Guermantes

It seems believers in our magic friend in the sky have moved on from the mere use of acoustic guitars, in their attempts to woo the great masses. The other weekend we explored the East Lancs Railway and took tiffin in Ramsbottom. There was a church opposite the chip shop. On the lawn was a marquee with the Big Brother symbol in yellow on black and a sign saying “Diary Room”. I was curious but didn’t want to get too close in case one of those involved spake unto me.
We did sneak a look, though, upon completion of our chips, and it was indeed a ruse to ensnare the unwary - a list of questions etc. In addition to adopting some of Endemol’s materials, they tried to imply they were involved in the 1940s weekend that was happening along the railway. The heartening thing was that there didn’t seem to be any victims.
The next day I noticed a sign on the church I often pass on the way home. “With Jesus U R never the weakest link”, it said. Hasn’t Anne Robinson’s famous celebrity status dulled a little?

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu - health service as hell.  One of very few very long films which don’t seem long enough.

Several fenceposts by which I’ve navigated my map of the city have recently tumbled into dust.  The VIP Cinema Club, with its discreet doorway and set of stairs catered to a certain specialist interest, the accommodation to the clientele’s needs extending even towards wipe-clean seating.  Passing it on the bus I always used to hope I’d see someone either leaving or entering, regarding the amusement I derived as a form of good luck talisman.  Now, it has been demolished and the space it occupied will be taken up by an expanded chain-theme bar.  While it is trite to bemoan this sort of change, I do feel a little sad that a piece of distinctiveness has now been burnished away.

The Dutch Pancake House has also ended its unlikely run as a business.  When I was a child it was regarded as a special treat - the staff encouraged you to scribble on the napkins, the plates were enormous and the pancakes on the plates were gapingly large.  There were photos of the famous celebrities who’d been there.  In later years, it was of course the venue for ironic pilgrimages, combined with wonderment at how it persisted in a fairly central location with such erratic attendance.  The service was famously inept, the decor and the speaker system (I remember noting the large speakers as a child, with their cloth grilles) had not changed in twenty years.  Still, I liked its anachronistic presence and was amused at the woeful service.

Perhaps the owners of the lease felt they could derive more shareholder value from a more modern business.

What a shame.

Medium Cool

Tiredness meant I missed portions of the early sections, but it was a stunning print of a powerful film.

One night I was in a bar with after-work colleagues.  There had been some attrition and three remained.  We were in the upstairs portion of the bar and had been so all evening.  When most people around us had left, the bar staff started ostentatiously cleaning up and clearing things away, putting chairs on tables so that they made the greatest possible audio impact.  The bar person asked that we finish our drinks and move downstairs.

One of our number objected to this, on the grounds that we were not causing any trouble and there was no reason for us to have to move away from where we’d been all evening.  The “bar manager” was consulted and the staff person said we could stay until our drinks had been finished.  The door to our room was closed, lest any other patrons cause a similar ruckus.
A little later on, the “manager himself” appeared and demanded that we move downstairs, even though the drinks had not been finished.  He accused the principal spokesman amongst us of lying and was generally obstreperous without any good reason, while our spokesman stood his ground.  Eventually, the intransigence meant that the manager flounced off and slammed the door.

To my mind, the reason they wanted us to leave was so that they could finish early and go home.  This was not an acceptable reason to our spokesman.

I found the incident highly entertaining and revealing, while the third member of our huddle was deeply embarrassed in a highly English way, having attempted a rather sloshed emollience twice, to no effect.

It was clearly ire as a result of the arbitrary exercise of power having been stemmed by unwarranted rejection.

Today’s while-walking-into-work incident - a lone high-heeled shoe, with jewellery encrustations, sitting upright in the middle of a messy concrete area fenced off by wires.

Commentators complain about the over-testing of schoolchildren, as compared with some past Eden of care-free assessment drought.  In fact, I remember various reading tests I had to take.  One of them consisted of a card system, each of which comprised a story extract with a set of questions designed to elucidate vocabulary and comprehension.  Lord Baden-Powell featured in a story, I remember, about his exploits as a spy.  Trapped in a one-way street, he somehow climbed onto a roof, taking advantage of the well-known (as he told it) tendency of people not to look up at their surroundings. In this case the people were Kaiser-loving grenadiers.

Most days on the walk into work I am reminded of this passage and attempt to catch people out as a result.  One of the buildings I pass on my usual route has a set of windows on each floor, in an otherwise opaque space. I tend to look at the windows, hoping to see someone gazing out and imagining that they will not be observed in return by the people merely on the pavement. Perhaps they too read the Baden-Powell passage and are seeking to evade their own pursuers.  Sadly, they are generally client educational units “on the phone”.

For the past hour or so, a song bird has been orating outside somewhere, even though daylight is quite far away.

Is it privy to special knowledge?

This lunchtime I sat at a table normally occupied by young revellers. It affords a pleasing view of the client educational units coalescing around. Again a document had been left by previous occupants. This time it related to flights, the destinations being Hong Kong/Beijing and Mexico City, combined with 2 ISIC cards.

There was no dilemma over the appropriation of the paper as the contents were to prosaic, albeit conveying plans of interest to someone. Perhaps they work in one of the vertical drinking establishments in order to save up for their journeys. Maybe the fact that they clearly lack effective document retention procedures indicates they will never make it to Mexico. Or Hong Kong.

Today I was reminded of the difficulties inherent in specialisation.  There was a discussion about the problems holding back the wider adoption of Free Software.  The speaker had earlier made a salient point about the misleading impression generated by many of those moved to comment online about such things and that in order to progress they should not be the primary audience.

However, later there was a question about the problems mothers have in running a Free Software desktop.  Specifically, the proprietary applications and codecs required to experience much online content.  As advances are made, it is tempting to consider the problem largely solved.  However, I think there is a disconnection here.  If Normal People can’t Listen Again to Radio Four, it doesn’t really matter if everything else works much better than the alternative.  It might as well not work at all.  Nor do they really understand why they might not be able to do such things.