No Problem

Are restaurant staff becoming too familiar or am I turning into my Grandfather? It is almost certainly the latter, as I have already turned into my father (which is a good thing, in my opinion – although he can probably still beat me at table tennis). But my Grandfather is a different matter.

He was hugely offended once when the local council wrote to him, addressing him as “Dear Mr Hawker”. This was in the mid-1970s, which in itself is not particularly relevant. What was relevant was that he regarded “Mr Hawker” to be far too familiar. “Grandad, the person writing to you probably thought he was being very polite”. (The acceptable form of address should have been “Dear Sir”).

(All this reminds that that at my school, KCS Wimbledon, we schoolboys used to address each other by our surnames. It seems quite bizarre now. I don’t know if this custom still persists).

Anyway this whole piece of reminiscing came about as a result of a visit to a gastro pub in Guildford and being greeting by “Hi Guys”. I thought this unusual and put it down to having been away from England for too long. (Soon they’ll be saying “Hi Col”). Our hosts on the other hand, who have not been away from England for 12 years, thought that this was far too familiar.

I have decided that I am an alien here, as I am probably the only person in the country who does not qualify for free medical treatment here. Therefore, as such, I am unqualified to judge (as well as having to pay for my own medical treatment).

Ordering the meals also proved fertile ground for the use of now commonly used expressions. “I’ll have the mushroom soup, please”, receives the not impolite response of “No problem”. “No problem – kein Problem” is commonly used in Switzerland, but normally not by waiters or waitresses in restaurants taking orders. Having said that I am not sure that I have really made a proper survey of this and will be sure to rectify this on our return to Switzerland.

Our host made the observation that the statement obviously indicates that there might potentially have been a problem or indeed that perhaps having a problem was the normal state of affairs. Therefore the response “No problem” indicated that this was an exception and the mushroom soup was not only on the menu, but was also available for our gastronomic pleasure.

All this means that I had better be prepared for a shock if I return more often to the U.K. Cool or what.

Beware of courtesy extended by the car in front.

The second theme of this long awaited blog (2013 has been a lean year so far for the Grumpy Blog) is that it does not take long to realise that you are back in England. You will realise from this statement that you are in for a heavy dose of sarcasm.

My father is under the mistaken impression that it is a good thing to show courtesy to other drivers. Such foolish notions include letting cars out into stream of traffic instead of making them wait there for the next 30 minutes.

Another frequent example of his motoring madness is to allow in a car coming from the other direction who wishes to cross the traffic. This is easily achieved by taking the foot off the accelerator and a flash of the lights should have the oncoming motorist on his way.

I had forgotten that normal traffic etiquette (normally involving acceleration) is to the stop other motorists pulling out turning right etc.

It makes no difference if the traffic is almost stationary. The space in front should be filled up immediately and the car coming out the side road taught the virtue of patience.

Furthermore if the car in front tries to carry out any of acts of courtesy, the proper response is to hoot the horn for two seconds to show the correct measure of disapproval. I must confess that this latter response and use of the horn is a new one to me. It is a further sign that I have been away from England for too long and should stay away.

(I reserve the horn for hooting at Swiss drivers who do not indicate when going around a roundabout, for kids ambling across Thalwil High Street with their headphones on, for cars in front who look as if they have forgotten how to do a hill start and want to rearrange the front of my car…and oh yes ….etc).

I think that this hooting has real further potential. Why not hoot when the car in front is driving at the speed limit, instead of the normal 10 mph above. Hoot at pedestrians on Zebra crossings when they walk over too slowly, especially if they are pushing a buggy.

Hoot if the car in front does not drive over traffic lights, just after they have turned red and certainly hoot if the car in front does not move off at the aforesaid traffic lights 0.1 seconds after the lights have gone amber.

Learners should be hooted just for being there.

And so on. Welcome back to England.

Wannenstrasse Building Site and other tittle tattle

I have been reminded that it is time to write another blog. No shortage of ideas, but there is a danger of rehashing old themes. My powers of observation of absurd or ironic situations seem to have diminished, if not entirely eliminated…. And perhaps Grumpy was getting too political (or perhaps not enough).

Perhaps today, I will stick to some mostly personal anecdotes.

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A NEW KAT

So before I go further, I should introduce you to our new cat, named Kellogg. I was slightly uncertain whether “Kellogg the Kat” would be a breach of some patent or name protection law. He is a new addition to our household, having been discovered at the local garden centre, and is made out of recycled oil cans, at least according to the blurb that came with him. Ed, my son, says that if I persevere, he will eventually answer to his name.

