Word on a Whim

A visit to Cardiff Bay for “Death Songbook” : Brett Anderson, Charles Hazlewood, and Paraorchestra

My partner and I have both lost our dads within the last twelve months, and my lovely cousin recently died way before his time. Death and dying, with all it entails, has become a focus, and I have become a grumpy old git!

I’ve always avoided social occasions. I love people individually, but struggle with the noise of large gatherings where multiple conversations are competing in volume. I also love music, but listen to it through headphones, or alone in the car.  That way, I can enjoy it without forcing other people to listen.

When I saw tickets were on sale for “Death Songbook” by Brett Anderson, Charles Hazlewood, and Paraorchestra, I decided to make the effort to go to some event other than a funeral. For me, Brett Anderson is next best to Bowie, and the theme seemed fitting.

So, I did what I always do when I’m going anywhere new … studied Google Maps for the route to Cardiff, fretted about where to park and what time to set off, and dreamed up all manner of things that could possibly go wrong.

Of course, I got there far too early. Wales Millennium Centre was the venue. There was a band playing in the foyer. They might have been good but the sound was so loud it was distorted, so it was difficult to know.

The ‘Death Songbook’ was a seated event. I’d booked a ticket at the end of a row so I would be rubbing shoulders with only one stranger, and was delighted that the seat in front of me was unoccupied, so I had a really good view of the stage.

A Welsh male voice choir did a half-hour performance before the main event. They were good and well received – but the grumpy old git in me became irked by people coming in to find their seats, then squeezing back past again to go and get drinks or whatever. If one more arse gets thrust in my face! It must have been off-putting for the performers, as well as annoying for the rest of the audience who didn’t feel the need to wander around the place. It did settle down though, once we’d cheered them off and the main act took to the stage.

Brett was mesmerising and passionate as ever in his delivery. Some singers appear awkward if they’re not nursing a guitar because they don’t know what to do with their hands. Brett either moves spontaneously, blending with the music, or else he stands still, without feeling the need to jiggle around.

 I realised I was watching with a stupidly happy smile and a few tears, but it didn’t matter because the lights were down. Then, the giant who’d booked the seat in front of me turned up, and I watched the rest by leaning awkwardly into the aisle, looking over his shoulder and giving thanks that I’d got a seat at the end of a row.

The setlist included plenty of songs written by Brett, including Suede’s “He’s Dead”, where Adrian Utley (Portishead guitarist) performed a brilliant electric guitar solo. I call it a ‘solo’ but the rest of the orchestra were playing like mad – the string section really going for it. The cello and violins were rocking!

The highlight for me was Brett’s version of Jacques Brel’s “My Death”, accompanied by Adrian on guitar. I had been looking forward to this one, and knew it wouldn’t sound like a Bowie imitation. Halfway through his stunning rendition, I realised my stupid mind was no longer enjoying the moment. For me, this was the climax, and therefore an indication we were getting close to home time. I started mithering about where the car was, and reminding myself to do all my fussing around (swapping jacket for fleece, setting satnav for home etc) before paying at the meter, just in case I was only allowed five minutes to get out of the carpark once I’d paid. Then I got cross with myself for not fully focussing on the bit I’d been mostly looking forward to!

That was yesterday evening. I took photos of Cardiff Bay. It’s not exactly the ‘seaside’ I’ve been craving. That would require crashing waves and cliffs. Although, if I zoom into this photo, I think I can see a distant lighthouse 😊

Car Insurance Employment Status

I was made redundant in the spring.  It wasn’t a surprise; it was a planned closure of the firm I worked for. This week, when my car insurance came up for renewal, I phoned the insurance company to update them with the change of details. Since I’m no longer commuting a hundred miles each day, I expected the policy price to be reduced.  Instead, it went up!

“I know, it’s bananas isn’t it,” said the guy on the phone.  He explained that my change of employment status to unemployed had caused the increase.  WTF?!  What exactly are the connotations of unemployment that would trigger an increase when my annual mileage has reduced from twenty-five thousand miles to five thousand?  I decided to try elsewhere.

I found a better deal on a comparison website, but couldn’t select “commuting” as I’d selected “unemployed”.  Bloody computers!  I was also miffed because the no claims discount was dependent on the renewal notice, and the previous insurer didn’t care beyond ten years so that’s what their renewal schedule said, despite me joining them a couple of years ago with far more years’ no claims.  Grrrr!

Too much time to think, I guess, but I ended up phoning the new company to ask if I could add commuting, in case I forget to do it when I get a job, and also to check that it wouldn’t massively raise the price.

