Tag Archives: bad language

Long Tailed Tit - Rufford Abbey

Curses, Cars and Cameras

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I’ve been seriously thinking of having a camera fitted in the car.

A friend of mine, a few years ago, was lectured by the police after he was reported for making threats, with accompanying foul-mouthed abuse, to a woman driver who was badly parked in his street (it was part of an on-going neighbour dispute, which divided the street – an ex-policeman on one side and everyone else on the other). He was told to make himself available at the station with a view to being charged or cautioned, and advised that he may need legal advice. So he asked the police if they wanted to view his camera footage of the incident or if he should just give it to his solicitor ready for the court appearance, as he hadn’t sworn or made any threats, merely asked if she could park a little further along where the street was wider. She was the one who was aggressive.

The police muttered, and said they would be back in touch. When they rang back they said the complainant had decided to withdraw her complaint and no further action would be taken. Sadly, no action was taken against her for lying or wasting police time.

A couple of days ago I was reminded of this when a friend showed me a film of his wife being side-swiped by a car that overtook her and pulled across before completing the manoeuvre. He got out of his car complaining it was her fault and is maintaining that story to the insurance company. The film shows it is completely his fault. She was even decelerating at the time, so he should have had more room, not less, to pass. They spent £300 on the camera system and it seems to be worthwhile.

They had it fitted after a freak accident when two pallets fell off a passing trailer and smashed into the car, one wedging itself in the windscreen and missing his wife by inches. As they couldn’t trace the other vehicle it resulted in a long and time-consuming insurance wrangle.

This is beginning to look like one pieces of modern technology that might be useful. It will also improve my language, as the audio is distressingly clear. My friend’s wife demonstrated this with impeccable diction on the clip I saw. It’s undoubtedly an accurate description of the other driver, but not the sort of language you would normally use in front of a judge.

Header picture is a long-tailed tit at Rufford Abbey. I mentioned them a short while ago.

Marsh Tit at Rufford Abbey

Blue Tits being acrobatic

The End of the Beginning…

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I was encouraging my dining room computer to greater efforts last night, because I felt it was deliberately slowing down and refusing to obey commands just to wind me up. Shouting isn’t a long term answer, we really need a new computer, but it provides some short-term relief. In this, a computer resembles a teenager, though teenagers do eventually improve. On the other hand, you can switch a computer off and it never empties your fridge.

As I paused for breath I heard Julia say: “Simon, can you stop swearing please?”

This led to our usual discussion about me and my right to freedom of speech and how it was hardly even swearing compared to some of the things I could have said and how…

“Will you **** shut up, you foul-mouthed ****!”

I’ll leave you fill in the gaps. Unlike the tabloid press I have deliberately left the words unidentifiable. If you are going to blank out the bad language I’ve never seen the point of adding the initial letter and the exact number of asterisks. You may as well just print the word. As I know my readership contains churchgoers and grandmothers I tend to be honest in admitting that my language is not good, but refrain from exposing the true depravity of my language. Too many years spent working in the company of rough men. I really should stop it, but like vegetarianism and exercise, I seldom persist in my improvements for long. Te only two things I have really ever given up have been smoking and hard work. I have not done either for over 20 years.

It seems that Julia had just been adding sound to a video she had done for work and my advice to the computer meant she was going to have to do it all again. There really are times when I realise I’ve been a bad influence on her.

Chastened, I carried on typing, but when the computer seized up again I made my displeasure obvious with the use of hand signals.

It’s a good thing that we are doing more days at work in the coming week, as lockdown is beginning to change me. First I started eating too many biscuits, then I pretended to be a bear and now I’m making offensive hand gestures at a computer.

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Salon closed

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Salon closed

We’ve each been in twice a week for the last two weeks to do the eBay work and answer the phone. From this week we are going in four days a week and there will be two of us in the shop each day. I will be at work tomorrow, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

In two weeks time we will start letting customers in by appointment. I spoke to someone by telephone today – he has had a queue outside all day wanting new watch batteries. A lot of watches ran out of power over the last few months.

It’s going to be a long slow recovery from lockdown.

This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

Winston Churchill

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Picture of Desertion and Dejection

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Oh dear…

Book Review – “Pier Review”

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Pier Review: A Road Trip in Search of the Great British Seaside by [Bounds, Jon, Smith,Danny]

  • Paperback: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Summersdale (11 Feb. 2016)
  • ISBN-10: 1849538115
  • ISBN-13: 978-1849538114

Again, with this being a Kindle book I’ve taken the book cover art from the Amazon website, so thank you Amazon.

It’s a good book, though one with quite a few rough edges. You can tell this before you pick the book up because the less enthusiastic reviews, and even some of the more favourable ones, refer to grammar, blokiness, bad language and beer. I’m not that bothered about grammar, as you can probably tell from reading the blog, and, in truth, I didn’t notice any bad language. That probably results from me being desensitised by having two sons and a background of working on farms and markets. Like so many of my contemporaries that year at Finishing School eluded me.

It’s a tale of two immature mates and their driver, Midge. The narrative is based on them travelling round 55 piers in two weeks. It is, unsurprisingly, a badly organised and under-funded trip. It’s a familiar model and it felt like I’d read books by this pair before. After looking at their previous books I discovered that I hadn’t. I’ve merely read other gimmicky travel books by similarly immature, badly organised blokes.

This isn’t a criticism, just an observation. It was interesting to spend time learning about different lives and their relationships with the seaside, each other, their laundry and their past. There’s even a bit about piers in places, though not a lot.

One of the things they discuss early on is a quote from someone – J G Ballard, I think – that travel books never mention the parking. I take this badly, as my post on Cromer, our first attempted pier visit, does feature parking quite heavily. Now it’s going to look like I’m copying them.

Apart from that, I have a sneaking feeling that they planned the book better than it looks on the surface. They meet people, they stay in various places (a B&B, camp sites, floors of friends) and they space out the reminiscences. It could be an accident, but it could, under all the casual chaos, be quite a well-planned book.

It can be a bit tedious reading about people drinking (even more tedious than actually having to listen to them whilst they are drunk) and about their constant bad planning, but they are likeable idiots and the time passes quite easily as you read.

It cost me £3.99 on Kindle, which is more than I normally pay for a Kindle book, but I was happy with it. However, it’s a book about mates on a road trip: if you want to learn about piers buy a different book. I’ll review that later.