random

Historical in Context

You might, if you read my blog regularly, have been wondering what I have been doing recently. I haven’t posted for a while, so as you might guess, that answer to your question is "not much".

I haven’t been doing nothing, however. My desk is slowly taking shape, after many trials with the electric jigsaw (the supposed "guide" is surely a misnomer) and the hand saws (one goes straight but takes ages; the other is nice and quick but goes all over the place). I’m now sorting out the keyboard shelf so I shall soon be shouting at the hammer for making such an impression of my thumb, and quite possibly lobbing a few dowels across the room. Then it remains to build the final shelf for the monitor, which could prove the greatest challenge: another job for the electric jigsaw.

I have also applied for a few jobs. I want to start my working life proper somewhere stimulating and exciting: I’ll be damned if I’m forced to make friends with electronic colleagues and a calculator named "Alfred". I still want to be creative and I want to have the opportunity to present myself as an entity rather than as an employee, but chances are getting fewer and I’m looking abroad.

...with 2 replies.

Deep Lincoln

I spent last week in Boston (Lincolnshire, of course) with my grandparents. It was more pleasant than I had expected, though it was indeed rather warm. There were good photo opportunities in the town centre and in the boat cruise up the River Witham. We climbed The Stump, the 14th highest tower in Britain, apparently.

On returning on Sunday I went about doing something rather silly.

I have long wanted to have a desk in my room. My room is rather small and is rather restricted in its arrangement by a set of rather ugly pipes in one corner. On moving in my grandparents bought me a wardrobe to hide the pipes. I do use it, but it’s still a bit of a pain. So, while most sensible people would perhaps buy a desk and cut out holes for the pipes, I set about converting my wardrobe into a desk. Now, this is definitely something I do not recommend. Trimming the wardrobe door, which has a modern kind of motif, proved to be a tricky job; and it remains to trim the rest of the wardrobe to the size of the door.

Another thing I’d recommend is to get a decent circular saw or a decent electric jigsaw. I had an electric jigsaw and the blade broke, but not before struggling awkwardly and before snapping the blade. I gave up and used a hand saw. The edges are much straighter and my arms feel an awful lot stronger. However, it takes a lot longer.

...with no replies just yet.

Gasping

There was a minor frustration spreading around Cramlington this morning as the residents awoke to find their taps dry. About this time last night the water had stopped. Apparently, a pipe had burst under a main road and obliterated the supply to about half of Cramlington. This information was privy solely to those that checked the Northumbrian Water website regularly throughout the day. After promising to have it up and running by 9pm it did eventually start coming at about 10.20pm (of course completely unusable but before the "emergency repair time limit" of 24 hours, and thus avoiding a costly payout of £20 to each household and £50 to each business affected). Bottled water was a ten minute bus-ride away on the other side of town or there were some bowsers in discrete locations in the affected areas. It appears Northumbrian Water did not appreciate the wider effects of its minor catastrophe, since Eastfield (itself a sizeable area) was cunningly omitted from the water reparation strategy.

Now most in this situation would say how they have been made to realise how precious life is and how much we take for granted. However we learnt more valuable lessons today. Firstly, the human race is much more resilient than most pessimists would give credit for. We would not have realised this was a widespread problem had I not kept checking the website. Secondly, I learned that you can get a lot of bottled water for not much money, really. Sainsbury’s do their own Basics brand at 17p a 1.5 litre bottle. Bit of a bargain when others might panic-buy a night in a hotel room.

...with no replies just yet.

More To The Point

The buzz question in Britain at the moment is "how do we combat knife-crime?". Looking around you find there are a lot of answers. Some suggest tackling poverty as an indirect solution; some suggest having police stop-and-search every questionable face on the street; I have even seen suggested that knives should have their pointed tips removed to reduce their effectiveness as a weapon.

None of these will work. There are already thousands ingrained with fear and a need for retribution that offering them a "financial package", searching them to submission and trying to persuade them to buy these new knives without points will do nothing. The politicians simply see them as the denizens of council estates; the results of a poverty-stricken upbringing without any future hope. They seem to miss the point that they lack respect for "authority" and their reasons for turning their back on the rest of society.

I have just purchased The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels because of what I believe is the new communism. It is the uprising of those that feel repressed and looked-down-upon by the rest: forming their own micro-cultures of equality with some degree of hostility towards their oppressors. It is probably not the revolution that Marx and Engels envisioned (though without reading the book I could not speculate further). But what concerns me is that history tells only dark stories where democracy has fought against communism.

...with no replies just yet.

Come To London

People often ask me why I dislike London so much. It’s the pretentiousness and arrogance of the place.

Take this morning. I received an email from the TDA trying to persuade me to get into teaching. It has announced its new pay rises for newly qualified teachers. From £20,627 to £20,155 marks a whopping 2.45% pay increase. That is of course unless you happen to teach in London, where starting salaries rise from £24,168 to £25,000, making a rise of over 3.4%.

If people are so drawn to London, why do they have to give bigger pay rises to people that would otherwise be there in the first place?

...with no replies just yet.

Privileges for the Privileged

I read this morning about Lord Coe’s glowing view of the legacy of the 2012 Olympic Games. He says:

I don’t see a generation out there who are lost or are hoodies, I don’t see the world like that, when I go around that’s not what I see.