Several layers of call vectoring and twenty minutes of crap music later, a real person answered the phone. (I wasn’t sure at first, these robots are getting good at impersonation!)  I asked the lady to add “commuting” and the price went up a little. Then, I asked her to change my employment status from “unemployed” to “housewife”, explaining that I’m not claiming benefits – just taking some time out, and the price came down a few quid lower than if I was unemployed and not commuting. Confused.com? I am now!

What exactly is a “housewife” and why are they less of a car insurance liability than someone who is “unemployed”?  I imagine many housewives are busy ferrying children to various activities; doing the school run at peak times; trying to park in spaces too small; popping to the supermarket on the way home, and then taking the dog to the vet. Meanwhile, the unemployed person is sitting in the house browsing jobs on the internet … and paying more for their car insurance at a time when they could really do with paying less

But how do you get to it …?

I know I’m not the only one who gets frustrated with packaging design – not being able to get at the contents of a packet without using some sort of tool … when cooking a meal, for example, and everything is already simmering but it takes five minutes to add that final ingredient because it’s a new packet and you can’t get into it.

My least favourite packaging is the rigid, see-through plastic that is moulded around the item, requiring strong scissors to cut around it whilst creating nasty sharp edges.  I once queued behind a customer in a hardware shop, who wanted to return a yale lock because it didn’t fit his door.  When the assistant refused on the basis that goods could only be returned with packaging in tact, he pointed out that it was impossible to tell if it was the correct lock without taking it from the packaging, which was impossible to do without destroying it.

Packaging is designed with good intentions but do the drawbacks sometimes outweigh the benefits?

The Push and Turn top is sometimes used to make medication ‘child proof’, but if the medication is used regularly it can end up on a mantelpiece with the lid resting loosely on top, defeating the object.  It is also used on some bleaches and cleaning fluids but sometimes the bottle is so flimsy that it starts to cave in when the top is pushed down.

Some containers simply don’t want to part with their contents, giving you the option of either throwing half of it away or else cutting the container to get to what’s left inside when it will no longer dispense.  Being a bit fussy about smells, I tend to go for unscented moisturiser, and decided to give this a try:

No complaints about the product, but the bottle is so strong and rigid that after a couple of uses, squeezing with one hand to squirt some into the other hand is fruitless.  The container stays in the squeezed position and has to be manipulated from the sides to get it back into a shape that is ready for action again.  Storing it in an upside down position helps but owing to the rounded top it has to be barricaded into a corner, propped up by other items, and comes crashing down if anything is moved.  So what is the purpose of this design?  The only advantage I can think of is that it has no scratchy edges that could hurt if the baby got hold of it.

Where I work, we have had new toilet roll dispensers fitted. (There are plenty of other areas that need improving but for some reason this took priority). Without being too poetic, it looks like a pair of breasts with milk flowing from them.  Here it is on a good day, with both nipples producing:

The obvious benefit of this design is that the paper is kept clean and dry and untouched by anyone except the person about to use it.  The down side is that the paper comes out like a piece of string and has to be straightened out before use.  Worse still, it has to be pulled very gently as it tends to break off, usually with the perforations just within the nipple, so you end up with this:

The photo above illustrates a particularly dodgy situation in which it’s advisable to milk as much paper as you might possibly need before starting anything, otherwise that one sheet on display might be all you’re gonna get!  This of course leads to waste, as it’s difficult to gauge precisely how much paper will be required, and better to err on the safe side.

On a bad day, you can see the paper but there’s no way of getting to it – but at least you know where you stand (or sit) with this:

Moving on,  I think the key holder must have been on holiday on this occasion (you need a key to open the dispenser) because what happened next brightened up an otherwise mundane day:

Yes, I know, ‘little things please little minds’ … but I don’t think anyone had any issues with the previous loo roll holders (not that I went around asking).  If there was some on the roll, you knew it was there for real and not just to tantilise, even if sometimes it meant inserting your hand up inside it to coax and jiggle it down.  I’ve no idea why it had to be reinvented … maybe sometimes change is just for the sake of change.

Watch With Mother

The place where I work has fixed holidays, which is annoying because they are fixed during school holidays and around bank holidays, and I don’t like crowded places or other people’s kids.  Of course I am grateful that I have a job with paid holidays, but I’ve been there long enough now for such niggles to intrude.  Isn’t that just human nature?  This past week of fixed holiday was good though, as it meant I could spend some time with my Mum around her eightieth birthday.

