The Kettle Kapacity Konundrum

“Life. Oh life. Oh liiiife. Oh life. Doo-doo-doo-doo.”

So sang Des’ree in her 1998 number 8 chart hit, “Life”.

I often think about those words when I consider the fundamental contingency and futility of our existence on this earth.

Just now, a kettle has reminded me of Des'ree's words of power. 

Why oh why do all kettles measure their capacity in terms of dainty little teacups?

Does anyone under the age of 70 routinely drink out of a small teacup? No! EVERYONE drinks out of a mug!

Why, Mr Tefal, Mr Rowenta, Mr Morphy Richards, do you use an obsolete unit of measurement, forcing me to do multiplications and divisions in my head in order to work out how much water I need to boil?

It drives me to despair, as I drink my afternoon half-mug of tea. 

But then when the darkness looks insurmountable, I remind myself of the profound message of hope provided by 5ive in their 1999 chart topper, “Keep on Movin’”:

“Sometimes I think that life has no meaning, but I know things will be alright in the end.”

The Best Barber in the World

It may come as a surprise to you to discover that the best barber in the world is situated in Greengates, Bradford.

And yet here is the proof: BEST BARBER IN THE WORLD.

This, I should point out, is at least the second version of this sign that has been displayed on this shop. The first version was just a banner – as you can see, the owner has decided to go for something a little more permanent.

Clearly, this was one of those “president for life” elections, after which all future polls were abolished - after all, if he really is the best, why vote again?

Having spent that much on the sign, I don’t think he plans on putting his record before the public again any time soon.

I drive past this shop most days, but it was not until this weekend just gone that I put my head into the hands of the best barber in the world.

He was alright – he met my five criteria admirably. £7 for a cut, parking outside (none of those pictured are my car, psychopathic readers!) and plenty of Daily Stars to read while I waited.

It is not, however, the boldness of his claim that impresses me most, but rather the carefully hedged wording.

Was he voted the best barber in the world by his customers, whom he describing as loyal?

Or was it only the loyal customers who voted him best barber in the world – with the sign a coded rebuke to those disloyal customers who voted for someone else?

On Anger

HULK SUBLIMATE!

People often think I am unemotional, but in this they are mistaken. I am in fact a very emotional person, whose complex and varied inner states express themselves outwardly only in limited forms.  

That is to say, no matter what is happening to me and how I feel, I express myself more or less uniformly somewhere on the spectrum between boredom and rage.

In the same way that a power station turns coal into heat, which turns water into steam, which turns the rotation of a turbine into electricity (or something like that), so my constitution reliably metastasises every stimulus into one or another form of annoyance.

This is an exaggeration of course (you IDIOT) but it contains an element of truth. To have a furious side is quite restrictive, given that it is socially unacceptable EVER to be angry.

Generally, I get around this by the trusty old British standby of irony. You may have noticed this strategy in play on this very blog – I rant and rave, sneer scathingly, belittle and threaten others, but I don’t mean it.

Or do I?

I used to love irony. It felt so clever saying one thing and meaning another. Now I just want to say what I mean – but it’s practically impossible. People would think I was mad. Not because the things I want to say are mad (well, not all of them) but because there are things you just don’t say directly.

Like – oh, I don’t know...for example – that one thinks that another is an idiot, upon whom one has spent quite enough time already trying to explain simple things.

Having always to say this indirectly and in a way that doesn’t upset the other actually makes me even angrier.
 

Do you ever just want to get a sledgehammer and smash everything around you like the Hulk?

I do. Quite often.

And the fact that I can’t do that – because (i) everything around me belongs to me and I’d have to replace it, (ii) I’d get fired from my job, (iii) other people would be upset and/or (iv) the law – is quite irritating.

Can you perhaps see my problem?

What are people in our civilised society supposed to do with all the pent-up rage and aggression that our civilised society causes in them?

Play squash, get ulcers and have strokes?

Calm down dear

Everything around us is arranged to maximise annoyance value and minimise opportunities for legitimately releasing the pressure.

 Just phone up your gas supplier – it’s not the person on the end of the phone’s fault. You can’t get angry with them.

THIS IS NOT A COINCIDENCE!

The insincere pre-recorded apology for your train being late?

THIS IS NOT A COINCIDENCE!

By the way, none of the above is true. I’m being ironic.

LOL. 

Waiting...

A few days ago, I spent eight hours waiting.

I was waiting for the words of a wise man – a very busy wise man, who walked past me and glanced at me several times during that eight long long hours.

Eventually, the wise man came to me, poked me, muttered a few trite words – which I could have told him some eight hours earlier – and sent me on my way.

Can you guess where I was?

An NHS hospital ward of course. Long story, but basically some stitches I had got a week earlier fell out, so I went to A&E.

