Commitment

Yeah, yeah. Not fair?

Married people can park where they want. They can just leave one of them in the car as they roll up to any illegal parking spot they like the look of.

One goes off with the Burberry bag and one stays on watch with the keys in the ignition and, frankly, trying not to catch my gaze.

That's why they use double yellows - so everyone knows it's couples only.

 

But try doing that with a young child, and you end up talking to social services.

It's one rule for...

Crime of the Century

The headlines announced today the ultimate downfall of the perpetrators of some of the worst crimes in Europe this century. And who has consistently represented the sort of atrocities that history should never endure.
If only Cheryl Cole could have softened her accent, things might have been different.

 

Doubtless we will get the outcry against Geordie accents but it is nothing to do with that. People like Geordie accents. It is well documented in the telesales industry and beyond. No further convincing is needed.
What they don't like is HER voice.

 

And why is she at fault? Because she makes her living with her voice.
She thinks she makes it with hair extensions.
She has lost sight of her limited abilities.

 

She might have chosen to up her work rate. The Americans instantly realised what any English with sanity knew.
Her searingly childish insight is an insult to every sofa-sitter in the UK, and her monotonous whinging is no way to spend a Saturday evening.

 

If you want a transparent whine, go for a Chablis.

Lipstick on Collar

Poor old Ryan Giggs.
How horrible for a celebrity not to be able to betray and humiliate his wife of 4 years and scar his 2 young children for life without being embarrassed and inconvenienced by it.
Everyone else in life gets their affairs discovered, maybe by a look, a text, an email, a change in after-shave or spring in the step and various other more modern versions of lipstick on collar.
But perhaps his wife would have chosen to look the other way as she has such young kids. She might have ignored her suspicions of a man who is loved by millions if not approaching billions. After all, who would care about her little life? I mean, apart from Max Clifford.

Ryan Giggs hid like a weasel behind his celebrity and threw his money at it because that's the sort of hero he is - one with more money than character.
He can afford to make any problem go away.
Till today.
I know there are two sides to every story. But,for crying out loud, she's the Big Brother girl!

There are three victims here and Ryan Giggs isn't one of them. His wife has had the reality he provided rammed down her throat even harder by his exponential stupidity. He's stuffed her like she's producing Fois Gras and then tried to make the English justice system his fourth victim. Plenty of people have slipped up there. Doesn't he read the papers? Expenses scandal anyone?
He was Hitler invading Russia without the brain power. At least Adolf had one nut that worked.

How Ryan must pity himself for his misfortune but how lovely he will get off so lightly.

Living by the sword involves wielding it rather than cowering behind it.

Either way, Ryan..it's payback time.

That's Annoying

Frustration: definition 

n. driving round a roundabout and having to stop 4 times at red traffic lights on the way round.

New things

Number 7 (missed 7 out)

 

Task: Guested at a local group of (psycho)therapists watching a video and chatting about Ericksonian hypnosis

Method: Shoes + 20 minute walk + 2 hours... + 20 minute walk back (good weather, no-one got hurt)

Verdict: Nice people. Good video. No clue, and they spend 5 years training to doing their stuff; ended up with them asking me (who's done 2 weeks) about techniques - which is a bit odd as I was intending to keep my trap shut.

Conclusion: Maybe my training and experience (=life) counts for someat after all, not that my own profession thinks so.

Mark: Pass (with petit flair).

 

Real Horror Show

Life delivers a lot of functional interactions. These are not the same as having company round or sharing in a real conversation. They merely exist to serve a purpose, deliver a deadline, complete a task.

When you reflect on these gentle dialogues, at least in the workplace they could represent a certain mutual lack of humanity. That's not to say you weren't acting with human qualities. It's just that it was functional and perhaps little more.

There's a deadness to this dialogue which, while it doesn't produce the early chill that it might, hides a danger that, as the months and years tick by, may deliver a late shudder. And like all horror, the scariness comes from just a very slightly different view of what you previously chose as your reality.

The discovery is made.

You have noticed.

You have adjusted.

You hope it's not too late.

I think the challenge - the solution if you like - is to add humanity where you can, to add value. But sadly in this age we inhabit, there is a danger.

Anyone who wants to score a point against you can choose to actively misinterpret or to misreport something you might say. Or might not have said. Get it wrong (or just wrongly right) and it could lose you your job, your husband, your wife.

