Maybe It's Heatstroke

I know that sunshine is a rare thing in the West of Scotland, but is it really so rare that it causes half of the population to develop a Deadly Brain Cloud? Take yesterday for example: It was sunny, warm and generally fairly present. There was a strong breeze from the south-west that kept the air moving, enough to stop the air becoming stifling, but not strong enough to ruin the good weather.

A fairly perfect spring day in other words.

I was enjoying my ride home on the bike, same as most days, when I became concious that a lot of strange things seemed to be happening.Glasgow suddenly seemed to become infested with stunt drivers, addle-brained pedestrians and crazed dogs.

It started up on Bilsland Drive in Ruchill. I tend to head along it towards the west end so that I can avoid the bus laden nightmare of the city centre. Bilsland Drive is a big wide street with only a few houses on the one side and the tumbledown remains of the old Ruchill Hospital on the other. There’s more than enough room for two lanes of traffic on either side provided there’s no parked cars. It’s one of those streets in Glasgow that makes it great to cycle along because you know that with all that room nobody is going to try to squeeze past the end of your handlebar at 30mph.

Or so I thought.

I had just passed the gates of the old hospital. Pedalling along, minding my own business, when out of the blue a Toyota Yaris passed me within inches, in spite of there being plenty of room. Then, to my open mouthed amazement, the damn thing pulled in to the kerb right in front of me.

BRAKES = ON.

I scowled at the occupant, but gave her the benefit of the doubt: Maybe she hadn’t judged the distance properly and it was an honest mistake. I made to go round her car, and my front wheel was just about level with the back of the car when she threw the driver’s door open and leapt out.

“Fucking hell,” I said and swerved to avoid suffering head on collision with the Hambeast.

She looked at me, clearly registered I was there, and then turned to commence digging stuff out of her car. Why do people who do this exact thing never seem to get hit by passing trucks?

She was bad enough, but I also got chased along part of Queen Margaret Drive by a demented dog who’s owner just watched as it ran down the road behind me and in front of a taxi. I nearly ran over a woman who, despite clearly seeing me approaching along the road, decided to step out in front of me at the last possible moment causing me to swerve violently to avoid her.

After that I was more cautious. I indicated with hand signals in plenty of time, and kept a wary eye on pedestrians and wildlife. That still didn’t help me avoid a group of students wandering down the middle of the road on a blind bend, or the old man in the car who did a U-Turn right in front of me, or the bus that crawled along behind me even though there was enough space to pass.

Now I’ve given due consideration to the possibility that I had wandered into the twilight zone, or that I just suffered a run of bad luck, but thinking back I’m almost certain that this kind of madness always occurs when it’s warm. I  guarantee that it’ll be better today if the weather stays colder.

Meanwhile if the residents of Glasgow could try to keep themselves hydrated, wear sunscreen and keep a wee bit of common sense and situational awareness it would be greatly appreciated.

If only so I don’t have to pick bits off you off my tires.

The Odd Call

There are many immutable laws in the universe, but today I heard a story that serves as a prime example of two.

Rule #1 – When you work in a call centre the customer is invariably an idiot.

Rule #2 – People will be offended by anything if they’re crazy enough.

I went for a visit today to see the IT department of one of the contractors that The Work uses. They’ve been having some issues accessing one of our systems and I went along to see if it was something that I could help them with. It went fine and everything was running smoothly with just an hour of tinkering at their connection settings.

Now I should explain that they’re a medium sized firm of about five or six hundred people. Their IT department consists of two front line guys with headsets that deal with all the day to day stuff like lost passwords, corrupted files and such-like. There’s a couple of sys-admin/second line technician guys who sit behind them, kind of like the bridge of the USS Enterprise, who do the actual infrastructure support etc.  Over in the corner behind them sits their “Director IT” who is a jolly man who looks like Santa Claus after he went ten rounds with a pie and ale special.

Seemingly he’s also the fire warden and does some surveying part time as well.

While I was there helping out the two second line tech guys a phone call came in to the operators and the guy was talking away to the person on the other end. I wasn’t paying much attention at that point, but he seemed to be having some difficulty getting the person on the other end to understand his instructions. Suddenly the operator guy tore off his headset and shouted over to teh IT Director, “Here you want to speak to this guy?”

THe IT Director shook his head and asked,”How?”

“He wants to speak to my manager,” The Operator said.

The IT Director shrugged a bit and asked the obvious question, “About whit? This isn’t fucking Debenhams. Can you no sort it?”

“He’s being a prick, a stupid prick,” said the Operator.

The IT Director sighed, got up and went over to the operator. He picked up the headset, introduced himself and asked what the problem was. I could see a bewildered look cross his face and then he rolled his eyes dramatically before saying a line that wouldn’t be out of place in an episode of Still Game, “Listen pal F T P stands for File Transfer Protocol. It does not, has not, and will never stand for Fuck The Pope or any other sectarian slogan you might think it does. OK?”

The guy at the other end obviously embarrassed at the rammy he had caused rung off almost instantly leaving the poor IT Director standing there unsure if he should laugh or cry.

The Black Hole

I’ve discovered that a picture is worth a thousand words when dealing with some of my less than gifted colleagues at The Work. It amuses me when I end up drawing a diagram like this:

To explain to one of them why a chain email of “cats doing funny stuff LOL” didn’t reach anyone when he sent it. It seemed easier to just blame a giant black hole in the IT department than to continue fruitlessly trying to explain attachment size limitations, firewalls and how crap it is to get these emails when I can just look at the damn things on http://www.icanhascheezburger.com/. I was polite enough to avoid telling him that the two planets could just as easily be replaced with his ears…

Remember Remember

The sun is finally up and it’s now officially the 6^th of November 2009.  All the pensioners, animals and those of a nervous disposition can safely emerge from their bunkers into the cold light of day and be thankful that the annual barrage of fireworks that marks Guy Fawkes Night is more or less over for another year.

I’ve written a bit before about Guy Fawkes Night, or as we called it when I was young Bonfire Night, but I thought I’d wax lyrical about it again after reading the news this morning.

Firstly let me be completely clear here: I love fireworks. I love the huge organised displays that they have at events, and I love the little intimate local ones when they’re done properly. I say this in full knowledge that Scotland Gas Networks have a huge excavation on the road outside exposing a major gas main to the sky, and to raining fireworks…

What I don’t agree with, and can’t understand is why, with all the mounting cases of animal cruelty, violence and horrific injury, we still allow fireworks to be sold over the counter to almost anyone. Sure there’s laws in place regulating their sale to people over 18, and I’m sure that every corner shop and fly by night fireworks store owner rigorously follows that rule, but if they do why are so many youths mentioned as being the perpetrators in the firework stories in the news this morning.

So far this I’ve read about:

A firework shooting in an open window of the high flats in Whiteinch and the occupant then had to be treated for smoke insulation. Seemingly a kid fired the rocket from ground level outside. I’m inclined to believe this was a freak event, but you never know.

A group of firemen trying to put out a fire in a house in Bridge of Weir being attacked by a gang of weans launching fireworks.

At the weekend a badly injured cat was found in Crosshill, near Maybole, with wounds consistent with a firework having being strapped to her back and set off. The innocent animal had to be put down after having suffered for perhaps as much as a week after being hurt.

Last year we had a couple of classics up in North Lanarkshire:

A dog dying of a heart attack after being struck by a firework when a gang of youths attacked a kennel in Bellshill with a dozen fireworks over a three hour period.

A ten month old girl being burned on the neck after a pair of youths threw a lit firework into her pram as she sat outside a shop in New Stevenson. Thankfully she was only slightly injured as her clothes had taken the brunt of it.

These are only the stories that made the front page of papers. I’m sure that there were a hundred more incidents that went unreported, or unacknowledged by victims too scared to report the youths that terrorised them.

I understand that as a kid the desire to throw fireworks at other people is strong, but in days gone by it were mainly small firecrackers that people threw around. Sure they were still small explosive devices, but they weren’t very powerful at all. They could cause some bruises and maybe a small burn, but they weren’t going to blow anyone’s face off. Not that throwing fireworks at anyone should be encouraged, but in the distance past where it wasn’t particularly frowned upon the fireworks were nowhere near as powerful as the ones available today.

If find it ironic and amusing that at any other time of the year if a bunch of teenage junkies, or even a fairly respectable looking businessman, went into a shop looking to buy a dozen rockets packed with gunpowder the cop from monopoly would appear out of nowhere and sort them right out.

I think it might be a lark to threaten to charge the neds under the anti-terrorism laws that the government are so proud of. After all one of the definitions of terrorism is.

After typing that last paragraph I had a look into the definition of terrorism and it seems that legally, in the UK at least, terrorism is more closely defined. According to the 2006 Terrorism Act a terrorist under UK law is defined as a group or persons who meet the following criteria:

(b) The use or threat is designed to influence the government or to intimidate the public or a section of the public.

(c) The use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause.

Maybe a few hours of water boarding and a kicking from some double hard bastards from the SAS would make them think twice about the fireworks next year.

I enjoy fireworks and bonfires as much as the next man, but for the love of god I think we desperately need to do something to get them out of the hands of neds. Be that better education on the dangers, tighter regulation on their sale and use or even to go as far as to ban this archaic and deeply English celebration altogether I leave that up to the nation to decide.