UpsideDown Photos

I like facts. I like facts more than I like opinions or speculation. Speculating can be more fun, and expressing opinions may make me feel good and self-righteous, but nothing can beat a good verified fact.

In particular, I like numbers. “In the year 2012, there were 101 accidents involving pedestrians on Zebra crossings in the Kanton (County) of Zurich, excluding Zurich City and Winterthur”.

Can you beat that for precision and usefulness? Yes - the Kanton of Zurich has problems with its Zebra crossings and before it does anything, it wants some facts. A Kanton after my own heart. If liking data and facts is a characteristic of being Swiss, then I was Swiss before I arrived here. (Do I hear “b….y right and all”? – the cheek of it).

My theory is that the English do not like precise facts or rather they are indifferent to them. Too much precision is seen as fussy. “Billions of EU money spent on Polish Motorways”. How many billions? Two? Ten? Fifty? There is a fair old difference, you know. But of course, I am missing the point, aren’t I. The article is not designed to inform us, but to further irritate and annoy us, either against the EU institutions (not difficult) or against recipients of such largesse. In Poland’s case, this is misdirected, but I am prejudiced, having been treated to two months of Polish hospitality in Wroclaw (Look it up on the map yourself).

The latest scandal involving lack of data (and also lack of horsemeat, thank goodness) is the publication that there are hospitals in England where the number of deaths is above the national average. Talk about an article needing some hard facts. What is the national average (probably a national secret), what was the rate in the hospitals in question (and for six-sigma black belts, what is the standard deviation?).

But again, I have missed the point. We are not trying to have an intelligent discussion here, but to have a good story that gets us all excited and angry with someone. More relevantly, it gets the journalist noticed by the newspaper’s main editor.

Silly me.

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Most of you know that Hazel and I went to Seefeld in Austria three weeks ago for four nights to celebrate Hazel’s 60^th birthday. Here is a photo of our champagne breakfast. Whoops.

I feel compelled to carry my newly acquired iPad everywhere, take random photos (or ask others to do so for me) and send them to people. This photo demonstrates a particular Apple feature where photos sent to non-apple devices are turned upside down (and those sent to Apple devices are not). This less than obviously fine and useful function was further enhanced by the new the Photo “app”, which crashed every second time.

More useful is the Apple “Messages”on the Ipad. At the moment, we know of only four people who are registered. One of our friends in England, one in Spain, plus Hazel and myself. Hazel and I spend many a happy evening sending instant messages to each other, while watching episodes of 24. (No, I am not telling you the content of these messages. This is private, known only to us, Apple and the U.S. security services)

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I was asked by a friend what I was going to say about the Horsemeat Scandal. This is a tricky one, as there isn’t really a Grumpy or Clumsy angle. I would only observe that last week Hazel and I had a very good 850 gr (Beef of Horsemeat, I care which) Lasagne for only Chf 4.25, which is cheap for Switzerland.

So as Horsemeat hysteria enters its third week (is that right?), still no one has been killed, admitted to hospital or been made ill. But it is still possible and the news people are on the look out and have their fingers crossed for the next development with eager anticipation.

Why has no one yet marketed a “Do-it-Yourself” Horsemeat testing kit? Perhaps someone could develop an App and we could download it on to our Ipads. The French would no doubt make it compulsory to have one in your car, next to the breathalyser kit.

Can we keep this scandal / hysteria running until Christmas?

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By the way, we are up to the last episode of the first series of 24. Mrs Teri Bauer is definitely not someone you would want to have around you in a crisis. (“Oh no, Jack, I don’t know what to do”, at least once per episode. Together with “What’s going on?” Scriptwriters have a pretty easy job with her.)

Teaching the Austrians to Swear

Grumpy records are being well and truly broken now. If it is not enough to reverse into a skip, and 4 weeks later to be on the receiving end of the discipline of the St. Gallen traffic police, I have now succumbed and started to watch “24”.

For those if you unfamiliar with this, this is a series of eight dramas, each played out in real time (including adverts), where Jack Bauer has 24 hours (hence the name) to complete the mission. So that’s 24 hours times 8, less the editing out of the adverts, which  make up about 25% of the time. So this is 144 hours of viewing time. No time to write blogs. I need to get watching.

Quite a lot of “I do love you Jack, but we only have 24 hours to save the world” (with apologies to Flash Gordon).

Nigel Rogers challenged me once to see if I get through “The Killing” in one week, which is a mere 20 hours. He had completed this himself over a Christmas period, as a good way of digesting all that turkey.

Initial thoughts after only sixteen hours viewing is that Jack “you’ve got to trust me on this one” Bauer is definitely a man you don’t want on your side.

Target for completion of this project is somewhere around the same time as the completion of the High-Speed Rail Link.

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I know that it was only in the last blog that I continued the theme of “Safety in the Kitchen”. Our recent trip to Seefeld, in Austria, has provided me with further proof of the dangers of kitchens, lounges and even restaurants, all of which are obviously designed by midgets.

Some sadist decided to put a chandelier in our hotel room immediately above the point where I stood up, after a busy and intense 75 seconds of blog-writing. Is it compulsory to wear a crash helmet for writing?
As for this, I am almost speechless. In the time that it took to order and drink a hot chocolate, I succeeded in hitting my head twice. Perhaps I really shouldn’t be allowed out without a crash helmet. More to the point, second time around caused an explosion of frustration, a torrent of English expletives and references to sadistic dwarves, that had the locals reaching for their dictionaries.

It’s good to know that I am are contributing to the improved knowledge of my beloved mother tongue.

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It is at least a couple of weeks since I have criticised the BBC news, so it must be time again.

