23/10/2009 by admin.

I returned to my car at the National Trust car park at Aira Force on the banks of Ullswater after a walk of about 8 miles. I felt in my pockets for my car keys and, to my horror, they weren’t there.

The options were:

1. call the AA
2. take a cab back to Staveley, 20 or so miles away for the spare key
3. Retrace my steps over the hills, eyes fixed on the ground.

We argued about my failing faculties until, quite by chance, I tried the car door. It was open. I looked at the ignition…they keys were in it.

It is hard to describe the cocktail of reactions:

• horror at what could have happened
• relief that I didn’t have to do any of the above
• respect for the honesty of my fellow parkers
• horror again at the stupidity I am capable of.

And that brings me to the events of the previous week when I took a Virgin train to London and enjoyed it so much, I tweeted about it from on board.

As soon as I got to my hotel, a minute from Euston, I realised that I had left my raincoat – a fairly new £200 Rohan – in the luggage rack.

I dashed back, persuaded the security guard to let me back on the platform but, sadly, the train had gone. Lost property at Euston is at Left Luggage (and they will charge you a fiver to give you back your property) but to no avail…though after pressing the case, I was invited to fill in a form.

I was directed to station reception where I was treated in such an off-handed way that I almost asked to see somebody’s boss.

I didn’t…but later that night in the House of Commons, I did bump into their boss, Virgin’s chief executive Tony Collins with his Director of Communications Arthur Leathley. I mentioned my missing mac, but not my doubts about the reaction I had got.

Arthur passed the case to customer service who rang me a few days later. There was one moment of light relief when the man asked about my missing computer (as in Apple Mac) but he rang again after a couple of hours to say he had had no luck.

Now, I know that I have no-one to blame but myself but the dishonesty of somebody walking around in my raincoat is quite upsetting.

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21/09/2009 by admin.

I got this text from 07765 165359 at 7.32pm:

Our records indicate you may be entitled to 3750 pounds for the Accident (sic) you had.To claim for free reply with YES to this msg. To opt out text STOP.

Remember the Accident Group which fired its entire staff by text? (In fact they didn’t…I saw the actual message and it simply warned against trying to draw wages. But newsdesks across the country wanted the more dramatic version so it became a fact)

These spammers know that out of every 100 random texts they send, at least 30 people will think they’ve had an accident. And even if you text STOP, you are simply confirming that your phone is active.

Everybody has to earn a living but this is pretty low…

Posted in technology, Business, Society | Print | 1 Comment »

17/09/2009 by admin.

Continuing the rural idyll, we went to two shows…very different in nature. To be honest the Westmorland Show at Crooklands was too busy and because we didn’t realise how early it started, we were caught in the most horrendous traffic jam. The sun shone and the crowds broke all records. It took us two hours to get there from Staveley, no more than half a dozen miles away – and ten minutes to get back.

When we enquired at the terrier ring about Lakelands, one winner looked at Roxy and said, with all the snobbery and contempt of a working dog owner: “Oh, the way she’s cut, you want the Kennel Club Show over there by the pylon.”

Over there by the pylon turned out to be in a separate field altogether and I wondered why the two events were kept so separate. It was a small affair and by the time we got there, it was winding up. There wasn’t a Lakeland Terrier in sight.

The highlight was a travelling sheep show introduced by a New Zealander living in Dereham, Norfolk…and awfully long way from the Lake District.

He introduced several different breeds, cracked a few jokes, and then sheered a sheep. Brilliant.

The International Sheep Dog Trial at Lowther Park, near Penrith was an altogether quieter affair. We watched one or two of the competitors, getting a free commentary from an old retired farmer from North Yorkshire who knew everyone and how good they were.

Watch a demonstration at the show by a chap from Cheshire at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElVt-RwNRNc

Posted in Sport, Outdoors, Travels, Society, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

23/08/2009 by admin.

I enjoyed tonight’s repeat of Top Gear on BBC2. It is a clever, witty, laddish masterpiece of television which deserves its world-wide success.

Then I took my dogs on a last walk on the banks of the canal at about 10pm.

From the mill car park on the other side of the canal came the sound of idiots doing handbrake turns and over revving engines. Whether they were their own or stolen cars, I don’t know but it was an ugly, vicious sound.

I have only ever done one power slide - in a rather expensive Jaguar during a launch in Spain. And when I was invited to do the “elk test” to try the stability of the then new Volvo XC90 in Switzerland, I found it almost impossible to swerve violently enough to unsettle the big 4X4.

And yet these mindless fools were obviously throwing their cars around like Jeremy Clarkason and the gang on Top Gear.

