[blogosphere] the power of friendship

With ten minutes to go on this one hour internet time I'm allowed at Hull library [and they are very nice people here], I've just checked my email and not yet the post below and have to make a statement.

I don't feel alone with that sort of practical advice and encouragement. I thank you from the bottom of the heart and now, to make you thoroughly sick, I'm going to celebrate this by going out and having fish, chips and mushy peas.

The blogosphere works, it's wonderful and the moment I can get a breather and set up basically, I'm turning round and helping you in return. No doubt on earth about that.

Thanks again.

Proper post this evening.

[the rat race] where are you situated?

Someone recently said that success begets success but once it goes the other way, it all comes over you in waves and you can’t take a trick.

It’s true and an example of my own I can offer is in the mid 90s when I was my lowest ebb ever to that point – unemployed and trying to qualify for ue and housing benefits, once the cash ran out. I don’t really count that one though as I still had the car, clothing, iron and so on and I could compete for jobs. I was shopping for food at M&S.

Still, there were some numbing experiences. Had an interview in south London and it involved calculating the amount of fuel needed to get there, what food could be consumed that day to keep under the budget and so on. Turned out they weren’t interested anyway but just wanted to see me out of interest.

When the break came, it was almost an anti-climax. A teaching job became a housemaster’s then the head’s job itself. As the money moved steadily into the coffers, more smiles greeted me, people sought my company, allowances were made and little things like reserved parking spaces were made available and so on.

Riding relatively high, it all came abruptly to an end due to some issues from the school’s past; it limped on another couple of years but I didn’t.

So, back to square one in Russia and the long slow climb again, to the point where, in Russian terms, I was again right up there, with a thriving practice and coming into the lucrative summer. Contacts were exponentially expanding and I was even being a bit lazy and knocking back offers.

Most readers know what happened from May to August which was stressful but nothing to what it is now. You could well say ‘serve you right’ as I let everything back home slip away, dropped out of the credit system, dispensed with the mobile, failed to renew things like the drivers’ licence etc.

Result being that having returned, there is no recent credit history or any other history for that matter and those that officially bestow things on you don’t like that. They suspect you’re a terrorist, I think. So they refuse you bank accounts, benefits and other little goodies, which in turn means that overseas drafts are stopped dead in the water and a steady stream of refusals result.

Now it only needs one lucky break – one – and the nexus is broken.

I could point to a position I now hold or property I’m renting and everything then expands again. But without that first break, nothing at all comes – it’s scorched earth and meanwhile the clock counts down on largesse shown by certain kind people.

So it comes down to just one break, providing the groundwork is being done thoroughly and we’re up and running. Sound familiar to you, this story?

Incidentally - because the jameshigham email is not working on this computer due to javascript problems, then I also cannot access the address book to write to people nor can I check emails in. The address to use now is nourishingobscurity@gmail.com.

Also also - we were in the park just now and the first clump of leaves were under the tree and the brown leaves were in the trees. Autumn is upon us, folks and it is beautiful.

[criminalization] innocent and guilty alike

This must be of great concern to every one of us.

Tom Paine once mentioned the 3000 new crimes under Blair. Now we have the criminalization of youth and not just them either. There is something wrong when you are turned in by someone and then prosecuted for putting a bottle in the wrong bin or waling in the cycle lane or whatever.

What is happening?

[bank holiday] blackberrying and soaking up the sun

Old gear donned, we headed down the canal in the steamy hot, balmy 20 degrees but I still kept my long sleeve winter sweat top on against the thorns, nettles and thistles which, seeing through this ploy, decided to attack the wrists and face instead.

Deep in shrubbery on the bank, plucking away at juicy berries, the scene sitting beside San Georgio on the curving steps under the hot Sicilian sun was beginning to fade. Oh to have Welshcakes here now, fearlessly charging into the brambles for us, [because all men are wimps, you know], picking the six tubs in far less time than our two and a half hours.

The cuppa cha afterwards was like the nectar of the gods. Plus the cheese sandwich. Piradina con formaggio is also sliding into the medium term memory.

[bank holiday] the long-suffering heroes return

The scene – the Olympic plane lands, the gangway is rolled over and the athletes are rudely torn from their bag collecting and last drinks to line up in formation, attractively arranged down the steps.

Fiona Fatwah [BBC]: Andrew and Sally, come over here please. Well, I’ve simply run out of superlatives. What can I say?

Andrew: Er … I don’t know.

Fiona [recovering her composure]: Well Sally, when you were about to step up onto that podium, how did you feel?

Sally: Awful. I never wanted that medal; I wanted the gold - I could have scratched her bitchy eyes out.

Fiona: Andrew, how did you feel when you won that gold?

Andrew: Sick in my stomach, Fiona. Never wanted that gold.

Fiona: How was the flight back? How would you describe it?

