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LJ Idol Week 8 - Rant

A while back, I had a little baby rantlet concerning telemarketers. Nothing has changed. I still end up picking up the phone dozens of times over the week to have a machine or an unfortunate (this would be a euphemism) trying to persuade me to buy something or that I have won something spectacular (if I only call line x which operates at £5 per minute...). I still respond in the affirmative if a survey, no matter how bent, is offered. I still tell people that I hope that they have a nice day and all, but that I'd really appreciate not being called again. Various companies still call frequently enough that I'm considering asking for one of the callers' names and firmly requesting that I get put through to them every time the company is delightful enough to fork out for yet another call to my domicile; I might as well use this as a social contact.

I have now experienced enough of these calls to be able to put my regular callers into some broad categories:

1) The Machine

A machine? They have a machine calling me? Look! Dudes! I am never going to believe that any company which truly has something of importance to communicate to me is going to do it via a sodding recording! No! Nor am I going to be fooled by a short pause after the salutation into thinking that there is somebody there who means me well.

I have stopped apologising to machines before I slam the phone down. I now merely slam the phone down or, if I'm having a bad day, eff and blind down the line. I won't do this to people. I once rancourously called the number offered, intending to complain furiously, and got put through to a nice girl from Lancashire and answered a question to win some petrol. We've never owned a frigging car, but I've heard it mixes well with ginger ale...

2) Linguistic/Cultural Shenanigans

i. Mr/Little Miss Friendly

Most typical when we were living in Germany. Also met in pubs. Heard German being spoken with a British accent and felt obliged to tell me all about his school trip to Scunthorpe, asked if I were on holiday (with an established landline?) and if I liked Germany. Which is delightful and I'm usually up for a chat, but... I'M STILL NOT BUYING ANYTHING! I once cut one of these people short by pointing out that just because I was at home, didn't mean that I wasn't working and didn't mean that I had time to chat... and then felt guilty for the rest of the afternoon.

ii. OMG You Aren't German! This Means You Can't Speak German!

A further occupational hazard of being a furriner in a strange land. Usually involved folks trying out their 5th grade English snippets or else speaking loudly and slowly whilst assuming that I didn't understand of word of German. On the phone I can roll my eyes; on the street I had to look patient; in the pub I got to have people breathing beer at me while doing this. Actually, with telemarketers, I usually played along, refused everything very firmly, complimented their English and waited for them to give up. Of course, once someone got a colleague with 7th grade English (woo hoo!) to call me back and have to understand that I didn't want a subscription...

iii. Hi! I'm From Bangalore!

A largely British phenomenon in that many companies have outsourced their call centres and thus their telemarketers to India. I refuse to get all Daily Mail about this and argue that British people could be gainfully employed to annoy the s**t out of me - we are in the age of globalisation and there are enough Brits who are gainfully employed to annoy the s**t out of me - but these guys are feral.

At least once a week I will get a call from someone who is really not speaking English, from someone else who ceases to understand English as soon as I say, "No, thank you!" and from someone else who speaks impeccable English, calls me 'Madam' and insists upon speaking to my husband (who he?) when I graciously refuse their services.

Somebody somewhere is pulling my leg...

3) The Grim Disbeliever

I am in possession of a set of monikers which no-one can ever really spell correctly and often cannot quite pronounce. This is just part of life. However, one company has me down as Mr Mah-Whorey Fah-roots (well, as Mr Marhory Faruts anyhow...), which doesn't matter so much as I'm really never going to buy anything from them, but I tend to need (?) to prove that I am the official target before I can get rid of them... There have been several stages to this:

i) My name isn't pronounced/spelled that way.
- that's tough, luv. It's in the system now. Can I call you Whorey for short?

ii) I'm not a man. I'm not even a girlie trapped in a man's body.
- Ah! You're his wife! So, would your husband like an x/y/z...
- No! We must speak to him personally!
- It says you're a man here...

iii) No, really. I'm Marjory. I'm a lady (hem!). I'm not interested in your stuff. Could you please stop mailing me and calling me.

- But you're in the system, sir!

My fave from these people involved them checking my details for a prize draw for something which I did vaguely want, going through my name (Whorey), my address, my number (duh!) and my date of birth:

Him: So you were born on the 26th May 1959...
Me: No.
Him: It says that here...
Me: No, I was born on 14th November 1973.
Him: Are you sure?
Me: I know my own birthdate!
Him: But that's totally different from what's down here. How can that be?
Me: Someone put the wrong data in?
Him: [Pause] Well let's not worry about that for now, sir...

Yes, I am an epicene individual in denial about being 49. And probably Turkish or spawned by exceedingly cruel parents. Oh! Wait!

4) The W(h)ine Company

My all time favourites and shock troops of the telesales world and constant callers, even though both dr_mitch and I kept telling them that we weren't interested in their wares and didn't want them to call ever again. They were in a league of their own. 5 years of calls, right up until the day when we handed over the keys to the flat and quit the country.

We may have overstated the case of our disdain for the idea of their wine, as a latterday call involved a very nice lady calling me up to tell me that I didn't like wine at all (?) and that they were prepared to send a rep round with some juice for me to try instead. When I said that I wasn't interested and then had refused all of that week's appointments, I was cheerfully promised future appointments for juice-tasting. On QI I heard that part of Deep Blue was now employed in an airline's booking system somewhere. I now harbour suspicions that the wine company has enlisted the services of Talkie Toaster from Red Dwarf...

LJ Idol Week 7 - Hope

It Pays to Advertise

This isn't much of a ghost story. It probably isn't one. They don't always occur in stately gothic piles or ruined castles and they don't always end neatly, conclusively. It takes place in the compartment of a train.

It was a long journey from Oxford to Darlington and the train stopped literally at every station. It is a general rule in Britain that the area around the railway station is grim and blasted and this day's journey offered me few exceptions to prove the rule as town after town went by, each with its derelict factories, car wreckage yards and wasteground with tethered, scabby horses. It was late Autumn, no longer crisp and russet, but the season of soporific mists and dark, grey-green trees, of rotted leaves and wet cold. The harvests were long in, leaving only stubbled, dank fields when we went through countryside.

My ticket was checked and I tried to settle down to read a book with little success. I was alone.

I was alone until the train stopped in a small midlands town and the compartment door was duly slid open by an elderly woman carrying a small case, which I hefted into the luggage rack for her. She was what my grandmother would have called an old-fashioned looking person, very neat in a chequered woolen coat with an amethyst brooch, navy skirt and pink blouse. She wore a navy hat which was a couple of steps above and beyond the usual granny-toque. I noticed that she looked a little nervous, perhaps still excited at the prospect of travel which had long since become a drag to me.

"I'm going to my niece's," she said, before she was quite settled down. "Her husband will be picking me up. Do you think he will remember?"

I put down my book. I had just hit the age when the elderly would talk to me as opposed to eyeing me suspiciously like some exotic creature which might lash out at any time. I had also hit the age when I was able to converse with strange, elderly people again. Adolescence had been thankfully left behind.

"I'm sure he will," I reassured her.

"He's not the most reliable, you see. I'm going to help my niece with the grandchildren. What do you do?"

I told her.

"Oxford, eh? My son was at Oxford."

"Oh yes? What did he do?"

"Taught Philosophy. He's dead now. Pneumonia, but a broken heart in my book. He wasn't good enough for them."

This wasn't the standard fare of little old lady conversations, so I tried to steer away from the subject.

"I'm sorry to hear that. You must have been very proud of him that he was teaching at the university, though."

"Oh yes. He was always a very clever boy. Active too. When he came home in the holidays he was aways out hiking and he used to help his dad out. I remember him coming home one time and he dismantled a shed up at the allottments for one of the neighbours. On his own. Can't think how he got pneumonia."

"No. It's very damp in Oxford."

"They killed him."

It turned out that he had been an only child, but everything she had hoped for and more. She was happier telling me about him when he had been alive, about the pranks he had got up to as a boy, about holidays they had taken when her husband was alive.

"He died when John, my son, was 20. I made sure he kept up with his studies though. Pity."

I asked about the niece who lived in Thirsk and opined that that was a nice part of the world. She agreed and the conversation continued amiably enough, via was I courting and what my plans were since I wasn't, via how she hadn't seen her great nephews since they were babies, via the weather, viw more tales of the exploits of her son John.

We pulled out of York and I remembered to look out of the window for the White Horse of Kilburn, a shape cut out of a limestone hill by a 19th century schoolmaster and his pupils.

