Names are important to me.
For example, the name Jake. I have never met any decent guy called Jake. One called Jacob. Zero called Jake. They are all dicks.
And spellings of names are important too.
Let's take Nicole as an example.
Nicole is Nicki's full-name. But her name is Nicki.
I become distressed when people write the name 'Nicki' with any other spelling than 'Nicki'.
It's just wrong.
Nicky is unacceptable because Nicky is a boy's name, and Nicki is not a boy.
Nikki is unacceptable because Nikki is a porn-star's name, and Nicki is not a porn-star.
Only Nicki is correct.
Tuesday, 24 January 2012
Two things that I learned working at Marks and Spencer
While in my first year of sixth form college, I applied for temporary Christmas work at Marks & Spencer. I got the job, working on Menswear.
I lied in the title. There are actually three important things I learned at Marks & Spencer, none of which were taught to me by any member of staff (actually that's a lie, one was, but they didn't intend to).
The first important thing I learned was how to fold suits and suit trousers correctly. I was 16 when I started working there so you could perhaps argue that I should have known by then, but what can I say? I didn't.
Compounding this problem was the fact that when I started, nobody taught me. Given that suits were a pretty big factor in clothes sales at M&S I think it's slightly surprising that no-one bothered to check that their staff could do things correctly, but never mind.
An elderly foreign couple, perhaps Cypriot, came in and bought a pair of suit trousers, navy blue and from our finest range, if I recall correctly.
I placed the trousers quite clumsily in a bag, and the man, rather annoyed, asked me to take them out and fold them correctly (if there is one thing that you become immediately accustomed to working in M&S, it is older people speaking to you as if you're a piece of shit).
Had I been older and more confident, I feel like I would have reacted in a rather volatile manner to being spoken to in this way (whilst I admit it was my fault).
Instead, I sheepishly admitted that I didn't know how to fold suit trousers correctly. Once again the man was angry.
"How can a young man not know how to fold trousers?"
The lady was much more kindly, as is generally the case with the genders.
"Oh, look at him, he's just a young man - a baby"
She smiled at me, and proceeded to show me how to fold trousers so they don't crease up. I apologised profusely and explained I had never been shown how as I didn't own any trousers like that.
The next two things I learned are the original two I refer to in the title, and they are less physical and more philosophical.
Important thing I learned no. 2:
There was a woman who started at M&S about two weeks before me. Her name was Paula. Middle-aged and extremely petite - short and slim, with exponentially curly hair.
Paula taught me something, and I'm sorry to admit because she was very kind, caring and thoughtful, and she was always very nice to me, and we got on well. But she taught me that I was more intelligent than an adult. Because for all her good qualities she was not clever.
It was the first time that I had been able to fully appreciate that I was significantly smarter than someone older than me. Up until that point my only experience, really, of adults in the real world came from my parents, my relatives and my teachers, all of whom are generally smart and world-wise.
So, to me, it seemed like an obvious natural order. I knew I was relatively smart for a young adult - I always got good grades and I was a geek. But it just seemed to follow that adults would have had more time to learn things than me, and so would be naturally more intelligent.
But I knew things that Paula didn't. A lot of thinks. Fairly basic things. After that, the flood gates opened. Upon realising I was smarter than Paula, I noticed that not everyone was as intelligent as I was giving them credit.
The third thing that working at M&S taught me is a bit more obscure. It's difficult to say exactly what I learned. But I'll explain and we'll see where we find ourselves (part of the problem here is that I conceived the idea for this blog a while back, and I now can't remember what I originally believed I had learned from the following experience).
Some back story is required.
My first real best friend was called Daniel H. I've mentioned him before in this blog because the primary influence he has had on my life (more important than being my first best friend, although I thank him for that) was that he introduced me to basketball.
(Note also that once, when asked about origin of our friendship not long after its inception, Daniel told the asker that we had had a fight: if I had won we would not be friends, and if he had won we would agree to be friends, Daniel triumphantly explained that he had won the fight and so we had become friends.
Now, I don't remember this happening and it sounds like a lie, I also recall however that at the time we were I asked I couldn't remember how we had met or why we were friends.
About a week later I decided to test out the theory that he had beaten me in a fight. I suggested a play fight. With compete modesty I can tell you that I completely over-powered him very easily. So I must say that the story seems extremely unlikely.
I also believe that winning this fight is the sole reason for my undue confidence that should I become involved in a violent physical altercation that I would be fine. Fights are something that, to my equidistant happiness and disappointment, have been in extreme scarcity in my life.)
Some years after my friendship with Daniel had disappeared altogether (we went to different schools in years pre-mobile phone or MySpace) I saw in Marks & Spencer a man named Keith R.
Keith had been the husband of Daniel's mum at the main time I knew Daniel, so he was Daniel's step-dad. They had divorced a little time before I lost contact with Daniel (I believe it was their divorce that in sighted Daniel and his mum and sister to move away from Southwick).
So I saw him, but couldn't quite place who he was. To my delight he handed over his credit card and I took a peak at the name. It was Keith's name.
I realised then why I hadn't recognised him completely. See, my memory of him was from about eight years earlier, and to put it sensibly, eight years before I was 16, I was 8, and being 8 makes a big difference to your memory.
My 8-year-old memory of Keith was of a large, heroic man. I recall being told a story by my mum of being he once dived into the road at the last second when Daniel's younger sister (and not even Keith's blood-related daughter) had wandered into the road with a car approaching.
But now as he stood in front of me, I saw a very different man. I was only 16, and hadn't yet filled out my frame entirely, but already I was more broad-shouldered than he. While not slight, I cannot be described as someone with a particularly large frame anyway.
So in that sense he seemed almost scrawny. Thin, almost emaciated, and with rather sharp angular features that I wouldn't have credited.
I asked him if he was Keith R, and he said yes, and that he thought that he recognised me but couldn't recall who I was.
I learned that my memory was hugely subject to my own manipulation due to the stories I had been told.
To this day I don't believe I have seen Daniel or any other members of his family.
I lied in the title. There are actually three important things I learned at Marks & Spencer, none of which were taught to me by any member of staff (actually that's a lie, one was, but they didn't intend to).
The first important thing I learned was how to fold suits and suit trousers correctly. I was 16 when I started working there so you could perhaps argue that I should have known by then, but what can I say? I didn't.
Compounding this problem was the fact that when I started, nobody taught me. Given that suits were a pretty big factor in clothes sales at M&S I think it's slightly surprising that no-one bothered to check that their staff could do things correctly, but never mind.
An elderly foreign couple, perhaps Cypriot, came in and bought a pair of suit trousers, navy blue and from our finest range, if I recall correctly.
I placed the trousers quite clumsily in a bag, and the man, rather annoyed, asked me to take them out and fold them correctly (if there is one thing that you become immediately accustomed to working in M&S, it is older people speaking to you as if you're a piece of shit).
Had I been older and more confident, I feel like I would have reacted in a rather volatile manner to being spoken to in this way (whilst I admit it was my fault).
Instead, I sheepishly admitted that I didn't know how to fold suit trousers correctly. Once again the man was angry.
"How can a young man not know how to fold trousers?"
The lady was much more kindly, as is generally the case with the genders.
"Oh, look at him, he's just a young man - a baby"
She smiled at me, and proceeded to show me how to fold trousers so they don't crease up. I apologised profusely and explained I had never been shown how as I didn't own any trousers like that.
The next two things I learned are the original two I refer to in the title, and they are less physical and more philosophical.
Important thing I learned no. 2:
There was a woman who started at M&S about two weeks before me. Her name was Paula. Middle-aged and extremely petite - short and slim, with exponentially curly hair.
Paula taught me something, and I'm sorry to admit because she was very kind, caring and thoughtful, and she was always very nice to me, and we got on well. But she taught me that I was more intelligent than an adult. Because for all her good qualities she was not clever.
It was the first time that I had been able to fully appreciate that I was significantly smarter than someone older than me. Up until that point my only experience, really, of adults in the real world came from my parents, my relatives and my teachers, all of whom are generally smart and world-wise.
So, to me, it seemed like an obvious natural order. I knew I was relatively smart for a young adult - I always got good grades and I was a geek. But it just seemed to follow that adults would have had more time to learn things than me, and so would be naturally more intelligent.
But I knew things that Paula didn't. A lot of thinks. Fairly basic things. After that, the flood gates opened. Upon realising I was smarter than Paula, I noticed that not everyone was as intelligent as I was giving them credit.
The third thing that working at M&S taught me is a bit more obscure. It's difficult to say exactly what I learned. But I'll explain and we'll see where we find ourselves (part of the problem here is that I conceived the idea for this blog a while back, and I now can't remember what I originally believed I had learned from the following experience).
Some back story is required.
My first real best friend was called Daniel H. I've mentioned him before in this blog because the primary influence he has had on my life (more important than being my first best friend, although I thank him for that) was that he introduced me to basketball.
(Note also that once, when asked about origin of our friendship not long after its inception, Daniel told the asker that we had had a fight: if I had won we would not be friends, and if he had won we would agree to be friends, Daniel triumphantly explained that he had won the fight and so we had become friends.
Now, I don't remember this happening and it sounds like a lie, I also recall however that at the time we were I asked I couldn't remember how we had met or why we were friends.
About a week later I decided to test out the theory that he had beaten me in a fight. I suggested a play fight. With compete modesty I can tell you that I completely over-powered him very easily. So I must say that the story seems extremely unlikely.
I also believe that winning this fight is the sole reason for my undue confidence that should I become involved in a violent physical altercation that I would be fine. Fights are something that, to my equidistant happiness and disappointment, have been in extreme scarcity in my life.)
Some years after my friendship with Daniel had disappeared altogether (we went to different schools in years pre-mobile phone or MySpace) I saw in Marks & Spencer a man named Keith R.
Keith had been the husband of Daniel's mum at the main time I knew Daniel, so he was Daniel's step-dad. They had divorced a little time before I lost contact with Daniel (I believe it was their divorce that in sighted Daniel and his mum and sister to move away from Southwick).
So I saw him, but couldn't quite place who he was. To my delight he handed over his credit card and I took a peak at the name. It was Keith's name.
I realised then why I hadn't recognised him completely. See, my memory of him was from about eight years earlier, and to put it sensibly, eight years before I was 16, I was 8, and being 8 makes a big difference to your memory.
My 8-year-old memory of Keith was of a large, heroic man. I recall being told a story by my mum of being he once dived into the road at the last second when Daniel's younger sister (and not even Keith's blood-related daughter) had wandered into the road with a car approaching.
But now as he stood in front of me, I saw a very different man. I was only 16, and hadn't yet filled out my frame entirely, but already I was more broad-shouldered than he. While not slight, I cannot be described as someone with a particularly large frame anyway.
So in that sense he seemed almost scrawny. Thin, almost emaciated, and with rather sharp angular features that I wouldn't have credited.
I asked him if he was Keith R, and he said yes, and that he thought that he recognised me but couldn't recall who I was.
I learned that my memory was hugely subject to my own manipulation due to the stories I had been told.
To this day I don't believe I have seen Daniel or any other members of his family.
Monday, 16 January 2012
A sad fact.
There is a fact.
It is a fact that my family and I have had to deal with for a while now. It came to a head this weekend.
It's a sad fact, but it's true nevertheless. My mum discriminates on the basis of colour.
She'll admit it to your face, she doesn't care who knows. White is the only colour for her, and I think that's the way it's always been. I don't think we should judge her badly on it, it's just the way she was brought up.
She feels uncomfortable whenever non-whites are in the house, and I've seen her get genuinely angry because of it.
This weekend, she called someone up to come and physically remove some non-whites from our home.
Yes, I'm afraid it is true. My mum only likes white toilet roll.
There, I've said it. It's out in the open.
She made an order with Asda's online shopping department, and ordered 12 toilet rolls. White.
Unfortunately it seems the none were available, so they substituted them for peach-coloured ones.
Despite the fact that we had run out of toilet rolls, my mum sent them back. I couldn't believe it when I heard. I mean, is bathroom sartorial elegance so important.
I was just dumbfounded. I think I had been quite looking forward to the peach-coloured toilet roll. A welcome change. But no, she sent them back.
It is a fact that my family and I have had to deal with for a while now. It came to a head this weekend.
It's a sad fact, but it's true nevertheless. My mum discriminates on the basis of colour.
She'll admit it to your face, she doesn't care who knows. White is the only colour for her, and I think that's the way it's always been. I don't think we should judge her badly on it, it's just the way she was brought up.
She feels uncomfortable whenever non-whites are in the house, and I've seen her get genuinely angry because of it.
This weekend, she called someone up to come and physically remove some non-whites from our home.
Yes, I'm afraid it is true. My mum only likes white toilet roll.
There, I've said it. It's out in the open.
She made an order with Asda's online shopping department, and ordered 12 toilet rolls. White.
Unfortunately it seems the none were available, so they substituted them for peach-coloured ones.
Despite the fact that we had run out of toilet rolls, my mum sent them back. I couldn't believe it when I heard. I mean, is bathroom sartorial elegance so important.
I was just dumbfounded. I think I had been quite looking forward to the peach-coloured toilet roll. A welcome change. But no, she sent them back.
Wednesday, 11 January 2012
What am I going to do with my 2012?
It turned 2012 recently. You might be aware. Saying that, there do appear to be some people who have forgone the traditional calendar and now count their existence only in the number of X-Factor's they have lived through. If that is the case, then welcome to 9, the year of Mix.
I prefer the standard calendar, of course, so I will continue to use it.
I'm rather unsure of what to do with 2012 (or, indeed, the rest of my life but let's not wish my life away).
Fundamentally, I break down my life fairly simply. I have three main agendas:
1) Where I work.
2) Where I go on holiday.
3) Where I live.
(Note here I accidentally wrote 'love' instead of 'live' when I first came to write point 3, I wonder if it was subconscious. I have chosen to leave the idea of romance out of my potential plans. I don't have any plans in that department. Well, no, that's a lie. I've got loads, but they wont materialise because I live in my own fantasy world. So instead, I'll just push it to the side, it'll happen when it happens.)
So here we go:
1) Work is sort of complex. To a certain extent, I like my current full-time job. There is a nice office environment and I like the people I work with. Pressure is very limited and I don't tend to feel any stress. I'm also relatively mindful of the fact that there isn't much better out there.
Jobs are few in the creative industries, so for the moment I count myself a bit lucky that I simply have a job that I don't hate.
There could be some changes on the horizon though. I write part-time (but ever increasingly) as a sort of jack-of-all-trades copywriter. I'd love to be able to do it full time, but getting work is a slow process.
The more I get, the more I can think about leaving my current job, or at least reducing the hours.
2) Now, I love holidays. There are quite literally too many places to list that I'd like to visit, so here are just a sample:
I prefer the standard calendar, of course, so I will continue to use it.
I'm rather unsure of what to do with 2012 (or, indeed, the rest of my life but let's not wish my life away).
Fundamentally, I break down my life fairly simply. I have three main agendas:
1) Where I work.
2) Where I go on holiday.
3) Where I live.
(Note here I accidentally wrote 'love' instead of 'live' when I first came to write point 3, I wonder if it was subconscious. I have chosen to leave the idea of romance out of my potential plans. I don't have any plans in that department. Well, no, that's a lie. I've got loads, but they wont materialise because I live in my own fantasy world. So instead, I'll just push it to the side, it'll happen when it happens.)
So here we go:
1) Work is sort of complex. To a certain extent, I like my current full-time job. There is a nice office environment and I like the people I work with. Pressure is very limited and I don't tend to feel any stress. I'm also relatively mindful of the fact that there isn't much better out there.
Jobs are few in the creative industries, so for the moment I count myself a bit lucky that I simply have a job that I don't hate.
There could be some changes on the horizon though. I write part-time (but ever increasingly) as a sort of jack-of-all-trades copywriter. I'd love to be able to do it full time, but getting work is a slow process.
The more I get, the more I can think about leaving my current job, or at least reducing the hours.
2) Now, I love holidays. There are quite literally too many places to list that I'd like to visit, so here are just a sample:
- Road trip down the West Coast of America - starting in Seattle, WA and moving down the cost through Portland, San Francisco and Los Angeles, then coming a little in land from some Las Vegas casino-and-bright-lights action.
- Cities in central Europe - I have a desire to see a load of the cities in central Europe, just to go and sample the culture. Ideally I'd see them over the course of a few trips. I could even do like weekend breaks. Sample a museum, or art gallery, sample a couple of decent restaurants, sample a couple of decent bars. Sounds pretty good to me. Cities include Prague, Vienna, anywhere in Germany, Amsterdam, Budapest.
- Livingstone, Zambia and Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. I have a fascination with Africa, and certainly so with Zimbabwe. This is a particularly touristy part of Africa but its also a wonderfully naturally beautiful area.
- I'm quite intrigued by Windhoek, Namibia as well. For the urban aspect of Africa.
- India - at first it wasn't a place I thought I had any interest in, but the more I think about it the more it seems like a great idea. I love Indian food (and not just greasy Anglo-Indian stuff [although I do love that] that is made delicious mainly by cream and butter) and I'd love to experience real India.
- I want beach holidays - literally anywhere with a beach and sunshine so I can relax and read or go swimming or eat seafood for a week or so. Portugal would be great, or Spain or Turkey, and somewhere more exotic like Dominican Republic or Morocco would work even better for me.
- Another road trip, this time around New England in the north-east of America. Get to see Boston, the Basketball Hall of Fame, Six Flags New England, the fall colours and all the clam chowder I can get my hands on.
- I'd really love to visit Tahiti. But it would probably be rendered pointless with a partner.
- Myanmar, Malaysia, Laos and Thailand intrigue me. Probably Thailand the most, even though it is obviously the most touristy. But almost everywhere around that way intrigues me, mainly for the food and the culture. I think I'd be a bit worried by the terminal lack of the English language, though.
- Certainly some backpacking around New Zealand would be great. And to a lesser extent I'd like to revisit Australia, mainly for the beaches. If I found myself in that part of the world I'd love to take the time to visit Fiji.
- There's a couple more US road trips too. The deep South and the the mid-West (Chicago and what not), plus Texas and the surrounding area. Then I'd have to complete it by going to the other states. Hawaii would be nice of course, to get away from the continent. Canada too.
- I want to go to Scandinavia, and go up and see the Northern Lights.
- I've got some interest in first world Asia too, South Korea seems to appeal more to me than Japan or China but I would like to visit all three. North Korea somehow also fascinates me too, morbidly. I'd like to go just to say I'd been.
A sad event.
Imagine the scene.
You walk in from the cold night air. You've been playing high-tempo basketball for the last hour. Your muscles ache. Your hands are hurting from a rather suspicious, identical double thumb injury.
You ascend the stairs and begin to run a bath. Closing the door you allow the steam from the water to envelope the room, making for a relaxing semi-sauna. You step into the bath - it's just the pleasant side of too hot.
You lie back and your skin tingles as the water rushes over you. And suddenly there is no pain, and no aching. You close your eyes and enjoy the moment, completely calm and placid.
Then through the calmness you begin to feel something on your arm. Some water, you presume, from the bath. You open your eyes to investigate.
And on your arm, there is a rather huge and angry-looking spider. We are talking this big.
Now, I do not consider myself to have arachnophobia, but nevertheless, I'm not particularly good at dealing with surprise attacks, especially from spiders.
In what can only be described as a morbid panic, I swung my arm back violently. I smacked my arm into the wall behind, causing me tremendous pain. My crippling thumb injuries and aching muscles returned.
The spider had vanished. I eventually found him scuttling around behind the shower and, with some considerable skill, managing to lift him up and put him out the window.
Here is an artist's impression of the event.
So that was a sad end to my evening.
You walk in from the cold night air. You've been playing high-tempo basketball for the last hour. Your muscles ache. Your hands are hurting from a rather suspicious, identical double thumb injury.
You ascend the stairs and begin to run a bath. Closing the door you allow the steam from the water to envelope the room, making for a relaxing semi-sauna. You step into the bath - it's just the pleasant side of too hot.
You lie back and your skin tingles as the water rushes over you. And suddenly there is no pain, and no aching. You close your eyes and enjoy the moment, completely calm and placid.
Then through the calmness you begin to feel something on your arm. Some water, you presume, from the bath. You open your eyes to investigate.
And on your arm, there is a rather huge and angry-looking spider. We are talking this big.
Now, I do not consider myself to have arachnophobia, but nevertheless, I'm not particularly good at dealing with surprise attacks, especially from spiders.
In what can only be described as a morbid panic, I swung my arm back violently. I smacked my arm into the wall behind, causing me tremendous pain. My crippling thumb injuries and aching muscles returned.