Generally it's just too big a price to pay. And yet...

I would suggest that the best tool of adding humanity is a playful flexibility with language. You might call it neurolinguistic playfulness.

(You may prefer a dangerous leer or or a saucy wink. I don't recommend it. No one appreciates the Carry On movies more than me but it is 2011. And for the next seven months at least there's very little we can do about that).

That playful flexibility can be your noose. That's the trouble with flexibility. It can contort and twist and eventually fracture like a young willow. And the edge of that willow can be poked into one of your eyes. Or both. Hard like.

You have to be careful with this humanity thing but you use it or you lose it so please.... do it anyway.

Because unless you can think of a better way, that's how you change the world.

New Things

Number 8

task: Become amateur astronomer and observe the night sky

method: Buy scope

result: Detailed moon craters and a big star to the left - a Morning Star I wonder?

discovered: The moon moves through the night sky visibly quickly; as expected no sign of any flags.

assessment: Good pass within limits of equipment; now to unwrap my new planetarium...

Did you hear the one about the...

People think they like a sense of humour, right?
But why?
Whose?
Yours?
How much more likely that they like their own - reflected?
Or are you going to teach a different one?

Are you seriously going to introduce a Russell Howard fan to Daniel Kitson?
Come on. Listen to yourself.
Or perhaps you do not understand the question?
Perhaps you claim to like someone else's humour when you think it's suitable. Or appropriate. Or timely. And not at other times.
Well, wake up soldier.

A sense of humour is a tool that crosses....well... barriers is too small a word. Think more global, universal even. I'll allow you a wormhole (?wyrmhole) here if you are feeling confident.

It's more powerful than a laser because it can go round corners. It's the sort of solution and defence that modern life needs.
And nobody is better equipped to deploy it than the English.

Be proud and play.
You have a flexible joculoscope for investigating life.

New things

Number 6
Task:

Install reclaimed leaded light above door in hall.
Used:

Internet, Gumtree, Parker Tools
Lessons:

Bought too much gear. Thought I might have found a place for putty. Who knew!
Result:

1. As though done by a craftsman (?) , like you'd know the difference.

2. Shards of vestibular (in a vestibule) green and clear light and corridorical reflections of memories from a previous life of useful beauty.

The Art of Water

What about those kids who couldn't enjoy a water pistol fight without aiming at your trousers to make it look as though you'd wet your pants?
What's the matter with those guys?

Where is that tactic in the Art of War?

You can diagnose a cruel malicious streak through that sort of behaviour alone. WOMEN - work it into the conversation and don't marry those men. You'll save yourself a lot of pain.

Note to self: buy waterproof pants

Closing Time

My grandad was a shopkeeper - a grocer would you call it? Grocer doesn't have to involve lots of veg does it? Like pots - strawbs -mush - toms - that sort of thing? No, I thought not.

I have a photograph of a fantastic window display he made to attract his customers in, I suppose, the 1950s. Pyramids of tins and slogans and precarious beans. But where is that lost art now?

While the High Street employs window dressers, the best the corner shops near to me can manage is blotting the entire window out like a sex shop.

Or foisting and hoisting some tired worn ads for estate agents which end up repeated ad infinitum to the margin of the window to block any view in or out.

There's barely room for a lost doggy notice board or an advert for guitar lessons.

It's a view without a soul. Heaven forbid you can see inside the shop. That you might be attracted to step inside and purchase something.

You might as well write "Wads was 'ere" and leave it at that.

Maybe there are vandalism issues, but as a huge metal door descends at closing time regardless, I don't see how this would be relevant.

Maybe it's just a sad lack of pride or a shyness for daylight, or the fact that it just doesn't affect profits.

It might be all those things but how to put them in order.

A national referendum, perhaps?

Shield of Steel

I could see why some of the boys took him for snobby.

He had a quiet way about him, a walk and a talk that just wasn't normal around here.

He strolled, like a man in a park without a care or a worry in the world, like he had on an invisible coat that would shield him from this place.

Yeah, I think it would be fair to say... I liked Andy from the start.

Mindmelt

Urgent: PLEASE CIRCULATE to your friends, family and contacts.