"I'm on the home straits now", I said and turned around. She was gone, case and all. So quickly,so silently? I checked the corridor in case she was waiting at a door, so I could say goodbye and, although I checked three times, she wasn't there. She wasn't on the platform when the train pulled out of Thirsk either.

"Do you think you could check the loos for an old lady?" I asked the guard when he came by.

"What old lady? It's been a slow day today. There's been no-one on the train bar you and some football fans all morning."

Happy Hallowe'en!

LJ Idol Week 5 - Open Topic

There was an advert which ran on TV when I was in Germany which used to make me laugh. It also sums up some of the German attitude towards life.

The camera shows a traumatic scene, a kitchen, ruined by a deluge from the washing machine,an image of visceral dread. A workman is summoned and he spend some time rummaging around in the offending appliance's innards with the grimness of countenance generally reserved for life-saving brain surgery Eventually he pulls out the heating element and brandishes it aloft to show us all that it is coated in limescale. He shakes his head ruefully, turns to the cowering housewife and says, "You could have had 20 more years service if you only hadn't bought such cheap and inferior water-softener."

This is indeed what it is like hiring a workman in Germany. Whereas in Britain I would be sorely tempted to yell, "Shut up and fix my machine, you twerp! I'm paying you 30 quid an hour fit that!", few Germans would ever dare do so. Short of having PhDs in Mechanical Engineering themselves, the average German would meekly take the telling off and possibly even take notes for the next time.

For Germany is a country of experts and Germans pride themselves on efficiency and self-sufficiency. Years before anyone mentioned environmentalism, Germans were doing everything in their power to ensure that their cars ran better longer, that their ovens would continue to glow with a pure, clear light into the next generation and that their paintwork would last 1,000 years unbesmirched. I exaggerate. But not by much.

In Germany, this attitude pervades all aspects of life. If you go to a florist's shop, you do not merely buy your blooms from a florist, but from a Master Florist. In a stationer's, one does not merely buy one's pencils from a sales clerk, but from a fully-certified Stationery Sales Clerk. Similarly, the preachy washing-machine repairman of the advertisement is no mere workman but a Master Mechanic with special certification in appliance repair. It is not meant as a personal affront when one is told that one must be stark raving mad if one purchases this or behaves like that; it's meant pedagogically.

The only time this causes arguments between Germans is when there is a conceptual clash of methodologies.

I once watched in rapt horror and amusement as our favourite pub landlady, a touchy enough soul at the best of times (although we liked her for it) bandied wits with the man we called the Kamikaze Connoisseur. He watched like a hawk as she poured his drink, making certain that she selected the apposite vessel, that she held it at the correct angle, that the temperature was correct. Once the poor woman had served him, he leapt up with self-righteous glee.

"The head should be no more than 1cm thick!" he said, delighted to have caught her out.

"1.5cm," she said.

"1cm!" he returned.

It had settled to 1cm by the time they had finished arguing and he was lucky not to have ended up wearing it.

Germans. I miss them all.

JIdol, Week 4 - "I Think I Thought You Were Someone Else"

During a fair segment of my childhood, the following scene would take place on a fairly regular basis.

There would be my Pappa, eating up the pavement with his long, guardsman's stride which, should any of us little whippersnappers be accompanying him would make us have to run to keep up. He told us that he was once made to take part in a continuous 12 hour march; it had hurt and he'd been exhausted, but the constant rhythm of left-right-left had had a hypnotic effect which had seen him through. He could get back into that zone even 40 years later.

He tended to appear to be in his own little world for much of the time, being a dreamy sort of soul and mostly deaf since the age of ten. This made what stopped him in his tracks all the more dramatic, an exercise of will to stop his legs from taking those strong and measured paces and a calling back from wherever he had gone.

It would start with a halloo from somewhere further up the road, which would make him jump and then slowly stand at ease.

"Hey, Jock! Remember me?"

My Pappa's name was Tom, as it so happens. However, he was a Scot living in an English town and it was not impossible that someone would have the cheek to call him Jock. There was also the possibility that the person hailing him was someone he had been introduced to by my Grandma when he hadn't been paying attention. Maybe this person had forgotten his name too.

He would smile and signal to us to stand to one side.

"Hello."