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DUPLICATE PIECE

I have had something new come up in the jigsaw line, using my grand piano as the “table”, as usual (http://colinhawker.blogspot.ch/2012/12/the-various-uses-for-grand-piano.html.  

I had a duplicate edge piece. Not so sensational, you may think, especially if you were expecting something more exciting from Grumpy. However, very unusual, in fact, a unique experience for me.

 

This might seem a small thing to you, but it plays havoc when trying to fit the edges together. Some of you might have guessed the next thing. At the end, we found that we had a piece missing. What are things coming to?  Just the end of the world as we know it, like the Swiss railways not running on time.

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MULTI-TASKING

Hazel and I continue to work on the “Watch the Whole of 24 Series” project. (The Black Adder series has had to go on hold.) We are now on series 4 (out of 8). The great thing about “24” is that you can multi-task. The whole thing rambles forward at such a slow pace that you can do a number of useful things at the same time, like do a jigsaw, read a book, reply to emails, check your bridge notes, go on the cycling machine or even write a blog.

Included in this series is the free “Spot the most annoying woman” competition. Fortunately these mostly get killed off one by one.

One interesting point is that having watched three series, you can understand how U.S. troops behaved the way they did towards Iraqi prisoners. Jack Bauer is quite a poor role model for impressionable, but poorly educated young soldiers. He is made out to be a hero. The soldiers were sent to prison. (At the moment in 24, the “good guys” are torturing the son of the Secretary of Defence, without his lawyer being present.)

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WANNENSTRASSE BUILDING SITE

If watching 24 is an evening activity, then listening to the noise from the “Wannenstrasse Building Site” has become one of the main daytime activities. The Swiss inclination to renovate, maintain and rebuild is one of the characteristics that makes Switzerland the country that it is.

We have three work projects going on at the moment within 100 metres of us, with a fourth due to come on line in 3 weeks, within 200 metres.

The house, two doors away, is being knocked down and six apartments are going to be built. Although the mandatory crane has not yet arrived, the comings and goings of the digger have managed to cause some minor inconvenience. Not nearly enough noise coming from here yet.

The local Gemeinde (council) has decided to dig up the road again, the whole road this time, although not all at the same time. They say that they are laying down new water pipes, but I think that they are installing bugs so that they can watch me plan my blogs and check the number of pieces in my jigsaws.

The owners of one of the apartments in our block have found the cause of some problems with damp. The remedial action includes drilling the outside wall at 07.01, causing the entire building to shake. (Swiss building work starts at 7.00 am until they stop for their 11s at 9.00 am, therefore known locally as 9s)

Also due to start in about three weeks is some (i.e. considerable amount of) maintenance work on the railway line, which runs 200 metres from us. The best bit is that much of this will take place at night and will go on for six weeks. The circular from the SBB, the railway company, concludes with the usual “We thank you for your understanding”. Great, isn’t it.

As good Swiss people, we think that this is all very admirable and don’t mind at all. All right.

(Remember: In England, the water companies have a program to replace broken water pipes. In Switzerland, there is a program to replace them before they’re broken. Why do the English love the expression “If it isn’t broken, then don’t fix it” and then complain, when it breaks)

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DO TELEVISION PROGRAMMES BREED?

Going back to television and films, have you ever wondered how it is still possible for a Midsomer Murder program to come on television that you have not seen before. Do these programmes breed? Exactly how many villages are there within a 10 mile radius of Cawston?

Perhaps when they were filming, they made two per day for a year. Do they have actors, villages and houses lined up? By the way, it is admirable the way Mrs Barnaby takes part in the village fair at every one of these 1,000+ villages. It all makes a change from watching repeats of Morse.

I reckon that we will have completed the 24 series before we see all the Midsomer Murder series. Perhaps they are still making them in secret.

By the way, I can’t believe that neither “Midsomer” nor “Cawston” are in the Microsoft spellchecker and that I have to put these in myself.

Kickstarting the German Economy

TALKING OVER SONGS

I haven’t ever had a moan about local radio, as far as I can remember. That’s probably because I do not listen to it very much, even though it is available via the internet and a clever little iPad app.

Actually I tell a lie. Last summer, I listened a great deal to English local radio stations, including one (a digital channel called “Gold”) which plays songs from the 1960s and 70s. These songs are to be listened to and accompanied by a great deal of humming and joining in and conversation along the lines “Do you remember that one?” and “I remember where I was when this was being played.” Some caution needed here of course before opening mouth.

