Category: Social

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Poppy Prize

I’ve recently been reminded of an incident from about 23 years ago. I probably think of this every year around Remembrance Day because it makes me chuckle.

As a teenager I was involved with the Air Cadets, or rather the Air Training Corps as we were then known. My loyalty lies with 309 (Sawbridgeworth) Sqn of the ATC as that is where I spent a lot of my time from age 12 1/2 (not officially) to around 30 [with a couple of breaks]. I attended the 25th anniversary meal of the Squadron being formed and next year I’ll be attending the 30th anniversary!

During 1990 I did the usual house-to-house collection for my squadron around the town of Sawbridgeworth for the poppy appeal. We normally did this on parade nights the few weeks before November 11th. This particular year I also happened to be dating a member of 1096 (Bishop’s Stortford) Sqn and for a laugh I joined her squadron on their door-to-door collection as their parade night was different.

So, it turns out that I won some sort of trophy at 1096 Sqn for collecting the most money for their squadron. Even now it makes me chuckle. I guess simple things please simple minds. I can’t remember if I ever got a trophy or prize but I definitely won their competition.

Also, the estate where I was collecting was home to a Squadron Leader from the Wing Staff. I can’t remember his name (probably Ian, but that’s not a great deal of help), I’ll get in touch with some of my close friends, they’ll remember. Anyway, I was going through the process to get my Staff qualification and part of this required an interview. This Sqn Ldr was meant to interview me and so when I knocked on his door and he recognised me we held the interview there and then. I passed the examination.

Perhaps there’ll be more dim and distant memories recorded here soon!

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December 6 2013

Only one week after the release of the Playstation 4 Sony released the latest in the Gran Turismo franchise for the PS3. I understand their decision and applaud it.

I am most looking forward to the GPS tracker uploading app when it arrives so I can drive some routes around my village and then create tracks within the game. It’s just a shame that a Passat Estate isn’t in the car list. I might also upload a route to work and see how quickly I “could” drive that.

How to be happy
How to be happy

What you don’t want to see when you want to play a game. A 1GB update and rural broadband speeds!

Ba0Pc7HIEAAAYgl

A welcome return to the GT series: Apricot Hill circuit. I always really enjoyed this one.

Apricot Hill
Apricot Hill

And here’s the track:

Apricot Hill
Apricot Hill

And my first win:

Winner
Winner
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What We Moan About

Firstly I shall make a number of presumptions. There’s probably plenty of evidence for these but I am not going to give citations.

  • Humans are tribal, belonging to groups makes us feel safe
  • Humans feel supported by groups and common interests
  • Humans are storytellers

I’ve been thinking about the things I moan about. Sometimes I explain those things on these pages, sometimes a short burst on Twitter and sometimes I like to moan to my family or work colleagues. It’s good to let off steam as long as you don’t come across to other people as a moaning bastard. Then again, it’s not always a bad thing to be considered the grumpy one, you tend to be left alone.

So, here goes.

The topics of our moaning need to be generalised. They should be topics that nearly everyone experiences or understands. They should be communal so we all feel involved and able to agree or chide.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the best topics for moaning are:

  • The weather
  • Driving
  • Supermarkets
  • Television

We all love to join in and be part of a gang. With these topics we can feel part of a gang straight away.
Just because we find cause to moan about these issues, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s getting worse. It might be different or worse or better. Anecdote won’t be able to tell. Let’s leave the details to the sociologists and scientists and engage in ranting every now and then. It’s good for you.

 

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Dr Who

I tweeted about giving up Dr Who and it seems fair to give you more information, dear Fooyah fans.

I’m (most likely) middle-aged. I grew up believing in The Doctor. The glory days of Tom Baker as the time traveller. I liked Peter Davison as the Doctor and also watched a little of Sylvester McCoy. By this time I was a little older and TV had outgrown its purposes of entertaining me for a while.

I remember looking forward to the Doctor Who film in the mid 90s. I quite liked it but had hoped it would prove to be enough for a new series. The things of wonder from my childhood still provide wonder as long as I don’t return to them because the adult mind is so different to that of a young boy. Things I thought were great don’t always stand the test of time.

When the BBC returned the series in the 2000s I was hooked. It was great. Funny, exciting and what it should be. Ecclestone was good and although I was rather shocked when he left I still enjoyed the story line with Tennant. Personally I found that the series peaked with the discovery of who the Face of Bo really was. It was such a revelation that I can’t wait to watch the first few series with my children when they are older just to see their faces at that point. I think that occurs about 4 seasons into the new imagining of Dr Who.

When Matt Smith took over I had no problem accepting him as the Doctor and I didn’t stop watching because of him. I stopped watching because the plots and solutions to universe ending crises seemed too thin and similar. I don’t need the Doctor to save the existence of the entire universe once a series. I just want intelligent scripts and reasonable effects. The sonic screw driver seemed to have become such a plot device that it could do anything, boring. The Doctor would think for a while, rush off while our companions are in mortal danger and fix everything with a zap from the screwdriver. More boring. Deus Ex Machina. Boring.

I gave up watching it. I only have a certain amount of time I give over to television and Doctor Who dropped of the list of things I like to watch. There, said it for the world to see. I don’t think it’s as good as it used to be. Put that in your screwdriver and smoke it.

So, here’s W.A.S.P. singing “I don’t need no Doctor” [yes, I know that’s a double negative but you know what it means].

