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4 year old was born four years ago today, funnily enough.
Where's Daddy?
We have AI that can decide who is a terrorist and then track their every movement so we can wait until they're home to drop a bomb on their whole family.
But the 3 successive precision air strikes on #WCK aid workers coordinating with and following route instructions from the IDF was just a 'tragic mistake' because it was night time.
Curriculum Vitae (Memento Vivere)
Having been so bitterly rejected both in love and at work, I started to look around for new opportunities. I don’t remember how I found it, but a nursing home nearer to where I lived at the time (Cleethorpes) was advertising for a Therapeutic Activities Co-ordinator to develop a range of meaningful activities with frail elderly people who also had - iirc - impaired memory, or dementia. Right up my street (well, just around the corner).
This was the first time in my life (I was thirty years old) that I’d ever actually wanted a job, and I was determined to make sure I did everything I possibly could to get it (the money was better, too, although not a great deal). I think I really impressed them at the interview with the presentation I did (probably bullet points, but that was all the rage back then), but more my genuine enthusiasm and excitement at the prospect of doing what, at the time, seemed like it would be my “dream job”.
The role was to cover three separate nursing and residential homes in the Grimsby, Cleethorpes and Humberston area, all quite different as it turned out. I would also liaise with a colleague in Hull (where the company that ran the care homes had its headquarters), who had already been in post in his area for a year or so. Steve was a social worker by trade, and he was very upset to discover that I was not. He was also agitating for a substantial pay rise, and later on we would jointly present our case to the board of directors.
I shadowed Steve for a day or two and wrote substantial notes and reflections, before setting up my desk on the landing of the first floor next to the lift and the payphone (yes, really) at The Anchorage just up the road from Blundell Park. When I first entered The Anchorage it was a shock to the system. I was used to a welcoming, friendly, clean, freshly smelling (as much as possible), professional, and lively residential home where I used to work. The Anchorage was anything but. There was no welcome, staff looked harried, the place was so obviously run down and uncared for, it stank of piss, and all the residents appeared to be fully comatose.
That was on the ground floor. Upstairs was slightly better - at least the residents were awake. But it was like a madhouse, and brought back traumatic memories of a childhood school visit to the local mental hospital to sing Christmas carols to the moaning, leering, grabbing, drooling inmatespatients. The only redeeming factor now was that none of the inmates seemed able to move. I was going to have my work cut out here.
I think my boss expected me to have a timetable of bingo sessions, sing-a-longs, tea dances, quiz nights, etc. up and running straight away. But I would have to raise the dead first, and persuade the staff and manager to be supportive and helpful, In fact, a complete change of culture was needed. I spent several weeks getting to know everyone, not only there, but at the other two homes as well. One of the others was much larger with what seemed like a highly mobile group of very demented residents, while the other was more of a mixture of demented and simply frail elderly people. Once I got to know everyone, The Anchorage seemed to be mostly people with physical health problems, often compounded by the effects of a stroke.
The other two homes also had good, strong supportive managers, while The Anchorage had a temporary manager (one of the senior nurses), before appointing an absolute horror of a woman who mercilessly bullied me and made my job much more difficult than it needed to be. Luckily, most of the nurses and carers were good people.
To cut a long story short, we raised the dead. It turns out (who knew?) that even very poorly, very old people are up for conversation, doing things that interest them, socialising, going out, singing, dancing, moving, learning to walk again, reminiscing, and just living what life there is left. But they need help to do so. And when they get the help they need to do some or all of these things, it also turns out that they are often more continent, can walk again, need less of the carers’ and nurses’ time for personal care, feel better, have better health, and - crucially from the business point of view - live longer.
And when the residents are happier, have something to get up for, and are easier to look after, the staff are happier, too. We had a lot of fun. It was amazing. A highlight was organising three coaches and a disability-friendly minibus to take every resident from all three homes literally around the corner form The Anchorage to The Excel Club, which was (in the good old days), the premier night spot and bar for many of “my people” when they were young, for an afternoon of drinking, dancing, eating, socialising and reminiscing that I won’t forget (even if many of them them had forgotten by the time they got home).
The beauty of the whole endeavour was that people needing care were no longer seen as tasks to be performed and checked off on a list, but as people who had lives, stories, senses of humour, wants and needs like everyone else.
Such a great thing could obviously have no future, and when me and Steve presented the business case for expansion and pay rises to the board it was rejected outright. The most helpful training I ever did was with a trainer who advised me “don’t waste time trying to persuade people who aren’t interested - focus on those who are.” I’d tried my best, I really had. While I did really enjoy the job, I didn’t want to be doing the same thing week after week, year after year, with no prospect of advancement and for a company that clearly wasn’t interested or appreciative.
