A Gentleman's Domain

One sunny afternoon on County Road 232...

 

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Actually this is the ventilation system for a huge milking shed.   I suppose I should have guessed that, what with all those cows and all.

Prioities!

The cat lover in me totally agrees!

Paws for thought....

This is the picture on the packet of cat treats that our three felines enjoy  so much.  I have to say, I find that image vaguely disturbing!

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Smugness!

Concerning the inclement weather that has swept across much of the USA in recent days, I cannot help feeling a bit smug.  This satellite photo shows the sheer size of the storm, but you'll notice Florida, down in the bottom right, clear and unaffected.  Pass me another tee-shirt, m'dear; I'm off for a stroll in the sunshine!

Electrickery?

Here’s something interesting.  Well, maybe.   We got a thingy in the mail from our local utility company. I knew the bill wasn’t  due yet, so I when I saw the envelope I assumes they were trying to sell us something, or disseminate utility company propaganda or some such.  In fact it was a so-called “Home Energy Report” and it compared out use of electricity to that of our neighbours, which they define as “up to 100 occupied apartments or condos”  and average of 0.00 miles from us.  There are quite a lot to chose from in a radius of 0.50 miles, for example, but 0.00 miles seems pretty close.  Anyway, UI suppose they know what they are talking about.

Or do they?  I was all ready to look at their chart and be alarmed at our apparent profligate use of  “electrickery” as Catweazel used to call it (don’t worry if you don’t know who that is – I just put that in for my sister),  when I noticed something.  This is what they sent.

According to this, we are positively extravagant with electricity.  July and August, the air-conditioning I suppose.  Yes, on the basis if this, we should cut down…  But wait!!  We also, it seems, used quite a lot from December to January.  Look how the graph slopes upwards.  That’s strange, considering that from 12 December to 5 January we weren’t here.  We were in England and there was no one in the house except our three cats.  The only power used were a couple of lights on time switches, the central heating ready to kick in if the temperature fell below 65° and the refrigerator stayed on.  That was it.  We had a pet sitter visit to feed the cats and empty their litter tray while we were gone, but I doubt that she did more than switch on a few lights for 15 minutes while she visited.  No one used the really heavy users of electricity – dishwasher, washing machine, toaster, electric kettle, microwave – while we were gone, and I am sure we didn’t have neighbours breaking into our place to make use my wife’s hair dryer.  So, what’s occurring, GRU?  Is this a genuine report, or just a lot of porkie pies (Don’t worry if you don’t understand that last sentence either.  I used that term because it’s the Brit in me!)?
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One Wednesday afternoon, 20 minutes after my second cup of tea....

Well now, here’s a little mystery that maybe someone can solve for me.  We went away for six days. Very nice. We drove up to South Carolina to visit my MIL.  We were away for five nights.  Not a very long time, you’ll agree I’m sure.  So why, I am wondering, was there a huge disparity between the amount of luggage that I took to see me through those five days and what my wife took.  I managed to get everything I needed to wear, plus a pair of flip flops, my camera and my sponge bag, into one small bag that normally I use as a carry-on when I travel by air.  I am a great believer in traveling light.  

My wife, on the other hand, needed four bags.  I have absolutely no idea why.  It’s not as though we had to change our clothes several times a day.  I remonstrated with her when we left home and I saw all her bags lined up on the bedroom floor, but I was informed, with a touch of asperity, that I simply did not understand.  Probably I don’t.  I don’t even understand what it is that I don’t understand.

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And something that came as a bit of a surprise.  For some people it is even sad, but because I am so far removed from the people involved, it is merely interesting.  In the mid-1990s I worked for a big firm of worldwide management consultants.  Their head office was in Florida; I was in charge of marketing in the London office, though I did visit the Florida office.  In fact that was my very first visit to Florida, little suspecting that one day I’d end up living there.  The CEO, who had started the firm from nothing twenty years before and was now a millionaire several times over, was in his early sixties, had a very hands on approach, sported a young blonde wife and usually wore a toupee that fooled no one.  I met him briefly only once, but I saw him many times in training videos and pictures of him , often with is wife, were plastered all over the company’s publicity material.  I have to say I did not enjoy the job, and when they decided to close several offices  across Europe and to run European operations from their office in Dublin, I was not sad at all. 