Always a depressing experience among the sick and the lame, this was only brightened by the presence of a terrified researcher from the Discovery Channel asking the various inmates if they were there by virtue of an “amusing mishap” and if so, whether they wished to be featured on a programme called “Bizarre ER”.

I don’t think she found anybody whose symptoms or circumstances were funny, or who wanted the world to perceive them as such.

Had I simply been battered in a drunken brawl, I would have been stitched back up and sent on my way – but because this was a “post operative complication” I was sent upstairs to the surgery ward after about an hour.

And that was when my ordeal really began.

I arrived at 12.45pm – I left at around 9pm. In that time, I was continually assured that the “senior doctor” would be there any moment and that without his say-so, nobody could do anything. In that time I was given (i) two cups of coffee and (ii) a sandwich, at 7.30pm when I went and told the nurses I thought I was going to pass out.

I am convinced I left that hospital in a much worse state of health than I arrived in. I was certainly in a much worse mood.

Now, I could take this opportunity to blast the NHS, but why bother? I don’t want a better NHS – I just want to never have to use it again. It would be nice if doctors treated patients like human beings rather than infected gobbets of blood-flecked mucus and hair they have found smeared on a door handle, but I guess you have to pay cash for that.

No, dear friends – it is the waiting I want to talk about.

I hate waiting anyway. I value my time and I value other people’s time, so I always try to minimise the time anyone spends waiting for me, and I like that courtesy to be reciprocated. I take being kept waiting (unnecessarily) by someone as an explicit statement that they believe their time is more valuable than mine – and I take that as an insult.

But if you know that what you are waiting for is not going to turn up for, say, 30 minutes, an hour, eight hours – then that is a different matter. You can do something with that time. You know what is going on and you are in possession of yourself.

It is the imminent anticipation of something being always about to happen right now, that makes waiting unbearable. You daren’t do anything else, in case you miss it or – god forbid – keep them waiting for you.

Waiting is boring, and being bored is an affront to life. We have only so much time in this life. To waste it by choice is stupid, but at least it’s your own decision. To have it wasted by others is an offence.

That eight hours I spent in a dingy little cubicle being ignored has taught me the value of time and the evil of boredom.

It’s the Final Countdown

Have you seen this god?

T-55: Not long to go now, eh apocalypse watchers?

Less than eight weeks to go until the end of the world/the dawning of a new age of spiritual enlightenment/the Strictly Come Dancing final, depending on your point of view.

For my own part, I have to say that the portents have been a little disappointing to say the least. Jimmy Savile obviously came as a surprise, but apart from that the last few months have been pretty slim on Book of Revelation-type stuff. 

I am starting to wonder if this is all not a big joke. Has anyone else seen anything suggesting the impending end of days? Let's try to keep it light-hearted though. 

How to Win School Appeals - Part 3

I have to tell you, a part of me wishes I had never started writing this series of posts – as the growing gaps between instalments perhaps suggests.

Firstly, it’s really hard to condense everything I took from our experience into nuggets of wisdom without rambling on and on. This is actually the third time I have completely rewritten this piece now in an attempt to make it shorter.

I was thinking about just letting myself go to town and turning this into an eBook. For those of you not familiar with the term, that is a scam in online marketing whereby you hand over your contact details in exchange for a PDF which chucks together a load of stuff you could have found on the internet for yourself.

Secondly, there is the rather more serious point that I don’t really know how to win school appeals.

As I mentioned earlier in the series, we still don’t actually know on what grounds we won. And so any/all of the recommendations I make may be complete balls.

So, with that disclaimer still ringing in your ears, let’s finish this damn thing off so I can get back to writing about the mad shit thatcomes into my head when I’m driving to work without the pressure of real-world-responsibility to disturb me.

Is it legal?

Everything you will get from the council will seem very scary and legalistic. They will tell you that you can only possibly win if there has been some kind of maladministration or cock-up in the process.

So all your arguments about why little Timmy should go to this school rather than that school don’t count. It’s all about the correct application of the Admissions Policy.

I have no doubt that a fair proportion of people are put off from appealing just by the sight of the height of this bar.

Then there is the prospect of the appeal tribunal itself. Oooh – scary. You have to go and represent yourself in front of a panel whose decisions are legally binding, going up against someone (from the admissions authority) who presumably does this for a living.

Well, let me tell you that in our experience, you should not be put off by any of this.

The appeals panels are made up of members of the local “great and good” – not legally trained people and not education experts. As such, while the letter of the law says that they can only grant appeals on the basis of misapplication of the criteria, I am absolutely convinced that you can get them on your side by coming across as (i) intelligent, (ii) educated and (iii) genuinely concerned about your child’s welfare – all of which will put you at an advantage over the council’s rep.

Far from being experts, we found the person from the council to be poorly briefed and basically going in with the same argument for everyone.

Please note, that is NOT the case for faith schools and other places that do their own admissions – where you find yourself (excruciatingly) accusing of misadministration the very headmaster whose school you are trying to get into.

