Please don’t use the receptacle provided……..

OK, I have a puzzler for the more laterally-minded and quizzical in nature out there in the ether. 

I will keep this short and sweet because I am currently employed on the graveyard shift and will all too soon be hard at the drudge in the nether hours when all you good little flaxen-haired cherubs will be enveloped in the arms of Morpheus.  I need to get me some shut-eye meself  afore I go back into the belly of the beast….

I was recently out and about in the general environs of Stratford in the east of London, as is my wont. For those of you kindly souls who are not familiar with the area (or indeed, the country, come to that!) it is where they are digging like furious banshees at the present in order to render unto us a glorious sporting arena, that we may welcome athletes from foreign shores with open arms, kindly smiles and marvel as they win all the medals, drink all the beer, do some sightseeing, buy some tourist tat and bugger off home again from whence they came.

Personally, I don’t know why they don’t just get all the money for the project, throw it in a hole with a liberal sprinkling of accelerant and apply a naked flame. It would be, frankly, more honest an act and less convoluted in the long run. It really would be a kindness all round. 

Ah, but I digress. Truly, I do. Where was I? Oh yes….

There was I in the glorious edifice that is Stratford station and I hied myself hence to the Jubilee Line (the purpose of my journey both escapes me and is of no consequence for the purposes of this harangue). I had just boarded a waiting train and was patiently biding my time till we got underway.  

Whilst sitting in quiet contemplation on the nature of things, I noticed a small but rather outré addition to the platform furniture. 

What was it, pray, I hear you cry? Well, I shall show you rather than describe. It had my mind agog and perplexed me mighty, I can tell you. Have a gander for yourselves and see if it doesn’t fox you just a wee touch, hmmm?

Here we go, dear reader. Cast thine own gaze ‘pon the source of my confabulation and render your own feelings regarding this most perplexing matter, won’t you? Splendid!  

Well, quite…..

A short, pithy, instructive indicator of what this is most emphatically not. What is it then, if not a waste receptacle?

This conundrum was further exacerbated for me when one of the platform staff blithely strolled up with an armful of detritus gleaned, one has to presume, from the morning commute, smiled at me and dumped said collection in the ‘not-a-bin’.

I mean to say, really. What is one to make of such a ludicrous state of affairs?  Any and all answer are welcome. Just be sure and put them in the properly labelled receptacle, hmm? 

How to have your cucumber and eat it too….

My cousin is a sick, sick man. To my mind, that is one of the more endearing characteristics he has. He is a constant source of the odd and bizarre that is out there in the ether. He is a very giving man also. He has absolutely no problem in sharing his largesse to his kith and kin. 

Frankly, he will show his oddities to anyone who is prepared to answer his emails. Like I said, he is a funny boy and I love him so. 

With this in mind, I have just been the recipient of a video he sent me which has brightened my otherwise mundane Sunday. I have been inundated with the world of academia all the weekend and my mind is sore in need of some irreverence. This fits the bill. 

Puts the concept of high tea into perspective, don’t it? Another slice, anyone? 

Fear the Grapes of Wrath…..

I was mildly perplexed when I first read about the case of one Alexander Martin-Sklan who decided to take the shop chain Marks and Spencer to court this month. 

It appears that he was leaving one of their stores in North London when he slipped over and, unfortunately for him, managed to do himself some not inconsiderable injury. The kicker is that he blames the store for his injury. He blames an errant grape which managed to lodge itself into the sole of one his sandals.  He stated that the offending piece of fruit could well have been picked up whilst in the store or, indeed, in the very car park that the misfortune occurred.

Could have being the operative phrase here. Not definitely did. Could have. Remember that phrase, people. It will be important later.  

 

His reaction. Well, he felt aggrieved enough against the chain to determine that they were responsible for this individual specimen of soft fruit and, as a result, should pay him for his calamity. He felt that he was entitled to compensation to the tune of some £315,815 for the usual, ‘loss of earnings and psychological damage’. 

That is a lot of fruit salad in anyone’s money…

The claimant stated that the store was remiss in it’s cleaning regimen for the outside of the store. This was within the main body of the claim that also stated that Mr Martin-Sklan was leaving the store and, when walking down a ramp, a car passed in front of him at speed causing him to have to stop suddenly. This was the point when the slip occurred. Just prior to leaving the store, he passed through the fresh fruit section. 

As a result of his injuries, this chap also claims that the on-going depression and lack of confidence engendered had caused him to lose further business.

This is a man who charges £225 an hour. He is an accountant. Call me cynical but I am having some hard time eliciting sympathy for this fellow at this point. Not a manual labourer, he.

I may be talking out of turn but I am pretty sure that accountancy has not become a calling that requires an individual to be in the upright position when pursuing it. 