One of the competitions that goes on amongst broadcasters is the “Let’s see if we can talk over the whole of this song”. Radio Jackie did well on this last year, managing to talk over the first 45 seconds and the last 55 seconds of a 2 minutes 30 second song “Airport" by “Motors" (1978), a song, which if you know it, you definitely sing along to.

And talking over the music at the end of Morse is a good reason for bringing back capital punishment. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liH-uW2iymk

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KICKSTARTING THE GERMAN ECONOMY

Have you noticed that it is frequently stated in business and political circles that this or that initiative is going to “Kick-start” the British economy? I have often wondered how a half-dead donkey could somehow be “kick-started” into life. For an economy where the dips are so indistinguishable from each other that it looks like a flat line, I was not sure what the appropriate verb might be.

Is it possible for the economy to shuffle back into life? Perhaps wriggle upwards might be a realistic expression. Stagger into life might be better, like someone with a hangover, staggering into the realms of consciousness. I had thought of lurch, but this is a bit too dynamic in the circumstances.

If we slide along the bottom, then we might be able to say that we are going into a gentle rise, but then saying that the £35 billion High Speed Rail link is going to cause a gentle rise out of our more general slide along the bottom, doesn’t make for winning votes or good interviews on the news.

Actually even this statement is not true. In the case of the High Speed Rail project, the Germans will win all the tenders under the EU Open Tender rules and all the grunt stuff will be sub-contracted to British firms with Central European subsidiaries.

So headlines should read “British Government to Spend £35 billion on High Speed Rail line to kick start German and Polish economies.” 

After all, as the Siemens / Bombardier case from two years ago showed, we don’t have anyone who makes this stuff properly anymore or at least that is the opinion of the British Civil Servants who award these contracts.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jun/16/bombardier-at-risk-after-loss-of-thameslink-deal

Is Grumpy getting too political? Don’t answer this question. I am enjoying myself too much.

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EXCITING OPPORTUNITIES

There is space in this blog for a further overused or redundant adjective. Normally these are the domain of the newsreader or newspaper article, but the job advertisement market has its own list of mandatory adjectives.

In this respect, all job opportunities are exciting. I don’t like exciting opportunities, not just because of the endless repetition in job advertisements of the word itself, but because I like boring. Exciting is for the ski slopes, some difficult run giving an adrenalin rush or hooting at a group of pedestrians meandering across the road (very immature, I know.)

I am not sure that I “do exciting” generally or even ever. But I am an expert at boring. I like lists, dates and things that have their place. The key to operations and accounting work is making it routine and boring, even though career advancement lies in presenting it as “exciting”.

So what is it that all that all these jobs have got that makes them exciting? Presumably, there will be plenty of opportunity to work extra hours to prove your enthusiasm for the job to your boss. Of course, decisive action will be a constant feature, even if today’s action is the opposite of yesterday’s.

I guess that dynamic must come into this job somewhere, although this might be similar to being decisive. “Exciting Opportunity” means plenty of action. I recollect that IBM did a corporate advert some years back showing themselves as “dynamic”. It was obvious to the watcher that they and their clients were merely chaotic. “IBM – Specialist consultants to the truly chaotic” – Confusing the two is an easy mistake to make.

An “Exciting Opportunity” must include plenty of change. We are told that we live in a changing environment, so in the new position, you must be constantly on the look-out for opportunities for change.  In fact, if you fail to come up with at least 10 new ideas per month, then you are in trouble.  This philosophy has a good pedigree. The Queen in Alice in Wonderland said that she’d sometimes believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. She could run courses in Change Management at £1,000 per day or apply for one of these “exciting opportunities”.

Does saying a job is an “Exciting Opportunity” attract a different type of candidate from one that doesn’t? “Boring steady position in established function” might attract boring steady people, which would seem an ideal match. So why don’t I see job adverts like this?

If I do see this advert, I might apply for it.

Be a Football Player for one day

I want to be a Premier League player or manager for one day. I do not want to be paid for it (although it would be nice). However, I would insist on taking part in one of those match day interviews that now form part of the mandatory diet for sporting events.

Are sportsmen and women trained especially for these questions? Is there a website where they can go, so that they give the correct answers to the four or five questions that are the standard fare of lazy sports interviewers?

“What does this win mean to you?” – Grumpy answer: “Did we win? Is that good? I wasn’t really paying attention. I don’t think that we deserved it, but a couple of fluky goals always come in handy.”

“Are you disappointed after today’s result?” (after a 0 – 2 home defeat). Grumpy answer: “No not really. Taking part and doing your best are much important than winning.”

“What would it mean to you if you were to win the F.A. Cup?” (Yes -. They really do still ask this type of question.) Grumpy answer: “Not a lot really. No-one serious really cares that much about the F.A. Cup these days; there is no money in it, so we will just play our second team and give second division teams a chance.”