I do not doubt for a moment that the good impression Elvira and I produced in the panel (she cried! I read out long notes!) helped.

And remember, there’s the admissions authority can’t appeal against the panel’s decision – so you need to do whatever it takes, whether it’s admissible or not!

Listen to gossip

We found out – from local gossip – that someone who got a place via the waiting list lied about their address. We kicked up a huge stink about it before the hearing and in it. The council, naturally, had done nothing beforehand and this did not impress the panel.

If you had believed that this was a purely legal proceeding, it wouldn’t matter what went on in other people’s cases as to whether your own was justified or not, would it? Well, see above.

Get your ear to the ground and pester the council about everything you hear. By law, they have to have answered all your questions 48 hours before the hearing. Chances are they will be too disorganised to do that, and you have your way in.

Oddly, we only heard from the council about the complaint after the appeal decision had been published. It’s almost as if they wanted to make it go away...

Do your homework

Tedious I know, but you need to get totally familiar with the admissions policies you are dealing with. You need to get the official word on, for example, the distance of your home to your preferred school – and check it yourself. Friends of ours successfully challenged an incorrect measurement and got a place before even going to appeal.

You have a right to know where on the waiting list you are, but the council will try to pretend that you don’t. Their rationale for that is that some people can’t appreciate that their position can change in relation to developments in others’ cases. Bollocks to that. Don’t let them get away with it.

Get everything written down and give it in as late as possible. The panel will read it, chances are the council won’t and will make themselves look stupid and lazy at the hearing.

That’s it. I wish you all the best of luck if you’re appealing. It has opened my eyes to how local bureaucracy really works and how people can overcome its dead hand with a bit of reading, writing and ruthlessness. 

Isle of Sodor Railways loses franchise

"Eccentric" Hatt

PRESS RELEASE

Department for Transport, 12/10/12

Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin will announce this morning that the Isle of Sodor Railway Company’s franchise for operating passenger and freight services will be not be renewed and will come to an end next April.

Mr McLoughlin cited Isle of Sodor Railways’ appalling record on punctuality and safety – derailments on the network total 255 for the last year alone – as the decisive reasons for rejecting the bid put in by eccentric chairman, Sir Topham Hatt, better known to the public as “The Fat Controller”.

Many critics have laid the blame for the company’s performance on Sir Topham’s “Very Useful Engine” artificial intelligence system, which allows locomotives to make their own route planning and other decisions – frequently in competition with one another.

The Secretary of State also pointed to extensive financial irregularities within Isle of Sodor Railways, which is incorporated in the neighbouring tax haven, the Isle of Man.

Concerns have frequently been raised about the amount of rolling stock and track maintained by Isle of Sodor, which is vastly out of proportion to the needs of an island no more than five miles in length.

Mr McLoughlin will later today hand the franchise to the US-based Consortium For Putting in an Offer for Running Sodor’s Railways – SodOff.

Chuggington: Safety concerns

One of the lead backers of SodOff is the Arizona city of Chuggington. Commentators have noted that Chuggington’s record on accidents is just as bad as Isle of Sodor’s.

Confronted with these concerns, the Secretary of State said in a statement: “They offered shit loads more money.”

Asked for a comment, senior partner at transport engineering consultancy Pig, Rabbit and Cat, Ian “Daddy” Pig said: “Oh. I didn’t expect that to happen”, before jumping up and down in a muddy puddle.

NOTES FOR EDITORS

• Sir Topham Hatt is the brother of rogue investment banker Sir Stetson “Cowboy” Hatt, the former chief executive of RBS, who has not been missing since 2009. Sir Stetson was last seen leaving Claridges and getting on board Bertie the Bus with 15 teenage Lithuanian prostitutes.
• Sir Topham first developed the “Very Useful Engine” system in the late 1930s. He spent much of the previous decade in Italy observing how Mussolini made trains run on time. That period is widely believed to be the source of the ardent anti-communism which inspired his desire to run a railway without workers. His feelings about the labour movement led Sir Topham to become a dedicated supporter of Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, and he was interned for much of the Second World War on Zingzilla Island.

Missing banker Thomas Goldstein

• Although Isle of Sodor Railways maintains that “Very Useful Engine” is a closely-guarded software secret, allegations that trains are animated with the souls of dead business partners of Hatt, revived by unspeakable necromantic rites, have continually depressed share prices. Longstanding acquaintances of the Hatt family have claimed to see uncanny similarities between certain company assets and the renowned German financiers, Thomas and Percy Goldstein, who vanished in 1936.
• Spokesman for SodOff, Tinkie Winkie the Teletubbie commented on the DfT’s decision: “Tinkie Winkie bag!”. The FTSE100 and Dow Jones both immediately rose by 100 points. 

Contact DfT press office for further information.