Brennig Jones (and friends)

Hello, welcome back!

[canned audience applause]

Before the break we were speaking to John and Donny about their gay love for each other and how their fervent desire for increasingly dangerous sex led them to a Swiss ski-lift in the early hours of the morning armed with a tube of KY Jelly, a mountaineering crampon, a collapsible walking stick and a length of climbing rope.

Now it’s time to meet with Soph and Bren who have just finished a tour of the more mountainous bits of the Welsh mountains.

[canned laughter]

Yes, sorry. We’ve been away. But now we’re back and with many photographs in our possession.

Look, it’s my name! (nearly):

And we went to that place with that name:

And then we went up one of these:

And saw views like this:

And tomorrow it’s back to work for me, but not for her (lucky thing!).

Many things to catch up on, but they’ll have to keep for another time.

A few weeks ago an envelope from the DVLA dropped through the letter box. Inside was not one, but two reminders.

The first reminded me that the tax disc for my car would expire at the end of the month and I could go online and renew it if I was so inclined.

The second was an absolutely word-perfect replica that reminded me that the tax disc for my horsebox would expire at the end of the month and, unsurprisingly, I could go online and renew it if I was so inclined. Again.

I set them both aside until I had sufficient time and inclination; a couple of days later I picked them up and sat in front of my laptop.

I went to the appropriate URI (www.direct.gov.uk/taxdisc), input the reminder details and my car information and followed the action required of me and…

Was instantly informed that (and I paraphrase, but the meaning is crystal clear), I was either applying too early – i.e. before the 5th of the month – or the DVLA database couldn’t identify a valid insurance policy for my car.

As I had the valid insurance policy for my car on the seat beside me I reasoned that I was, indeed, too early in my application; a look at the calendar verified this.

OK, so that’s my fault. But I just wish the reminder from DVLA carried this restriction a little more prominently. It does carry it, just not obviously so.

Hey ho.

I set aside both reminders for a couple of weeks.

Multiple tax disc Fails!

Last Monday I picked up the reminders and went online to the DVLA again.

I input the reminder details for my car, jumped through the hoops that the website told me to, entered my card details and pressed submit.

After about 20 seconds the website said everything was in order, payment had been taken and the new tax disc for my car would be in my hot little hands within five working days.

Tax disc Win!

I went back to the start of the menu, entered the reminder details for my horsebox and jumped through the same hoops but before I could flip to the payments screen and put in my card details, the website said I could not proceed because I was either applying too early (again? still? no, that can’t be!) or the DVLA database couldn’t identify a valid insurance policy for my lorry.

Ah.

I knew I had a valid insurance policy for the horsebox so I bundled the current MOT Certificate (including the supporting Brake and Emissions Test data), the current insurance certificate, the current log book (not stated as being required but hey, one can never be too thorough!) and the current tax disc reminder from the DVLA, and set them aside until I could visit a Post Office.

Tax disc Fail!

A few days later I went to our local Post Office where I stood in a queue for 35 minutes. I could rant about having to stand in a queue for 35 minutes, but that would be predictable so I won’t.

When I got to the front of the queue, presented my documentation, flourished my chequebook and asked for a new tax disc the guy behind the counter said that I was in a Post Office that didn’t issue tax discs.

As I’d lost the will to live about ten minutes before I had got to the front of the queue I gave up on the tax-disc-buying attempts for that day.

Tax disc Fail!

Yesterday I went to the Post Office opposite the building I’m currently working in. I bought a padded envelope, posted a book* which I sent recorded delivery and presented my bundle of documents, flourished my chequebook again and asked for a tax disc. Again.

The person behind the counter scrutinised everything, pushed the papers back at me and said that he couldn’t give me a tax disc because the insurance documents I’d provided would expire at the end of June and the tax disc would run from the start of July.

Hmm… Well yes, there’s a degree of logic in his argument, but this is the first time that anyone has said this.

Anyway.

Tax disc Fail!

Today I tried again; I took the same bundle of documents with the addition of the insurance policy that isn’t yet valid but would be next month (Yes I know. It looks obvious when I see it like that, even to me!), to the same Post Office.

