» Neighbours

I'm not going to tell you where I live...
...cause I know some of you will want to form a queue.

But my next-door neighbour insists on topless sunbathing (and mostly with only a bit of dental floss to cover up her lower lady bits) whenever there is the slightest threat of sunshine. The problems are this, however:

1/ This is the front garden I am talking about.
2/ Part of said garden is directly in front of my living-room bay window.
3/ There is only a low wall between the front garden and the street.
4/ There is a bus stop at the end of my front path.
5/ We have builders in at the present.

So consequently there are mixed blessings to this:

1/ Passers by are funny to watch. Newbies do a visible double-take, regulars slow down to tie shoelaces, dog-walkers exercise their animals several times a day and always pick up doggydo's, and mothers taking their toddlers to the day-care centre at the end of the road strangely always cross the road to the narrower pavement.

2/ Whenever I have visitors, I have to steer them away from the window. They are here to visit ME not ogle the neighbour, dammit. It's embarrassing having clients round though; they need to walk past her to get to my (home) office and the conversations get increasingly strained until I break the ice by cheerfully asking if she is still out there.

3/ Cars slow down miraculously on nice days, never on bad days. Occasionally they stall, or the driver pulls over to answer his mobile phone / look for something in the back seat / look for something on the passenger seat. Sometimes they even manage to break down, with the driver getting out to open the bonnet, stand around a while shaking his head and generally looking pensive, before closing the bonnet and driving off.

4/ The bus always stops at our stop. Whether it needs to or not. And sometimes - I kid you not - the driver takes a sandwich / fag break if there is nobody on the bus. The council are threatening to divert our bus service for lack of use, but the drivers always complain and the route stays. Result!

5/ We can't get rid of the builders because they just keep coming back to do the final bits of "snagging" (yeah, right. That's a new word for it.)
(Thu 1st Oct 2009, 17:18, More)

» IT Support

Many many moons ago....
.... I was a teacher, and worked for a progressive County Council who in their foresight had bought and delivered spanking new BBC Model B Micros, monitor screens and tape-players for all the schools in the county. As this was back in 1982, I said whatever the equivalent of YAY was, as this was a new-fangled invention I wanted to know more about!

However. It soon became apparent that nobody knew how to use the things, what to use them for, and being busy teachers pre-national curriculum, nobody had the time to learn. And the older ones had no inclination either - nor video recorders to tape the overnight lessons from BBC2.

So the progressive council advertised amongst its teaching staff for those who would be prepared to do the BBC/OU course which, of course, the BBC Micro was introduced for. The lucky acceptees were to be subsidised and given video recorders (still a relatively expensive item at that time). I applied and was accepted, YAY again.

Months later on completing the course and learning to amend the few existing educational programs to suit particular classroom environments and writing a few new ones, I and my colleagues proceeded to go round all the schools in the county to set the systems up and teach the teachers what to do. With some considerable degree of success as hardly any of the schools had bothered to take the things out of the box before we got there.

However, one school surprised us all. A rural location, with a lovely little-old-lady headmistress, on the phone she happily told us the computer was the most useful thing the council had ever sent her, and yes we could come to see her use it.

Believe me, the lot of us descended on that tiny school. By this time we were fed up of spending our time dusting off the boxes, getting injured by the packing staples and finding somewhere to dispose of all the polystyrene packaging instead of showing the kids that if they kicked the bricks in a certain order to spell words, their name would come up on the screen in flashing & alternating bright colours. (yes, times were very different then, that was a real incentive, honestly).

We arrived, eager to see this enthusiastic little old dear's set-up. She greeted us at the school entrance and told us that the building was so small and had so few pupils, all the children were taught in one big open plan area in the hall, under different groups according to age.

Then we saw the BBC Micro, in use.

In its box.

Propping her office door open.

She said it was the only thing she had ever found that was heavy or strong enough to stop the hinge on the fire-door to her office from closing shut, and she wanted the door open because with all the empty classrooms and all the pupils in the hall, she felt isolated from them. And this, honestly, was said to us without a hint of irony or sarcasm.
(Fri 25th Sep 2009, 18:16, More)