Belt Involved in Freak Accident

Back to the design stage, I fear.  The Dragons' Den and Patent Office will have to wait a little longer for my Writers’ Utility Belt. 

The details of the incident need only be sketchy. 

The prototype WUB let me down in the bathroom two weeks ago when the non buckle end of the belt unravelled from its loops and my camera slipped free to plunge into the WC pan.  Days of warm, dry boiler cupboard air and repeated re-chargings of the battery have proven futile.  I killed my camera.   

Lessons learned:  

1. Smooth, shiny belts lack friction.

2. The buckle end is best for valuable items - my notebook and pen pouch remained in place.  

3. I am careless (already known, but now expensively reminded).

Abuse of English Update

I was distressed to realise this week that even my favourite celebrity chef, Jamie Oliver – he of the power verbs: “fling”, “bang”, “stick” and “sling” (often within the same sentence, when they combine in pure poetry) – is resorting to “pop”. 

I counted at least three inappropriate uses of the hateful non-verb in the final episode of “Jamie’s Great Britain”, since at no time was Jay Oh referring to minor explosions, fizzy drinks or the behaviour of weasels. 

I wonder if there is a conspiracy afoot to bring in this safe, inoffensive (to most) and reasonably versatile word to assist in the dumbing down of our language.  If so, I mean to fight it.  Such a development is not evolution of language, but deterioration. 

Who will join me on the linguistic barricades?       

Quote of the Week

As for the patronising assumption that people need the promise of heaven (or the obscene threat of torture in hell) in order to be moral, what a contemptibly immoral motive for being moral!

Richard Dawkins

Check out RD’s full text from the New Statesman:

http://www.newstatesman.com/religion/2011/12/religious-faith-children

Couldn’t put it better myself.

Flashback to: Health and Safety Backlash

The high-pressure water spray proves a success after minute one.  The wood deck, laid in 2000 and cleaned over the years by nothing but the weather, reveals itself in pale brown strips merging together as the dead algal murk is swept away. 

The difference is remarkable after only a few sweeps of the nozzle and I am seized with the need to clean.  I blast away the green-stained dirt from the fence posts.  Scour the wood upstand around the deck.  Scatter green slate chippings from their beds and thrash the dry leaves of a Hosta before stopping to consider. 

Calmer, I decide to continue with a promise to eradicate the weeds from every inch of my concrete paving joints.  I shall re-grout for England.  I am Pressure Man.  A chemical-free Lord of Hygiene.  The modern deluge falling on my unclean world.  Man and Power Tool is a fearsome combination.  It is modern medieval weaponry, all physical force but with less effort and no bloodshed. 

I calm a little more as I remember my entry into family power tool folklore as the man who managed to inflict a long transverse cut on his right forearm with a hedge trimmer, whilst holding it properly with two hands.  It was easy, but I don’t seem able to explain how.  I am intrinsically careless, a bit clumsy and definitely non-safe by default.  Without realising it I depend on good fortune but am a great learner after the event, using a lifetime of research for my impending doctorate in hindsight.

Not the best skill and mind set for a Health and Safety Professional.  The P-word was appended by practitioners in the seventies, when “public health” (old-fashioned, a bit too associated with sanitation) morphed to “environmental health” (modern, trendy, eclectic, clean) on local government reorganisation in 1974.  The same year saw the birth of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act and the modernisation of health and safety law, to be enforced by the newly professionalised corps of local government Environmental Health Officers and the higher-status, grim-faced, government-controlled Factory Inspectors.  It is from these two groups that a small core of health and safety specialists evolved to become one of the nation’s service industry success stories . . . despite its unlikely provenance.  

                               

After ten minutes I am spattered with grit and my front is soaked from water recoil and spray mist, but I do not care.  The day is warm and I am outdoorsie wet, one of my favourite states.  The grit irritates a bit so I consider washing my sandaled feet.  Sense prevails so I experiment on fingertips.  After retrieving them from a neighbour’s garden I realise that “high pressure” is an apt description and I resolve to take more care.  No impromptu washing down of my torso after I finish.  I consider my outfit, attitude and working practice and decide, as an ex-H&S Pro that I should compare these with what most good employers – including my last one – would have their pressure-washing staff doing. 