 

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Possibly Slightly Fussy

I could possibly be described as being slightly fussy. This may surprise you, dear reader, but then again I would think not. I’m a teacher of mathematics and I love science and the real world. Of course I’m going to be fussy and whimsical.

I am probably too fussy about white boards at work. The one in my main teaching room I keep as spotless as possible. I do not use permanent pens [you’d be surprised the number of times that does happen] and I always wipe the board using a circular motion with my hands.

If you wipe clean a white board using a side to side motion the ink gathers in small areas at the edge of the wipe, much like windscreen wipers. However, if you clean using a circular motion this does not happen.

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There is a slight dent in my whiteboard in the bottom right of the picture. It irritates me slightly but I can’t do a lot about it! Also, if you look carefully you might be able to see my year 10 class doing a test!

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Pigeon Check

This is a picture of the building where I predominantly work. You can see I have labelled certain parts of the building.

Over the last few years I have been here I have become aware that before I enter the building (through doors labelled A) I check the roof line (labelled B) for pigeons. This is because they poop over the edge of the building and I don’t want to get any of that on me. If I look at the floor underneath the eaves I can see a distribution of pigeon poop along the length of the building. If I spot pigeons directly above the doors I will adjust my approach to the building. In the picture the birds sitting quietly (labelled C) would not be considered a threat unless it was a windy day.

 

Pigeon Check
Pigeon Check

Don’t get me started on the seagulls on the other buildings!

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Just Wrong

Maps eh? This is the picture of a wall chart by Michelin (the French company but for their English cousins). It is a Van Der Grinten projection with changes made by Michelin. I’m not sure it’s ethical to change a map projection but they did.

This map makes Great Britain look the same size as France. The real multiplier is that France is 2.2 times the size of the UK, let alone GB.
Spain is really twice as big as Great Britain.
Although it’s not on this picture Kenya looks about the same size as GB but is in fact 2.4 times bigger.

What have Michelin done? They’ve made it appear that Great Britain is larger than it is really. Oh dear. Perhaps we should all watch the

Somebody’s Going to Emergency, Somebody’s Going to Jail

episode of the West Wing. It will explain it all, I assure you.

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By the way, the last time I saw this episode of the West Wing was summer 2013 in Keswick while I was visiting penguin.

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Umbrella

In 1988 I went to the British Formula One Grand Prix with my sister and friends. We were four in total, Nick, Andy, Tracy and me. It was pretty exciting and one of the first “big days out” I had done as a teenager (I was 16).
I remember about five things about the day:

  • It rained
  • We watched from the Hangar Straight
  • Nigel Mansell came second
  • Andy and I bought an umbrella
  • We couldn’t hear the radio commentary because the cars were too loud
  • A car came to a stop right in front of us

Ok, wow, that’s six things about the day. I also want to say that we drove there in an Austin Allegro but I don’t think that is correct. I shall check and get back to you.

According the to Wikipedia page on this race it did rain, which is reassuring for my memory cells and Mansell did come second. It’s the umbrella I want to focus on.

As it rained so much Andy and I decided to buy an umbrella. We didn’t have enough money to each buy one so we put our funds together and bought a Marlboro McLaren umbrella from a stall. This umbrella served us well during the day and from then on we agreed we would share the umbrella between us as we both owned it.

I think this arrangement may have lasted about a year until I lost the umbrella. It’s something I feel a little bad about even to this day [when I remember to]. I had a strange canvassing job for Eissman who were trying to build a business of home delivered frozen food. A group of us would wander crappy (and some not-so-crappy) housing estates delivering the catalogue of frozen delights and then two days later we would ring every door bell and see if we could have the catalogue back, preferably with an order. It was commission only.

For this particular week I was getting a lift with the son of the vicar of Ugley in Essex. We were working in Letchworth in Hertfordshire. The weather must’ve been bad because I had the umbrella with me and then left it in his car when he dropped me off from another unsuccessful day at work. I’m pretty sure he quit and didn’t turn up again. As a job it was pretty bad, I lasted two weeks. What is more annoying is that I lost the umbrella which meant quite a bit to me.

I remembered this recently when I was teaching ratios to a class of mine. I told the story and then text Andy about it. He had forgotten what happened to the umbrella, but for me, I feel the loss nearly every day!

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Such A Waste

I had a lovely time at a wedding in June or at least people tell me so, I don’t remember much of it at all. Anyway, the hotel room had sugar lumps for coffee and tea but each one was individually wrapped in plastic. What a waste!

IMG_4725

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Who shall I address this too?

Yes, I know it’s grammatically incorrect. But that’s the point, read on dear Fooyah follower. I am sure that this is wrong and someone should be sacked for putting this on posters [if this poster is written correctly then tweet me or something and I’ll withdraw this post in shame]:

20131102-194327.jpg

The correct version of this is:

Who’s stolen our lions?

I’m never really sure who to blame in these situations. It’s a bit like the problem with sign writers. If they are given instructions telling them what to write and it’s grammatically incorrect do sign writers have a duty to correct the English or to put what the customer has written on a sign? It probably doesn’t matter as most people wouldn’t be bothered by something as trivial as a spelling mistake or grammar. But these things are important. There’s a proper way to write information to ensure that meaning is as accurate as possible.

Language is there so we can communicate effectively. What happens to society when newspapers are unable to write properly?

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