"It's me, Billy! You must remember. It's been awhile. How are you?"

"Doing away."

My Pappa's answer which covered all states from having a leg hanging off to being in a Charles Atlas peak of glowing health. Laconic they call it.

"You remember me from Catterick, don't you? Coldstream Guards. I'd recognize you anywhere, just from your walk!"

A war crony. Or not as it turned out.

"Not me, pal. Scots Guards. I was at Malton and then London. Sorry."

The other man's face would fall and each time he would pat my Pappa on the shoulder, apologise and go on his way.

"Who was that, Pappa?" I'd ask when I was younger.

"No-one. Let's get back to your Gran with her messages."

"Why don't you make friends with him? You could find out all about him and Jock" I'd ask when I was a bit older. It made sense to me, since they saw one another on the street quite often, they were the same age, they lived in the same town.

He shook his head.

"Don't be nosy. I don't know him."

And that was that. Adults didn't have the same curiosity about their doppelgänger it seemed. My Pappa was a lone crow, apparently happier marching to his own beat.

I think I know some of my Pappa's story and have an idea now that not only was he shy, but that he did not want to relive the war. He'd tell us stories and I learned more about his experiences once I was deemed old enough to hear them.

But I sometimes wonder about Billy and his friend Jock. Was the man perhaps lonely that he constantly mistook my Pappa's identity? Or was he a little 'wandered'? Was his war a happier time than my Pappa's or did he choose to dwell more upon the aspect of companionship of young men together?

I don't know and my Pappa chose not to.

LJ Idol, Week 2 - I Don’t Care About Apathy: What I "Should" Care About – But Don’t

A long, long time ago, I applied for and was given a job in an HR company as a graduate trainee. It had been a long process, involving psychometric tests, interviews with departments and the CEO himself, presentations, tap-dances and the signing of curiously long documents in blood taken from a vein in my left arm where I promised Mephistopheles that I would be his faithful slave for many years to come.

I was psyched! They decided that they would get me to work writing European grant proposals and that seemed like a sober and worthy enough occupation for me. I didn't last long.

My problem wasn't so much the grant proposals nor yet the need to become acquainted with the ins and outs, fol-de-rols and regulations of the various EC bodies which awarded grants. Like any other graduate trainee, in between making fabulous cups of tea, doing the sandwich run, answering the telephone and wrestling the photocopier, I became known for writing a mean report and a savant-style proposal. None of that was the problem. The problem was that my director thought I was a scruffbag.

I came in everyday in pressed suits, ironed blouses and polished shoes knowing that this was the norm for the young professional (sic). I am a clean individual and would never dream of leaving the house of a morning without having first showered and washed my hair etc. etc. If I ever had to go off-site, I put on a special effort with my appearance although the main thing was being prepared and able to feign intelligent input. I was hardly Sir Les Patterson. This was not enough.

"My dear," the director said to me, having called me in for a meeting, "I do not like the length of your hair. It is neither long enough to be tied back nor short enough to be let down. Deal with it."

I dealt with it. At great expense I went and consulted with a hairdresser and my chin-length hair became rather shorter. I sat up at nights and took Mousse 101 and invested in a hotbrush in an effort to tame the wild bush which my hair can become. I would not be defeated.

"My dear," the director said to me, having called me in for a second meeting, "I must insist that you wear make-up and make-up that is obvious to the casual onlooker. Deal with it."

I dealt with it. At great expense I hit the make up counter and attempted to get a 'professional' there to teach me how to avoid both the Kabuki or fetishistic transvestite look which tends to result whenever I'm presented with sticks of pigmented lanolin or cakes of mineralised talc. I would not be defeated.

"My dear, " the director said to me upon the third special meeting, the one which paid for all, "I must compliment you upon your coiffeure, your application of cosmetics, the three new outfits with matching high-heeled shoes which I approved and possibly even the weight-loss which you are undergoing as a result of no longer being able to afford to eat, but I must insist that..."

Since there was never going to be an end to it and I could not afford cosmetic surgery, I quit. I found another situation rapidly enough and the first question I asked the interviewer there was what the dress-code was. She laughed and I knew that I'd come home...

Content?

Today I had achy joints (bless!) and staggered off to the medicine cabinet in hopes of finding some paracetamol. Yes, I lead an exciting and dynamic life.