I explained what I wanted, handed over the documents and flourished my chequebook.

The lady behind the counter checked everything then took the MOT certificate to her manager and checked it with him (I don’t know why!) and then returned and began writing out a new tax disc.

She saw my flourished chequebook and said I could pay by card if I wanted. So I did.

I now own two bright, new and very shiny tax discs, one for my car and one for Vin’s taxi.

But the disparity of the system, how I can order and pay for a car tax disc via 21st Century technology yet have to order a lorry tax disc in person via some very 19th Century technology yet still pay for it via 21st Century technology is all very puzzling.

Anyway…

Tax disc Win!

Eventually.

* Crossing The Line, a novel by some guy called Brennig Jones. It’s a reasonable read, or so I’m told.

this is a purely hypothetical situation

Wouldn’t it be funny if after weeks of System Testing and then weeks of User Acceptance Testing during which hundreds of scripts were walked through and many different scenarios were enacted and all of this was followed by a few days of fine-tuning and that was followed by a full technical and board review and the board gave unqualified permission for the development to progress and then, ten minutes after system implementation (i.e. ten scant minutes after the new development was migrated to live), the senior user wanted to put a stop on the project because a business critical unit couldn’t make the new system print anything?

Wouldn’t it be funny if, after hours of investigation, the fault was traced back to the location of that business critical unit, where a member of the night-shift had unplugged the printer and rolled it in to a spare meeting room so she could get some peace and quiet?

Wouldn’t it?

Oh no, it’s started.

Wimbledon SW19, home of The Wombles and mecca to Very Many Boring People is seeing its annual influx of the near-terminally dull.

And hundreds – I kid you not, absolutely *hundreds* – of hours of television will be freely-given to this grunt-and-groan-and-slap-the-ball event that not even the addition of a new, all-singing, all-dancing sliding roof can elevate to a level slightly north of ‘tedious’.

What, I ask myself, have these tennis-watchers done so wrong in their former lives, to be inflicted with potential bouts of Cliff Richard and hideously overpriced Strawberries and Cream?

I tut, pittyingly, at the woman in the queue behind me in Sainsbury as she talks loudly (on the phone, obv) to her friend about the tennis.

Laura Robinson has been knocked out you know.

No, I didn’t know.

But there is one thing that I can guarantee as a result of this earth-shattering piece of news; tomorrow the newspapers will publish a number of photographs of the young Laura Robinson in her very short skirt and neither the media publishers nor their readers will feel the least bit hypocritical when, the next time it occurs, a so-called ‘sex pervert’ is outed for having sex with a 15-year-old girl.

And it’s not just the tabloids, look at this photograph from today’s Guardian:

And this photograph in today’s Guardian – I kid you not again - is of something that happened in July 1996!

Yes we all know that sex sells (newspapers), but not even sex can sell The World’s Most Boring Sport, surely?

So, last night, I went to see the ‘rehearsal show’ (yeah, I don’t know either) of Romeo & Juliet at Ludlow Castle.

The show started properly tonight, and runs for a couple of weeks at the castle (as part of Ludlow Festival), before going to Exeter.

Why Exeter?  Because the Ludlow Festival and Exeter Northcott have worked together in the past, apparently, and it worked well then, so they did it again this year.

Did it work?

Oh. Fuck. Yeah.

I totally forgot it was supposed to be a ‘rehearsal’.

It was amazing.

Very funky costumes – sort of Braveheart meets A Knight’s Tale meets the BBC’s Robin Hood, or even better, the BBC’s Maid Marian and Her Merry Men.

Lots of leather and layers and knives strapped to arms and boots and leggings. Noteably, Benvolio wears a faded t-shirt with a pixelated photo of Travis Bickle on it, under his funky leather jacket. I loved it.

The effect was ever-so slightly spoilt by the fact that we could see the top of his tartan boxers poking over his trousers whenever he knelt down with his back to us…but only slightly:)

Juliet had those almost-dreadlocks that look cool rather than flea-ridden. And she really threw herself into the emotion of it – proper tears and everything! Mind you, they all did.