Following a suitable and sufficient risk assessment . . .  Nobody, even my closest family and friends, can go close to appreciating how I shudder at these words.  They contain a world of meaning and when combined with other general terms from the H&S lexicon (including, “adequate”, “reasonable” and the chief horror: “reasonably practicable”) into an instructive or advisory sentence the only people jumping for joy at the resultant hedging of meaning are the interpreters of the jargon.     

Anyway, following a suitable and sufficient risk assessment the hierarchy of risk controls will be applied, as follows:

Option 1.

Do not do the work!  No activity = no risk = Health and Safety Heaven.

Option 2.

Get some poor sap of a contractor to do the work instead.  This is unfair and a cheap shot, as employers have a similar duty of care to third parties as they do their own people.  In short, they must make sure that other employers’ employees and the self-employed enjoy the same levels of protection as their own. 

It has to be said  that many poor contractors promise H&S Heaven at the lowest bid, don’t always comply with their contractual vows and those commissioning the work don’t or can’t properly police it.  However, if done fairly and properly, it is in many ways easier to have somebody else worry about the details. 

Option 3.

This is where is gets complicated.  (Yes, so far it is simplicity itself).  Option three, entitled “Reduce the Risk”,  has a sub-hierarchy typically running to five stages starting with a level of separation and protection between users and used that could not in theory be breached under any conceivable, and at least one fanciful, circumstance from natural disaster to a grunt having a bad day.

I won’t list these sub-options, but they are progressively less safe as we drop down the list and pass from “hardware” (fences and gates and barriers and things) to “software” (people knowing what to do and always doing it right) and finally to the one labelled THE LAST RESORT. 

This is personal protective clothing (PPE in the jargon).  The health and safety irony is a system designed to operate from the principal of prevention and risk management at source is so often by-passed straight to PPE.  Or is that TLR? 

Anyway, to shortcut this homily back to my own situation, I have considered and dismissed Options 1. and 2. as I want the work doing and I’m not paying someone else to do it.  Option 3. 

I have to hold the pressure lance so can’t hide behind a wall and the software stuff I take pretty much for granted – Mick showed me how to use the washer (thus I am trained in its use) and I trust him that the man he got it from (his father-in-law) would not give him equipment that was mechanically or electrically unsafe. 

My last – and many other – employers would have thrown a seizure at the idea of such an informal arrangement.  Equipment hired in must be accompanied by full history, including evidence that it was electrically tested before arrival at the premises and has a full service record in accordance with the manufacturer’s recommendations.       

I know the TLR/PPE standard for this sort of kit.  First, I must wear overalls to protect my own clothes and keep light soiling and wetting away from me and my possessions.  A waterproof apron and/or overtrousers might be needed if the risk assessment shows that the overalls may become wet. 

Wellington boots, with slip-resistant soles and a safety toecap protect the feet.  On the hands go water-resistant gloves capable of retaining the pressure lance in a firm hold.  A hard hat is not needed – unless work is in an area with low headroom – but face protection against flying debris and water spray (a Perspex shield covering eyes and face is normal) and ear protectors against the noise finish off the outfit. 

A droplet-proof face mask should also be worn to restrict the inhalation of Leptospira (the source is rat urine, said to be ubiquitous) and Legionella bacteria (also ubiquitous).  An additional safeguard against Legionella is to ensure the spray head is descaled and disinfected before use.   

I wore a tee-shirt, shorts and sandals.  After a while I put on the safety wellies issued to me by an employer in 1987.  I knew they would come in useful one day.  I tried the pressure spray on them (you knew I would, didn’t you?) and felt barely a thing, but I think the boots leak a bit now.

Two hours of light-to moderate, wet and noisy graft with a piece of macho kit whilst dressed for the beach (except the wellies) leaves the deck clean and me happy, looking thoughtfully at my little paved paths.  A quick blast and dull, blotched grey becomes the silver grey of the original Portland Cement concrete.  Tomorrow, I think.  I’ve had enough excitement for one day, but I won’t stop after the above swipe at ex-profession before giving the necessary evidence for Health and Safety.

Consider the above activity, but with a few significant differences. 

It is not a DIY job of mine, it is a job-of-work for an employee of a small company just about holding its own in the recession and desperate for work.  Dirty jobs involving physical effort, little skill and the wearing of much PPE tend to be done by the workers with the least influence on what they do. 

They can’t delegate, wait until the weather’s fine, get better equipment or even ask for help.  They just get it done asap, take the minimum wage and on to the next job.  Such a worker won’t do the one job just for himself or a friend or a family member, but may have to do four such jobs in a working day in all conditions for people who think he is a lesser life form. 

If I were that worker, I think I would hate to be wet all day – especially in cold weather – wouldn’t want to spoil my own clothes or buy my own wellies, gloves and such.  I might even wonder if my hearing could be affected if I do this sort of job for long, or what might happen if I hurt myself when working alone out of sight and earshot of everyone.  I would probably feel resentment at the way I was treated and this may be compounded by my being a graduate with the £30K of student debt Tony Blair urged me to take on as a great investment in my future. 

The good news for now is on c.£12,500 a year I am below the pay back threshold and if my life is truly, abysmally shit from now on the repayments of the original stake plus a similar amount in accrued interest, will be waived when I retire at the projected age of 75.

Is that fair?  Is it even reasonable?  No to both, I suggest.  Is it also fair for the lad’s employer to win contracts against less-competitive employers who kit out their people properly and look after their welfare at the cost of a higher quote?  No again. 

But alas, it is how it is.

Musical Interlude

The music session this afternoon started off a bit of a nightmare as the tunes were all played at fifty notes to the second, but I kept up with a couple and relied on bashing out chords (up to three different ones per tune. Yes, really!) for the rest. 

The main things are:

1.    I enjoyed it.

2.    I didn’t spoil it! 

Wonder if I’ll be asked again . . .  

The mix of fiddle, guitar, mandola and mandolin sounded damn good and the locals in the pub enjoyed it, as did the staff and landlady.  A bonus when one starts banging out tunes in a pub.  

So that was me playing out with the musical grown-ups.  I felt a bit like a character in a scene from a Laurel and Hardy or Buster Keaton film, hand-levering a railway car along the tracks after – or away from – a train. 

The thing I found, as in the film example, not to give up!       

DIY and me

I undertook kitchen worktop stabilisation this morning.  A ten-minute job for a handyman worked out at two hours for me, but most of it is done and tomorrow I only have to do a smaller section, make good the errors in today’s work and squirt sealant into all the gaps and the kitchen will be finished: thirteen months after the technical start date. 

At this rate the whole house will be redecorated by 2020. 

A narrow window of okay weather meant the paving contractor could get started today and, six months after I started digging the hole, we have a shed base!  He sorted out the mess I had left, levelled the site, did other arcane things and had it paved in the time it took me to do the above worktop wrangling. 

Who says DIY makes sense?  Not for this writer!  Not to be too self-deprecating, I believe the following holds good:

Those who can: do

Those who know: teach

Those who are neither: OFSTED (yes, it’s a verb!)

And then there is me!

Falling

I fell into a shop this afternoon and drew stares and sympathy.  It hurt, of course – later I nursed a bruised toe and aching knee – but I smiled up from my kneeling position whilst saying “no harm done” in that plucky British way I have.  The elegant assistant in her killer eight-inch heels looked relieved and gave me a chocolate from the bowl kept for customers.  I was reminded of the time I fell off a gym treadmill in 2006.  At what age does falling become “having a fall”?  Was the sympathy chocolate because I was now at that awkward age?  Is two random falls in five years a lot? At least she didn’t offer me a chair.                      

Elegant’s more sensibly shoed colleague served me with the purchase I had been thinking over for two days with the good news that today was 20% discount day.  Today’s unstable re-visit netted me a cash saving!  We discussed the merits or otherwise of heels and I learned the girl in question was recently off work with a bad back.  Aha, I said.  That will be the heels.  Yes, her colleague replied.  I’m always telling her, but you know how it is with these young ones . . . They take no notice of us.

I left feeling older than when I arrived.         

A six-letter word beginning with “W”?

The ambient winds had dropped and a blue sky smiled down on cold Harrogate’s dusting of frost and ice, so out I went for a bike ride.  After my helmet (safety comes first, as we all know) I strapped on my writer’s utility belt (available via Amazon from £49.99, belt and pouches only.  Okay, that was a joke, but maybe one day . . .) so was kitted out with camera, MP3 voice recorder, notebook, pens, diary and binoculars.  All these essential writerly items were secure and out of sight beneath clothing, with minimal chafing risk and yet ready to hand.  Thus I could look out for news-worthy items and write notes, record conversations and sounds, take still digital photos, shoot videos, make appointments and see quite a long way.  All I needed was a phone hacking kit, slush money, night vision goggles and an ethics by-pass to be a News International journalist.

I was ready for anything, but my circular journey of six miles was uneventful until I met Jack.  He was spreading grit on the steep path up from the cycle track to the road and I thought: what a sound chap.  How unexpected to find a vehicle-free route being gritted at all, especially on a Saturday.  I told him so.

“You wouldn’t believe”, he said “what’s been going on.  People have got the local M.P. involved, so here I am again.  It were all stones and mud ‘til this summer, when I put down the tarmac.”  He stamped the blacktop path for emphasis.  “One woman told me back then that it were a waste o’ money.  I saw her again this morning and she told me it were a disgrace I wasn’t putting grit down earlier on when she took her dogs out.  Then a posh bloke on a horse went past on the road and shouted that I was using too much grit and that the bin over there,” he waved towards a yellow plastic container, “will soon be empty and it was him that got it put here in the first place for the road and what would he do when it was all gone?  You can’t win, can yer!”

I agreed and we spent a few minutes watching the antics of a robin.  Jack had laid his grit and was now on with digging holes in the hard ground for fence posts.

“Soon as I turn my back he’s down there, looking for worms.  I’ve got to be careful I don’t squash him.  Course, this fence is being extended for the same reason I’m spreading grit.  Health and safety!  People don’t have common sense any more.”

I nodded.  Up until recently I was an uncomfortable apostate serving with the Health and Safety priesthood and had to agree with him.  ‘Common sense’ was not defined by Statute or case law, having been replaced many years ago by, in summary:

Suitable and sufficient control measures determined by competently undertaken  risk assessments and applied to a reasonably practicable standard. 

I shuddered at the memories.     

“I mean if it’s icy don’t it make sense not to come this way if you think you might slip?  Or at least wear proper shoes!”

I had dismounted rather than risk a bottom gear dash up the slope past the guy in the contractor’s jacket, but now I could feel the mix of grit, salt and melting ice lubricating the new tarmac beneath my soft-soled Vans.  It was time to move on.

“I bet if I told any of those moaners to take another route they’d tell me where to get off and do what they wanted anyway.  Then if they fell and hurt themselves I’d be sued!  Bloody daft, I call it.”            

He carried along on this vein for a little longer.  I was leaning on my bike for extra support holding both brake levers with a tetanic grip, but I felt a tyre slip sideways.  I needed an escape route before I slipped and crashed to the ground, but Jack had found a sympathetic ear and was into his full stride. 

“I used ter work f’t council years ago, but they ‘ad these daft safety types oo’d come round wi’ their notebooks and clipboards and big attitudes . . .”  So many people slip into a stronger accent when getting worked up and Jack was reverting to type.  “Ah sez to one on ‘em, ‘ yer daft wassock, ‘ow can ah do’t job properly if I can’t go up that ladder, eh?’  Ee just said to me, ‘You need someone to foot it and hold it steady.’  Straight back, ah said, ‘only one place my foot’s going in a minute, lad!’ and  off ‘e went, meek as a lamb.  Five minutes later ‘e’s back wi’t Clerk o’ Works and I’m on a disciplinary!”        

I was reminded that even the simplest, most obvious beneficial measures often have a background of great complication involving Westminster M.P.s, the council, various experts, local people, single-issue pressure groups and, in the end, a moaned-at, underpaid, pissed-off guy with a shovel just getting on with it.  Jack was putting things right, but still copping all the grief. 

The robin saved me.  He flew onto the handle of the spade as Jack let go to supplement his words with hand movements.  “Hello little feller”, Jack was distracted so I took a chance and jumped back two-footed onto the churned up mud beside the path.  Instead of sinking up my ankles in brown ooze, I hit frozen, lumpy ground and stayed upright.        

“Well, I’d best be off.  Nice meeting you, Jack.” I wheeled my bike up the path without a slip.

“Aye, and you lad. Take care.”  Jack went back to his hole.           

  

I hadn’t used any of my utility belt equipment, but felt as genuine in my new role as if I had scrawled “WRITER” across my forehead in bright, boggart-eye green.  When I got home I realised that maybe another six-letter, two-syllable word starting with a “W” was as appropriate a label for a man who rode around wearing a utility belt.    

Another Quote

There are several versions of this quote.  Here is one of them:

While wandering a deserted beach at dawn, stagnant in my work, I saw a man in the distance bending and throwing as he walked the endless stretch toward me. As he came near, I could see that he was throwing starfish, abandoned on the sand by the tide, back into the sea.

When he was close enough I asked him why he was working so hard at this strange task. He said that the sun would dry the starfish and they would die.  I said to him that I thought he was foolish. there were thousands of starfish on miles and miles of beach.  One man alone could never make a difference.

He smiled as he picked up the next starfish. Hurling it far into the sea he said,
"It makes a difference for this one."

I abandoned my writing and spent the morning throwing starfish.

Loren Eiseley

I’m 60+ miles from the sea so I went Christmas shopping instead.   

Bloomin’ awful day . . .

. . . with December well-and-truly upon us.  Sleet, sort-of snow, cold rain and the kind of buffeting winds that blew roof tiles onto my caravan this time last year.  Seasonal?  Indeed it is.  Do we want it?  Of course we do!  How could we otherwise appreciate our fleeting periods of warm, dry weather that can happen at any time?  We have as much chance of a white Christmas Day as we do of 15 degrees C, bright and sunny.  Variety.  That’s what it’s all about.  In all things.       

 

Boggart News

I was self-impressed to knock out nearly 3,500 words of “Ester and the Boggarts” in under three hours this morning.  My heroine has been suitably inconvenienced, imperilled, encountered her first boggart and got home to tell the tale.  Is a total of 10,000 words enough for a standalone story?  I see it as part of a series for the

9 to 12 age group with Sophie younger daughter illustrating as part of the USP.

Perhaps one day somebody will want to buy my shed for a ridiculous sum.        

Will interested readers and reviewers please contact the author. 

Lumbar Update

Oh woe!  A mere three weeks after all traces of the late-August backquake disappear, here we are again.  My latest theory of the causes-and-effect relationships of this perennial nuisance  is in tatters, but I have the germ of a new one.

My present indisposition is only about 5 on the Bachter Scale, i.e. stopping me doing anything physical I might want or need to do for perhaps one week, but no need for serious analgesia. 

As is typical, Day 2 is worse than Day 1, but it is interesting to have it pointed out that my worst twinges and consequent yelps so far today have all followed negative statements. 

Examples:

To Denise Sort-of Daughter on her getting up not feeling well, I said. “You look rough!” (twinge-yelp).        

To Andrew Eldest Son the day after he landed a good job for which he can use his university education: “You’ve grown four inches since yesterday and your head barely fits the door frame.” (twinge-yelp).

To Stella Consort complaining at the idea of fish for dinner: “Stop being so faddy.  You wouldn’t know there was fish in it if I didn’t tell you.” (twinge-yelp).

All these statements were meant kindly and in jest, so the pain wasn’t justified on any level of deserved punishment, but maybe I need to take heed.  All previous back-related theories and diagnoses have proven to be flawed (no twinge-yelp that time.  Statements of fact are presumably neither positive nor negative) so I’ll try a weekend of extreme positivity.

This morning I shall finish my feature on Stringer’s Brewery for submission to a suitable regional magazine AND HAVE IT ACCEPTED.