Cut to a few months ago.  I had never given that  company a second thought since the day I received my final pay cheque from them, but for some reason the name came to mind and I wondered if they were still in existence, so I used good old Google to see what I could find.  What I did find was a bit of a shock.  Apparently, everything in the garden had not been lovely.  The company did still exist, in a rather truncated form,  but some years ago had gone bankrupt.  The CEO was dead.  A few months before I Googled, his wife had divorced him and had been awarded a very generous, maybe even unfairly generous, settlement.  Unfair or not, it had prompted this man to go sit in his gazebo late one night, phone a local radio station to rant and complain about the inequities of Florida divorce laws and (I’m not sure if he was still on the phone or not) to blow his brains out.

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The other day, my wife and I were talking about various websites and she used a very descriptive term for sites that grab you and keep you reading them for hours – rabbit holes.  Maybe it’s a long established expression to describe sites like that, but it was the first time I had heard it.  I knew just what she meant.  There are some sites where  I have spent many hours of my life reading, clicking, reading more, for hours on end.  In particular, I can think of  YouTube, Wikipedia, IMDB, Etiquette Hell.  Do you have any rabbit holes?  If so, what are they?
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An A - Z thing

I was sent one of those A - Z thingies.  I have taken a rather free-handed attitude to answering it!

A - Age: 21

B - Bed size: Sort of rectangular, with sheets and blankets and things.

C - Chore you hate: de-knelging the upper flunes

D - Dog's name: I don't have a dog

E - Essential start your day item: coffee

F - Favorite color: blue

G - Gold or Silver: Gold, I suppose. I don't own much of either.

H - Height: 6' 2"

I - Instruments you play: Clarinet, ukulele

J - Job title: Dilettante, poseur

K - Kid(s): Emma

L - Living arrangements: Apartment

M - Mom's name:

N - Nicknames: My wife has one for me. If I told you what it is I'd have to kill you. My school nicknames are lost in the mists of time

O - Overnight hospital stay other than birth: Only one, when I was 5. Suspected appendicitis. False alarm.

P - Pet Peeve(s): People talking on mobile phones whilst driving, texting even worse. (I copied this from Taru as I completely agree with her) plus talking on mobile while sitting on a bus. Also why the heck they need to talk so loud then? I don't want to know about their personal things...

Q - Quote from a movie: He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty  boy!

R - Right or left handed: Right

S - Siblings: Sarah

T - Time you wake up: Variable. This morning it was 7.00am

U - Underwear: What about it?

V - Vegetable you dislike: Almost all of them

W - Workout style: Walking, swimming

X - X-rays you've had: Dental, chest, left knee

Y - Yesterday's best moment: Dr Who

Z - Zoo favorite:

I'm not going to tag anyone.  Have a go if you like!

Two Interesting Conversations

I was in a doctor’s waiting room the other day, using it in a completely correct manner, because I was waiting.  My wife was in for a routine check-up and I was passing the time reading my book in the, thankfully, silent room (no blaring CNN or Fox News or piped music, I’m glad to say).  After a while, a sales rep for one of the pharmaceutical companies arrived, to speak to one of the doctors..  I was not trying to eavesdrop but in the silent room I couldn’t help but overhear their conversation.

The rep started with “Hi, how’re you doin’?”  to which the doctor replied “I’m getting there!”  And for some reason they both followed this comment with hearty guffaws.   Then the rep said “Well, that’s progress.”  and they both laughed again.

Doctor:  Is it Friday yet?  (laughter from both)
Rep:  Not even close. It’s Tuesday!  (guffaws)
Doctor:  God, not even halfway there!  (chuckle chuckle)
Rep:  Well, what’re ya gonna do? (ha ha ha)
Doctor:  The weeks get slower and slower. (laughter)
Rep:  Tell me about it.  (almost falling about with laughter)

Then they got on to the actually reason for the visit, discussing drug supplies, ordering new batches and handing overt a few free samples.