The spider had vanished. I eventually found him scuttling around behind the shower and, with some considerable skill, managing to lift him up and put him out the window.
Here is an artist's impression of the event.
So that was a sad end to my evening.
Monday, 9 January 2012
Religious Tract Society.
Becoming acquainted with a vast quantity of literature is one of the major perks on working for a large antiquarian book retailer. You can wade, waist-deep through paper tides of Biggles' and Uncle Tom's Cabins' and Dennis Wheatley's, all in their own sense fascinating, but (certainly the latter, at least) generally dreadful.
Uncle Tom's Cabin, in particular, fascinates me. The novel presents a grotesque caricature of slave-life; in some sense laudable due to it's rather progressive anti-slavery message, if deeply clumsy and stooped in Christian allegory. Especially galling as the bible advocates and justifies slavery in its very basis, but let's get beyond that.
We also find plenty of books from the Religious Tract Society, which would go on to become the Lutterworth Press, which is still around today, albeit in a highly abbreviated format.
RTS books are generally quite hilarious. They are monotonously similar, to the point in which all you have to do is pick a main character, and then the story is virtually written for you.
Take The Blind Basket Maker , the story of the title character, Abel Curry. Abel feels only bitterness and anger towards the God that robbed him of his sight; he struck Abel's shed with a bolt of lightning. Abel's hard-working and smart, and despite his dislike for the almighty, makes a decent living as a basket-maker.
This disgusting paragraph sums the RTS' principle message on pg.39:
"Poor Abel! he had yet to learn that God never lets harm come to us but for some good. The good is often hidden, and the paid is all we know; but some day God will open our eyes to see how He was teaching us, and we shall praise Him that He did not give us our own way"
Abel's bitterness towards God appears to enrage our divine king, presumably violently irate that Abel was unable to see the funny side in being blinded for his own amusement.
God sends a thunderstorm to flood the river by which Abel does his work. He then sees fit to kill Abel's dog, and then his young daughter.
Not to worry though, because soon enough Abel meets a pious young girl named Mary. Her kindness renews his faith for some reason.
Unfortunately, Mary's father soon dies, so she comes to live with Abel and his wife.
The story ends there. Devout Mary's father dead, and Abel a broken man. But at least they have each other. The moral of the story is, it seems: your family will likely die, but don't worry, God will kill many other people's families, so you can just join together. All is well, praise Jesus. Amen.
Fuck the RTS.
Uncle Tom's Cabin, in particular, fascinates me. The novel presents a grotesque caricature of slave-life; in some sense laudable due to it's rather progressive anti-slavery message, if deeply clumsy and stooped in Christian allegory. Especially galling as the bible advocates and justifies slavery in its very basis, but let's get beyond that.
We also find plenty of books from the Religious Tract Society, which would go on to become the Lutterworth Press, which is still around today, albeit in a highly abbreviated format.
RTS books are generally quite hilarious. They are monotonously similar, to the point in which all you have to do is pick a main character, and then the story is virtually written for you.
Take The Blind Basket Maker , the story of the title character, Abel Curry. Abel feels only bitterness and anger towards the God that robbed him of his sight; he struck Abel's shed with a bolt of lightning. Abel's hard-working and smart, and despite his dislike for the almighty, makes a decent living as a basket-maker.
This disgusting paragraph sums the RTS' principle message on pg.39:
"Poor Abel! he had yet to learn that God never lets harm come to us but for some good. The good is often hidden, and the paid is all we know; but some day God will open our eyes to see how He was teaching us, and we shall praise Him that He did not give us our own way"
Abel's bitterness towards God appears to enrage our divine king, presumably violently irate that Abel was unable to see the funny side in being blinded for his own amusement.
God sends a thunderstorm to flood the river by which Abel does his work. He then sees fit to kill Abel's dog, and then his young daughter.
Not to worry though, because soon enough Abel meets a pious young girl named Mary. Her kindness renews his faith for some reason.
Unfortunately, Mary's father soon dies, so she comes to live with Abel and his wife.
The story ends there. Devout Mary's father dead, and Abel a broken man. But at least they have each other. The moral of the story is, it seems: your family will likely die, but don't worry, God will kill many other people's families, so you can just join together. All is well, praise Jesus. Amen.
Fuck the RTS.
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