Dental Floss

Hi adoring fans,

I am aware that I have been less than diligent in keeping you fully informed of the thoughts of chairman Pete. Indeed the last blog was a year ago at least and that was only the second ever! But as you know quality never did come in great Lidl sized family blocks ... oh no.

Another example of the kind of thing that really exercises me took place today and I felt it might be cathartic for us all if I shared it with you.

I live in Bath. My dear mother (the ancient of days) lives in Bristol some 10 miles away. The road to her door for filial attentions of one sort or another is well trodden indeed and the mighty Honda (preferred chariot of your current entertainer) has clocked up a fair few of her 130,000 miles along this stretch of road.
Anyway, as is their habit the planners have been "improving" a perfectly functional interchange by adding in traffic lights, incomprehensible lane markings that could probably be read from Mars, but make no sense to the normal road user, and generally clogging up the works with cones and vans and dozens of industrious fellows in yellow jackets thinking about what to do next in happy groups.
As I say it all worked very well before it was "improved".
Today was like Ben Hur meets Logan's Run! Nobody had a clue about which lane to be in, the previously smoothly running traffic was gridlocked and all was chaos. Dante would have blanched!
I wonder how much it cost!? Perhaps someone got an award for design; nothing would surprise me.

Which brings me to the Dental Records plonker of the decade award!

Now as you can imagine, gentle reader, this one is hotly competed. All of Westminster is in the running, health and safety gestapo everywhere and a fair smattering of other inspired wreakers of chaos and misery. Disciplines such as architecture, inspectors of all kinds and especially planners were famously represented and made the whole competition white hot.

But we have a winner. a piece of strident idiocy so breathtakingly audacious as to fair tug at the heart strings. I give you, in gold medal position, the architect of the newly restored Bath Spa!!!

Now, I can understand if you feel in need of a little more information ..... so here goes.

About, oooooo, ten years ago, some fathead thought it might be good to spend all the taxpayers' money from Bath on a luxurious spa / health facility. A place of relaxation and calm, awash with the vapours of cedar and lavender. Where OCD folk from all over the globe could come to pay silly money for a rub down with a towel and a couple of handfuls of Harpic on a night light. Very new age, very eco - friendly greeny, lovey etc etc.

But this "sensible" plan (passed of course immediately by the far sighted and omnipotent planning department) was never going to be cheap. So its tighten your belts, forget any local services, litter collection, refuse on time or street cleaning for the foreseeable and rejoice in this jewel in the Aquae Sulis crown. The Spa!!!

No doubt there was a good deal of tooth sucking over the appointment of an architect and having established the one with no GSCEs and a white stick and labrador the good burghers of Bath pressed ahead.

They booked the three tenors (but it cost more than £30) he he.

Pavarotti sang, but the opening was delayed for months because of a technical mistake by the architect..... now this is the real master stroke that secured that coveted gold medal and pole position in Dental Records Plonker of the Decade Award.

You need to remember this Spa is basically three swimming pools in a tall building. The main one on the roof where you can swim and listen to the romantic sound of Seagulls crying and crapping in the water. This is vital knowledge before we proceed.

Our man, not content with designing an elitist piece of nonsense that few wanted in the first place managed to massively increase the cost (I mean by multiple factors) by ... now wait for this... remember the three swimming pools full of the celebrated Bath water (+ chlorine for the seagull poo)... forgetting to include the weight of the water in his design plan and so the whole thing had to be rebuilt as the stress calculations and weight bearing data was all up the swannee (or is that spa?)

So instead of just being a ludicrously expensive folly that few would really be able to afford to use and which would consume the huge rates we all pay in this fair city, in one masterful piece of empty headed stupidity our man created a truly cripplingly expensive folly.

The award is justly merited.

As we speak Bath city council is considering knocking down one or two Georgian terraces and a crescent or three to build a pink multi storey goat pen where goatherds from all over the world can come to tether their goats in luxuriously appointed pens. I only hope I'm joking!

Return of Lazarus

Dental records is back by popular demand! My adoring fan club (Ragged Roses commented with a tastefully concealed degree of irony) are baying for more.

My subject matter on this occasion will drift seamlessly from the state of Bristol's hospitals, through local authority planning departments, touching on recycling and possibly concluding with the PC Blairite nanny state twaddle so perfectly encapsulated in the Health and Safety Executive.
Firstly I have just returned from one of Bristol's major hospitals where I was assisting my ancient mother to meet with a specialist in the general AWOL behaviour of the senior kidney.
It was (and indeed is) the monsoon season in the south west. People are gathering animals into pairs and bulk ordering gopher wood and pitch! "Inclement" is not the word for it and if Morrissey is short of material for a new whinge A Bristol hospital in the rain would be a great place to start.
Anyway, it was persisting it down and, of course there is nowhere to park. Eventually I find a space and park leaving mother to wait as I locate the actual bit of the hospital she has to go to and also to find a wheelchair. The work of a moment I foolishly concluded as I skipped off.
40 mins later I had not found the urology dept! This is because there are NO SIGNS ANYWHERE mentioning "urology" and also because it is concealed in rather the way platform nine and threequarters is in Harry Potter. A whole new party game is born "seek the concealed consultant"! Only marginally more fun than root canal surgery but teams can play. Anyway eventually I located the lost consultant, by now I was truly soaking wet and naively asked for a wheelchair.
"Can't have one!" I was informed. I checked the date. No it was not April 1st. I asked again and once again was advised to "bring my own!" Now let us just hold it there for a moment to savour the incalculable stupidity of this piece of advice. If saying really inappropriate and unhelpful things were an olympic event .... well I was in the presence of Michael Phelps.
I persisted, coming as I do from a long line of terriers, and eventually, whilst being made to feel the luckiest little angel in heaven, I was allowed to borrow a wheel chair. THIS IS A HOSPITAL remember!
It turned out to be a cross between a cheap skateboard and a Tesco trolley and only worked (I am being serious here) if you pulled it behind you! No really!
So picture this .... I am dripping, soaking wet, dragging my 87 year old mother through stair rod rain along a pavement with no ramps (really I promise you this is true; no ramps) for about 10 minutes to the department with no name.
Medical care not a speciality, but character building a real strength eh?

Which brings me to planning departments.
This could be a very long section so I will cut to the chase. My line of work means I am responsible for a large victorian building. This building has been "improved" over the years and in the late 40's early 50's some worthy put in new windows.
These windows are: metal framed, inappropriate, single glazed, inefficient, ugly and broken... oh and constitute not only an aesthetic risk but also an environmental and security risk as well.
So I want to replace them with wooden framed, in keeping with Victoriana, windows. The new windows will reduce energy wastage, save money, be pleasing on the eye and secure. So of course the planning department won't let me do it!
How I love them!

So to recycling. Now our local authority have reduced the cost of collecting our bins from approx £15 per lift (these are big wheelie type bins the sort with a wheel at each corner) to £5.40. Good news, if a little perverse given the concerns re landfill etc. But this news came in the same week as the stunning little bombshell that we will now have to pay to have our recycling collected.
Perhaps at this stage I should point out that I run a school and so the irony is priceless! The only people in my area who have to pay to have their recycling collected is the children! "Education, education, education" .... oh ah!!! And now to the penultimate twist.... In the same week I have to pay between £300 and £1500 to have the school accredited with some Euro generated environmentally respectable kite mark. The Local Authority carry out this test!
Just one more irony to spice up this already "Yes Ministerish" pudding; you recall the cut in the cost of landfill collection... well not for us! Because the Health and Safety regulations won't let the bin men push the bins up the tiny incline necessary for collection! I am allowed to of course, but not our bin men.

More notes from the Dali painting I live in may follow if there is any enthusiasm for my particularly ascerbic brand of blogging.

Thirty Two!!!!!

Good Lord!
It appears that 32 folk have visited this blog. I am delighted/ amazed/ completely made up etc etc.
I wonder if it just those dear souls led astray by the teasing promise of pre-molars and canines and the heady smell of amalgum (shaken, but not stirred) the distant whine of the drill as seductive as a train in the distance stuffed with promise and possibility? Maybe things will tail off now that they realise it is just some sad old plonker who writes the odd bit of duff poetry!

We'll see!

Anyway today's posting comes frmo more recent times and is a double bill....

Firstly:

A sonnet from 1998. A bumper year as I was pretty unsettled at that time and this always stirs at the sediment that seems to give birth to this kind of thing.

Shards

How the splinters pierce as moments shatter!
We limp, squirm on the shrapnel remaining;
We can’t select what will, will not matter,
Discarding some past events, retaining
Others. Inventing heroic futures,
Full of nobility and grace, where no
Stubborn waxy flags of tell tale sutures,
Show the place you’d much prefer not to show.
When cowardice, folly was you and yours
To slice through your better self; scar and maim
Limit possibilities; even scores
Between you and the others in the game.
Casting back to when the glass reflected
Was it really as you recollected?

Pete
April 1998


Secondly:
One for my mum.
An amazing lady and a true hero. Not one fo these false pretty boy/girl cosmetic, soundbite kids all spin and hair gel. A real star, like the stars, not something you notice or even value perhaps.... until they go out. Then isn't the night a dark place?



The Gospel According to Kath.

My mum’s my hero.
An embarrassing fact perhaps,
But I’m proud of it.

She taught me that grey is true.
The world is not black or white …
Not really.
The zealots would have you think so,
But it isn’t.
It is full of nuance.
At every turn there are so many maybes
That perplex the student of certainty and
Only serve to delight the
Student of grey.

People are trying to right and left of you.
Oh sure, it’s not always that impressive,
But it was their best after all,
and that
Really is … impressive.
Of course it is.

In a world of judgement and certainty
Mum posted a question mark for me.
Perhaps in the shadows of everyone’s attempt
There is nobility.
The quiet heroism of the average.

And she loved me,
In just that way.
She saw something heroic in the pale
Apology of potential I offered up.
I never felt like a disappointment to her.
To me, to them, but not to her.
And so like Matthew with his tainted abacus
I found my own gospel.

But it isn’t mine.
It’s hers.

The gospel according to Kath.


Long live the students of grey.. for they alone stand between us and disaster. If you are certain of anything you don;t know what you're talking about.... by definition!

Pete
November 2007

Another one!

Here is a slightly lighter poem from a long time ago again.

I used to live in Wiltshire and the land really rolls. It swells and moves like an ocean.
This poem was an observation on that.

The Land is the Sea

The land is the sea.
A deep swell of hills and valleys
Quickens into trees that break
In green foam;
Burst in slow spray amongst the field’s
brown shallows.

Cities are the winking plankton.
Embers in the black hollows;
Hanging on time’s tide
Like leaves torn from the wind’s current.

The land is the sea
But the sky is itself always.

Vanity Publishing to myself (a concept for the third millenium)!

What a clutz!
I have just had a strange and slightly perverse frissante of excitement as I open my new blog to note that I have a comment.
Unfortunately it is my own comment sent to me by me by mistake!
I have a feeling there is something more than a little dodgy about responding to one's own blog!

My all too brief October break is about to come to an end and the siren call of the daily grind can be faintly discerned in the distance ... not the crude reality of the 5.30 alarm just yet... more a piper on the gates of dawn reminding me that I do not have private income.

I am also still somewhat at a loss to know why I am writing this. There seem to be two quite separate reasons for not continuing....
1. Nobody is reading this apart from me.
2. I am not sure that I have anything to say that will contribute to any greater good.

