The Price of a Pint

A very good friend of mine had a birthday last weekend and we celebrated in time honoured fashion by going to a lovely old pub. A small group of friends gathered on a Sunday lunch time and an odd thing happened. There we were, a couple of pints in and gathered round a large table, all adults putting the world to rights with humour and bonhomie when I was overcome with a feeling of relaxed wellbeing. I hadn't experienced an atmosphere like that for some time. However, it was short lived as a family with a crying baby turned up breaking the mood. I don't want to pay nearly £4 a pint to listen to babies crying, I can do that for free. The family concerned had a brassy grandmother in tow who took to scowling round the pub as if to say 'we have just as much right to be here as you so don't dare complain.' Of course it doesn't work the other way, just try taking your mates and some cans down a kiddies play park and see how long it takes for the police to turn up.

I am from the generation where children rarely went in pubs and it was quite acceptable for parents to leave the kids outside with a bag of crisps and a soft drink. The pub trade has had to evolve to survive and now a lot of places consider themselves restaurants as opposed to pubs so children, and their parents' wallets, are welcome. The knock on effect of this is that children are allowed into most pubs now and, as long they don't try and buy beer, the landlords don't complain.

Most parents are responsible and their children well behaved. Some parents don't give a stuff how much their kids run about and irritate others as long as they aren't bothering them. In our local pub the situation is so bad that my wife and I have taken to calling it the After School Club. From 4 P.M. onwards there is a gaggle of children running about inside the pub, some in school uniform, until about 8 P.M. This was witnessed by my good buddy and fellow blogger/musician who came up for a beer once. I think he was quite taken aback and I almost found myself apologizing for other peoples unruly kids.

If you want to avoid kids another option is the sports bar with six huge screens and drunken louts hollering and yelling. That's great if you like that kind of thing but personally I don't. Unfortunately pubs can't survive on a convivial atmosphere and a pretty barmaid anymore. They have had to evolve and diversify to keep trading but at the expense of the olde worlde charm which, ironically, some chains are desperately trying to replicate. You can still find a proper pub if you look hard enough but they are dying out fast. It's another slice of life peculiar to the British that may soon be lost forever.

The Spy in the Kitchen

In the corner of our kitchen, tucked under the work top next to the sink, sits a washing machine. It's a white box with a porthole door and a panel with some knobs and lights on just like every other washing machine. Just an ordinary household appliance... or so I thought.

My wife came to me the other day complaining that the washing machine wasn't spinning properly. She had tried to wash the bath mat and the damn thing refused to spin. In fact, it hadn't been spinning properly for weeks she informed me. We have insurance for just such an emergency so I rang the engineers and made an appointment for the following week. The charming girl I spoke to said I should check the filter because if it's blocked I will be charged a call out fee even though I'm insured. I did and it wasn't.

The day before the engineer was due I asked the wife if she had any further problems with the machine. 'No', she replied, 'it's been as good as gold'. Ah, I thought, I'm going to look a total lemon if the engineer turns up and there's nothing wrong with it, perhaps I should cancel him. But then I thought,If the charming girl was going to charge me for a blocked filter, they might charge me for a last minute cancellation. Not only that but,if it is playing up, it will take them another week to get someone round to fix it. I might as well let the appointment stand so the engineer can check it over while I play dumb by blaming the wife.

The engineer turned up pleasantly early and began his investigations. A short while later he popped his head round the door saying, 'I have done a diagnostics test and there is nothing wrong with it, what were you washing when you had the problem?' 'I don't know' I lied unconvincingly.
'It was probably a bath mat' he said eyeing me suspiciously.
'I don't know' I blustered 'I will have to ask the wife'. And there it was... caught out in a lie by a kitchen appliance.

I thought I knew about washing machines, they are relatively simple things... not so. The engineer went on to explain how the machine won't spin unless it can balance the load to prevent too much movement. It will try three or four times on a gentle spin until it feels the load is balanced and then only spin when it feels it's safe. If it can't balance the load it won't spin and it couldn't balance a bath mat. The engineer went on to tell me that it also measures the murkiness of the water and will give it another wash if it feels it's necessary. The more recent versions also keep a log of what happened and when. It will tell the engineer if you have been overloading or under-loading it, if you have tried to wash a bath mat or if you use too much, or not enough, washing powder. It will even automatically adjust the auto programs to your way of washing.

Where will it all end? Will our ovens tell us off for cooking pizza four times in a week instead of something healthier? Will our fridges complain about too much fat content, or our freezers demand we eat those chicken kievs that have been frozen for over year?

Modern computers already have an annoying habit of thinking for themselves which I find incredibly frustrating. I'm never sure if it's maintaining itself or needs fixing when it does things unexpectedly. I don't mind household appliances being smarter than I am in principle, but I wish they would tell you when they are being clever. A simple message saying 'look, dummy, I am trying to balance the load' would have saved a lot of time and money.

War of Cat-trition

I don't mind cats. They are cute looking things, inoffensive and tend to look after themselves. I find dogs tend to be much more bothersome. It's like having a seven year old child, they are needy and tend to do disgusting things in public. If I had to choose between the two, I would come down on the side of cats. My wife loves cats. There is a running joke in our Buckinghamshire hideout that, if anything were to happen to me of a permanent nature, she would become one of those crazy cat women you see on telly who have 20 cats and scares the local children because they think she is a witch. We are currently the keeper of a single black and white cat who is cute to look at but I suspect that behind those slitty eyes lies a sinister intent. The cat and I seem to be involved in a power struggle.

The Pecking order in our house is a follows: the wife comes first, then the cat followed closely by the children with me as the tail end Charlie lagging somewhere in the rear. I don't mind as it's my job to make the family happy (ish) so their needs and wants naturally come first. However, the cat isn't content with this and seems to go out of his way to flex his muscles and make my lowly position as difficult as possible. This may sound like paranoia but, if it is,I am in exalted company. The famed poet Shelley pointed out that 'when my cats aren't happy, I'm not happy. Not because I care about their mood, but because I know they are sitting there thinking up ways to get even'. Shelley would understand my predicament.

Most cats sleep a lot and ours is no exception. He is often to be found curled up on our bed. Despite having the whole bed to sleep on he insists on lying on my side curled up around my pillow which,to be honest, I find a little distasteful. I would rather not inhale cat hairs when I'm sleeping.

I have tried moving him but because I am such a softy he makes me feel guilty. He looks at me with those big eyes as if to say ' what have I done'. He knows exactly what he's done. Sometimes I assert my meagre human authority and physically move him. In these instances he shows his true colours by trying to bite me. He then shifts to a slightly different position and challenges me to try it again. On the occasions when I have had enough and shut him out of the bedroom altogether he takes his revenge by digging up the carpet by the door and ruining it, so I let him back in to save buying a new carpet. These are his daytime bedroom tactics, his night time ones are even more insidious. One of his favourite night time gambits is to quietly enter the bedroom and climb on the window sill. When he is sure I am asleep he takes a flying leap onto the bed landing with a mighty thump which wakes me up in shock. He can spend five minutes walking up and down the bed finding a place to settle then curl up right next to me like a dead weight thereby restricting my movements. His nastiest habit is to bite my toes if they stray from under the duvet while I'm asleep. It's  extremely painful. If I wake in the night the first thing I do is check my feet are well under the duvet, just in case.

Then there is the chair thing. It's often noted how comfy the cat looks in my usual space on the sofa particularly when I want to sit on it. If I want to sit down I have to move him off and appear to be the bad guy again. Sometimes I sit on the floor or in a different chair but then it occurs to me that the black and white fiend has bested me again. If I do try and move him, he will shuffle along the sofa a little and take up position between me and my wife as if he is on guard duty. Sometimes he sits on the back of the sofa just behind my head as if to say' I'm watching you'. Another favourite trick is to wait till I vacate a chair then appear out of nowhere to quickly take my place. By the time I come back he is comfortably lazing so when I move him I'm painted the villain again. He has been noted to do this several times on the trot. Any chair will do and he doesn't do it to any other family members. Paranoid? I think not.

His more blatant tactics involve waiting until my wife is not around. It was late at night and  the other family members where in bed. I was relaxing on the sofa with a glass of red wine engrossed in a film on a dark, cosy winter night. The cat noticed my guard was lowered, saw his opportunity and struck by vomiting on the window sill, down the curtains, into the back of the radiator and onto the carpet. It took me half an hour to clean up. He is regularly sick and most often when I am the only one around to clear it up. The other day my wife was in the kitchen, I was sitting down eating my dinner. The cat sauntered in from the kitchen, looked up me, made sure he had my attention then threw up right in front of me. It sounds more like the work of a malicious demon than a humble cat. Alarmingly, the cat seems to be raising the stakes. Just the other day it waited until the house was empty and I was in the shower before knocking a substantial glass vase of the side. It smashed into a thousand glistening fragments within a pool of water and half dead flowers. I could have cut myself clearing it up. Shakespeare thinks ' the quality of mercy is not strained', Ms Hathaway clearly didn't have a cat. 

Brave New World

I was in the lunch room at work the other day when the subject of conformity came up. It seems to me that in this day and age practically anything goes. I pointed out that, whilst eyelids  would indeed be batted if I  turned up in in a dress, I don't think anyone would dare say anything derogatory to my face. The management would certainly not say anything as they consider themselves to be all -embracing and non- discriminatory. I think it's only a matter of time before weekend transvestites begin asserting themselves and  flounce out of the cupboard into everyday life. I am not saying this is right or wrong, however, It did lead me to consider where all this gender-bending is leading.
These days both genders regardless of sexual orientation are happy to cover themselves with tattoos, a custom that used to belong almost exclusively to soldiers and sailors. In most town centres the over-riding fashion for all ages and sexes is jeans, trainers and a hoody or fleece, usually in muted colours. Our work uniform allows for women to wear skirts but it's extremely rare to see one being worn. The pupils from our local secondary school also seem to prefer trousers, not that I spend a lot of time looking at schoolgirls. It's probably because it's just more practical. Jewellery seems to have become almost unisex as well. I am sure there are chaps out there with belly bars.
Persons of mixed race heritage are the fastest growing social minority in America these days. So much so that some commentators are heralding it as the end of the race issue. According to the Office of National Statistics for the UK, the same phenomenon was recorded in Sheffield where there is a large Asian population. Not so long ago it was considered shameful to be of mixed race - a throwback to the illegitimate children born to prostitutes and sailors in the worlds ports which became melting pots as trade flourished in the 17th and 18th centuries. These days, people of dual heritage are proud of their ancestry and have no problems describing themselves as such.
Another modern social trend is the decline of marriage. A 32 year study shows the proportion of married women has fallen from 74% to 47%. More women are getting divorced and choosing not to remarry, while the number of women choosing not to get married at all has risen steadily.
If things continue as they are,In 500 years or so our descendants are all going to homogenise into androgynous, brown hued singletons who living in apartments blocks and wear a natty line of matching overalls. Now that sounds like a Buddhists' view of paradise.