Month: February 2012

Three men and a Plane

Some time ago during summer months three of us used to take our lunch break out on the canteen landing. This idyllic setting was on the first floor. After a few weeks one of the men said.
“There goes my plane.” I asked him what he meant and he said. “Every day at this same time that plane flies right over us.”
For the next week we monitored his statement and judged that he was correct. This small plane did indeed fly overhead routinely at the same time. Continue reading “Three men and a Plane”

England here we come

No, no, I’m not going to the land of the wheel clamper or that place where the supermarkets / banks rule supreme!

I’m not going where black isn’t and white shouldn’t.

In fact England is coming to me!

Perhaps I should say us.

Bought our tickets for the Test Match today (thank you Eastern Province ANC branch for insisting that your comrades here in the Eastern Cape have an opportunity to watch world class rugby [and no, you’ll never get my vote])

Yep, the English are coming (oops, was that Paul Revere?) we’ll be here to welcome them!

Members may recall when I took my daughter to watch England play in the FIFA 2010 world cup, I’ve bought her a ticket for this one but she doesn’t want to come along 😕

Looking up and down

An afternoon in Oxford on my own to attend a talk by the artist in residence at Modern Art Oxford, Tamarin Norland (who is exploring the interface of art and the written word…. ) turned into a meeting-up with several friends from a poetry group I attend. We stayed on for a chat and cup of tea afterwards.

By the time I came out the sun was going down and the temperature was dropping. Mainly my eyes were drawn upwards to the tops of buildings caught in the soft light

Continue reading “Looking up and down”

The Pogey

This post was initiated as a result of a recent one by Araminta commenting on the use (or misuse)  by Tesco of a “back to work” program in Britain.  It reflects only one person’s experience of the system  employed here and I make no claim that such system is more effective than those used elsewhere, however it is different.

 

The Pogey

 

The Pogey, the Dole, or as my old dad used to say the Parish.  “If you don’t watch out son you’ll be on the Parish” that’s how old he was, and back then that’s who supported you, if anyone did, the charity of the parish.

I was on the parish once, in the US, it was 1998, I was 54 and it was the middle of winter.   The company I had been working for since 1984 declared bankruptcy, just like that, in February.  The whole operation, about two hundred people, was closed down and a trustee brought in to liquidate the assets. There was no severance pay or golden, silver, tin or lead handshakes, no pensions or settlements just pay-to-date and goodbye. Continue reading “The Pogey”

School trips

The tragic accident reported in today’s papers of the coach carrying British children and accompanying adults going off the motorway stirred memories of school trips I have been involved in.  Every such accident does and can even lead to nightmares.

I remember leading a trip to Paris where we travelled by coach.  I suppose we should have realised at the start, when the driver complained mournfully that he wasn’t driving his “own motor”, that there might be problems.  The coach he usually drove was off the road for repairs.  We arrived safely at our hostel and the driver took the coach off to a safe car park.  The following day he drove us into the centre of Paris, we arranged a pick-up point and set off to show the pupils Paris.  Each adult was responsible for a small group of pupils, as is normal.  It wasn’t the driver’s fault that when we got to the Eiffel Tower, one of my colleagues broke down in tears, begging me not to make her go up the tower. Just what you need – one adult short on the highest monument in Paris!  The following day we set off to visit the castle at Rambouillet, because we knew Versailles was closed for repairs. The driver, still reminding us that this was not his “own motor”, insisted he knew the route I wanted him to take. When we passed the exit for Rambouillet and headed off towards Rouen,  it took a lot of argument to persuade him we were on the wrong road and must turn round. Continue reading “School trips”

What’s so bad about extinction?

Just to put this into context: I’m much closer to extinction than I was 69 years ago. That’s life. Or in this case, death. So, musing as one does now and then about the transitoriness of this mortal coil, I wonder why the goody goodies of this world persist in lamenting the natural passing of everything they can shake a stick at!

If they could, they’d repopulate our crowded countryside with dinosaurs, woolly mammoths and giant stinging nettles. As if we didn’t have enough to worry about.

And now they even think they can save all of the 7,000 surviving languages – as if there is any lasting value in being able to say hi in Anishinaabemowin or Early Outer Mongolian.

Come on, guys. Spend your tax income on something else. Like educating aborigines. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist it.)