This afternoon I shall practice the mandolin ready for the jam session tonight with the other members of Snake and the Hoecakes AND WILL BE AWESOME. 

After mando. practice I’ll create the best chowder ever AND PEOPLE WILL TALK ABOUT IT FOR YEARS TO COME.

And so on . . .           

The Lumbar Curse

A minor tweak between L3 and L5 this morning was felt as an internal crunch and rumble, like that of unstable rock strata re-adjusting themselves along fault lines.

Oh, me and my analogies.

Anyway, the seismic shift has resulted in the expected loss of mobility.  If this was my first time ever I’d say it will wear off by this evening and I shall dance like nobody is watching tonight and tomorrow morning.  Since I am experienced in matters lumbar, I am cancelling all morris travelling commitments for a week at least.  These were significant this weekend: the fortnightly Galphay ceilidh tonight for a demonstration of appalachian clogging by Cricket on the Hearth; Knaresborough’s  Edwardian fair tomorrow morning for north-west morris dancing with Ripon City Morris Dancers.  Any possibility of sword dancing at Lightwater Valley with Pateley Longsword on Sunday has also evaporated and it is just as well that the same team’s planned dance out at Pateley Bridge tomorrow afternoon was cancelled for reasons beyond the team’s control.        

On a positive note it is a timely reminder that I am neglecting my mandolin, bought a year ago as insurance for when I hang up my taps, clogs and sensible black sword- dancing shoes.   

If I may be permitted a small expletive . . .  BUGGER!

Quotes and such

I have a liking for good quotations and tend to quote the most quotable if I remember them.  This is as good place as any to do it, so here is the first:

"We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.  And we should call every truth false which was not accompaned by at least one laugh."  

Friedrich Nietzsche.

Plenty of dancing and laughs last night at practice with the Appalachian clogger team Cricket on the Hearth, followed by beer at the Swan on the Stray.  FN's advice seems to work.       

Use of English

I’ll start with something unrelated to morris, travelling and beer but it is relevant to writing and the English language:

It struck me today that the short, pithy word “pop” is used a lot at the expense of more suitable words. 

Today, a shop assistant offered to “pop” my purchase into a gift box.  I declined (I mean, who wouldn’t at £2.50 extra) so she said she would “pop” it into a bag for me and would I please “pop” my credit card into the machine.  Three uses of “pop” inside thirty seconds. 

I remember when “pop” was the sound of a cork leaving a grown-up’s wine bottle, the noise of poor-quality fireworks, hydrogen gas being ignited in a test tube in Chemistry lessons and the word of choice to name sugary soft drinks guzzled from big screw-topped bottles or metal cans.  The “psst” of gas release from these vessels was most definitely not a “pop”, but lemonade, Tizer, Orangina and the rest were full of tiny bubbles which, when grown large enough, were known to go “pop”.

In a way it is similar to the encroachment of “like” (following “I’m”, “he’s”, “she’s”, “they’re”) into sentences where people used to say (after “I”, “he”, “she”, “they”) “said”, “shouted”, “argued”, “complained” (and even) “retorted”.

So why not “put” my purchase in a gift box, or “drop” it in a bag and let me “insert” my card?  There are many alternatives to these examples and this is my point.  Let’s not be lazy and use simple, newly generic words at the cost of losing the myriad others with or without favoured onomatopoeic features.

The abuse of “pop” is not new and my theory is it was started years ago by some television chefs who “pop” food into the oven/fridge/pan/processor.  Fortunately Jamie Oliver is helping to roll back this tide with his use of words such as “slam” (it is the oven), “bang” it in the fridge, “chuck” it in the pan, etc.  One syllable will do most of the time, so let’s do it. 

Starting Out

The original intent, way back in November '11, was to chronicle my travels through (morris) Festival England, including visits to the jewels in England's national treasure chest of microbreweries.     

It hasn't quite worked out that way.  Not at all, in fact.  I've visited a couple of breweries, but not yet posted my writings about them.  Festivals have been in short supply - the morris season is pretty much that of the spring and summer months - so are not featured either and so for the time being this blog is a general one.     

That will do for now, but everything here: subject, content and degree of reality, is subject to change without advance notice.   

Morris