I was interested how they had felt obliged to preface their business with that little bit of mindless small talk.  They weren’t telling each other anything, and even though they had pretended to laugh at each other’s comments, there was nothing the remotest bit funny about what either of them had said.  It was as though this bit of drivel was some sort of ritual that had to be gone through as they positioned themselves for the main business of the day, rather like a mating dance.  Did they really need a buffer between meeting and doing business?  Would the ordering and selling have gone any different if they had got straight down to it?  I suspect not.

Then a few days later I was in my local Starbucks, and unusually there was a queue at the counter.  As we were waiting to be served, the man ahead of me turned and asked me “Did you watch the Olympics yesterday?”  I took this to be a reference to something or other happening somewhere in the vicinity of Vancouver and I answered truthfully  “No, not really.  I don’t like sports.”   The odd thing was, he seemed unable to process this bit of information.

Him:  See the hockey game?
Me:  No. Like I say, I don’t like sports.
Him:  What about football?  Who’s your team?
Me:  Well, I don’t really have one.  I don’t like sports.
Him:  You been to a Gator game?
Me:  No,  I don’t like sports.
Him:  You should go. They’re great.

By now he had reached the front of the queue and placed his order so our little chat ended.  Once I had my coffee and was seated, I reflected for a moment no what had happened.  Leaving aside the assumption that everyone lies sport, I wondered why that conversation had taken place.  To be friendly?  Yes, maybe, but we met briefly as total strangers and as total strangers we parted company.  I think it was probably chat for its own sake. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, so human society abhors silence.
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One of the lesser known hazards of living in Florida!

Cruel and unusual travel.

For the benefit of anyone who has been living in a particularly isolated cave these last couple of weeks, and presumably had a very circumscribed Xmas, on 25th December a young nutter tried to blow up an airliner as it was coming in to land at Detroit, with explosives strapped to his upper thigh, inside his underpants, and he would have succeeded had his detonator not failed to work properly and he hadn’t been overpowered by several of his fellow passengers.  If what we read in the papers is correct, President Obama lost his temper, which he is reportedly slow to do in normal circumstances,  when he learned the details of this man’s flight.  The terrorist bought a one-way ticket from Lagos, Nigeria to Detroit, paying cash at a travel agency in Ghana, and he had no checked luggage with him.  His name was apparently on a watch list and had been refused a visa to enter the UK before he even applied for a visa to enter the USA.  Obama talked about a failure to join up the dots, though I expect that his language was more basic, and less printable, when he spoke the government functionaries responsible for failing to spot the risk this man posed.  Showing  both frankness and a breathtaking lack of tact, Gordon Brown has stated that the British intelligence services warned their American counterparts about this person before he even booked a ticket.  Heads will have to roll to satisfy an understandably angry public and my guess is that one or two mid-level functionaries at the Dept. of Homeland Security will be publicly fired – possibly the one who gave the terrorist a US entry visa.  Visa or no, the terrorist is in the USA now, and will probably be spending a great many years here, though I suspect that he won’t be able to do very much sightseeing.

So how does all this affect the rest of us?  Well, as usual whenever there is a terrorist incident, successful or foiled, those responsible for security at airports go into panic mode, increasing all existing security measures and adding a few more for good measure.  All of which succeed in making flying a more and more miserable experience.  I remember when going on a trip that involved flying was something exciting.  Now it is just something to be endured.

My wife and I flew back home from England to our home in Florida last Monday.  In normal circumstances it would have been a tiring day, with no fewer than three flights in store for us, but the extra measures made it all pretty miserable.  We flew from London to Washington/Dulles,  then Dulles to Charlotte, NC, and then from Charlotte to our home town, and I have to say that the actual flights weren’t that bad, considering.  I’m 6’2” and airplane seats in economy are not made for people my height, but as long as I get an aisle seat I can make myself reasonably comfortable.  I’m used to that. There were a couple of screaming babies on the flight from London but you have to put up with that when flying economy (economy is a relative term here – our tickets were pretty damn expensive).  The second and third flights of our trip were on small commuter jets, which appear more cramped that transatlantic jetliners, but the flights were about an hour each, so that doesn’t really matter much. 

