Category: Chips on Shoulders

The thirst for a friend

They tell me that social life these days is all about getting the most friends on your FaceBook file. Not that you know most of them (in any normal meaning of the word) from Adam or Eve, or even care who they are; as long as you can parade their names and faces as being ‘yours’. Even today I received an email asking if I wanted to be ‘Linkedin’ with a chap in Coventry. Nothing strange there, you reply. My home town, old friend? Well, yes and no. The chap married a childhood/family friend about 45 years ago and I’ve never met him! Would I like to learn more about him and share my thoughts? Er, not really, but thank you for asking. (I think.)

Then there is the latest Starbucks gimmick – asking customers their names. “Hello, I’m Sherry and I’m your barista today. What shall I call you?” I shall of course now avoid Starbucks even more studiously than before, since I would be likely to disappoint them on several fronts. a) I just want coffee, not a weird beverage with a life history and geography thrown in. b) I prefer to be anonymous (people tell me I am, effortlessly). c) I hate American chumminess which seems to demand that we are all welcomed like immigrants at the Staten Island depot. It’s a cup of coffee FGS! d) Every other customer below the age of 50 will be studying their ipod/ipad/laptop/notebook, making even more cyberfriends and ignoring the aromatic reality of a coffee shop where normal people meet in person.

O tempora, o mores!

Too many foreigners

Nicolulla, pictured here with a recent squeeze, is the son of a Hungarian immigrant and a French mother of Greek-Jewish origin, was baptised a Roman Catholic and grew up in Paris, and is now married to an Italo-Brazilian. Glass houses and stones came to mind when he identified an excess of foreigners as the root of France’s woes. Continue reading “Too many foreigners”

More pseudo-science

As far as I know (but there again I only have four children and eight grandchildren) children sometimes sleep ‘badly’, snore and report bad dreams. Believe it or not, it’s because they are human and respond in the same way as adults to what life serves up. They get scared, worried, confused, excited, even impatient – and then sleep just doesn’t happen as it ‘should’.

But now we are informed that such short-term difficulties are potentially dangerous, harmful to the brain! They might lead to the elusive ADHD – which not surprisingly means that after a bad night’s sleep it’s hard to concentrate. Wow, that’s terrifying. Quick, get a shrink, pick up a prescription, talk to your child about the dangers of snoring.

Or alternatively, ignore it and get a life!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17237576

The Jeans of Slave Traders

Some of you may remember a post I wrote a couple of years ago about my disillusionment with Richard Dawkins. A copy of that post is here. Yesterday I was reading one of our local papers and I came across this rather dodgy article here, which took me to the original, but equally dodgy article in the Daily Telegraph here. Continue reading “The Jeans of Slave Traders”

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”

I have been saying it for a while..

and now the first shoots of evidence are begining to poke through.

Football is as doomed as epilectic octupus at a gelignite juggling jamboree!

Recently we had the Quakers, (Darlington) go into administration. They had a last minute reprieve courtesy of a 50k bung from fans and local busnisses but they are surely on their way.

Now one half of the Weegies are being advised to seek refuge from it’s creditors.

Just like the banks, these self absorbed ‘sportsmen’ have been riding the wave of their own ridiculous publicity.

Continue reading “I have been saying it for a while..”

Death by a thousand cuts

Allegedly Sarko himself is not subject to any such torture. His stratospheric grocery bills and zillion car garage bear witness. But last weekend he had to sit at home while his persecutor, Ms Merkel, arranged a Euro-strategy meeting for AAA-rated members only. A veritable ‘Not-you-Perkins!’ moment! How very dare she?

I do wish there was an English or even French word for Schadenfreude because this summer is going to be filled with it – except in France.