The Nurse was way younger than I’ve ever seen her cast before – and injected a lot of humour into her character.

Romeo was very much like Heath Ledger in aforementioned A Knight’s Tale. Very doe-eyed and romantic (in Romeo’s fickle way…) but not to the point where I wanted to slap him – there was a little bit of the ‘lad’ about him, as well.

The whole cast was very ‘young’ and there was a massive amount of energy to the show.  For example, the masquerade scene, where Romeo and Juliet first meet, was captivating in its booming, atmospheric music coupled with choreographed movements using all of the stage and the ramps that came out into the audience.

Talking about the stage and set – I mean, the castle must be an amazing venue to perform at, especially to perform a play such as this, and especially at dusk with it’s lengthening shadows and slowly changing light.

And they used the space really well – lots of running around the ramparts, circling the audience.  The stage was on a slight slope, with a castle wall crumbling away in the background, but the main focus of it was this scaffolding-cum-metal-spiral staircase.  Like a big climbing frame, really.  And it was used in so many different ways.  Not just the ‘Oh God, here we go Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo…? scene’ which was obviously going to happen on it.

If any of the cast had looked in my direction they’d have seen a gormless looking, bespectacled lass.  I was totally involved in the story.

It’s sometimes a worry going to see a play that has been done and done and done again, because you know the story, bloody hell, you’ve probably even acted bits of it out (I remember biting my thumb at various fellow students during Drama at school once!), so there are no surprises.

But this performance of this play made it all fresh and shiny new for me.

When the Messenger Friar blokey returns to Friar Lawrence blokey having been unable to deliver the message that Juliet isn’t really dead to Romeo, I turned to my friend and whispered ‘Oh, bugger!’ in frustration.

Because, I was so wrapped up in it, I was hanging on everything working out for the best in the end.  Even though, clearly, it’s never going to happen. Unless we dig old Shakey up and force him to rewrite a Hollywood version for us sensitive souls.

Anyway, all I wanted to say was – it’s brilliant.  Go and see it.  It’s only on until mid-August, in total, I think.  So go.  Go now.

Or perhaps wait until you’ve got tickets and stuff…

…and my friends and I decided to go and grab some lunch from the very classy supermarket caff.

There was a wide range of foodstuffs beaming out at us from under the hot glow of the, erm, hot glowy things. Stuffs such as fish and chips and rice and curry.

The curry looked nice OK vaguely edible, but then so did the other items of wonderous goodness. And as we were umming and arrring over what to choose from this delectable array of delights, the lady behind the counter offered my friend a taste of the curry. Which was accepted.

Well, we were a trio of students, so free food is free food, right?

Anyway, the lady went off and served someone else, and when she came back she said to my friend ‘So, how did you get on?’.

To which my friend replied, ‘Well, it’s a curry, I like curry, we got on quite well, really. I think we’ll make a great partnership.’

This was all years ago, and, at the time, I found it hilarious.  It was all in the delivery I guess – this particular friend, Sue, had a very dry sense of humour.

Anyway, for some reason, that teeny tiny little comedy exchange keeps cropping up in my head.

Why is that?

Perhaps I am wondering where Sue is these days?  And Clare, who made up the duo – I was a friend of theirs, but more in a kind of ‘I’m everyone’s friend’ way, than a ‘let’s live together at Uni’ kind of way.

Although, I don’t know whether they did live together at Uni, because I lost touch with them, along with many other college friends, pretty much as soon as I left college.

I just didn’t make any effort to keep in touch with most people.  There are a select few who I still meet up with or at least e-mail from time to time saying ‘we should definitely meet up soon!’.

I think it was partly because the college course was Drama and Theatre Studies-based, with English Literature tagged on for good measure.  And I decided to go down the English Lit. route, rather than the Drama route.

Mainly because after a couple of weeks on the course, I realised everyone was so much better at it than me.  A at Drama GCSE does not an actress make:)

But it was a brilliant couple of years, with much fun, and way more laughing than 16-18 year olds seem to be having when I look around these days.

