Floating down to Camelot

Don't people nowadays know about this whole dipping your headlights thing when people are approaching or when following someone close behind? Is this one of those dying arts, like basket-weaving, thatching, and bothering to indicate when turning left, so people don't sit there needlessly giving way to you?

Agh. I really, really mustn't listen to radio phone-ins. I don't normally do it, but this time the radio happened to be on in the car at the wrong moment. I just get so cross and so frustrated and so depressed at the sheer number of people who know they are right. They spout their bigoted opinions and their narrow little world views, and they say it with absolute unshakeable conviction that they are right, and that anyone who thinks otherwise is morally wrong or worthless or stupid or rotten to the core. It makes me want to bang my head against the wall and cry. Occasionaly I might even more or less agree with what they're saying, but they state it as such categorical fact that I want to pin them to the wall and devil's advocate them to death.

A birthday card was just passed around at work for us all to sign. It included a rogue apostrophe! This was in the proper printed greeting! You kind of expect these thing's in handwritten sign's in greengrocers shop's or special's board's in pub's, and we all make slip's of the pen every now and then, but a proper published greeting's card? Outrage! Outrage! What i's the world coming to? et'c e'tc.

It's not even a funny mistake. Rogue inverted commas can be. ("Fresh" chicken soup). Confusion over similar words can be. ("The meat is complimented by the sauce." "Beware the deadly rouge gorilla fighters" etc.) This was just annoying. I am sorry to say that I had to discreetly cross it out before I could sign the card.

This is a predictable rant, because I know I've ranted about similar things before. In fact, I can probably leave half the words blank, and you'd all be able to fill them in. (Now, there's an idea for an LJ post…)

( On reading for pleasure etc. )

I watched the second episode of Sense and Sensibility last night, which I'd recorded the previous night. We reached the end of the episode, got a fraction of a second of blackness… and – bang! – straight into a preview of next week's episode. I hate how they do this. I'm quite fond of trailers in their place, but there are definitely times when I don't want to see any spoilers for the next episode. At any rate, I like to have the choice of whether to watch it or not, rather than to have it come crashing in before I've realised that the episode has actually finished, totally ruining the effect of the ending.

Announcers are even worse. A few weeks ago, I was watching an episode of a TV series in which heartbreaking things happened. The end of the episode was quiet and deeply emotional, and I was in tears. The screen just began to fade to black… and in came the loud and cheery voice of the announcer telling me about some stupid laugh-a-minute programme coming up later in the week. (Yes, I know I can just reach for the "mute" button the moment the programme is finished, but it's hard to get quite so emotionally caught up in a programme if you're poised over the remote control, ready to mute at the slightest hint of an imminent ending.)

Viewers often complain about things like this, but the BBC (and others) never take the blind bit of notice. Of course, they want to attract and keep viewers, and presumably they've done research that finds that more people are attracted by pushy trailers and announcements that are deterred by it. It's just a shame. I wonder if things like this genuinely do attract more people than they deter. Perhaps they assume that people like me will get cross, but will still watch. However, I've pretty much given up watching television documentaries because I've got so annoyed by their irritating habits, such as concentrating on the presenter and not the content, and telling us everything three times – one in a "coming up" preview, once properly, and once in a "previously in" recap.

I expect people will accuse me of being bah humbuggy, but, hey…

Say something like, "It's three weeks until Christmas" (when it is three weeks until Christmas, of course), and the standard response from most adults is a pained, "Oh, please, don't." Library book issues plummet in December, as people say with heart-felt regret, "Oh, I wish I had time to read, but I've got so much still to do." (By the way, it always bothers me when I hear parents say to their children at the end of November, "You can't borrow any more books today, because Father Christmas might bring you some." Subtext: "I'm too busy rushing around like a headless chicken buying presents, and will forget to return them, so you're not allowed books for the next month.")

Yesterday, I heard someone complain about how they'd been out for six nights out of the past seven at various Christmas parties, "and you have to go, haven't you, because it's rude not to, but it's just too much." Today, I heard someone explain at great length about how they "had" to spend Christmas with various relatives they had nothing in common with, and how much they were "dreading" it. Someone else said how their mum used to spend all of Christmas day cooking, and then would go to bed after the washing-up was done, exhausted.

The shops are full of stressed people, their tempers close to breaking, struggling desperately to buy something for distant relatives they don't know – and what chance is there that they will get something the relative actually wants? Parents are scouring the shops for whatever the media tells them is this year's "must have present", and fear their child's Christmas will be ruined by not having it.

While a lot of individuals have very happy Christmases, an awful lot of people seem to be made very stressed by something that's supposed to be joyous. I wonder what's gone wrong.

"Recycle!" they tell us. They talk about going to a fortnightly rubbish collection, to force people to recycle, rather than throw away. They talk about charging per rubbish bag. School children (at least here) have been sent out with pledge books, to collect "I will recycle" pledges from any adult they can find. Okay. So why, Mr Council, do you make it so hard for us to do it?

We have a fortnightly kerbside recycling collection. Actually remembering which is our "on" week and which is our "off" week usually defeats us. Even when we remember, our problems are far from over. The black box can be used for glass and paper, but not just any old paper, oh no. Newspapers are fine. Stapled magazines are fine. Glued magazines? No way. Junk mail? Old envelopes? Amazon packaging? Cereal packets? Pizza boxes? All the multifarious bits of cardboard that supermarket food gets wrapped in? No to all of these. However, the local recycling place (only open at weekends, and not all day) takes all paper and card and plastic all mixed together. Since this is, one would expect, the ultimate destination of the kerbside collection, why does the kerbside one have more restrictions? We tend to chuck all cardboard and paper into the black box, which means that separating it out on black box day becomes too much of a nuisance, and we drive off to the recycling place at the weekend - thus making an extra, ought-not-to-be-unnecessary journey - where at least they'll take it all, and not get sniffy about a stray envelope.

We can also put out garden rubbish for a fortnightly collection, but only in special bags that we have to buy at £1 each, and don't get back. Where do all these bags go? Cluttering up landfill? In contrast, if we drive to the recycling place (only open at weekends, and not all day), we can tip the garden waste in the skip, and keep the bag. We can also collect food waste, but these, too, need to be in plastic bags. Someone at work says she doesn't have a single plastic bag in the house, since she loads her shopping direct from trolley into crates in the car, yet she's been told that she's got to go out and buy (or otherwise obtain) plastic bags if she wants use this service.

And while we're on the subject of bags... It's amazing how much effort it requires to stop people giving up bags in shops, even when you've come armed with your own re-useable ones... But this suddenly sounds familiar, so I think I must have ranted about this before. I'll be quiet now.

1. When you drop a laptop on top of a glass of home-made plum wine, it is not good for the carpet, the glass, your feet, or the laptop. Fortunately, the stain comes out, feet prove freakishly good at avoiding deadly injury, and the glass was only cheap, but the laptop appears to have died completely as a result of its late-night ordeal. Grr!!!!

2. It is nice having a calendar that tells you all about the customs associated with each day. The trouble comes when said calendar is so nice that you decide you don't want to write anything on it, so you live your life depending on your frail human memory to tell you when you've got to do something. My childhood home town has a community radio programme that broadcasts for a few days this week. I knew all about it, but still managed to completely forget to listen to my Mum's interview, and to the play about folk songs being collected in the local workhouse in 1908. I really really wanted to hear the play, since I did quite a bit of research about those workhouse singers a few years ago. Grr!!!!

3. Sainsbury's seems to be very proud of the fact that you can now pretty much do your entire week's food shop in the petrol station. It is not something to boast about! I was quarter of an hour waiting for petrol yesterday, and the queue for the petrol station was grinding traffic to a halt in the whole area. So many people were dilly-dallying around the shop, very slowly choosing food, while their car sat there empty, blocking a pump. Even people who only wanted to pay for petrol had to queue patiently behind all those people with their overflowing baskets. Grr!!!!

4. While on the subject of Sainsbury's, and not really a grr, I think I need to learn that just because you can pick up a free pasta bowl with the five stickered items you were going to buy anyway, you don't have to. I can foresee a future in which large white pasta bowls feature very highly, gradually taking over the kitchen, and soon, indeed, the world.

5. Having two late alcohol-fuelled nights in a row plays havoc with one's ability to write. It also makes you feel that playing Guitar Hero on "expert" is a good idea. It does, however, somewhat take away your ability to manage a single coherent note. This makes you frustrated. This makes you do silly things like... er... dropping a laptop on a glass of home-made plum wine...

What is it with me this weekend? Why does every bird and animal on Vectis feel the need to leap out in front of me? On a trip to West Wight yesterday, I almost squashed a pheasant, a partridge, a baby pigeon, two rabbits, a stoatorweasel, and a red squirrel. This is far too many to be mere coincidence. I think a description of my car has been given out on the Fur and Feather Radio Station. Clearly they know that I'm the sort of person who will do anything I can to avoid hitting said beasties, rather than being one of those drivers who goes, "Yay! Road kill!" and gleefully squashes them. Either I have been chosen for a giant introductory game of chicken ("Baby's First Insane Brush With Death. Ah, how cute! Let's put it in the family album"), or unhappy animals are using me for their suicide attempts/cries for help, knowing that I almost certainly won't really hit them.

( The sound of crunching in the evening )

How's this for a piece of silliness? Two weeks ago, I posted an anniversary card to my parents. Ten days later, it still hadn't arrived. 11 days after I posted it, they got a note through the door saying that the postman had tried to deliver something to their house, but had had to take it away again since there was inadequate postage on it. They were told to go to the main sorting office, 8 miles away, to collect it.

At great personal cost – money, time, and threats to life and limb* - my parents went into town to get the mystery package. They were told that the postage on it was short by 6p, but they had pay an additional one pound on top of this. Even then they didn't get the letter. The post office person carefully counted out 6 1p stamps, and put them on the letter, being careful to hide it from my parents so they couldn't see what it was. They were then told to go home; the letter would be put in the post as normal and would arrive in due course. Three days later – i.e. two postal days, and one Sunday - it did. It was indeed my card.

6p appears to be the difference between a first class normal letter, and a second class large letter, so I assume that the card was just a bit too big to go by normal letter rate. To be honest, I'd totally forgotten the existence of the new big latter rate, but even if I'd remember, I think I'd have assumed the card was small enough and thin enough to pass as normal. Still, that's fair enough. What is annoying, though, is the 11 days it took the Post Office to tell my parents about it, and their refusal to hand it over.

* Okay, so they got on the bus that stops right outside their front door, paid nothing, since they're over 60, and had a trouble-free bus journey over the delightful scenery of Cleeve Hill, but why let the truth spoil a good story? In my version, they fought lions en route, and spent all their hard-won savings on hiring horses. I bet the real version of most great sagas is actually fairly prosaic. That Beowulf, you know… Mildly bruised a baby squirrel, causing its mother to throw a nut at his head… And as for King Arthur… Found a rusty penknife in a puddle, and before you know it, the bards are hailing him as king.

Umbrellas need to be banned. What with the smoking ban coming in tomorrow, and a shiny new prime minister eager to make his mark, I think the time has never been better to lobby for this. Umbrellas should be banned in public. (People can, of course, use them in the privacy of their own home.)

Think of the health benefits! Never more will people return from shopping trips minus their eyes. Never more will people suffer bad backs and bad necks from desperately twisting their upper body out of the way of someone else's badly-wielded umbrella. Never more will people get cold and drenched when other people shake their umbrellas dry all over them. Never more will people fork out money for some outdoor spectator event, only to find their view completely blocked by the umbrellas of the people on the front row. Even the poor enslaved Umbrellas Users will benefit, since they will learn the rain-resistant qualities of waterproofs and hoods. Never more will they wrench muscles as their umbrellas catches the wind and tries to escape to freedom. Relationships will benefit, since they will no longer be plagued with the "two people, one umbrella" dilemma. It's even good for the environment, as the countryside is cleared of the shattered remains of skeletal umbrellas, torn apart by the wind.

I am aware that there are probably Umbrella Users on my friends list, so I will admit that some Users are responsible ones who commit none of the above evils. Unfortunately, they appear to be in the minority. I am actually quite prepared to accept something less than a total ban, but one has to start by lobbying for the most extreme result, so one can make concessions later. I am prepared to accept the following measures:

- All aspiring Umbrella Users must undertake a course of training in responsible umbrella use, so they wield them with consideration for others.
- The Umbrella Code is to be written and enforced. Umbrella Wardens fine people who breach it - e.g. by meandering along a busy road with their over-large umbrella lurching around all over the place.
- Local Councils are given the power to create Umbrella Free Zones - in narrow lanes, for example, at outdoor performances, or in ruined castles with narrow windy passageways.
- A size limit is imposed on umbrellas.
- Don't drink and umbrella!

After the smoking ban has been achieved, I hope as many people as possible in the country will join me in campaigning against this most terrible of social evils: the umbrella!

Grr! I think Father's Day cards are even more mired in stereotypical images than Mother's Day cards. Although my Mum would rather stand on one leg up a ladder and attack a shrub with a hatchet, than elegantly dead-head roses, at least a flower design can be fairly neutral. However, it doesn't seem to have crossed the minds of the card manufacturers that Dads can be anything other than sports-loving, heavy-drinking, TV-watching slobs.

...are annoying. There you are, minding your own business on your day off, when suddenly a strange man appears at the upstairs window, sending you scurrying with a squeal, desperately trying to avoid tripping over terrified cats. You then realise that you've spent all your money on whisky and beer cider and CDs, so spend the next ten minutes rushing around to all your husband's habitual change-dumping grounds, and laboriously assemble a coin skycraper that adds up to the right amount. You try to placate some sulky cats, and go cower behind a closed curtain and do some LJ, while alien figures thump at the windows, their dark shapes monstrous in shadow and silhouette. And what do the window cleaners do? Drive away, leaving a little note through the door, saying "You were out when we called." Hmm... I'd have thought the car in the drive would have been a clue, not the mention all the open windows, the full mug of coffee near the kitchen window, folk music being played a little too loudly, and, indeed, the fact that they actually saw me.