Meaningless puns must rank pretty high in the league table of persistent irritations of the media. I guess that the journalists think that it is amusing, so in a post-Leveson world, we need to keep them sweet or they might write nasty things about us, in the public interest of course.

Also high up this newly founded league table (open for sponsorship deals) is the meaningless and redundant adjective. There is obviously a list of nouns that journalists learn at journalist school, which may not be used without the correct prescribed adjective.

Thus “Red-heads” are always fiery. I don’t know whether this is actually true or not, having not known many red-heads in my life, with the exception of my son-in-law and my grandson. At 3 1/2 , Bradley has not had much of a chance to display these characteristics and his mum wouldn’t let either of them, if they tried.

And “Devastation” is always terrible. I tried to conceive of “mild devastation” or “low-levels of devastation”, but failed. How about “The Devastation was not as bad as expected.” This actually has some meaning, but unfortunately lacks news impact.

It could be my own feeble imagination. I can understand “Scattered showers”. How about “scattered devastation”? “The Devastation moved in from the west, turning south-east towards Norwich…..etc”. Doesn’t quite fit, does it.

17 years old is apparently a “Tender Age.”   The words “…..at the tender of age of 17” were reported only a couple of pages away from a report of a 14 year old girl doing things that I didn’t know went on in the world or were even possible. I think that I am at the tender age of 60 and my dad is at the tender age of (nearly) 90. There is nothing tender about the age of 17 these days at all. You ask any teacher.

The final piece of journalistic nonsense came at Christmas where a death was reported as “Being doubly tragic, as it was during the Christmas period”. Try telling that to the mother of a child who died earlier in the month, that her tragedy was only half that had it occurred later in the month.

This is not only nonsense. It is offensive. Just occasionally journalists should learn to use their brains.

I am on a roll now and can keep this up for ever, but will save it for when I have run out other rants.

 

Plates have feelings too

It’s happened. After a career of 40 years of accident free driving and ticket free driving, at least since 1980, I have now obtained new personal achievements in both areas in the space of three months.

Look at this skip. The big evil brooding thing. Just looking for a fight. Well, it got one, and I came second.

It wasn’t my fault, even though I knew the skip was there, but reversing into it in the dark was not a good strategy (or was it just a tactical error?). Anyway a four inch wide dent would cost £1,050 to fix according to the local Norwich Skoda dealer, so I may just leave it as a Rose Valley souvenir.

As for the parking ticket, you need to be careful at the Swiss ski resorts, especially the base station for Flumserberg and look for the hidden ticket machines. Actually the ticket machine wasn’t hidden. I just wasn’t paying attention and my negligence will cost me Chf 40 (£27.50).

So much for my “Well, that has never happened to me.” What next, do you think?

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Long-serving followers of Grumpy’s blog will remember a Red Bicycle chained for several months to a fence in Thalwil. The general consensus was that this was a piece of Swiss art, designed to brighten up our day and to challenge us in our lateral thinking on “I wonder why that Red Bicycle is chained to this fence.”

http://colinhawker.blogspot.ch/2011/06/red-bicycle.html

Not to be outdone, Rose Valley has its own “Red Bicycle”. We don’t know when this bicycle came, but it was there before we arrived in Rose Valley in mid-December. When we left on 5 January, it was still there.

Is this a piece of work by the Rose Valley branch of the Thalwil Art Society? Have the Norwich Art Society decided to follow in the footsteps of the Thalwilers? Has David Gray left yet another bike lying around, waiting for me to find it for him?

Other  theories? ….and please don’t even think about “Perhaps someone left it there and forgot it”. “Abandoned”. “Stolen”. Perish the thought. Just mundane theories cannot even begin to explain the mysteries of the Red Bicycle universe?
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On a completely different piece of nonsense, I think that we have not had nearly enough written about what goes on in the kitchen, except possibly the hazards that are contained in it.

http://colinhawker.blogspot.ch/2010/06/self-defence-in-kitchen.html

So have you ever stopped to consider that after you have cleaned the plates, you then probably stack them on top of the others? What of the plates stuck at the bottom? They are never used. They might feel hurt and neglected. Totally unwanted for weeks and months on end.

As for the plates which are forever being recycled, they might feel abused and overworked.

You need to think about the problems that are being stored up for the future. Both sets of plates have their own grievances and could start demonstrating. Can you imagine the disruption to the watching of the next episode of “Silent Witness”, when the plates start marching around the lounge, clattering away, clamouring for more attention, less work, more money, compensation for hurt feelings and discrimination? There must be some European Court of Appeal to which they can turn (at the taxpayers’ expense, of course).

Knives, forks and spoons probably get mixed up a bit, I could go on down the same route with soup bowls and glasses, but I think that this particular piece of nonsense has run its course.

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Here is an annoying sight for Grumpy

 

Just look at it. Glorious sunshine. Lovely snow at 8,000 feet in the middle of the Alps. The ski slopes almost entirely to ourselves.

So nothing to be grumpy about here. It’s so unfair.

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And finally, I could not resist this. Kenneth Clark says that we will all die if we leave the EU. It’s going to be fatal. It is end of England, as we know it. The sky will fall in and all will be destroyed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21269658

Well that’s a compelling case if ever I heard one. Definitely no referendum for me, then. I don’t want those nasty people from Brussels coming over, shooting us all and burning our houses down. (Do Brussels have an army or would they bring the French troops back from Mali to do this?)

Anyway, as the Irish have shown, in 2008 and 2009, there is no real chance of the U.K. leaving the EU. If the U.K. (with or without Scotland) vote to leave the EU, we will just be made to do it again, until we get the right answer. That’s how democracy works in Europe.