‘These days’ – like this was all happening back in the 1950s or something!  It was only 10 years ago or so…! Blimey – 10 years! That seems worse when written down.

I sometimes see someone from my course, or the year above, on telly or in a film.  The latest one has been Brett, who was, and probably still is, very lovely and very cute; he’s the guy in the Volvic advert looking like he’s some sort of rock dude, but still drinks water because it’s good for him…or something.  Bless.

Anyway, this started out as a little story that I needed to get out of my head, to waste some time while I waited for my husband who was tapping away at his own blog post beside me.

And it seems to have morphed into some looking-back-on-the-olden-days piece.

Did I mention I’m turning 30 a week on Monday?

As much as this doesn’t bother me in the slightest, I wonder if there is some subconscious thing going on that is determined to freak me out about it?

Hmmm…*scratches head (in puzzlement not due to scabies or other nastiness…hopefully)*

MPs expenses continues to exercise most people’s minds.

The issue is at the forefront of the collective mind of the public because the revelations which our MPs have fought so hard to conceal have not only shown what a bunch of liars and thieves our MPs are (broadly speaking), but have also revealed that our MPs are unable to distinguish between ‘making a mistake’ and ‘stealing’.

Let me give you a clue boys and girls; walking out of Tesco with a carrierbag of unpaid goods is not making a mistake. It is theft.

It is also theft if a member of the public claims a benefit to which they are not entitled. Like, oh, an MP claiming for a mortgage that she or he doesn’t actually have.

You see?

That’s not making a mistake, that’s stealing from the public.

But setting aside, for a moment, the fact that an alarmingly large number of our MPs are, by their own admission, unable to distinguish between these two enormously different states, the whole subject of MPs pay will shortly be raised.

And the raising of this topic is logical and, frankly, is a welcome item for public debate. MPs are, after all, public servants and it is right that there should be a public debate about how our MPs get paid.

Or rather, there should be a public debate about what our MPs get paid.

It’s a difficult one so I’ll kick off the discussion with a straw man. Please feel free to kick it to bits.

1. Each MP should get a salary (note the word) of £100,000/year.

2. No MP gets travel allowances; no MP gets second home expenses; no MP gets mortgage payments; no MP gets office expenses. They know where the job needs them to be before they sign up, they know what the job involves. If they don’t know these things they are not fit to be MPs and should be barred from standing.

3. If an MPs primary home is so far from London that he/she requires London accommodation it will be provided for him/her in the form of a single-bedroom flat from the housing stock of one of the inner London boroughs (e.g. Tower Hamlets, Wandsworth, Lambeth). Rent will be paid by the MP from his/her salary at the local authority rate. Furnishings for the accommodation will be provided by the MP from their own salary.

3. Admin support/secretarial duties may be purchased from a pool of selected staff (the list will be owned and maintained by someone like the Manpower Services Commission). The cost of purchasing these services will be paid by each MP out of their salary.

4. Second jobs or additional income: For each financial gratuity or benefit in kind that an MP receives from any NGO (i.e. for a Directorship or Consultancy), that MPs salary will be reduced by the amount of that financial gratuity or benefit in kind. It has to be remembered that first and foremost an MP is a public servant and they are paid to perform a full-time task for the benefit of the public. The rule about second jobs or additional income applies to all public sector and private sector occupations where any kind of benefit or payment in kind is received by the MP .

5. An MPs primary home must be in their constituency. I know I’ve said this before, but it’s an important point of principle that means a lot to me. And if the MP needs a definition of the words ‘primary home’ then they’re automatically barred from the job.

6. Each annual pay review should be conducted and applied at the same percentage increase as that of the lowest public sector. A 1.5% increase of a salary of £100,000 puts a lot more extra money in the bank account than the case of a person who has been awarded a 3% increase on a salary of £15,000.