Mum is very easy to be with.  Stick her in front of a telly with a glass of wine and she’s happy, which is particularly useful now that she can’t get around too well.  I rarely watch TV – the internet is my telly – but there’s something comforting about watching it at my parents’ home when I visit.  Some of the adverts though!  My son had come up for his Nan’s birthday and we’re all sat waiting for it to be late enough to go off to the Eightieth Do and the conversation fizzles out so Dad puts the telly on.  Of course it was adverts but the first that came on was, “Do you suffer from vaginal dryness and itching?”  Well, Dad averted his eyes, frowning slightly as if distracted by a sudden thought.  (It reminded me of when I lived there more than thirty years ago and he would pick up the newspaper and study it if any kind of sex scene came on).  My son played it comical, affecting a genteel expression whilst examining the ornaments on the mantelpiece, as if suddenly noticing how very interesting they were, which set Mum off laughing, infectiously!

Why do such products need to be advertised on television? And why are they mostly to do with women’s things?  “Suffering from nob-rot?  Try Penisil!”    Hmm.  Sorry 🙂

Anyway …  Mum came to stay with us for a few days, so I wiped the dust off the TV screen and looked dubiously at the remote control, but she knew instinctively how to change channels. (Didn’t they used to be called ‘stations’?)  It turned out this was an important time in Coronation Street.  Corrie has been going for as long as I can remember.  Mum used to wash me in front of it with a wet flannel poised between me and the washing up bowl, and if there was any action it had sometimes gone a bit cold by the time it made contact with skin.  I have always found the theme tune depressing – back then because it was time for bed – but now because it sounds like an unhappy cat.  Watching it again this week, I was surprised to recognise some of the characters who are still in it but was also amazed how dark and disturbing it has become.  Okay, I’d had some gin, but I recall one guy self-harming whilst another was being sucked down in quicksand.  In Corrie?  FFS!

Then Mum threw into the mix, “She was married to Sean Bean – she was inbred.”  Trying to make sense of this, I said, “You mean they were first cousins or something?”  Mum said, “No, she was in’Bread’!”  Well, that tickled me!

I live some distance away from my parents and have done for many years – but it’s a worry now they are old.  (Mum has said, in the past, “Don’t be worrying about that – we might just drop dead!”)  The big ’80’ is a wake up call though, and it’s hard to imagine a time when they won’t be just a phone call or text away.  I know they can’t go on forever … but I very much fear that Corrie probably will!

Wacky inventions … who buys these things?

I have always found humour in wacky inventions. For me they existed before the internet, when Dad occasionally bought ‘Exchange and Mart’ if he was thinking of replacing his old car.  It was within these flimsy pages that I noticed such things as The Big Slipper that was taken up by Billy Connolly (google it – there’s a video!)  I was also intrigued by a Blackhead Zapper –  with some vague diagram that suggested a syringe without a needle … it appeared to work by planting the open end over the zit and then pulling until the zit popped and the debris landed in the barrel of the syringe!  I also recall a Body Massaging Wand – recommended for sporting injuries but with small print advice that it was for external use only …

These days, well, nothing has really changed, except there are images available for me to download from the internet and take the mickey out of …

Here are some of the funniest I’ve seen lately:

“Create extra storage in busy bathrooms by utilising the wasted space over the toilet.”

Who (apart from a double-jointed acrobat) thinks the space over the toilet is wasted? Surely the space over the toilet during standing use is so that men can see where they’re aiming without having to bend over backwards? And for sitting use, in my experience, the space over the toilet is where my head goes.  I did wonder if you were supposed to move the scaffolding out of the way on each visit – but looking carefully at the picture it appears that the lower horizontal bar has been fitted behind.  See what I mean?  No way of easily shifting it aside!

Here’s the next one:

“Maximise your storage with this fantastic set of four fridge drawers.”

Marvellous!  How ‘fantastic’! How exactly are we maximising storage space by placing the containers we keep in the fridge into a larger container that has a big sticky-out handle?  These are advertised as ‘currently sold out‘, even though they are £19.99 for a set of four … so lots of people must be buying them.   Really?

This one takes the biscuit, maybe … unless it really does only do eggs or beans:

“Choose between fried, poached or boiled eggs using the interchangeable trays, or alternatively use it to heat beans”

If only I had space on my worktop … but what if I wanted to heat up soup instead of doing beans or cooking eggs?  Would that be okay, or maybe this thing can only manage eggs and beans?  Not sure I could be bothered with the washing up that the interchangeable trays might generate.