“What impact do you think the new manager will have?” Grumpy answer: “None whatsoever. He was a failure at his old club, and he probably won’t be much better here.”

“Is the fact that you have just left your top striker out of the team significant?” Grumpy: “You bet. He is overpaid, plays like a prima donna, is generally lazy and I wouldn’t have chosen him for the club).

“How do you feel about joining your new club, Uxchester Utd?” Grumpy answer: “I don’t really care who I play for, providing they pay me plenty of money.”

Interesting and truthful information in interviews in Sport – Dream on.

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Have you ever had one of those long voice-mail messages, concluding with “…and give me a call back on my home number, XXX XX XXX XXXX.” Of course, the numbers are garbled and unless you already knew the phone number, you will have to listen to the whole message again, just to get at the phone number.

As I can never remember the right number to press to replay the message, I also have to listen to the date and time of the message and menu of options that tell me how to save the message, delete the message or replay the message (Hurrah).

People do the same with airline flight numbers. Leave a long message and then race through the crucial information at the end, leaving the listener floundering. Is this a conspiracy of the telecoms companies or is this a game that people play, just to be annoying?  If so it sounds like a good wheeze.

The last thing, I guess, that the telecoms companies want is for us to start with “This is Grumpy on 079 123 4567. Do you want to subscribe to my blog? If so, please call me back.”

So remember, please leave me a really long message and give an unintelligible phone number at the end.

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I have a great new way to save money. Go on the “Drei-Länder” slow-up cycle ride, around Basel, invite your good friends to join you on this 50 km cycle ride.

http://www.basel-dreiland.ch/

You do this with 65,000 other people, all going about 7 mph, cross over into Germany after 10 k and get excited in anticipation of the first coffee stop, offer to get the coffee and bratwurst and then realise that you do not have any euros.

Thank goodness that someone, in form of Jim Barrington, comes prepared with almost every currency that one might need in Europe. But recompense comes later in the afternoon back in Basel, where Swiss Francs are accepted in exchange for Coca Cola.

So no real money saving wheeze here after all. Sorry folks.

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.

Here is a Picture of a Dog

Before talking about pictures of dogs, it’s time to pay attention to some important points of English grammar, before the responsibility for the whole thing is given to the Americans.

Already my spellchecker corrects my spelling into American English. This has been going on in the office for years, but for it to take hold of my Thalwil laptop is too much. England has become the grammatical and spelling 51^st State of America.

The particular last straw (and point in question) was pointed out by my Norwich next door neighbour, in Rose Valley. He is a solicitor and as such is in “Practice”. It has always been a mystery why solicitors need to practise for so long, but there it is. The spelling point of this statement is that up to twelve weeks ago, I would have written “…need to practice for so long.”

For the slow of sight, like me, this was spelled with a “c”, instead of an “s” and upon such trivia, empires rise and fall.

How many of you knew that? No one, except my neighbour. I didn’t know it. My straw poll of six people showed that no one, including me, realised that the verb is “practise”. It took a Yahoo search (not Google, the wicked immoral devious tax avoider) of an online dictionary to point out that it is that it is Americans again who have changed the spelling to “I practice the piano.”

We’ve been taken over. The cause is hopeless. It is too late to stop the rot, even with my Norwich neighbour, struggling bravely at the linguistic barricades.

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Changing the subject entirely, one of the few plus points of my latest treatment is that in times of extreme tiredness, I can watch junk movies that I have seen at least five times already. “Die Hard” is the favourite, with Harrison Ford and Star Wars not far behind. For something really long, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley’s people can take up three entire days.

The latest film that I watched was “Armageddon”, accidently lifted by me from my niece’s library and which I failed to return. Anyway, on returning to Thalwil, and trying to watch this on my PC, the DVD decided to play the film in German.

I don’t know whether this is some kind of conspiracy between the DVD, my laptop and local authorities, but I do know that it is very irritating. The wicked immoral devious tax avoider, Google, is always trying to switch me into German or divert my searches to www.google.ch (the Swiss site).

Back to Armageddon, I managed to find the option to have English (or American?) sub-titles without a problem, and I am disappointed to report that after the pressing of only a couple of random keys, I managed to change the language. A small step for man, but a giant step for a Hawker.

Anyway, Bruce Willis saved the Earth and we can all sleep happily ever after. (…and now my iTunes has decided to double up most of my tracks. I think that this is called a feature upgrade or enhancement). As it is Apple, it must be my fault.

