Bob Fleming's folkin' classics

You know that winter has arrived when everybody in the office starts coughing and spluttering. At times it sounds as though we're working on a flamin' TB ward rather than in an office. Coughs, snorts, splutters, throat-clearings; you name it, we've got it. And so for anybody reading this who has a bit of a tickle in their throat; a little irritating irritation, here's a Fast Show Classic from Bob Fleming and his pals. Enjoy.

Originally published on Blogger on 18th December 2008. The coughers and splutterers are still with me plus, now that we've moved into a bigger office, a couple of snorters as well. Lovely.

Whilst on the subject of the Fast Show, treat yourself to this drinking game sketch as well.

Look out, there's a zebra about

I see that my countrymen are exporting road safety.

There was a report on the BBC website yesterday that the UK Government is set to spend £1.5m on improving road safety in developing countries. It was reported that in some parts of the developing world, road accidents are "a bigger cause of death than malaria". Well I can tell you for a fact that in developed Britain, road accidents are a also bigger cause of death than malaria, and Britain - allegedly -has one of the lowest road-death rates in the world.

So what exactly is the money going to be spent on and where is it going to be spent? The BBC was unclear about precisely which countries would be benefiting, but whoever gets the dosh will be delighted to hear that it's to be spent on zebra crossings and road markings (probably double yellow lines if I know the UK).

You see that's what happens when you have a well-meaning developed country trying to impose its culture - or regulations - on a developing country. Bangalore has plenty of zebra crossings but I've never seen a single car stop at one to let a pedestrian cross. Similarly, a lot of the roads here have road markings but that won't stop every driver in the city ignoring those markings if his way ahead is blocked.

The Minister for Development, Mr Gareth Thomas, said: "I want to see this funding make a real impact on reducing casualty numbers where it's needed most. It will help with implementing basic safety measures."

No it won't, it's going to increase casualty numbers. Hospitals in those countries which are to receive British money can expect to see a surge in admissions to their accident and emergency wards. At the same time, drivers everywhere will be holding their hands up and saying to traffic police, "But officer, I just didn't see him. I mean, the last thing you expect to come across is some idiot painting black and white lines in the middle of a road."

Image courtesy of Staebrook News.

Broken sleep

OK, if you have a violin, now's the time to get it out.

I'm fortunate in that I don't require much sleep - five hours is usually enough - and I'm normally up at the crack of dawn. This morning, staring somewhat blearily at my laptop at 5am having abandoned all hope of sleep, I made a note of the previous night's interruptions. Here they are:

1. People talking outside the house.
This was the first interruption of the night and that was probably at around 3am. I don't think the people had stopped outside but they were talking loudly enough, as they passed, to wake me up.
2. Coughing and spluttering.
My poor wife is having terrible trouble with her sinuses at the moment and my disturbed sleep as a result, is far less irritating than the congestion must be for her. Nevertheless, it still counts as disturbance factor number two.
3. Dogs barking.
Anyone living in a city in India will appreciate this one. These packs of dogs were not in the immediate vicinity but still close enough.
4. Baby crying.
My eleven-month old son woke up about 4am (possibly as a result of 1, 2 and 3 above), came into our bed and then decided to thrash around, emitting the odd Tourette's-like shriek.
5. Water tank filling.
Our neighbour's tank fills up at five in the morning and makes a hell of a racket. At this point in time I abandoned all hope of sleep, came downstairs and played heavy rock (loud) until I left for the office. I was at my desk this morning by 7.30am.

Alright, you can put your violins away now. Please! They're keeping me awake.

Originally published on Blogger on 5th December 2008. We've moved house since I wrote this, which means that 3. and 5. above, no longer apply. Thank goodness. Yawners courtesy of Waka Austin.

Blame it on the medical shop

PeopleSoft, that is. I'll explain.

Some while back, on a family holiday in Sri Lanka, we stopped at a medical shop in Colombo. We'd flown in from England, realised we'd forgotten the malaria tablets, and were now trying to buy the local equivalent. We were in luck. The shop had plenty in stock, and before you could say, "Wickramasinghe", there they were on the counter. And then they were given to another sales assistant who wrote down the price and handed the bill to the cashier who, on being given the money, handed the bill to somebody else who stamped it. The bill then came back to me and I went to a new fifth link in the chain who, examining my bill to satisfy himself that it had been stamped (even though he'd seen his colleague stamp it) handed me my malaria tablets. The best of it was that I think those tablets cost about ten Sri Lankan rupees which was the equivalent of five Indian rupees.

And my contention is that whoever came up with the PeopleSoft software, had been to that very same medical shop in Colombo and had their eureka moment.

I have never had the misfortune to work with such a cumbersome, user-unfriendly piece of software as PeopleSoft. In fact wasn't it PeopleSoft that came up with the motto, "If you've got a nut, we've got the sledgehammer to crack it"?

For those blessed individuals who have never worked with PeopleSoft and have no idea what it is, go and Google. Just type, "useless piece of shite" and you'll go straight to the PeopleSoft home page. For those of you who can't be bothered to do that - and I don't blame you in the slightest - PeopleSoft is essentially an HR tool that companies introduce for their employees if they want those employees to waste not only their time, but their colleagues' time as well. It's the on-line HR equivalent of going into a Sri Lankan chemist's and ordering ten rupees worth of malaria tablets.

I'm going to cut a very long story short, but suffice to say that four of my team who put in their customary backbreaking day's hard slog under the usual trying conditions of artificial lighting, aggressive air-conditioning and banal chit-chat, suddenly found that because their attendance had not been marked on-line, their day's work had been recorded by PeopleSoft as leave, and that consequently their holiday entitlement had been docked by one day. And since this occurred, e-mails have been flying backwards and forwards to various Indian cities. People in Gurgaon are on the case. People in Mumbai are on the case. The software support team - presumably employed in the first place to help clean up the PeopleSoft mess - are all looking at their screens with furrowed brows. I half expect to see the story reported in tomorrow's Times of India.

And while we're all having great fun with PeopleSoft, the originators, having sold PeopleSoft to Oracle for about $10.3 billion in 2004, must be lying back smirking on some gorgeously sandy sun-kissed island. I hope they get bitten by mosquitoes and all the medical shops are closed.

Asian tiger mosquito courtesy of flushrush.

You want to put some oil on that

"You want to put some oil on that."

That at least, is what a car mechanic in the UK might say if you turned up at his workshop complaining that your car had developed a squeak.

Actually, it wasn’t so much of a squeak, more of a grating sound under the bonnet; a rasping noise when I drove the car away from the house on Friday morning. It didn’t last long, but on the journey to work I heard it again, intermittently. When I reached the office, my driver was there and I told him what I’d heard.

“Have a listen, Hegde” I said, “when you’re driving the car. See if you can hear it too.”

We have a good arrangement, my driver and I. I drive myself to the office where he picks up the car and then drives it home. He cleans the car, drops my daughter to school, picks her up a couple of hours later and then spends the rest of the time sitting outside the house. In the evening he drives back to my office and then I drive home, dropping him off at a bus stop on the way home. Sometimes I wonder who’s the driver and who’s the driven. Maybe I should just cut out the middle man.

Anyway, in the evening, driving back towards home, he reminded me about the squeak.

“I found what it was” he said. “There was a rat under the bonnet.”

At which point in time I know that my Indian readers will say, “Well of course it was a rat. Any dumb fool could have told you that.” It had been raining and I suppose the rat had just hopped up on the wheel and then shuffled up under the bonnet. The Scorpio is quite a big car and there’s plenty of room under the hood. You could probably squeeze in half a dozen rats there. This is India after all.

“Did you get it?” I asked.

“The rat’s gone.” He replied.

But it hadn’t gone. Driving back, we both heard the same noise again.

“Get it for me please, Hegde, will you?” I asked. I was heading off to the pub and Hegde was going to wait for me. “I don’t care what you do, but just get rid of it for me please will you?”

Some hours later, driving back home, I asked him again whether he had got the rat.

“Rat’s gone” he repeated.

But it was still there. I heard it again on Saturday and so on Sunday morning, armed with a long stick, I went out to the car and cautiously raised the bonnet. Not a sausage. Not even a rat. My neighbour came out and looked at me.

“Rat in your bonnet?” He asked. “I have the same thing. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”

But I don’t want to get used to it and more to the point I don’t want Ratty chewing up cables and wires. Actually, I’ve not heard anything more since Saturday, but I wouldn’t bank on the creature not reappearing (there you go, some nice double negatives dropped into a sentence).

Still, at least now I know why most Indian motorists don’t indicate. It’s because they’ve got rats under their bonnets which have chewed up their indicator cables. And there was me thinking it was because most drivers in this country don't have the first idea about road courtesy or basic driving skills.

Originally published on Blogger on 3rd December 2008. Rat picture from the Brookswville Show.

Children's Nehru Day

When we were little, my brother and sister and I would moan to my parents, "But why isn't there a Children's Day?" Mother's Day we were familiar with (bunches of daffodils or Cadbury's Black Magic for mum), and Father's Day too (socks and Old Spice for dad). But what about Children's Day?

And my mother always had the same answer. "Every day is Children's Day."

My, how good that used to make us feel! It didn't seem like it at the time but you know, looking back now, she was right. When I was little I don't think I had any real responsibilities at all; not even wiping up dishes or pulling the sheets up over my bed. Even when we progressed from childhood into adolescence, the tasks weren't onerous. Washing and wiping up was a duty which my brother somehow seemed to consistently avoid by rushing to the loo as soon as dinner had finished, and emerging some while later just as the last utensil was being packed into a drawer. (I'm sure his memory of that time is that I did exactly the same, but this is my blog and not his, so I'll be liberal with my recollections.) Cleaning the windows was another of my tasks, whilst my sister had to tidy my father's study once in a while. We made our beds and polished our shoes but that was pretty much it. Every day was children's day.

But now there really is a Children's Day and today is it. Niharika's school has some function or the other and even Google has included brats on it's home page.

I suppose - although the day may be intended to raise awareness of those poor children who really don't get the opportunity to have a childhood and either live in poverty or are supporting families, or suffering abuse - that it has already become just another commercial excuse and that even now, as I write, children all over the world are beaming back at their doting parents and saying, "take me shopping". These days there always seems to be some Awareness Day or the other. We've just had Remembrance Sunday and I think 1st December is World AIDS Day isn't it? Then there are the more bizarre ones like World Smile Day (which I recall from when I was younger, and my sister and I smiling at a dour man who we used to pass every day on our way to school) and Walk A Dog to School Day (both these days falling in October, for those who are curious).

In fact, I would certainly endorse a Grumpy Old English Git Day if only there was still a date in the diary available. Drop Foil in your Beer Day was on Wednesday and tomorrow, if I felt so inclined, I could put a pair of Y-fronts on my head, walk down the road and declare it National Wear Your Pants on Your Head Day (even though it does clash with Wear Your Clothes Inside-Out Day). In any event, I don't know why I'm making such a fuss. As my mother will tell me, next time I speak to her, "Every day is Grumpy Old English Git Day".

Originally published on Blogger on 14th November 2008.

Today, almost one year on, my daughter's school is celebrating Children's Day one day early and I see that whilst Children's day is universally celebrated on the 20th November, in India - no surprises here - it's been "preponed" or "brought forward" to the 14th November in order to coincide with Nehru's birthday. I also see that Children's Day was first celebrated in 1954 - so my parents obviously kept quiet about that one. Nehru photograph from schema root.

Spot the difference

The motoring supplement of The Sunday Times in Great Britain, used to run a weekly feature where readers were presented with a photograph of a section of British road. They were asked to study the photograph carefully and then suggest why they should be particularly careful if they happened to find themselves driving along it.

Go on then. Click on the image above and see if you can spot any tell-tale potential hazards.

Are you done? OK, here's what I can see.

1. There's a steep climb coming up and not only that, it involves sharp bends. Beware of vehicles that are coming down the hill too fast and which might career into your path. This will be a particular problem in the autumn and winter when the fallen leaves make the road slippery or when snow and ice turn the road into a ski-slope.

2. There's a house on the right hand side which has a partially concealed driveway. A vehicle emerging from that driveway could cause an on-coming vehicle to swerve into your path.

3. You might be so busy reading the road signs, and hoping that a vehicle doesn't dart out of the partially concealed driveway on your right that you completely miss 96 year old Mrs Jenkins who lives in the house on the left. Yes, that's her driveway just going out of shot and she is about to step in front of your car.

Actually all of those answers are way to easy, and the Smart Alec who used to write that column for the Sunday Times would have pointed out that what we should have been looking out for is the adverse camber, or the Little Tiddington Rambler's Association just out of shot around the corner (note the sweet wrappers on the grass) or the evidence of subsidence and the likelihood of there being a great gaping abyss also, just out of shot.

In any event, for some reason I was thinking of that column this morning as I drove through a fairly typical Indian street at 7.15am, and I was wondering what the Sunday Times journalist would have written about my street.


Let me help him out.

1. Bikes overtaking on the inside and outside and some also heading straight at you. Ditto cycles.

2. Buses, cars, auto-rickshaws, bikes and cycles which pull out without any indication and which also pull in without any indication.

3. Pedestrians walking in the road or standing in the road who are completely oblivious to the traffic that is shooting by.

4. Dogs and cows, oxen, handcart-vendors ditto.

5. Potholes, industrial debris. Adverse camber? You should be so lucky.

6. The Little Tiddington Rambler's Association on an exchange visit to India and now hopelessly and helplessly lost (just out of shot).

UK photo courtesy of Transport Cafe. Indian photo courtesy of Bicycling around the world.