Next we have the Ear Cleaner … well, two Ear Cleaners because if you buy one you get one free , so that “two family members can have their own Ear Cleaner!”

Each Ear Cleaner requires 2 AA batteries (not supplied)

The dog in the picture below has been zipped into a bag!  He does look rather hot and panicky, and I start to hyperventilate if I look at this for too long.  How the heck is he standing? Maybe someone propped him up and then stepped back and quickly took the photo?  “Good boy!”

Perhaps I should mention that the idea of this … invention is that if your dog goes outside and gets wet and muddy you simply zip him up inside this thing and leave him to dry – so that he doesn’t bring any muck into the house!

I read some funny reviews. One customer was dissatisfied because the bag had left pink fluff on their white dog 🙂

Another was very pleased not to have to clean out the motor-home after the dog had been in it.  Maybe you should get a stuffed dog next time!

Hair

I never have been one to bother much about hair styles, always being a wash and leave girl … yet I do know when it needs cutting.  I have thin dark hair with a white head that tends to shine through, especially when sitting beneath an office light, an effect that is accentuated as the hair grows longer.  It was my son who first pointed it out to me, some years ago (with that invaluable and direct approach our children have) “I can see your head.”  I also have him to thank for alerting me to the fact that my facial hair was getting out of hand, by piping up (in the queue at Argos) “You’re growing a beard.  And a moustache.“

Back home (back then) I said to Julz, “Bill says I’m growing a beard and moustache.”  Maybe I expected him to say of course I wasn’t – but he replied, “It’s not too bad, Love.”  So, I got out the hair removal cream – the stuff you’re supposed to test on a small area first – and daubed it generously above my top lip and around my chin, and then waited.  It was tingling nicely so it must be working …  and yes, you’ve guessed – it was working rather too well, burning off a layer of skin along with the hair … and then I had to go into work the next morning and face startled, concerned expressions from my colleagues and explain what had happened!  Anyway, I’m digressing.  This was supposed to be about head hair.  I only wish it grew as healthily up there as it’s growing everywhere else these days …

I do believe the answer to thinning hair is to get it cut regularly, with layers, to maintain a little uplift.  Until this year, I always worked on sites where I could get it cut during my lunch hour.  When asked how I wanted it done I would ask them do whatever they could to make me look less bald on top, confident that people who cut hair for a living know better than I do how it will suit me best.  It only ever took them about five minutes, and then they’d ask if I wanted any more taken off.  Never really liked to ask them to go all round again!  In my new job we only get half an hour and there are no local hair shops.  It’s an early start, so I end up scraping ice off car windows hoping my hair isn’t going to freeze to my head, even in April, in England!  It gets washed in the shower every morning because it sticks out at one side or curls around in whichever direction it’s been slept on.  After trying a couple of Saturdays to get it cut without an appointment I had a go at the front myself – just chopping off the annoying bits that were hanging around my face, and made that do for a while.

Owing to my son’s adorable puppy, I’ve been WhatsApping photos of me and the pup to my Mum.  On one I sent her that was particularly lovely of Alfie, I added the comment “Excuse my bald patch,” to which she replied, bless her, “That’s not a bald patch, it’s a parting.”  Of course she said that because she is my mother and not my daughter!  “Bloody wide parting,” I replied, and experimented with moving the parting to the other side, like a bit of a comb-over 🙂

So, this weekend I was on a mission! I didn’t want my precious Saturday to revolve around a five minute hair cut but surely one of the very many hair shops in the nearest town to this village could spare five minutes to cut my hair without prior arrangement?  But, “Hoe Nyo!  Not without an appointment!”  Defeated, I mooched around the shops, recalling the expression of that one particular lady, so heavily made up that it looked like a disguise, looking at me as if I’d crawled out of a drain whilst her younger assistant (who appeared to be doing nothing) stared at my head with pity as if thinking omigod she really needs a haircut.  I almost bought a pair of ornamental meerkats from a charity shop to cheer myself up – but then remembered there was nowhere to put them and this is precisely the kind of clutter I am trying to get rid of.

When I got home, Julz looked at me with his face prepared to approve my new haircut.  It was clear from his expression that he wasn’t too sure whether I’d had it done or not, but wanted to be approving either way!  He settled for “How did it go?” So I asked him to please cut my hair, and he did.  I’m very pleased with the result – the best it’s looked for ages.  After all these years, he knows my hair better than anyone!  🙂