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In case you are wondering about the title to this blog, a headline on the BBC news website caught my eye last week for no particular reason. “India dog steals 400,000 rupees”. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-21076712  At the time, I didn’t know what particular aspect of this caught my eye. I think my instinct was to ask whether 400,000 rupees is a lot of money, or whether it was a case of a large number of digits, with only enough value to buy a Mars Bar. (Is this product placement? Am I allowed to do this? Can I charge Mars for this mention?).

Anyway, it seems that 400,000 rupees is nearly £4,500, so it was worth something of a fuss.

What caught my eye later was the photograph. I wondered whether there was a connection between the dog in the story and the dogs in the photo. There must have been. Why else would you have the photo? “Here is picture of Fido / Rover - or the Indian equivalent - resting after lifting £4,500”.

The caption is “Stray dogs are a common sight on India’s streets”…..and here is a random photo, which we found in the archives, of a couple of dogs, who could have come from anywhere, even Streatham High Street and will remind you what dogs look like, in case you have forgotten…..and anyway, we always like to put photos in our articles, however irrelevant, as it reduces the amount that we have to write and you have to read.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Confession Time:

Blogspot, on which this piece of nonsense is published, is operated by Google, the wicked immoral devious tax avoider. Oh no. What am I to do?

Suggestions required. In the meantime, I am self-righteously marching off to Starbucks for a hot chocolate and to read the paper.

Various Annoying Animals

It is time for some random grumps, some moans and groans that don’t use up a column of 800 words on their own, but are worth a mention in Grumpy’s list of annoying stuff. As the Donkey in Shrek 2 (voice of Eddie Murphy) said to Puss in Boots, “I’m sorry, the position of annoying talking animal has already been taken” or something like that.

We should start with annoying and unfunny puns, which fill newspapers and football commentaries. These are now obligatory. Presumably Sky Sports and the newspapers have departments whose sole job is to think these up and the more obvious the better. I’m looking for examples, as I think that this could be worth a blog on its own.

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Moving away from News for a change, Apple has set up an “Annoying Apps” department. The latest is the very poor imitation of a three octave piano, on which you can play chopsticks with one finger. They have even spent money on TV advertising for this, without pointing out that if Chopsticks is played several times on this App, on a train, it can successfully drive over half the other travellers mad. I think that this is a seriously overlooked selling point.

(Is “Chopsticks” a singular or plural noun?”).

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Rushing back to the News and the BBC News in particular, did you know that the newscasters have a competition which is based on three criteria. Firstly, how many times can the newscasters say “Er”. This used to be the domain of Tony Blackburn, if you can remember that far back. Now it is the preserve of mainly female newsreaders, who presumably cannot read the autocue fast enough or simply don’t have anything else to say. And if you think that this is a sexist comment, you should try listening to Jane Hill reading “Breaking News”.

The second criteria is the ratio of the time in an interview that the newsreader takes to ask the question in relation to the answer itself. The target is 100%. I mean, who really wants to hear what non-journalists have to say. The purpose of the news is to promote the Newsreaders and journalism. It’s a pretty competitive business, so the more you are heard the better. At least that’s the logic. I am waiting for the 2 minute question, followed by “I’m sorry that’s all we have time for.” They have already nearly reached that point on several occasions.

Additional points are awarded in this category for the amount of contempt for the interviewee that the presenter can put into his / her voice.

Third criteria also in relation to interviewing, is the hand-waving category. I am not sure why this is important, although it might be a variation of a language for deaf viewers. To fully appreciate this, you have to turn the volume off and watch the newsreader ask his (or her) two minute question, accompanied by hand gestures which would do justice to a premier league footballer in the penalty area, pleading to the referee for a penalty. Actually the hand waving is more interesting than some of the questions.

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On a completely different topic from the news (but don’t worry, I’ll be back), I was interested in the connection made in a television advert between the adjective “Intuitive” and “Coffee Machine”. Now I always thought that (i) put coffee in cup / cafetiere (ii) put in hot water, was about as intuitive as it gets. No instruction manual here. No Chf 200 half day training course is involved in making a cup of Nescafe, although I recollect that making Red Mountain coffee involved making a sound like a coffee percolator.

Previously you might have done a Google search on “Intuitive Coffee …..” However, I know that you won’t be using Google anymore as you will be boycotting them, along with Starbucks and Amazon, as being immoral wicked tax avoiders. So if you do a Yahoo search on “Intuitive Coffee …..” you will get a number of hits. My assumption is that if anyone needs to market a coffee making machine on the basis that it is intuitive, then there is a problem with complexity here, and you better be ready with those £150 cheques and book yourself on a course, because it’s going to be complicated.