7. Parliamentary time must be restructured to a year-round calendar. The past practice of sitting for less than 2/3rds of the year is a historical anachronism that has no place in the modern world. Similarly with the bizarre hours that MPs have chosen to work for the last few hundreds of years. If MPs want to work until gone midnight that is their prerogative, but I feel that after working five days a week for a few weeks MPs will  a) restructure Parliament’s working day to a more civilised model and b) consider introducing technological reforms to make remote access, video-conferencing and electronic voting become routine facilitations.

8. Each MP will be entitled to 28 days paid leave from the year-round Parliamentary calendar. It is up to each MP to judge when the best time of year for him/her to take their leave would be.

9. Each MP can be sacked by a 2/3rds majority in a Vote of No Confidence held by their constituents.

10. Golden goodbye payments to departing MPs will cease immediately.

11. Pensions will be paid at the standard civil service conditions to all MPs who achieve twenty-five years of continuous service to the public. If anyone needs a definition of the word ‘continuous’ they are clearly not fit to be an MP.

Does anyone else care to add their thoughts? I’m considering setting up a website with Financial Rules for MPs on it.

It’s been a hell of a day but before I fall in to bed and wait for Soph to (eventually) return from the ramparts of Ludlow Castle, I’d like to tell you how the day started…

You know those loud compressed-air horn things that the more juvenile adults take to sporting events?

Imagine that you are fast asleep in your bed, little Zs falling out of your mouth and running all over the pillow before they transform and become slightly damp patches, suspiciously near your mouth.

Now imagine that the local village lunatic has silently broken in to your house and is standing beside your bed tittering, silently, to himself.

Now place in his hands one of those compressed-air horn things.

Now make the time just a few minutes before 02.00.

Yep, one of our smoke alarms went off in the very early hours.

Not went off as in ‘detected any smoke and decided to do something about it’. Oh no.

This was went off as in ‘decided that its battery was too low so, instead of flashing a warning light which we could have picked up on in the morning, and instead of making a subdued, mildly-concerned kind of noise, it decided to give us the full benefit of its full-on smoke alarmingness.

Bastard.

We were out of bed instantly.

Asleep, but moving around.

I, unusually – given that I was still unconscious – identified the culprit then dashed downstairs to check on the status of the smoke alarm in the kitchen.

Normal.

Then inspected the upstairs one.

Green status light, flashing red battery light.

Fucker.

Still fast asleep we got the small step-ladder out of the spare room, I tottered around on top of it and eventually worked out how to remove the cover.

Then I removed the dead battery and do you know what?

The fucking smoke alarm chirpped at us. Repeatedly.

Why couldn’t it chirp at us to tell us the battery was screwed? What did it have to sound like the Battle Stations klaxon onboard a Nuclear Submarine?

Bastard.

So I did the only sensible thing a half-asleep person with a chirping but batteryless smoke-alarm could do.

I went outside and locked the fucking thing in my car.

Then I made two mugs of tea, returned to bed and handed Soph hers.

We were still, frankly, in a state of shock; adrenaline coursed through our veins and our pulses were elevated.

We read for a while and then sleep arrived and eased itself in.

So that’s how my day started. It went rapidly downhill from there.

[beware the google traps]

Do you remember that an uninsured driver recently hit my car with three aluminium ladders when they were swept off the roof of his van because he failed to get his vehicle (and the ladders that were on the roof-rack) to limbo beneath the height-restriction barriers at Oxford’s Thornhill Park & Ride?

[whew, that was a sentence and a half!]

As a result of that accident my insurance company arranged for my car to be repaired by Humphris of Oxford, which is pronounced ‘Humphries of Oxford’. Or ‘Humphrey’s of Oxford’.

Humphris of Oxford needed to work on my car for a few days, so they agreed to give me a courtesy car which was great.

Unfortunately things stopped being great when I tried to arrange to drop my car off.

Humphris of Oxford seem to have four different sets of opening times.

If you want the sales department they’re available:
Monday – Friday 08:00 – 18:30
Saturday – 09:00 – 17:30
Sunday – 10:30 – 16:30

If you want the service department they’re available:
Monday – Friday 08:00 – 17:30
Saturday – 08:00 – 12:30
Sunday – Closed

And even the parts department are available:
Monday – Friday 08:00 – 17:30
Saturday – 08:00 – 12:30
Sunday – Closed

But woe betide you if you need to do some business with the body shop because they’re only available:
Monday – Friday 08:00 – 17:30

And that’s it, because they’re not open at all at any time on either Saturday or Sunday.