I promised myself not to post anything else this week, but this has annoyed me today. Our local paper has just run a "Child of the Year" competition, results announced today. Parents sent in posed portraits of their child (all taken by the same photographer), and they were printed in a special supplement. All that was shown was the photo and the child's name. And, on that basis, readers were invited to vote for the "best child" in each age group.

The paper says it was a "huge success", with nearly 1500 people voting - i.e. 1% of the population, and fewer than four votes were child (parents, grandpapents, auntie..?) The list of winners even listed the number of votes, so the winning over 8 now knows that 23 fewer people liked them than liked the winning 5 - 8. And so on.

We have a carnival in every town here, and hundreds of little girls queue up to enter the competitions to choose carnival princesses and carnival queens. However, at least in these they're given a chance to show something of their personality. A still photo is a beauty contest, plain and simple. Either that, or it's a test of how many people your parents know. This latter reason I can at least tolerate. I find it far more disturbing to think that total strangers are poring over pages of photos of children they don't know and picking out the "best" one.

What sort of message is this giving to children? That worth is judged purely by looks. Babies who don't win don't know anything about it, but there were children up to 11 or 12 in this competition. I'm certainly not against having winners and losers in children's competitions, but at least have it relate to something the child does, not just to how they look. How many little girls have had their confidence knocked by having been judged wanting?

Personally, I found the whole thing very objectionable and quite disturbing. However, I'm not a parent. Maybe parents here will tell me I'm missing the point.

Sorry. I've been quite ranty this week, and also quite talkative. But here goes...

( Why do they make it so HARD to book a hotel online? )

After four man hours of work last night we managed to book 5 out of the 9 nights, a flight, and a car. We then retreated, battered and bruised. The battle will be rejoined today.

I should also note that this was the first Friday night in aeons that we didn't have anything to drink. I feel quite proud of myself, though I'm aware that this fact makes me seen very bad.

Today we need to tidy the house and make it fit for polite company next weekend. Not that we're getting any... ;-)

I was listening to a radio phone-in in the car earlier, prompted by Prince Charles allegedly saying that Mcdonalds should be banned because it leads to obesity*. A lot of people were phoning in to agree, some of them getting really heated. This really annoyed me. It all seems part of the modern trend not to take responsibility for your own actions. It's always someone else's fault. ( More... )

1. When a road is closed, why do They then put roadworks on all the possible alternative routes?

2. Why is it that you can bump yourself really hard, so it really, really hurts, but end up with no bruise whatsoever, so therefore get no sympathy? However, at other times you get a wonderful bruise, despite not remembering what you bumped into, and the bruise not hurting. This is Not Fair.

3. Why is it ten times easier to get 30 3 year olds to settle down to story-telling, than it is to get 30 grown-ups to settle down to story-telling training?

4. Why do I always remember things I want to email/post to LJ/write down/tell someone about when I'm driving or in the shower, but always forget them as soon as I'm sitting down by my computer?

Have any of the "hers" around here ever seen anything in the "For Her" section of a Christmas gift catalogue that they would actually want for Christmas? Am I totally out of synch with British womanhood in not longing for moisturiser or bubble bath or curling tongs? At least the men are allowed gadgets and toys, as well as aftershave. I saw one place that was advertising a gift of a magazine subscriptions, and the "for her" selection was entirely women's magazines, while the men were allowed computer games, films, cameras etc. Men are allowed to be interested in things and to do things. Women are only allowed to be interested in beauty and celebrity gossip. It is most annoying. Does it reflect reality, I wonder? I doubt it.

Though speaking of hims, a certain him I know has given me his Christmas list. It includes a full set of fourteenth century armour, an anvil (small), a halberd, a spear things, longsword wasters, and a gambeson. Aftershave would be easier to obtain.

This morning, I was at a meeting in Southampton. After it had finished, I popped into the food court of the big shopping centre to grab some lunch. I went to a sandwich place, where I was confronted with a long counter, with a member of staff at each end, each with a small queue of customers. Being a law-abiding person, I looked round for any clues as to which end I was supposed to queue at. When I saw none, I chose one end at random. I queued, got to the front, said what I wanted, paid for it, and moved to one side to wait for it to come.

I waited, and waited, and waited. Eventually, the chap said something to me, but he had such a strong foreign accent I couldn't tell what he was saying. I asked him to repeat it, but I still couldn't tell what he was saying. Embarrassed, I asked again... and finally worked out he was asking me if I'd ordered at the other end. Puzzled, I said that no, I'd ordered from him. He sighed, and told me that I should have ordered at the other end, then come and paid him. He sent me to the other end to order, then told me to come back. "Next time order at the other end," he told me sternly. "Next time?" I thought. "You can bet there won't be a next time."

( Customer care rant - longer than it should be )