I started looking around again, and this time further afield. I felt I was in a rut, personally as well (it was all work and no play for me), and I needed a fresh start.
Wife has returned home after being abducted by aliens (scroll down past the football).
Curriculum Vitae (Repetitum)
Following on from my success delivering the news to my local community, I took a break from the world of (very part-time) work to focus on… playing in my first bands. And learning to play the guitar. Much of which came at the expense of any interest in or motivation to study, or revise for ‘O’ Levels, and later ‘A’ Levels.
Living in a small rural market town, some of my friends, and my own younger brother, in fact, had Saturday jobs bush beating - literally (as far as I know) beating bushes to encourage game birds to fly to their sporting deaths. Let’s never forget that killing is a sport for our aristocracy and their hangers-on. Famously, at the time, the host of these shootings was “peppered in the buttocks” by our drunken home secretary Willie Whitelaw. You couldn’t get away with a name like that now.
My brother graduated from bush beating for toffs to hunt sabotage.
I did well enough in my ‘O’ Levels (one A, eight Bs, and a C), that my maths teacher told me I would “never amount to anything”. He wasn’t wrong.
My dad tried to motivate me after my mock ‘A’ Level results by leaving me a drunken handwritten note and caricature drawing of me with an arrow pointing to it (I mean, in those days what else could he have done?) saying: “THICK CUNT”.
Then he got me what felt like a punishing summer job at the duck processing plant where he was a line supervisor. Being the boss’s son was no fun when they put me on the killing floor. I became a vegetarian for nine years after that (although since returned to meat eating - that’s another story).
I messed up my ‘A’ Levels (three Es, and failed General Studies writing about the punk band Stiff Little Fingers). I was profoundly depressed, but had no one to talk to about it. Mainly because I had been brought up not to talk about or express any “bad” or “difficult” feelings. Random people used to come up to me and say “Cheer up, it may never happen”, but it in my internal world, it already had.
Music, and playing guitar in a band, was my only outlet, but we were young and totally delusional. We were a three-piece, but believed we were the next Fab Four. We played a successful debut gig in Cleethorpes at The Sub, but instead of building on that, we immediately packed our bags and gear into a van, and drove to London to live in a series of squats in Stepney, Poplar and Limehouse.
An older ex-school friend was part of an anarchist community based out of a bookshop, and helped us find, gain entry to, and occasionally get the water, gas and/or electricity working. In those good old days, you could easily “sign on” the dole and get enough to actually live on.
I read and heard a lot about the politics of anarchism, which I found very attractive to my idealism. That said, I couldn’t ever see how it would work in practice, in the real world. It would need a revolution, of course, but even then, it would need a revolution in people’s minds and thinking first.
Six months living in squats, a couple of lousy gigs and a demo tape later, we packed our bags and returned home.
Dishing It Out
Following on from the pots and pans incident, my wife has decreed that the bamboo plates and bowls I bought as child-safe alternatives to our regular crockery are in fact likely coated with melamine and, therefore, toxic.
She’s probably right, although only for hot food. I had noticed that my hot food tasted a bit funny using these, but I think they’re fine for sandwiches and such.
She claims her eggs taste better (“like childhood”) cooked in our new stainless steel frying pan. I used it to cook an omelette for the first time yesterday, and it was undoubtedly the best omelette I’ve ever tasted. Is that possible?
Bit of a damp squib today, but eleven years ago these were the scenes the morning after Diwali.
Beer Nights In
I didn’t drink all of these beers in one sitting, or, in fact, any of them on Friday afternoon, prior to the school run.
Friday night I had a couple of the light beers.
Steeplechase Pale Ale: far too citrusy for my taste.
Deco WCIPA: another one far too citrusy for my taste.
Accompanying snacks made them drinkable.
Saturday night I had a couple of the dark beers. I had a feeling I would like these even less, but…
The Adventures of Mr Malty Baltic Porter: lovely malt flavour, rich, dark, but not bitter.
Salted Cinder Toffee Stout: I thought this might make me throw up, but it was surprisingly good, not too sweet or salty.
🍺
Hey David
Our contract with Plusnet for telephone landline and (not full) fibre broadband ends on 25 November. I started looking around for cheaper and/or better alternatives back in August. Not that there was anything wrong with Plusnet’s service. In fact, compared to Sky and TalkTalk, they’re bloody brilliant. But end of contract time usually means either a hike in price to stay loyal, or finding a new provider that offers new customers a better deal than its existing customers.