Ah ha, but wait..... perhaps there is a way forward (this needs to be read in the voice of Montgomery Burns).

I will publish my poetry this is a perfect idea because my poetry is
1. only read by me
2. not really likely to contribute anything of any great worth.

A perfect match: the pointless published anonymously on the unread! How very punk!

Here's one from ages ago ... a lifetime really ... nearly a decade.



Jetsam

On the shoreline we’re dark beacons casting
A debris of failure and potential;
Beached before the tempest’s sinews blasting;
Memory’s drift of inconsequential
Flotsam and treasure. A slick half recalled;
Clinging and polluting where it fingers,
Until each sensation recoils appalled
And only wistfulness bravely lingers.
Twisted and salt bleached, pale in the mist, hung
With leathered weed and the writhing shapes of
Forgotten belongings pointlessly flung.
Beyond the ocean’s reach at last, above
Serving the pointless rhythm, storm and calm,
To rest between the tideline and the farm.


Pete
April 1998.


There are hundreds (not all miserable sonnets it must be said, but I was really hacked off in 1998) .... sorry.

But then I don't need to apologise because nobody is reading this!

Here's an idea!

What about making up film titles that contain references to food or drink…
Here’s some to start with:
· Captain Corelli’s Mandarin
· Last Mango in Paris
· Rhubarbarella
· Easy Cider
· Little Miss Moonshine
· Good Morning Vietjam
· Lock Stock and Two Smoking Haddock
· Crocodile Dundee Cake
· EEEE Tea
· (Bath) Oliver
· Excalibrese
· The Lamb Shank Redemption
· The Good the Bad and the Ugly Fruit
· Double Cream Indemnity
· The Kipper and the Rose
· March of the Penguin Biscuits
· Steak Out
· Codzilla
· Hambo
· A Chocolate Orange

He he .. the alien has landed!

Well now this is fun!
This is a chance to make new chums of similar dispositions and similar outlooks.
Such folk are probably undergoing some kind of therapy, or at her majesty's pleasure, but then such is the reality of being nearly fifty and a keen student of human nature in a world stuffed full of paradox.
I do sometimes feel like an alien visiting a planet where I am familiar with the language and conventions but do not comprehend the shared values or deep presumptions that underwrite the way things are.
Unlike Louis Armstrong I do not see trees of green or red roses too.

• I see politicians so transparently crooked that one wonders if basic felony is a pre-requisite in standing for any political position. Isn't it paradoxical that we put people in positions of ultimate trust, running the country, who we would not trust to make us a sandwich?
• I see and hear musicians who's only definable quality appears to be a total lack of talent in any area that might be construed as music. This is referred to as popular music.
• I see sportsmen and women being valued above artists and being consulted on matters of philosophy or politics when clearly they are only good at bashing a spherical object, and then not well enough to win.
• I see "celebrities" valued highly as cultural leaders when they betray an almost complete lack of intelligence whenever they open the yawning, and generally broadly Thames flavoured gap beneath their silly noses.
• I see the elderly, who are by definition experienced and usually wise treated as fools and the young; who are by definition foolish treated as wise.
• I hear the beautiful language that is English whipped and fettered by almost everyone who is licenced by the media (meeejyaa) to occupy any kind of platform. Indeed it seems only the possession of an inability to articulate and a vocabulary largely comprised of the latest street gibberish will qualify as a commentator on our world. Most bizarrely, when someone like Brian Sewell who does have a proper grip on our fair tongue is showcased it is as some kind of anachronistic fool.. because he speaks properly!
• I see people fined more for speeding than for rape. Pursued more avidly for parking offences than for shoplifting and all this in cities where you cannot go out in the evening for fear of being vomited on or mugged.

Perhaps I have missed the point.

This has made me really miserable and it was supposed to be fun! I will try to make further observations less "going to the dogs"!

As I was going to write on my introductory page as my random question: "why are you reading this nonsense?

Pete