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Lastly for this session (hurrah, you say), have you noticed that hotels still place telephones right by the bed?  If you stay in hotels, when was the last time that you used the hotel telephone? (I can’t believe that you ordered room service.) First action on arrival is to place the latest Jack Reacher thriller by the bed and to move the telephone, which then gets moved back the next day.

This is a pretty pointless Grump, just put in to fill out the blog. I’ll try to do better next time, at the expense of a hotel.

The Various Uses for a Grand Piano

You always thought that pianos were for playing on. There is an alternative and conventional view that they are very nice pieces of furniture that should be protected, especially from children. A musical version of a Rolex watch. Both are examples of a failure, as we executives say, “to think laterally” or "to think out of the box". That’s another expression that I have always wanted to use. Just don't ask me what it means.

The Bechstein piano, made by German engineers, was designed to withstand the poundings of energetic but non-German pianists such as Liszt and Chopin. They were designed to be indestructible, although I was informed by my U.S. neighbour downstairs, that in the contest between a Steinway and the U.S. East Coast Floods, the floods win. The Germans had not thought of that one. Room for improvement here.

There are other alternative uses for a Bechstein, other than as a piece of furniture or as a musical instrument.

For those of you interested in the history of our particular piano (and for those of you who are not), it was originally sold by Harrods in1937 and restored by Kevin Rowley and his colleague Richard, in 1998 for yours truly, before being driven back through Germany in 2006, probably directly past the factory where it was built, and onwards to Chez Grumpy in Thalwil.

You may wonder how a Bechstein is taken up to a second floor apartment. Easy. You find four big chaps, take the legs off the piano and they carry it up the stairs. And I thought that they would get a crane and sling it through the window.

Back to the story and a bit of lateral thinking or thinking outside the box.

The top of the Bechstein makes for a very good desk surface, when you want to work standing up. That difficult letter that you wish to compose or the report on which you need to concentrate are both best carried out on the wings of a grand piano - I think that there is a pun in German here, but I am not too sure.

The main use to which I put my Bechstein, other than driving the neighbours crazy for one hour a day with Chopin’s third ballade, is for doing jigsaws. This is not normally considered as a musical pastime, but is nonetheless a very worthy use of such a fine piece of engineering. The height is perfect, the pieces can be spread out, a 70 by 30 mm jigsaw sits neatly on the top and allows more than one person to work on it at a time, providing they can agree on who does which part. (I can never be bothered with edges to start with, despite the conventional wisdom on this topic.)

 

I don’t know if this works as well with other grand pianos. But I am going to see if I can sell the idea of a new advertising slogan to the makers of Bechsteins.  “Do a jigsaw - get a Bechstein”.  

As a final grammatical note, I am reminded that the spelling is Bechstein and not Beckstein, with an “h”, not a “k”. I don't remember who pointed out to me the error of my linguistic ways, but I am sure that he or she is on this mailing list - hands up those of you who knew the right spelling. Hands up those of you who don't care.

Does the Post Office really hate stamp collectors?

I have just spent all day yesterday trying to get eight British stamps off three envelopes. Five British stamps of no particular consequence, but special commemorative issues, none the less. Three Olympic stamps and two Christmas stamps.

In the same postal delivery, there were two other letters from England, with the usual everyday definitive stamps. It always amazes me that the British Post Office manages to produce such drab stamps. The outline of the Queen is recognisable after a fashion, but for sheer lack of imagination these stamps are hard to beat. I guess it saves on design fees.

As if that were not enough, the Post Office has used the money that it has saved on design costs, and invested in purple crayons, like the ones that my grandson Bradley, uses to draw over his mum’s kitchen table. These purple crayons are then used to scrawl over the stamps to indicate that they have been used. “X marks the spot” is the training mantra here. Sometimes franking machines are used, but these are not favoured, as they are too neat. Much better to make the stamp totally unusable by anyone, including stamp collectors.

So it’s back to my failed attempt to soak these stamps off their envelopes. Normally stamps from any other country come off in about 30 minutes. These particular eight items of philatelic delight refused to budge one-tenth of a millimetre. My attempts included the use of cold water, then warm water and then hot water, all to no avail after twelve hours.

The Post Office has obviously used the remains of its savings on design costs (after the costs of purple crayons) to purchase special super glue, normally used to hold aircraft wings on to the body of a plane. Well, judging from my experience yesterday, it wouldn’t surprise me.