No, what was utterly miserable, and what made the trip seem endless and frayed our tempers and took all the joy out of returning home was the constant standing in line.  Lines, I should say.  Long, slow moving lines, snaking back and forth along roped-in lanes.  We stood in no fewer than five of those, and because according to my calculations we spent a total of almost four hours standing in line, I propose to describe all of them.

One of the panic measures that the airlines instituted after the Xmas Day incident was to restrict hand luggage.  When we had flown west to east in early December the rule had been one item of hand luggage plus one personal item, e.g. a laptop.  Now all of a sudden it was one item, period.  Now we neither of us were about to put our laptops in out checked baggage, so we had to consolidate our packing, and put only essentials in out laptop bags in the extra zippered pockets that you normally use for flash drives, mice and other laptop extras.  That meant we were compelled to put some items in our checked bags that we would have preferred not to (cameras, medications etc).  This new measure, by the way, was only for flights from London to US destinations, not for everyone.  Anyway, we fetched up at Heathrow airport at 8.30am, having spent the night in an airport hotel, ready to check in for our midday flight.  We wanted to get check-in and security over with as quickly as possible, so we could take things easy in the departure lounge, have breakfast etc.  Ha!

Check-in took close to an hour. It was in two stages. First we had to line up to use an automated check-in machine, a touch screen which also scanned our passports and my green card, then burped out boarding cards for both of us for all three flights.  I was rather impressed at that – nice and speedy.  And a fat lot of good the speediness did us, for we then had to get into another line to have our baggage – four cases – checked.  That line took well over 45 minutes.  At one point the line seemed to have stopped moving altogether.  I know there were passengers for at least three United flights in that line (San Francisco, Chicago and Washington) – in other words three jumbo jets’ worth of people – being served by six check-in staff.  After a while they opened up a couple more desks.  We bid a temporary farewell to our bags and went off to make our way onto the departure lounge via the security check area.  This was the security run by the BAA (British Airports Authority, who actually own and run the airport).  To my surprise, it was fairly quick and even though it was very thorough we were though it in about twenty minutes. As I stood there on the other side, taking my belongings out of the plastic trays and putting my shoes and belt back on, I sighed with relief that that was all over.  With smiles on our faces, we strolled over to one of the many restaurants in the Terminal One departure lounge and had a leisurely and enjoyable breakfast.

Then, in line with what the woman who checked our bags had told us, we made our way to the departure gate at about ten-thirty; an hour an a half before the plane was scheduled to take off.  And it was here that we were confronted with another long, slow moving line.  United Airlines had decided that in addition to the airport security they were going to have their own.  I suppose that would have been fine if they had run it differently, but as it was, they had four security staff dealing with the First Class and  Business passengers, while we peasants in Economy were dealt with by five security staff.  Five people to check about 200 passengers.  No wonder the line crawled forward so slowly that at times it seemed that it wasn’t even moving at all.  It took about 50 minutes for us to be seen.  Each passenger was directed to a small table where he had to empty is pockets and his hand baggage was searched by hand.  The unsmiling woman who dealt with me even riffled through the pages of the paperback book I was carrying – no doubt to see if I had any wafer-thin dynamite sticks in it.  Then I was patted down by a male security agent – a very incompetent search really.  I was taught in my police days how to do a so called pat-down search, and patting doesn’t enter into it at all. The end result was a lot of disgruntled passengers in a hot, sealed-off departure area where for whatever reason even the drinks machines had been turned off. 

We took off 40 minutes late but somehow were able to make it to Washington/Dulles on time. As I say, the flight wasn’t all that bad – just long and boring, as transatlantic flights usually are.  I didn’t watch any of the films on offer. I was more entertained by the moving map.  It took just over four hours to cross the Atlantic, but since we made landfall over Newfoundland, It took another three hours to head due south to Washington.  We landed at Dulles airport a few minutes ahead of schedule.

