitting a first step from their online troubleshooting guide: “Check that there are no firmware or software updates for your printer first, before filling in the support form which always has to result in a new unit being sent out once you have triggered the process, even when you subsequently find, not on our company website, but through a Google search leading to a tech forum, that it’s not what you need.” Given that the ‘new’ printer came without any leads, trays, parts etc (including ink cartridges and print heads), that was never going to solve the problem with worn print heads (after only 5,500 copies). Fortunately, 22 Mrs Angry emails back and forwards with India (how I love them) finally elicited some print heads (sent from France) which arrived a day after the ‘new’ printer (which otherwise would have cost over £100… erm…), which solved the problem. Now all I have to do is work out how to get the ‘new’ printer (which I never wanted, but had to have just in case I was wrong about the print heads, which they were convinced I was, as they weren’t going to send it twice) to be collected so it can go back to the Czech Republic, when the number they have given me just sounds ‘unobtainable’. If it wasn’t in such a huge box (incorrectly arrowed so it was stood on its end in transit, rather than flat) I’d keep it for future spares, because they are so disorganised, I doubt they’d notice…
And there are more minor things too… And I’m not even going to mention Large Local Town Large Hospital who, in amalgamating to become even larger, almost filled the local rag with horror stories this week, which included serious ‘negative happenings’ (or, more correctly, non-happenings) to three people we know.
So, a Big Stir Up Spell was necessary. A by-product of the heat form the cauldron was, of course, the melting snow. Normality resumes, then, hopefully. Whatever normality is in this crazy media- and consumerism- driven world.
Blogging is predicated on dissatisfaction.
– Ron
Do you ever think of odd questions to which you don’t know the answers?
For instance, why is Northampton in the Midlands, and also (now) has a county around it, while Southampton is several hundred miles away and a port on the south coast? I suppose it would be worse if the locations were reversed…
I’m always thinking of odd questions, but I don’t often remember them long enough to look up the answers. Which might mean that either: (a) my memory is getting worse (undoubtedly true), or (b) I wasn’t that interested in the first place, and was just thinking up questions for the sake of it. I used to do that a lot when I was a Small Witch, because it was a good way of getting interesting people to talk to me.
Other questions that are currently puzzling me:
Why are UPS so incompetent? Having failed to deliver my parcel (sent on a named-day express delivery from Germany) two days in a row, due to ‘adverse weather conditions’, Mr BW went in at 5pm yesterday (the depot is just down the road from his work), to be told that it was in a lorry and no-one could get it out until the morning, as they were only the office staff, but they would get someone to retrieve it in the morning, so that Mr BW could pick it up today. So, what happens? It’s gone out on the lorry, undoubtedly for non-delivery again, today, due to ‘adverse weather conditions’. Which we know isn’t true as Mr BW has travelled that route to work on each of the 3 days this week that they have failed to deliver. As they don’t provide telephone numbers to anything other than automated services, there is no way of doing anything about it.
How is it so hard to find the cheapest priced items on the internet these days? You can’t trust the comparison sites, or Google, as he with the biggest marketing budget gets the highest rankings. I’ve found that getting the name of the cheapest merchant from somewhere like Amazon Marketplace, and then Googling that often results in much lower prices than buying through the third party website (and significantly lower, not just the small percentage that they might be paying the umbrella company). I’ve done quite a lot of online shopping/stocking up/replacing things this week (to beat the VAT/general price hike in January) and reckon I’ve saved well over a hundred pounds. £72 on just one item costing, (eventually) £164!
Why are some companies so unhelpful? Yesterday morning I emailed a particular retailer asking them for further information on a product (costing £236) on their website, that I named in full. I got a reply this morning telling me that they could only answer my query (which was about the 2 year warranty as the product is obsolete and the manufacturer has stopped making, servicing or supporting them) if I gave them either the product number or the link to the item. Lost sale. If they can’t be bothered to use the search facility on their own website (which is how I’d have had to get the information), then I can’t be bothered to give them my hard-earned Witchy Pennies.
Do you have any questions currently, to share with us?
Times are hard, so what does a retailer do to improve customer morale?
If you’re T£$co (not spent a penny in there myself for, oh… pushing ten years, I’d say), you devalue the loyalty vouchers you’ve already given to your customers.
Next Monday, the vouchers are losing a quarter of their value, when used on rewards purchases. That is, things like RAC membership, cinema tickets, days out and gifts.
This link tells you more, and this link tells you how to check if you’ve spent all the vouchers you’ve been issued.
Use ’em quick. And watch out for T£$co’s next con… (they’ve already halved the number of points they give on petrol and diesel purchases from November 1st).
Best way to deal with T£$co is to avoid them completely methinks. Mind you, I’ve visited Morrisons a couple of times just recently as Quite Near Scum Town where I usually do my Thursday Advanced Texti1e course (other than today, when snow has stopped play) only has T£$co, Netto or Morrisons, and the latter is the lesser of the evils when I need a couple of things on my way home. I can’t decide whether it’s the other shoppers or just the grubbiness of the place and the uninspired packaging of the displays and products that makes me feel like I need a good bath when I leave. Whichever it is, I don’t find their prices any cheaper than Sainsbury’s.
And I must report that my package experienced an exception, yesterday and today.
So the UPS website tells me. Meaning, their driver can’t be arsed to deliver to me and is using the snow as an excuse. As their depot is minutes form Mr BW’s work, and he has managed to get their yesterday and today in a small car, then their large delivery truck shouldn’t have any problems.
Three flakes of snow (about 2″ at present) and the whole country grinds to a halt. Even email and mobile phone systems seem to be affected by it, which I don’t understand.
It’s the day I should have been teaching a texti1e course on using up tiny weeny 5crap5 of fabric. Snow stopped play. So, the two sacks full of offcuts people have been donating to me for the last 3 years remain to clutter up The Studio until the rescheduled date in another few weeks.
It’s World Aids Day.
I’ve said all there is to say about that on past December 1sts (check the archives *nods right and down* if you’re interested).
Oh, except… I wonder if we’d now have cures for HIV (and cancer) if all the money that has been spent on war by supposedly developed countries, since World Aids Day was first declared in 1988, had been spent instead on medical research?
It’s the beginning of Mr BW’s Sequential Choccy Calendar. Reused for the 6th year. The thought of chocolate for breakfast (or, more likely, before breakfast) repulses me, but I’m no chocoholic.
And I find I already have 2 FOTCR™ cards. One given to me last Friday, and one arrived by 2nd card post yesterday. Why, oh why so early?