My efforts having been defeated, I have come to the conclusion that the Post Office hates stamp collectors. Well wouldn’t you? If you had to trudge around the streets all day, in all weathers, with your only outlet for frustration being to throw elastic bands on the ground (of which I was a major beneficiary during my time in Norwich), wouldn’t you hate stamp collectors, together with dog owners?

So today, I was off to the local Post Office in Thalwil to buy a set of commemorative stamps and what did I find? No – they didn’t have any. Perhaps commemorative stamps aren’t meant to be used. They are just meant to be bought and placed in the stamp collection.

By the way, if you are unaware of the significance of the Post Office and elastic bands, you might be amused by the following: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Mail_rubber_band.

The English speak English

I promised in the email accompanying my last blog that I would write something nice about England.

I have spent over 10 years in Switzerland now. When it comes to the tests to see how far you’ve gone native, I score pretty well. On returning to Norwich (which is a part of England, for those of you who did not know) for a few months, I did better than expected in adapting to my “new culture”.

Just before coming back to England for five months, I was asked by a friend what I particularly liked about Switzerland. My answer was pretty poor (railways, mountains, etc – I did not even mention low taxes), so I was motivated to keep some notes, while in Norwich, of what I liked, disliked or just observed about England or Switzerland.

The list was fairly long on all three counts, with some surprising entries (e.g. I like the suggested recipes on the sides of sauces in English supermarkets. You might not think is important, but as an amateur chef, I came to like this).

But I know that you have all read the title, so you know what is coming next.

I was in a car park with Hazel by a store like B & Q – it wasn’t B & Q, but that is not the point. The point was that a man, who had parked next to us, came up and I made a complementary observation about his car. Within 5 minutes of banter back and forth, he had told me how old the car was, how old he was, how many grandchildren he had and so on and he probably heard similar information about me. (As we were both male, we will both have forgotten everything within 90 seconds, except that I remember that his car was red – I think).

Yes – English is my native language and this was England. I consider myself something of an expert of the English language, having used it from a very early age. However, as I was forcibly reminded with some disdain by a German lady in Zurich, “Colin, you have been in Switzerland for 10 years and you still don’t speak German fluently”. You have to admire the motivational words.

And yes – in Tesco Express on the Unthank Road “Hier spricht man Englisch” – Hurrah. Time for some banter about the weather, the Olympics, BBQs in the rain, Princess Katie or whatever else was on everyone’s mind at the time or having a minor rant (in English) about the automatic pay machines.

I have become convinced that banter (and probably humour and swearing) is only done well in one’s mother tongue. Here in Switzerland, because I can say “Grüezi” (normal greeting) with a reasonably good accent, I receive in return some sentiments in the local dialect. This is both flattering and totally reasonable. However, my response has to be (in my best German) “Sorry, but I am English, however, I speak some high (formal) German.”

This leads either to the conversation coming to an end or just as likely to a perfectly formed sentence in English from the other person, who having been to university in England, speaks fluent English. This is not the same as banter.

Best places for banter are: car parks, supermarket check-outs, fish and chip shops, (but not in Indian takeaways), bus stops when it is pouring with rain and buying theatre tickets. You may have other suggestions.

When we first arrived in Norwich (England), we had to force ourselves not ask whether they spoke English. (There was one occasion when I spoke to a cashier in the local Tesco Express in German by accident). Imagine being in a street in England and someone asking you if you speak English. I know that England has become multicultural, but that would be too much.

So it is probably true. The English are just not good at languages. We don’t get enough practice. And why should we – everyone else speaks English. Are we spoiled or just lazy? Perhaps a bit of both.

In the meantime, to answer my friend’s question, one of the things I like about England is that everyone speaks English.

 

The Need to Queue

Regular readers of this blog (thanks, Dad) will know how much I hate queuing. Whether I hate queuing more than having Google constantly redirect me to the German website or translating everything into German is a close run thing.

Of course, your view on queuing might be completely different, and probably is. “How do you use your queuing time?” This could be a useful social study, and should rank alongside such important questions as “Do you love Marmite or do you hate it?” http://www.marmite.co.uk/

For some, queuing might be an opportunity to consider and reflect on the meaning of life, or to think over some particular crossword clue. Others might just reflect or think of nothing in particular. I like to engage others in conversation, especially on the subject of why this queue is not moving fast enough / not at all / why the other queue is moving faster / debating whether the person at the front of the queue is trying to buy the entire train etc. and asking myself whether it would be cost effective to actually just pay the bill of the person three in front of me.

It is conceivable that one should just relax, but that it not a core Grumpy skill.

Whichever it is, Starbucks have found a new way of separating us from our free time and in providing us with an opportunity to practice whatever it is that we practice, while we are queuing.