To my joy and delight, dr_mitch had purchased said drug, but it wasn't the simple generic cheapo stuff I'd have gone for, but something in a big, red box called Paracetamol Extra with added caffeine, zap, pow and blammo.

This is what he does every time he purchases any home remedies. He can't just buy own brand Lemsip, but he always picks out Lemsip Lazarus - guaranteed to raise the dead. He never buys a simple cough bottle, but always Benylin with Twirly Bits - titanium plates your bronchial system. I can only conclude that certain products are marketed for men.

Conversely, if he is ever ill or in pain, no matter how close to his final death agonies he claims to be, I can never get him to use any of these products. He may accept one paracetamol - half the dose - if he has a leg hanging off (not a usual occurrence), but I'd need to feel the urge to sing 'Your Tiny Hand Is Frozen' before he'll even suffer the cap of his super-duper cough bottle to be opened.

This perplexes me as yer average FFS-I-haven't-got-time-to-be-ill-I'll-sling-it-down-my-throat gal.

There are some males on my f-list. The rest of you surely know and have observed some. Please humour me and fill in a poll:

Occurring in LJ - land Most Days

From the Computer of incrediblybanal

Subject: todays_victim Must Die

No - rilly this person has NO REASON to continue to exist. They look funny, they smell funny and I once suspected them of sexually-abusing a llama.

todays_victim

Pleas

If you'd like to vote for me over at LJ Idol (by 12pm EST Monday), please click the link and check the box. My entry is here, complete with another link.

Neville Nights, Season 2

LJ Idol - Week 1 - Saying Goodbye

It was a liberating experience, like soaring through the heavens for a while. I laughed, clapped my hands, danced for joy. No more them, no more poison being poured into my ear, no more accommodating their paranoia, unpleasantness, manipulation and narcissism. I wasn't free of them altogether, for there is nothing like a nutter, but I knew I'd not regret the decision to make the break.

LJ Idol, Season 5, Topic 0 - Introductions

1. I was born in Scotland, brought up in County Durham and have made detours to Oxford, St. Andrews, London and Göttingen along the way. I currently live in the People's Republic of South Yorkshire and mean to stay unless something more exotic comes along. I like it here, but most anywhere would be more exotic.

2. I like history, grammar, reading books with pretentious titles, reading books with writing in them, role-playing, watching movies and playing with other people's children and small animals. I dislike rude and dishonest people, but I secretly like most of humanity despite this. I've learned various languages, I believe, out of an innate sense of nosiness.

3. I get horribly obsessed by small details and absurdities, trivialities and the picayune. I'm actually very lucky, with a lovely boyfriend, lots of friends and a 1001 cool and interesting things to do, but the occasional whinge is fun.

4. I have MS which pretty much means that I walk like Charlie Chaplin, fall over a lot and have anthropomorphised my limbs (who plot against me even now). I think that anyone who can walk down stairs and carry things is a demigod. The chief benefits of MS for me are having a pretty doody stick I can wave at people and being quasi allowed to slide down steps on my bum. Both of these things are good and I'd want to do them anyway.

5. I have a terrible weakness for kitsch. My ideal home would be lined with (miraculously dust-repellant) books in gracious book cases and be otherwise minimalist. However, I fear that my evil twin would fill said edifice with Matryoska dolls, bizarre clocks, lava lamps and what-nots, just like everywhere else I've lived.

6. I am politically very liberal and tend to have my own opinions about the world. This a problem?

7. My sense of humour is pitch black with flashes of silly and puerile.

LJ Idol, Season 5

I will be participating in season 5 of The Real LJ Idol; my third season in a row!

I've met some fabulous people and some fantastic writers via this comm. They far outweigh the muppets. This is a vast recommendation!

I've Been Busy...

Busy involves things like trying to run a game, doing work, having guests, being a guest, running around like a headless chicken and, generally speaking, not coming n this account.

I will do better in future.

Uh... What did I miss? The friends page has got out of hand.

My Life... It's So... Um...

* We are now into Episode 7 of Neville Nights! We got the series renewal!

I haven't updates about Neville or... anything for a while, but we had 102 posts for Episode 4, 99 for Episode 5 and 89 for Episode 6. Pollyannna says that this is a manageable amount to read and... everybody< is still killing one another, shipping, investigating and getting into fun jams. Oh, and the canonically evil dudes are slithering in. Join us. Be canonically evil or jolly nice. We have room for more confusion and mayhem.