This means that people who have a job (i.e. me) have to take time off work to drop off (and pick up) their vehicle.

And this means that people who are self-employed (i.e. me again!) have to take a hit on a half day of paid employment, because we don’t get paid for time not working.

So I bit the bullet, I took a hit on a half-day of income just to drop my car off.

A few days later I took another hit on another half-day of income, this time to pick up my car.

It looked brilliant. Clean, shiny, valeted; the new wing and new headlight cluster looked factory-perfect, not obvious as replacement parts at all.

Until you looked at the car from the front.

‘The new headlight cluster is different to the old one,’ I observed to the guy from the body shop who was showing me the repair.

There followed a more detailed inspection by the body shop guy, then I waited in reception for 10 minutes while he retreated to the body shop.

‘We’ve had to order a new cluster, it’ll be in next week and we’ll let you know when it’s here,’ he said on his return.

In other words, because the body shop were unable to spot the (obvious) difference between the existing and the replacement headlight clusters, Humphris of Oxford were saying I had to take another hit on another half-day of income.

I sighed and bit the bullet.

A few days later the garage called to say that the new headlight cluster had arrived.

Today, by prior arrangement, I went back to the garage for them to fit the part while I waited.

Except there wasn’t exactly much part-fitting while I waited.

A very embarrassed-looking body shop guy returned with my car keys after ten minutes to tell me that when he unboxed the new headlight cluster, the part was broken. He’d ordered a replacement for the replacement and that they would call me when it had arrived.

So Humphris of Oxford expect me to burn another half-day of income to attend the body shop.

Again.

Great.

But let’s just take another look at those opening hours a moment.

If I want any department other than the body shop I could have the work done on a Saturday morning.

To me this is a clear indication of where Humphris of Oxford put their customer service values.

And where they don’t.

Vin (who has managed to tug off one of his shoes as a sign of protest) has a new friend.

Due to one of those peculiar coincidences that occur, from time to time, on public transport, I met K.

K is a very experienced American equestrian-type, who is studying for a DPhil at Oxford and is keen to get 16 hands between her legs on a regular basis.

Last weekend I arranged to meet K at the yard. I walked her around the cross-country, the show jumping, the outdoor arena, the indoor arena and the lunging pen, introduced her to a bunch of people and then took her to meet The Great Carrot Eater.

I tacked Vin up, we wombled over to the indoor arena, sat on and worked-in for about 20 minutes. He was mostly good with occasional squally showers of tantrum.

Then I asked K if she wanted a go (which was a bit of a stupid question given that she was in boots and jodhpurs and almost champing at the bit to crack on).

I love watching someone else ride Vin – but not too often! It’s a learning experience to see how *this* evasion manifests itself, or what *that* looks like when he does something else.

And he has quite a few evasion tricks up his little orange sleeves.

K got his measure straight away.

She worked with his head, showing tremendous patience and understanding right from the start.

After 25 minutes K had him going brilliantly. She has the softest hands I think I’ve ever seen. She has tremendously fast reactions and her initial instinct is to give away not take back.

Sammi looked in, saw what K was achieving and gave an appreciative semi-silent whistle.

Vin was looking excellent.

Later, with Vin showered off and everything put away K and I were sitting in the tack room having a cuppa when I asked when the last time she rode was.

Two years ago, she said.

Now that was just spiteful. To be able to take two years off and come straight on to a not-straightforward-ride like Vin, work with his head and have him going like a Dressage Star?

Spiteful I calls it.

K has said she’d like to ride twice a week. I’m not sure Vin thinks it’s a good idea but I’m more than happy with the arrangement!

The excellent news is that K loves Vin to bits, she won’t stop gushing about him.

Funny how these things work out, eh?

Of course, having K on the scene to help keep Vin ticking over means I can look for an Eventer with just a bit more impulsion.