I’ve taken a rather pessimistic view of sport in Britain, and that the Olympics will do little to change that. In my personal experience, sport is only pushed in the way of those that display early talent. And even then, only those that get personal attention early on have a chance of making it into the big time.

It was a gripe of mine that while at Borden Grammar, that despite years of concerns from teachers about lack of funding and teaching resources for academic studies, funding was made available for and spent on a huge astroturf pitch, a new pavilion (with impressive catering facilities) and an additional all-weather area for other sports. It felt like a betrayal, in part, that I spent time in a school supposedly encouraging academic excellence, which maintained a firm eye on improving the sports facilities. This wouldn’t have irked me so much had there not already been an astroturf pitch in Sittingbourne, and had the school not been surrounded by a park, a leisure centre, further field space and a local workers’ group recreation centre.

But despite this, during my time at university and at school, I’ve found that time is invested in you only if you are a marketable asset. If you can represent the school or university at a competitive level, you are open to all sorts of time investiture, financial investment and perks. I never felt welcome at football or cricket trials at school and was never really encouraged at all during that time. At university, participating in any sort of sporting activity requires money (and a substantial amount): that is, of course, unless you show any sort of finesse. In which case, you are not only treated to free gym membership and use of all the university’s sporting facilities (and I dare say priority in obtaining them), you are also privy to free personal attention, performance monitoring and any advice they can spare (see the CPRS site).

In essence, sport is for those that have the time invested in them. This is the kind of thing Lord Coe sees. If you have been able to build on early talent, you will never see a locked door. If you are like me and want to get into sport, I hear tiddlywinks is quite affordable.

...with no replies just yet.

Chop Chop

I had my hair cut today. It wasn’t something I planned, so I am a little in shock now. This morning I had what appeared to be black hair: the stubborn locks that remained since dying it in December covering what lied beneath. It was also rather long, gathering at the base of my neck and swept across my eyes. Now, it is desperately pale blond, and rather short. I look rather anaemic now.

Beforehand I had been working on some freelance work. It isn’t all that easy. I had been hoping to get it done fairly quickly but the intricacies in the detail are quite amazing. I am, in fact, surprised by the additional research I’ve had to do to get the results that are required. That’ll teach me!

The final thing that affected me this week was being called a coward. It was meant in a light-hearted way and I don’t think there was too much meaning behind it, but it did get me thinking. It followed me saying how I now crave a simple and quiet life: to settle down and knuckle down. I don’t want to be under undue pressure and I don’t want to be in a job that no-one else gives two hoots about. I think I’m in the right, but does it make me a coward?

...with no replies just yet.

All Was Well

Even before I had finished my exams I had started to pick up the last two Harry Potter books again. I had started reading The Half Blood Prince not too long after it had first been released, but I stopped reading it. I forget why. But for a long time I had that and The Deathly Hallows on my ‘to read’ shelf. That shelf is quite big, by the way.

I can’t describe how wonderfully it is written, for those that have not read them. And I suggest if you have read this far without having read the books and intend to, you really should stop reading this now. This is a potential plot spoiler.

I was rather enjoying the book until the moment Harry looked into the Pensieve for the last time and understood that he must pay the ultimate sacrifice: be killed for the sake of the world. I felt that was rather fitting. That really was the last thing he had to do. The fact that he was able to return to life by some "unexplained technicality" seemed a bit of a cop-out.

The fact that he survived then paved the way for him to lead the rest of his life as he could only have done in a Voldemort-free world; being able to raise a family with Ginny with three children named after his parents and Dumbledore. It felt strangely wholely unsatisfying. And it has left me feeling rather depressed.

Is that because the overall message behind the whole set of books in the series is that being able to love is life’s greatest power? Possibly.

...with no replies just yet.

In A World Of My Own

I think I have a small problem. Over the past couple of days I’ve started to realise that playing World Of Warcraft is starting to get to me.

On Wednesday evening, I was playing in a "Heroic Dungeon" called The Mechanar, and in short the group kept dying. We decided to call it and I turned off the computer. This was shortly before midnight, and I went to bed a little after. At about four in the morning I roused slightly and in pure delirium aided by flu symptoms I was immersed in the environment of The Mechanar, trying to fight but being completely confused and unable to move. This lasted for about an hour.

Yesterday the flu took hold. I kept reflecting on that episode the previous night. Despite being rather overcome by body aches and light-headedness, I played again that evening. I was asked to tank (which means being the punching bag while other players get to do the fun stuff), which is both difficult and rather boring. We were making good progress through Karazhan when the world server screwed up and sent most offline. Being one of the survivors of the glitch, I remembered reading about someone who broke the world record for levelling a character from one to seventy in the shortest time, which was a little under 44 hours. He could see how long he had played on that character by typing /played, so I tried it.

I have spent 52 days of the last three years playing on my main character. To be fair, most in the guild that were online at the time had played much longer in a shorter timespan, but on reading that result I was rather shocked. 52 days is a long time. Perhaps too long…

...with no replies just yet.

For Love Nor Money

St Valentine’s Day passed me yet again without so much as an affectionate text message. I can’t say I’m disappointed. It’s as much a relief than something to be depressed about.

I think it’s quite acceptable to be loved as much as a friend rather than anything further. Indeed, I’m much happier having several friends than a single object of desire.

Lesson of the Day

I don’t need a card to feel loved.

...with no replies just yet.

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »