PigBlog

Today, we decided to go to the local pub for lunch. It was, mostly, very nice. The food was nice, the beer was good, the staff were pleasant.

However, one thing wasn’t so good, and it’s really starting to bother me.

Children. Badly behaved, noisy children, running round and round, repeatedly ringing the bell at the bar. On other visits, they’ve been running up and down the seating too.

Now, a quick reality check. I don’t have children, which is a little bit unusual at my age, so there’s the possibility of me having a distorted view through being famously intolerant, and not used to it, but not *all* kids annoy me. Hell, some of them can even be nice.

I don’t mind the presence of children or teenagers, and I have nieces and nephews. Am I that far out of whack when I think that a pub (with the notable exeception of Wacky Warehouse type establishments) should primarily be an adult space, so if kids are they they should behave? Is it unreasonable of me to expect parents to keep their children entertained and under control (let’s face it, pubs are probably quite boring for kids) ?

At what point did it become acceptable to let your kids annoy all and sundry just so you can have a drink or do whatever else you like? Is this just another aspect of the increasingly greedy, selfish, screw you society we live in? Should we all love all of the little darlings?

Am I being overly grumpy about this, or are my complaints justified? Talking to friends and family that do have children suggests I’m not that far off the mark

We’ve had a day off today, and went out for a walk: after a bus to Cannock, we walked back via a lane or two and Norton Canes, the Cannock Extension Canal, and a footpath over the fields from Pelsall.

It’s about time for a non-whinging post, so here goes.

As Bob has commented, you can find some lovely countryside so close to home, here in the West Midlands conurbation, especially on the canals. Excuse the slightly duff cameraphone photos.

Today we walked around 8 miles, and by far the majority was in country lanes, woodland, or canal towpath, in the sunshine, just when, like the Bumpkin, I was feeling summer had gone.

The Cannock Extension makes a nice walk- sadly it now terminates at the A5, after it was abandoned further up.

Cannock Extension Canal, 2/9/2010

Grove Colliery Basin, 2/9/2010

We’ve had a busy old time. Quite pleasant, but busy.

We’ve had a house guest (who returned home to NZ last Wednesday), which meant the end of the previous week, last weekend, and the start of last week were busy. This weekend has also been that way: beyond the normal humdrum domestic necessities we went out to meet the Bumpkin and his good lady, sampling a few pubs (and managing a cheeky extra one at The Turf- it would be rude not to) and getting a few miles of walking in- we had our visas for the Principality.

Today I actually persuaded myself out on my bike for once. A mere turn of the pedals compared to one of Brownhills Bob’s epics, at around 3-4 miles but I’m feeling better for it and it’s better than nothing.

The rest of the day has been domestic tasks and collecting my dear Stymistress from Birmingham city centre (and by Jebus, the dawdling idiots were out on the roads today- I hate driving on Sundays), but we do have another pub visit to go yet- just a gentle couple of pints with the neighbours.

We’ve just been reminded why we don’t go to Wales very often: It absolutely pissed it down for much of our time there, so we came back early. I’m famed for phrases like “It’s only a bit of water, stop moaning”, but even I have limits, and yes, it always rains in Wales, but 3 days of almost continuous heavy rain and then more showers….

It wasn’t a disaster, but we were out in the car more than intended, on foot less than intended, and one evening couldn’t face leaving the cottage. Beautiful scenery, some nice roads, and a few nice places to go, but it felt like Rob McKenna was on holiday too.

edit: Pictures at the gallery. They’re not all rain, but 283 and 285 are only hours apart…

Anyone that knows me well will know that phrases like ‘proccess efficiency’ and ‘streamlined business processes’ will send me running for a claw hammer with which to viciously beat the speaker. So often today “efficiency” means “cutting the funding”, and anything done to “benefit customer service” is quite the reverse: it’s little more than an excuse to trot out a load of managment bullshit, knacker the service, and give someone’s private sector buddies a pile of cash.

However:

By dear sweet baby Jebus, Walsall Manor NHS needs *something* doing to stop wasting time and money quite so well. It’s so stunningly poor that it looks bad compared to the rest of the NHS.

I’ve had some experience myself (I gave up trying to get any useful contact out of the Physiotherapy lot last year), but recent experience with my dear Stymistress just drives it home. It was a routine appointment, for a regular clinic- not an emergency, so you’d think that you could run appointments roughly to time. After all, if you’ve done it for a while, you’d know on average how long an appointment takes. Build in a few minutes reserve, book as many appointments as you can fit in.

So then, we turn up at around 3:30. The appointment is timed to be at 3:55. See that? That’s planning, that is: we left 1:05 for the journey, knowing it should take around 45-50 min. You take account of what is likely, leave a little room to move, and work to that.
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I’m back from holiday in Sorrento. Very nice too: it’s a short flight (but see my forthcoming rant), and weather was excellent. I’d always harboured some prejudices about Italy: it would be full of loud, posing fashion victims, and the food would be crap (I’ve never been keen).

In the event, my dear Stymistress was the one that tired of the food first- the biggest issue being there’s not a great amount of choice- and the fashion victims mostly kept themselves to themselves, so I actually enjoyed it far more than I imagined- I would go back. There are photos up in the gallery.

Air Travel

Naples Airport, 28-05-2010, 18:05 local time.

Air travel. Don’t you just love it?

Well, no. Here goes a semi-repeat rant.

The compensations are there: it’s relatively quick, and you get to go to nice sunny places but there’s so much pissing about involved; a 30-60 min drive to an airport, typically, and the need to be there 2-3 hrs before the flight goes, baggage check, security check, passport check (where it’s always a surprise to one thick bastard that they might want to see his passport), sit in a departure lounge with objectional people (like the welsh fucking gobshite just a few yards away,busily explaining in tedious detail and great volume about how much he paid for flights, car hire, the services of a local rent boy, and whatever other fucking shit he paid for.

Then comes the flight itself. Trapped in a metal cylinder with a few hundred people, enjoying the smells, sights, diseases and sounds thereof. Detestable food, seating designed for anorexic midgets with no legs. TV ‘entertainment’. Just to add to the joy, if you fly with Thompson or First Choice (who would be no-one’s first choice if they had the cash to do otherwise) you get a ‘cute’ safety announcement that features a brat you’d willingly fling out at cruising altitude. It has to have subtitles, so that you can understand what they are saying.

Then (assuming we make it), there’s BHX. I think they import the baggage handlers from somewhere with a very relaxed work ethic. I’ve been lots of places by air, and BHX is where you will wait longest for your luggage. Idle brummie gits.

Still, back soon.

[edit; We did,of course, make it back. Naples airport managed to be amazingly disorganised, and bussed us all of 30 yards to the plane- this took around 20 minutes. Birmingham excelled themselves: we got our bags 1 hour 10 minutes after landing. Genius. Then an unfortunate fox decided to commit suicide on the M6Toll by running in front of the car. Joy, though to be fair, it didn't wnd well for him.]

Today, thanks my sister-in-law and husband, we’ve had a nice trip up the canal from here to here and back (with a lunch stop here) on a hired narrowboat. Very pleasant it was too.

I like canals, and I’ve walked a good fe miles along them, but have only been on a canal boat once before, over 30 years ago, and I’ve never piloted one before. It’s quite tricky at first, but you get a feel for it after a while. It still needs concentration though, despite the low speed. We managed relatively few collisions though .

It’s a relaxing way to travel, with only the dubious boating skills getting in the way, but don’t plan to go far, we did around 10 miles all day. Photos here.

I touched on this some time ago, but it’s time for a revisit.

Why does so much of the world involve 9-5ish business hours, and going to an office to do so?

What first set me thinking on this was tonights commute home. 43 minutes end-to-end, steady speed (so less emmissions and more MPG), and less stress. This is (roughly) 75% of the average lately, and the difference was that I had to change a router after business hours (after a failed attempt a couple of weeks ago), so left work just after 6pm, rather than the 4:30/5:30 rush hour.

Sadly, I don’t have the opportunity to work (say) 7:30 or 8:00-18:00 every day, aviod the traffic, and take a day off a week. That would do good things for me and the environment, but my employer, like many, wants me at my desk during the day.

If we’re talking about being at your desk during working hours, why in fact be there at all? I’m a network monkey: I support networks, servers, telephony etc etc. I could do 80-90% of my work from where I’m sat now with an IP Softphone (or a mobile) and VPN. I could conceivably only go to the office 1-2 days a week.

Even for meetings there’s plenty of products that can reduce or eliminate the need for people to travel to meet: If you have a national coverage, that can save a wedge. The Webex product is robust enough to do product demos over, and as a support tool for us techies it’s incredible. For one supplier I use, the account manager works at home several days a week, and I cannot tell if she is there or in the office: the phone seamlesly re-routes. An educational establishment I know of in the Black Country uses mobiles with wi-fi connectivity and SIP together with Asterix and makes the user’s internal extension appear seamlessly on their phone if they are at work, home, or anywhere in between and saves a truckload of cash in the process. I’ve done system upgrades sat on my sofa with a beer; Lee H-W has done his (techie) job from a campsite during the Gloucestershire floods.

So then: in our connected world, with all the enabling tech we have, why does the rush hour persist, at least for those of us office-based?

Will rising traffic levels and environmental concerns see this pattern end?

Discuss.

As I hinted at below, I need to whinge about travel agents and insurance.

I’ll start by being fair: the agents refunded our money, but not until after a lot of hassle and stress and hard work form my very nice neigbour Helen.

I’ll lay out the facts: Two Belgian commuter trains crashed. This casued chaos, includung to the eurostar service:

Screengrab from Eurostar site, 17-02-2010

You may like to note that paragraph:

We therefore strongly advise travellers between the UK and Brussel (sic) to cancel or postpone their journey

I called our travel insurance co, and they suggested that there may be a way to claim for the accomodation- Eurostar were refunding travel costs.

Their story changed the next day. Apparently, this counts as ‘disinclination to travel’ which is not covered.

I’m frankly shocked, though not that surprised, that when the Foreign Office refers to Eurostar’s advice, which is not to travel, that the insurance company say we must travel, then if we suffer a 12 hour plus delay or cannot reach the destination they will pay.

Strikes me as irresponsible, and double standards- we choose not to place ourselves in a risky situation they choose to not pay out. Still, that’s insurance for you, the fetid bastards.

Evil Overlord 21: An eternal rainy Sunday in Bracknell, with all of the pubs shut and no TV and cinema for the insurance industry.