The Bleak Midwinter

Sliding, Scraping & Staying Home

It’s a funny thing, winter. Certainly in Plymouth it is anyway. It happens about once every five years and just like it did last January, it completely screws things up for a week or so. The snow falls unexpectedly to a depth of about an inch and no-one knows what the hell to do. You switch on local TV news to see kids sliding down the merest hint of a hill on a dustbin lid, a poor driver trying and failing to drive his car up an icy incline and worst of all, a local reporter has been driven to the middle of nowhere to show us the scarf he got for Christmas and to indicate with a sweep of his arm what chaos awaits you outside.

Commuter Chaos!

Important-looking officials impart the most pointless instruction in the world “stay at home unless your journey is absolutely necessary” and everyone ignores them for fear of having no milk in their tea, no fag in their mouth and possibly the kids at home all day. Seriously, how would you classify a journey as “not absolutely necessary”? Certainly, no employer is going to let you off a days work because someone on the radio told you stay at home. What usually happens is that you chip your car out of the frost and drive gingerly away. You sit forward enough for your nose to touch the windscreen and you grip the steering wheel in the hope that the harder you do so, the more grip the tyres are going to have on the road. It doesn’t help of course. You are almost certain to start sliding sideways the moment you touch the brakes and if there’s one thing worse than a high speed accident, its an incredibly slow one that you can do nothing about. Nevertheless, your employer still expects you get there and its once you are there that your problems really begin. If it has stopped actually snowing by the time you get to work, it will start again not long after you arrive. You and your employer will then do little work anyway and instead stare at the window and the slow-falling flakes of chaos. You will be hoping to be sent home soon and they are hoping that it will stop and that they won’t have to send you home soon, whilst simultaneously hoping they CAN send you home thus enabling them to go home as well. Ahh, the stress of management…

At some point, you are allowed home and more horror awaits. Annoying people in 4X4 monstrosities seize the moment to smug you to death. Most of the year we scorn their selfish choice of oil burning machine, but for today at least they can be comfortable and safe. Their unnecessary blight on the ecological landscape still bruises the planet for 350 days of the year but for now they can be warmed by their own superiority and our palpable jealousy. If you look closely, they have probably given a lift to a few non-drivers and saved them from slipping and sliding their way home in the bitter cold. They will no doubt find time to stare at you as they drive away, their judgemental, bobble-hatted gaze futher burning into your angered heart.

By now, you may be wondering why I am talking about this on Halloween. Well, it was a bit frosty on Monday morning and I was caught unawares. The car warmed up eventually and the windows cleared, thanks mostly to the drippy remnants of last year’s de-icer and the edge of my bank card. On the way home, I bought two cans of de-icer and once home, I topped up the anti-freeze.

The next day, the temperature soared by about 5 degrees and nothing but warm morning drizzle has greeted me since.

You are welcome. I like to think of the first moments of Winter panic as a kind of public service.

TV

Upside-down Eyes!!

A recent phenomenon is the autumn TV surge. In recent years, SKY has started showing US TV series only a few days after they broadcast in the States. Due to my hours of work (evenings), I have to SKY+ all of these programs and watch them later. For some reason, I end up saving these for the weekends and starting on Saturday night, I have to methodically watch each of the 11 programmes. I make it sound like torture, when it is actually the opposite, but there is something about seeing all those recorded programmes lined up that fills me with dread. It happens every week and then, around May, the series all finish and there’s nothing on. I could quite easily leave all these programmes and watch them at anytime. The SKY+ box kindly stacks them all up in little folders but I MUST watch them and watch them NOW.

I haven’t even mentioned the programmes that actually go out live on Saturday night, namely Strictly Come Dancing and The X Factor. I usually watch these on Monday morning and fast-forward through them – especially Cher and her upside-down eyes, funny mouth and hugely annoying leg twitch.

Radio

I have no desire to return to the angry young blogger that I became in the first part of the year but I must allow myself a little bit of release now and again. All this week and for a lot of the preceeding few months, the broadcasters on Radio 2 have been endlessly plugging this year’s “Electric Proms”.