All that notwithstanding, apparently this wicked fruit has allegedly also curtailed this lad’s apparent pastimes  of tennis, football and he can’t go on his skiing trips. 

My heart bleeds for him. Really.  I feel his pain (figuratively, of course). 

The main upshot of all of this is that the case was contested and Mr Martin-Sklan chose to represent himself. A risky manoeuvre by any standards. 

 So what happened next? Well, the long and short is simple. 

He lost his claim.

Shame.

The judge felt that he could not rule that there was compelling enough evidence that the offending fruit article was indeed even to blame, let alone that it was from the store in question. He said (I like this bit) he was not persuaded that the ’substance in the void’ caused the slippage.  Simple as that. Done and dusted.

Well, not quite…..

It transpires that not only does our down-in-the-dumps skiing bean-counter not get his payday from Marks and Spencer, he has to kick in and pay them to the tune of £15,000 to cover the legal costs.

It will be a while before his next trip to Whistler or Val d’Isere, I feel.  

Never mind. At £225 an hour I don’t think that he will be wanting for a dinner anytime soon. 

I just don’t think that it will be coming from Marks and Spencers in the near future.  

 

You have the right to remain horizontal……

Now we all know that Big Brother is watching us these days at all times, pretty much. That is a given. We also know that there is a lot of debate regarding the relative merits and downsides of constant CCTV intrusion/observation in all our lives and I am not going to open that particular can of worms here at the present moment. That is a thorny issue at the best of times, I find, especially here in the UK. We are, after all, the most watched nation on God’s creation. 

I do, however, have a little something to say to one Deputy Charlette Marshall-Jones of Hillsborough County’s Finest. When you felt the need to up-end a quadriplegic man from his wheelchair and search him whilst he was face down and unable to right himself due to his disability, did it never occur to you that there were cameras in the room making a record of this act of sheer stupidity? 

More than an act of stupidity, even. An act of downright ignorance in the face of ALL the fecking evidence. There were a couple of clues that you should have picked up on when you asked him to stand and he didn’t.

•  The chair he was in had dirty great wheels on it. Not unlike a wheelchair
• He told you that he was disabled and, as such, needed a chair with wheels. A wheelchair, in fact

You thought he was having you on, did you? You reckoned he was having a laugh at your expense? Who do you reckon is going to be laughing now? Well, I will wager that you are going to have a fair while to ponder that particular conundrum.

Honestly, I would love to hear what to ‘protect and serve’ actually means in her world. I have only more thing to add to this sorry wee tale. We have heard down the years of many travesties of justice carried out by police officers, in many and various countries. All heinous in their own right and worthy of righteous scorn by all proper thinking people. 

It does beggar belief, however, when the police are downright asinine enough to be recorded for posterity and, in turn, earn their own twisted fifteen minutes of fame. To paraphrase a legal term here, there is a precedent for this.

Two words, people.

Rodney. King.

 

  

Watch the skies, people…..

Alright, I may be gently losing my mind but I have witnessed something fairly bizarre today and was curious to know if anyone had any thoughts on it.

I was working on night shift Thursday night and had not been home for very long today when I was rudely disturbed by a very odd thing. I was relaxing at home, down Hackney Wick way, when there came a thunderous noise over the top of my apartment block.

Being a curious soul, I wanted to find out what was disturbing my reverie so I went onto my balcony just as the building I was in was buzzed at low level by two dirty great Chinook helicopters flying in formation. Honestly, they were so low that I could see one of the crew members in the back of one of the beast machines in all his jumpsuit and flight helmet finery!

 

What was bizarre also was that I could see him because the back door of his craft was down. Now I am not an expert in aircraft but I am pretty sure that the doors would usually need to be closed in order to effectively get around!

Not only were they flying EXTREMELY low in the east London area at two in the afternoon but they were also jinking side to side rather than flying in a straight path. Truly a compelling spectacle….

This was all very odd but kind of fun in a ‘Boy’s-Own-adventure-pretending-to-be-Action-Man’ kind of way, but then they went and did something I was really not expecting. They turned westward and flew at tree top level into the boundary of the eastern side of Victoria Park whereupon they both, still in formation, dropped into the park itself. They were only there for about 30 seconds to a minute at best when they took off again, turned north, and flew off in formation. They were still going at low level, mind you.

Now, I spent a short time looking around the interweb to see if there was any explanation for this intriguing display and I have noticed that, although there was nothing about covert ops going on in the east end today, there are a lot of people who have noticed more and more the regular exhibition in London of Chinooks flying in formation (albeit not as bloody low!).

I have also noticed these sinister looking things buzzing across the London skyline, usually east to west along the river path, but I am now really curious to know why the general E3 area is now being used for military manoeuvres.