• Mitch got the one year job he started off with here on the grounds that all of thenother candidates were 'mad or unqualified'.
  
• What mumphing is (I can't see why, but I can name a couple of people I suspect would be up for it...)
  
• It's wrong to even joke abut mixing Johnny Walker Black Label with coke.
  
• Beer turns me into a pundit, albeit a crappy one.

ebee

bettybaker

supremacy_born

Not Dead...

... sorry, fans!

Just ouchy.

Which makes me the vulgar kind of acerbic.

Which amuses me, but might not amuse the rest of you.

(BUT: Hahaha! I could pull a better... no! GRAMMAR! IDIOT!... um... Thanks for making me feel sorry for... yeah, that explains a lot.... )

(you really didn't want to be subjected to that)

Neville & Weekend Six

* Went to the cinema with Janet and Joe to see HANCOCK. Janet and Joe loved it, Mitch was iffy. I thought it had all of the charm of a cut'n'shut, to be honest and was not surprised to learn that the studio had called in a screenwriter to rewrite the original substantially. The funny parts were fine if you like Will Smith and asshole jokes. The great tragic serious part did not mesh well with the former at all, confused me somewhat and... um... The kid? C'mon! He was surely only there to be a little scamp and to engage the interest of children brought along to see the Summer movie and diffuse the scary aspects of having Will Smith play a violent, anti-social drunk.

Me? I'm waiting for Hellboy II, which looks to be a cgi-fest of shamelessly epic proportions and unlikely to take itself seriously for a nanosecond.

* Shocking conversation at Joe's house during which he described Object Oriented Programming and... I got it. Which either means I'm becoming psychotic or I might be ready for the twentieth century. This being the twenty-first century.

* Still puzzling out quite why and whether women bishops should be a stumbling block for the Church of England. I'm not C of E remotely, but it's still interesting to watch the different theological wings battle it out. The idea of 'Super Bishops' to counterbalance the twinsets and handbag-shaped vowels which many fear occupying cathedrae reminds me too deliciously of the Anglican Church's former stance on homosexuality (basically, God doesn't mind too much so long as one is not sexually active in that regard... Nice fudgemanship!).

* Dr. Who. No more RTD (yay!)! No more Catherine Tate (boo!)! Impending arrival in TORCHWOOD of Mickey and Martha, where we have placed bets regarding how soon the pair will discover that they are omnisexual slutoids (2-1 within 3 episodes) and whether the team will leave Cardiff during the next series (3-1 against). I may have to consider doing something active of a Saturday evening now.

* Bought a fitted sheet. Yes, rock'n'roll. As it goes, I am a little troubled by my occasional fits of grown-uppery which compel me to go out and spend money on useful household items as opposed to fun stuff. This was a spare fitted sheet, mark you. I appear to be planning for a cleaner and more domesticated future.

* Neville is rocking still, with 92 entries. We have magic, we have drugs, we have psychic disturbances, we have wistful artists, horny teens, bitchy witches, disgruntled academics and hardened criminals. We have plot, we have fun we have seasons in the... oh.

Episode 4 can be found here

Episode 3 Now Posted!

here.

And... 102 posts last week! w00t! Quality as well as quantity IMHO. And we never have any idea what direction our players are going to take us, but it's a lark trying to keep up!

This week we have portents of doom, uncertain romances, the fall out from the discovery of a large stash of heroin and the 4th of July. It's fun. Come join us!

Hear Ye, Hear Ye!

Let it be known that, should dr_mitch turn up done to death, that he has committed a variety of crimes against Marjoryhood.

1. As I was making up the Sainsbury's order, he kept singing the R.White's lemonade advertising jingle at me.

2. When I threatened to take his lemonade off the list, he started to call me a 'bad Mummy' (!) and said he was going to call ChildLine (he's 33). And started singing at me again.

3. Then, when we were mucking around on the couch, he (accidentally) punched me in the mouth and started to wail about his sore knuckle.

Apart from that, I just love Thursdays!

EpisodeTwo, Season One is Up!

We had

100

ny_wisdom

Happy Birthday, ny_wisdom