The idea here is to have one person taking the orders and the money and another making the coffee. The trick, though, in the “Let’s help people to practice queuing” training department is to have the person making the coffee not turn up / be on his coffee break /visiting the bathroom. This way queuing practice time can be maximised until the crucial coffee maker returns or just turns up.

I may have mentioned this in an earlier blog, but the Swiss think that the English like queuing. I explain that we do not like queuing. We are just good at it.

I have visited Poland and have concluded that they are good at queuing, at least in the city that I visited. My observations have led me further to think that a significant percentage enjoy it. The feeble evidence for this rash thought is from the local supermarket which has two exits, one at either end of the building. Each exit has its own checkouts. One exit always has longer queues with shoppers with more shopping. This is for the experienced queuers (is there such a word?), or for those who are practicing. The other is for people like me, who are lost causes in the queuing department.

Perhaps queues are a test, although exactly what sort of test, I have no idea. And who would set the test anyway? More to the point, who would mark the results? The EU should seriously consider having a “Queuing Directive”, to enforce this character enhancing habit.

I will continue with this rather unlikely theme. If we are bad in this world, are we destined to come back as someone whose only activity is to wait in an everlasting queue, which never moves?

 I remember a Russian friend of ours, who volunteered, some years ago, to queue for some tickets for an open-air cinema in Zurich. She arrived there at 5.00 am and collected the tickets at 8.00 am. “Wow”, we said. “That was some queuing”. “That’s not queuing”, she replied. “When you stand for twelve hours, you reach the front and the shop then tells you they are closing and you should come back tomorrow, that’s queuing.”

Well, I guess that puts Grumpy in his correct place.

(By the way, there is a “I hate Marmite” facebook page – I shall be lobbying for an “I hate queuing” page on Facebook – perhaps someone can help me to set one up.)

Pencils, Pills and Toe-Nails

Exactly how far can a pencil travel? This is not a physics question. Neither is it a new Olympic discipline (although it could be). It is the practical question of what happens when you drop the pencil on the floor and why.

You know the feeling. You reach for a pencil to start the Sudoku puzzle from today’s newspaper. For reasons which cannot be explained by modern science, the pencil moves of its own accord, rolls across the desk and falls towards the floor.

All is not lost. From the great experience that you have gained from playing table tennis, you are confident of your ability to catch it, as it plunges earthwards – but no – the pencil slips past you and lands with a click on the floor, probably shattering the leads internally thoughout its length.

Before you can reach down to pick it up, it continues its journey to escape your clutches and proceeds to roll gently underneath the sofa. Yes – I have a sofa, next to my desk, so I can have a sleep, when studying German vocabulary becomes too hard for me.

Now it’s a question of getting down on your knees in your best jeans. You reach right to the back of the sofa and at the same time, collect up a handful of dust which has assembled since you lost the last pencil.

There you have it with pencils. They’re slow, don’t go far, but are cunning.

But what about pills? You drop one of those and you are really in trouble and I should know. These little swine, they not only slip through your fingers, then gripped by gravity, they always fall to the ground pointing sideways. This works on the same cosmic and logic defying principle that causes a cat to land on its feet and bread to land face downwards, leaving a nasty mark on the carpet.

Back to the pills. Landing on their side, they proceed to roll purposefully at about the same speed as you can chase and then disappear……You took your eye off it, didn’t you. The chances of this ever being found by anything other than the vacuum cleaner are receding by the second.

Writing that off to experience, you take more care with the next pill, still looking around the room, in deadly combat with the little pill that has decided to humiliate you. Yes – It’s personal.

To summarise: Pills – small distance, but fast and ruthless, with an invisibility cloak, straight out of Harry Potter.

How do toe-nails figure in this league table? Clipping toe-nails is a personal business, not to be lightly discussed in public. However, there are important questions to be asked.

You do your best to make sure that the clippings remain in a space where they can be tidied and collected up – I hope that this not too personal or embarrassing.

Then suddenly, the toe nail shoots across the bath room at the speed of light, diagonally from the basin to the corner by the shower. The cursed thing disappears from view. Do this a few times and you would expect to have a little pile of shavings, lodged in the corner – but no. They have gone forever.

At least you are not trying to do something useful with them, like complete a Sudoku puzzle or swallow them to increase the iron in your blood. (I think that they must have a great deal of protein and calcium in them, but I will leave that thought where it is).

So there you have it for Toe nails – theory of relativity defying speeds and general pain in the whatsits.

Pencils, Pills and Toenails – they are all out to get you. So who’s paranoid?