Never again will we take a flight that arrives at Dulles!  Once we had got off the plane, we followed the signs for transfer passengers.  I reckon at least half the passengers on our plane were taking onward flights, not to mention passengers from several other planes that arrived round about the time ours did.  The result was a huge, and I do mean huge, crowd at Immigration.  Approximately half of them were foreign visitors, and the other half were US citizens or permanent residents.  There was a line for each category.  So, straight away we found ourselves in a long queue, between ropes, shuffling first one way across the hall and then the other.  This was the worst one so far.  What annoyed me was that there were five positions closed that I could see.  You’d think that they’d manage to find an officer to man every desk in the hall at what was obviously a peak period. I think it took us an hour to get to an Immigration officer’s desk.  A few minutes and a couple of rubber stamps later we made our way to the baggage claim area.  As you can imagine, it was very crowded.  The carousel assigned to out flight was also assigned to flights from Geneva, Vienna, Tokyo and Berlin that had recently landed so there was a huge throng milling about, everyone getting in each other’s way.  Also, to my surprise, there were long lines of unattended suitcases across the floor, as though forlornly waiting for their owners to come and collect them.  Our bags arrived after about 20 minutes and we put them on a trolley and trundled over to the Customs inspectors.  At least this line didn’t take more than a few minutes.  When we got to the front, the inspector seemed almost indifferent.  “You bringing in any food?”  “Yes, some candy and about two thousand tea bags.”  “Ok, good enough.”  He waved us through and we re-checked in our bags for the next two flights.

Now, I thought, we just need to find out which gate our connecting flight is leaving from and then we can relax for a bit.  Wrong!!   At the end of the customs hall there was a crowd of people.  I couldn’t think why there would be at first and then I realized that we were about to be security checked yet again.  We were still airside, mind you, and still “sterile” from the previous security check at Heathrow.  I have no idea why they needed to check us all again, but they did.  This security check had the appearance of something that has been hastily put together.  It wasn’t in a special hall or wide area, but had been located at a place where the corridor turned at a right angle, and everything was very cramped and bustling.   There were just four lanes, and with hundreds of passengers to be screened there was a bottleneck.  This line moved the slowest of all.  We waited almost an hour to get to a screener and then went though the familiar ritual: laptops out of bags, pockets emptied, belts and shoes off, walk through the metal detector,  recover all the plastic bins with your property in them, try to put your belt and shoes back on and replace your laptop in its bag, all the while other passengers are crowding behind you and trying to grab their property too and everyone is getting very irritated with everyone else while officious TSA people are shouting something about keeping the lines moving.

When we were finally through there, we were able to take a shuttle to another part of Dulles airport, catch our flight to Charlotte, where the gods did actually smile upon us because our connecting flight left from a gate just a few yards from the one where we arrived.  No frantic hustle from one end of the airport to another.  There was one more wait, at our final destination, where it took about thirty minutes for our baggage to be loaded onto the carousel, but our local airport is almost a one man and his dog operation, so we weren’t too surprised and anyway we were too tired to get worked up about it.  One great advantage of flying from the regional airport right here in town – our front door is just a ten minute taxi ride from the terminal.

Now, I know some people have suggested that profiling of passengers would be a very good idea and others have recoiled in horror at the suggestion of such blatant discrimination.  I am not sure what the answer is, but I am almost 100% certain that we can assume that a mother, father and three young children, such as the family immediately ahead if us at the security check, present a  threat to no one.  If we look back at all the terrorist incidents of, say, the last ten years, we can’t help noticing that the number of  outrages perpetrated by young children was, at my reckoning, zero.  I think the same applies to grandmothers in their seventies, among others.  Of all the lines we stood in, all those hours we spent moving forward a foot or two at a time, three were far more miserable than they should have been because of  the incompetence of the people organising them – United Airlines’s extra security at Heathrow, where there weren’t enough screeners: Immigration at Dulles, where they didn’t have enough people on duty to cope with the volume of passengers: the Dulles post-customs security check that was an overcrowded shambles.  I don’t want to belabour the point but lets have a bit of common sense about airline security.  It need not be as downright horrible as it has become. 

Meanwhile I leave you with a memory from a more innocent age, when flying away somewhere was still exciting and even romantic.
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