Electric Proms

Quite what separates this annual event from every other live performance they broadcast, I am not quite sure, but this hasn’t stopped them elevating it to the status of an indisputable religious miracle. This is annoying enough but not the whole story. What really gets my goat is the way they talk about it like we could all go if we wanted to. Let me explain. Only 7 million of of us live in London. Let’s be generous and say that maybe 10 million people live close enough to go without too much inconvenience. The remaining 50 million are a bit stuck, even if they wanted to go. This doesn’t seem to stop our favourite radio station pretending that this wonderous event is for all of us. They do the same with productions in the West End. Its “our theatre” and “the nation’s theatre”. No it isn’t. Shut up. It’s for people who live in London and not for those who live 100s of miles away.

As a side gripe, it also seems that it is for BBC staff too. A quick glance at Twitter or a quick listen to the station’s output the next day made it clear that an event so exclusive that tickets were given away in a telephone lottery, was attended by any DJ who wanted to go and quite a few hangers on as well. Not good at all.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am still proud of the BBC. I listen to Radio 2 and Radio 4 every single day and they are both wonderful. I just wish they would stop talking about Neil Diamond, Robert Plant (all hail) and Elton John like they represent the second coming. They are good musicians, all very good at their “jobs” but that’s about it. Get a grip people.

School

I didn’t have much to blog about this week regarding school or writing. It did occur to me that, in two weeks time, I will be back in Dover for Old Boys Weekend and it’s the first such visit that has taken place during a blogging phase. I can’t let this pass without doing something appropriate so I am going to do some sort of blog from there. I am not sure exactly what to do but I’ll think of something. I do have a dictaphone and I do know people who like to talk a lot so that might be one directon to go in. My travelling companions probably just swallowed something hard and jagged but I promise they are safe.

I am going to take some more photos certainly and I have compiled a list of things to check up on. I have been writing about things that took place 30 years ago and 400 miles away for ages. It will be cool to actually check the memories out.

L8r

Yes, another one.

Bear with me. I need to unload this weirdness. I have thought back and this dream was not induced by anything imbibed the previous evening.

So there I am in the school dining hall, ready to eat. Myself, Stan, Matt Colgate and various people I now work with are filing past the hotplate which for some reason is now about 100 yards long. I can’t decide what to have and end up at the other end with an empty plate. For some reason we all exit the hotplate queue at a point roughly where Marlborough House sat. Surprisingly, this is now where my back garden is….and I woke up.

Actually, this is unusual in as much as this was a morning dream. I got up at about 8am, made a cuppa and went back to bed. This is when I had it.

So how has your Bank Holiday weekend been? I have spent 3 long days painting my bedroom whilst not removing a single item of furniture (don’t ask). It was fun, but I managed to listen to Radio 2 from 8am this morning until about 20 minutes ago because the radio was in an inaccessible corner of the room and I couldn’t re-tune it. Honest. I got 33 points on Ken Bruce’s Popmaster quiz, but only my cat witnessed the thrilling and memorable performance.

The Olympics was fun. For some reason, I was more into it this year than in the past. Maybe its another sympton of growing old. At work, the break areas all have TVs now and I spent far too much time catching  a quick glimpse of the Grecian Goings On. Greece looked great and reminded me of my ideallic youth in Cyprus, wherefrom the bronzed Veaseys recently returned. You have to wonder though, with those crystal clear seas, blue skies and shimmering sun whether Manchester ever has a chance in hell of ever hosting the games. Having said that, Beijjing in 2008 hardly promises similar scenes.

I am sick to death of media coverage of grinning school kids and their 15 ‘A’ grade O level passes. No particular reason I suppose, other than a certain camerardery I share with those slightly less successful souls. I am seriously considering going back to college to get 10 or so of my own. I quite fancy some of those A levels too. What say you Sean? I don’t wanna go alone.