Wonder if they had been watching?

Posted in Society | Print | 1 Comment »

24/12/2008 by admin.

The saddest Christmas scene at Booth’s supermarket on Christmas Eve:

It is busy with well-heeled shoppers. Most members of staff are wearing santa hats but one man, obviously the store dickhead, has gone too far. He is wearing a dress with mellons stuffed down the front to represent bossoms.

“Would you like to feel my melons?” he asks a woman supervisor. “I just thought we’d have a bit of fun!”

Her face drops and he begins to realise that not everyone thinks he’s great.

He is marched off to the manager’s office as she asks: “Well, have you had permission?”

We next see him replacing the melons on the fruit counter (thankfully, we had already chosen ours) and stomping off, muttering and seeking sympathy from his colleagues. Whether they felt it or not, I don’t know but it was a true David Brent moment and seeing someone so humiliated was really quite sad. 

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15/10/2008 by admin.

I have just found this in my drafts file ands can’t remember whether I ever published it. Well now it is time to name and shame. The university involved is Salford - and they simply did not reply!!!! 

Interested to swee the new ageism laws in force while filling in a form for a university post.

The application studiously refreained from asking date of birth, simply asking you to declare that you are not within six months of 65.

But on the next page, it demands secondary school details…and DATES!!!

OK, its a fair cop. I’m 56!

Posted in Society | Print | 1 Comment »

03/10/2008 by admin.

I have spent more than three decades pestering the vicitims of crime. I have intruded on the families of murder victims, interviewed the survivors of horriffic attacks, and demanded gory details from even kidnap victims.

Now I am a victim myself - a couple of thousand pounds has disappeared from my business bank account. My own theory is that my card was somehow cloned when I took £20 from a cash machine in Bournemouth - where I was covering the Lib Dem party conference - and the details were used in America, by the look of it, on the last day of the month when most people would be paid their hard-earned wages.

I will probably - HOPEFULLY - get the money back but why does this clinical impersonal crime make me feel so violated.

Those feelings at first made me also feel guilty for doorstepping all those other victims. But wait.

Many of them seemed to want to talk about it…. and, I suppose by writing this blog, so do I.

I feel better already. 

Posted in Society | Print | 1 Comment »

31/08/2008 by admin.

I was unreasonably angry when I read the news that under 19s are to get free sports sessions. In some places, near me, over 60s also get free sports sessions…as well as free bus fares.

I am 56, I’m white and British. When I left university 34 years ago, it took me a couple of months to find a newspaper to give me job. Because I had to leave home, the government topped up my meagre wages on the Scarborough Evening News by the princeley sum of £4 a week for a year. That is my guilty secret.

Since then, I have done nothing but contribute to the state. When my daughter was born, I took two weeks’ holiday. When my mother died, I took two weeks holiday. When I had a brain haemorrhage  (and the casualty doctor sent me home with paracetamol!!!) I had three months 0ff work to recover from brain surgery. Since then, I haven’t had a day off sick.

Now I work for myself,s o if I go on holiday, I take my computer with me and carry on working. There is little sign of the people who promised me contracts before I left the Manchester Evening News. I am paid pocket money as a freelance to save publishers the expense of employing a full-time, fully qualified specialist transport journalist. A lot of organisations don’t want to pay me for several months after I have supplied them. I apply for jobs and, presumably because I am 56, employers do not feel I deserve the simple courtesy of a “I regret to inform you” reply.

I don’t need the money but many of my age do. 

I have been shafted by people who should know better ( and who know who they are).

Am I bitter? Yes. I am a baby boomer ….the lost generation and LAST generation to fend for itself!!!!

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28/07/2008 by admin.

Added a session in the gym this morning to my regular 40 lengths. Hard work…but not as hard as a day  gardening on Saturday.

After the pool, I popped into the sauna and to me horror was joined by an old woman who began to tell me of her strange affliction which causes her flesh to come away when she bangs it against anything hard.

“The doctor wanted to put a dry dressing on it but I just got my dog to lick it,” she revealed. I made my excuses and left.

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26/07/2008 by admin.

I am not going swimming again on a Saturday morning. Too full of tossers who keep bumping into everybody. No soonewr had we got rid of blind barry - a slow crawler whose goggles steam up so badly that he can’t see what he’s doing - than the famous flailing fanny turned up splashed everybody for two lengths before standing at the bottom end talking to the fattest women in the pool about her bad leg - and was still going on aboujt it eight lengths later.

But the worst was a new idiot who adopted a kind of backwards butterfly which involved waving his arms about like a musical conductor and hitting as many people as possible!

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