Sally: Ah, there were these three seats, you see and there was a stain on the antimacassar in front of me and I read the in flight magazine twice and had a g&t.

Andrew: Mine was a Carlings.

Fiona: Well guys, do you have a message for the teeming millions watching this because there’s nowt else to do this bank holiday Monday except extend the Olympic fix as long as we can through interviews like this?

Sally: Yes, Fiona – we’d just like to thank everyone and see you in 2012, guys.

[They rush for the team bus which takes off, the camera lovingly trained on the exhaust pipe disappearing round the corner.]

Fiona: And now we cross live to the team reception where Emma Hamilton is awaiting to ambush the luckless athletes.

Emma: And here comes the team bus now. Let me call over Andrew and Sally. Hi guys. Oh gosh, what can I say to you that hasn’t already been said a thousand times already?

Andrew: I have not the shadow of a clue.

Emma: How was the bus trip back from the aeroplane? How would you describe it?

Andrew: Sally, you do this.

Sally: Ah, there were these three seats, you see and there was a stain on Andrew’s uniform in front of me and I and couldn’t get a g&t.

Andrew: I couldn’t get a Carlings.

Emma: Well guys, do you have a message for the teeming millions watching this because there’s nowt else to do this bank holiday Monday except create a feel-good factor as a buffer against the cries of outrage at the £10 billion bill for 2012?

Andrew and Sally: Er … ah … [rush inside for the reception].

Emma [turning to the camera crew]: What did I say? What did I say?

Must I wear shades too?

[need a shave] of metal seats, tube fights and blackberries

Some images above of first impressions.

Question- have you ever spent a night in an airport? Interesting experience, especially the way they do the slippery metal seats with metal armrests in such a way that you can't lie on them. The other guy with me found a way though- put the head on the table effect at the end, the neck under the first armrest and the waist under the second and so on.

There was a chapel in the airport, just as there is a Madonna in every shop and it was nice to spend some time in, that chapel, with it's cleverly backlit crucifixion scene at the front. On the right at the front was a plush velvet chair, presumably for the priest to sit on. When I came back later in the night, there was a shopping trolley in there with plastic bags of someone's worldly goods. In the priest seat was an unfortunate who'd ended up on the street and I thought - there but for the grace ... left a few coins and departed. Hope the airport authorities don't read this post.

I must have looked like a shady character as I got the shakedown on trying to check in and it was my first half-strip in public - hope the public enjoyed it but the paws all over the bod didn't endear it to me too much. The airline quite thoughtfully had provided copies of newspapers with the Madrid disaster plastered over them so that made good reading.

First experience this side was a helpful railway employee called Mark who not only suggested that if I went to the ticket machine round the corner there was no mile-long queue but then he stayed around to ask if I was "all right then" after that. Wish I'd taken his name and sent a letter to the authorities about him - he was exactly the image the railways need.

Of course this was counterbalanced. An old chap couldn't read the signs and was trying to get to the Victoria line so he asked me what it said and I said that I also had trouble with my eyes but I'd ask. As it happens, we were in the right place so we helped each other get to the right train just as it pulled in, which infuriated a nutter with wife and daughter standing in prime position to get on the train.

He threw a tantrum, shouting he was going to put me in hospital and then came at me while the old man looked on in disbelief. I told the nutter he was a f---- imbecile. " Something wrong with your brain, i'n there, eh?" I grinned at him, which seemed to infuriate him more and wife and daughter kept right out of the way. W-e-l-l, why do nutters keep coming at me? I mean ...

So he continued:

"Yeah, you!" he shouted. "Wot you calling me names for?"

"The stress, friend, the stress."

"You got no f----- manners," he shouted.

"Yes I have - I stepped back and let you on first, din I?"

"You wotchit, mate."

"Yeah, yeah, you 'ave a good day too, me china."

The old man had enjoyed this and now asked me if I was travelling to join a boat. "Pardon?" I asked.

"A boot like. Merchant navy. Anyway, they employ Filipinos these days."

"Ah." Turns out he was twenty years in the merchant navy and I thought to myself, that sounds like not a bad idea, really. Either that or become a Benedictine monk.

Still might too but first some blackberry picking tomorrow and another thing - why do councils insist on lopping them down when they're doing no one any harm? This is the sort of out-of-spite thing and then they send in teams of loppers who know nothing whatever about trees and things and they hack at them.

Reminds me up on the moorland some years back when some Dutch company got the right to hack swathes of heather for padding in dam walls in such a way that it could not regrow. Everyone knows that heather needs burning. Still, it was a nice little money spinner for someone.

And another thing- did you see the way McFly hacked up Winner Takes it All today but the version of We Can Be Heroes was pretty good. And what did you think of Jimmy Page and that girl, by the way? And how do you like the way Boris was standing, waving the flag?

I need my winter clothes, even though the ice cream van was out today.

More in the next few days.