In the coming days, DO NOT open any message with an attachment called: YORKSHIREMEN ARE HIGHLY INTELLIGENT, regardless of who sent it to you. It is a virus that burns the enitre hard disk of your computer. This virus EVEN IF IT comes from a known person who you have in your list.

Directions: You should send this message to all of your contacts. It is better to receive this e-mail 25 times than to receive the virus and open it.

If you receive a message called YORKSHIREMEN ARE HIGHLY INTELLIGENT even if sent by a friend, do not open, and shut down your machine immediately. This new virus has been discovered recently it has been classified by Microsoft as the virus most destructive ever.

Oh..... and while you are at it, DON'T THINK OF A BLACK CAT.

A troubled choice (or is it?)

Is it a paradox or a tautology that the word dilemma might have two plurals?

Until today I thought the correct description of 2 dilemmas was 'dilemmae' while harbouring (harboring?) a hope that it was actually dilemmas.

It turns out dilemmas is fine.

I've just checked.

But so is dilemmata and spelling that without a dictionary, (I mean Gooogle), might be the biggest dilemma of all.

Work day

Today I saw a dozen alcoholics/drug addicts or so.

I usually briefly wrestle with why they're failing themselves, why our system has failed them, why their GP hasn't made any progress (apparently) and in particular what the bloody hell we all going to do about it.

I get occasional positive encouragement from people who can still find an imagination of a better future that I can reach, tease, taunt, provoke or stimulate to reawaken.

Like healing a zit that won't go away. It doesn't matter whether you poke around with liquid nitrogen, a scalpel blade, the points of a compass (sorry Mr Armstrong, pair of compasses) - if you agitate it successfully you just might be lucky enough to allow healing process to begin.

The final patient tonight has been rushed into a famous local hospital and actively detoxed from his alcohol but I wondered at the stupidity of an emergency detox. The likelihood of success of this process in someone who had not been ready with his motivation and with whom they had failed to engage in any psychological manner. In dark circumstances like this, if you're not prepped for success you are doomed to failure. In the end he drank secretly all the way through the detox and left hospital early to drink some more.

But he recognised me.

He recognised me from the last time I presumably tried some similar weak, wordy intervention.

Some might call the need for this repetition failure. Not me. I'm comfy with it.

Failure is to give up trying. That's all. Just to give up trying. That's what I say and I say it because I genuinely think it's true.

If you do nothing else than to make a positive influence on the room that you happen to be in the time, that's still a damn good way to play.

He decided to pay me a compliment. 'I like your attitude' he told me and he went out of his way to do so. And.... I know what you're thinking, you cheeky sod, but I can tell you he meant it in a good way. And while you don't do this job for compliments, (god knows there are rare enough), it was a sign of a connection - a genuine piece of well meant appreciation.

A sign of a seed sown.

A result, okay that's too big a word but I live in hope. A result that, of course, would never show up on your appraisal report.

And that's the thing - surely a success is should be a quiet one. Better, surely they should be silent... the medic stepping into the background as the patient steps forward and takes the applause. Isn't that what the bloody hell this is all about? Channel 4, are you listening? Do you hear this, BBC3?

Or am I wrong?

As ever I took the compliment in a manner that left much to be desired by punching him in the face. I don't like people me thinking of me as a soft touch.

The fact is that the whole negotiation is more complicated than that.

The drug services who overprescribed are missing the point. If they wanted to know what's actually going on, they could ask the patient. That's what I do. They'll tell you the answers if you bother to ask the right questions, in the right way, and be sensitive to the nuances of the responses.

It's called the consultation. And the art form became endangered when checkboxes, NHS Direct, the pharmacist-as-clinician and the nurse prescriber stepped into the spotlight.

Ask the questions if you dare.

But you have to be to able to deal with the answers.

Or disregard these when you find you have nothing to offer.

I say ask the questions anyway and deal with your lack when you find it.

But there are other ways out of this slightly sticky situation - don't ask the questions, don't recognise the lack, say it's not your job, refer, do a bloody blood test.

But I'm not really giving you that option.

The fact is, it is your job.

Why?

Because you volunteered to be in that room.

When you are in the room, it's always your job.

If you don't like the heat, find a way to turn it down, sorry...it's going to take a bit of work, maybe you'd rather go cycling.

Or step out of the spotlight, take your bow and head for the emergency exit.