So, I was very pleasantly surprised to discover a full fibre broadband option available in my area. Apparently, a company called Hey! Broadband had laid there own network of fibre-optic cables in my street, meaning that we could replace our maximum 67Mb download speeds for £28 (due to go up to £54) a month with 900Mb download and upload for 99p a month for the fist six months, and then £29 a month thereafter. It sounded too good to be true!
Of course, we don’t need ten times faster broadband, but the extra bandwidth and improved coverage would be nice. It’s not uncommon now to have one of us in a Teams meeting, another gaming on his Switch, another watching internet TV, and another doing general internet stuff. The first three, certainly, have all complained at times of lag and buffering. And even the last one has found online work meetings in my bedroom-cum-office occasionally impossible due to poor connectivity.
Hey! Broadband make it clear on their website that they cannot guarantee to be able to connect new customers to their network even if your address is within their network area. There may be unforeseen problems. They also make it clear that potential new customers should not cancel their existing broadband service before you have your new Hey! Broadband service up and running for a couple of weeks without any major issues.
So, I wasn’t expecting a smooth service. For one, I had no knowledge of when or where the new fibre-optic cables had been laid in our cul-de-sac. On the adjoining road, maybe. But I would let them sort that out. When the two engineers from Hey! Broadband’s sub-contracted installation company arrived on 2 October things didn’t immediately look hopeful. They were very friendly, but looked barely old enough to be out of school, and had no idea where the cables were outside to connect us up.
After an hour or so of looking around the local area, they came back and informed me of the good news and the bad news. The good news being that they had found a cable that we could, in theory, be connected to. The bad news being that it was on another street around the corner “about three doors away”. They would need to get permission from the homeowner to go into their premises and then somehow connect the cable up to our non-adjoining property. But I didn’t have to worry, they would take care of everything, and we should hear something within five to seven working days.
Of course, seven working days later when I phoned them, nothing at all had been done, and in fact, they asked me to provide contact details for my “neighbours” and to go knock on their door and ask permission to enter their property. Which I could have done, but as I pointed out, I don’t know them, or which house it is, and even if I did, I have no official ID to show that I’m an engineer from Hey! Broadband. I asked to speak to a manager, and was told someone would call me back later.
Days passed until another engineer appeared at my door. He was even friendlier than the previous two, and old enough to have a young child of his own. He’d already had a look around and found the cable in my next door neighbour’s outside storage cupboard (as well as my little kid’s trike in our storage cupboard, which he wondered if I still wanted, and if not, could he take it for his little kid?). I let him take the trike, and he promised someone would call later that day to book a new installation date.
No one called, although we still had the revised installation date for 31 October, and another even friendlier and slightly older engineer showed up. He actually managed to connect us up, pulling the cable through from the street next to our cul-de-sac (“the longest pull” he’d ever done), cabling it out from our neighbour’s storage cupboard up and over our communal porch and up our wall to our first floor flat. He drilled a hole in our wall (reassuring my wife that, no, the hole wouldn’t let cold air or creepy crawlies in) and set us up with new full fibre broadband.
It turned out that he’s self-employed, and does up to five of these installations a day at a £100 a go. He left school aged eleven unable to read or write. As he wired up our new modem, he told me how he had a habit, when younger, of setting fire to things. He went back to college to learn to read and write when his kids started coming home from school asking for help with school work, and he didn’t want to tell them he couldn’t do it. He didn’t ask for a trike, either.
Funnily enough, I met him again two days later around the corner from my big kid’s school while we were feeding the community cats. He was doing an installation there, or trying to. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to pull the cable through on this occasion.
We’ve had Hey! Broadband for a week without any issues at all, and full 900Mb ethernet speeds as advertised, with wifi speeds around 150Mb down and 250Mb up. No telephone landline anymore, which is no loss, as we only ever used it to answer scam calls. I’m now a [Hey! Broadband Brand Champion]heybroadband.co.uk/champion (referral code: HeyDavid M39)
Break in Transmission
Last week’s swimming lesson was cancelled, and the week before that, we went away for half-term. To a very wet and wild north-east Lincolnshire right by the sea (or the Humber Estuary). With no wifi, and very poor data connectivity. In a tin can caravan.
But we all had fun, and the kids got to spend time with their grandparents who live nearby. And use their wifi.
On the night before we left I met up with a couple of my oldest and best friends, Murray and Aaron, who I hadn’t seen for ten (Aaron) and thirty (!) (Murray) years. It was really great to have a couple of pints and talk shit with them, just like the old days, as if it was only yesterday.