November 2008 Archives

I have a day school tomorrow.

Because one of the guys is off sick, The Boss now has to cover this Saturday. I think the guy has actually been poisioned by his wife such is her...err...desperation. Anyway, yes The Boss is working tomorrow. I had forgotten until late this afternoon that I do in fact have an AA100 Day School. I am not required to attend, but it might be helpful.

The original plan was that The Boss would take me into Chelmsford tomorrow morning, drop me at the University and then come home. Because The Boss now has to work this has been scuppered a bit. Why can't I just drive myself into Chelmsford?

• I don't want to drive into Chelmsford on a Saturday Morning less than a month before Christmas (ew, ew, ew).
• I don't want to have to pay for parking at Chelmsford University (ew, ew, ew, ew).

The second one got four ew's.

The morning of the session is taken up by stuff that we won't be assessed on - The Diva and Stalin. The afternoon however, is. It's about The Dalai Lama and The Faber Book of Beasts for TMA03. I'm going in the afternoon. That way I can get dropped off and we don't need to pay for parking. What confuses me, is that it seems to suggest that the afternoon sessions take it all in within an hour. Now, I'm assuming that it's an hour each for one subject, so in total I'll be there for a couple of hours, just like a normal tutorial.

Part of me doesn't want to go as it already feels like a waste of a weekend, and I was rather looking forward to the weekend being relatively free and easy. Another part of me doesn't want to go because the relevant bit is in the afternoon and that's akin to me working in the afternoon which I simply don't do. And another part of me doesn't want to go because I'm convinced that as it's encompassing four different areas there will be a lot of people there who know even less about the subjects than my normal tutor group do. Oh yeah, and my Tutor isn't going to be there. You see, I'm sceptical about the whole thing. It'll be another two hours of my life where I sit in silence trying to hide my displeasure at stupid questions.

Moving on...Today the pest man was supposed to visit. He did visit in fact. We had a pest problem - some kind of rodent, we assume a rat or mouse (more likely to be a mouse) was trying to burrow its way through our ceiling. Had to be sorted before it chewed through an electricity cable and set the house on fire. I felt very guilty about having to call pest control in, but these things must be done sometimes. We had two visits previously from one guy. This time, it wasn't the guy that I was expecting. I was disappointed. The guy we've had in the past has been very talkative and nice. This guy was nice but not as talkative, he was also much older. He did however confirm us as pest free. That reads as though I am a social animal and that I am lacking/missing conversation. I'm not, in fact I much prefer talking to myself.

Now all we need to do is to coax the maintenance department into filling in the hole in the eves that lets the 'pests' in. Pfft. One day. They came round yesterday to do a different job, then said that they would come back today. They didn't. I assume it's because of the rain, just so long as they do come back on Monday, or at least early next week.

This weekend was looking so promising until I remembered that I have to go out.

I booked the hotel for our anniversary today. Yay. London Eye booked. Hotel booked. Now, what are we going to do while in London? Trying to entice The Boss to an art gallery has proved fruitless so far. Admittedly, I've only had one attempt, but he'll read this, laugh and still give me the same answer I am sure ;)

Sunday should be quiet. I hope. I've lost wherever that train of thought was going. I shouldn't google things during the middle of writing these.

For a while now, I have longed to put into words my experiences of when I have to visit the Mother in Law. It is a difficult thing to do because the entire experience engenders so much anger, and almost hatred, in me. Sometimes I experience some form of enlightenment where I let it pass me by untouched. Othertimes I cannot deal with it as effectively. This time, it mostly passed me by. I wasn't even passive-aggressive, I was merely passive.

This weekend just gone, we had to visit them for a little fireworks party that occurs every year.

Let me pause here for a second. I have no problem with The Father In Law - he's cool until one of his moments when he pitches up at our house unannounced, or asks the same question for the 100th time.

I always dread this occassion. Not because The Father In Law might get his hand taken off by an errant firework. No no. Merely because she (in this post "she" will refer explicitly to the mother in law) goes out of her way to ruin everything. She puts on her most dour face and can't muster up a single fucking smile the whole time that we are there.

And it doesn't stop there. She has to ruin things even further by complaining about everything that the Father in Law is doing. She tells us that he's doing it wrong. She asks why it has to be done like that. She chastises him like a child because he got dirty - FFS, he was stoking a bonfire, what do you expect? - she practically screams at him when she notices him sitting on an item of furniture while wearing apparently dirty clothing. Everything is prefixed with "Oh my God!", or a faked scream in agony. When someone asks her if she is okay, the answer they get is normally along the lines of "Of course I'm okay". When help is offered your head is bitten off quicker than vultures can form around a corpse.

I find these 'functions' to be something that I dread attending. In fact, myself, The Boss, the Boss's brother and The Boss's Brother's Wife all agree on that count. We only attend them because we have little choice. We're made to feel guilty. In fact, I can hear her voice saying "But he's bought all of these fireworks for you to see", yet in the same breath will beat him down like a petulant toddler for 'wasting' the money. She's so...capricious. She is more than that - she is completely two-faced. She'll say one thing to one person to meet some ends, and then the complete opposite to express her true opinion.

She never listens to what you say. She'll ask if you want something, whether that be a drink or a christmas gift. You can say "no" to her a thousand times. You will still get whatever you didn't want. You can say that no, you don't want to read something about her fucking Family History - a few minutes later some 100 year old photographs, newspaper clippings and a family tree will be in your hands and she will be waxing lyrical about it. There are occassions when she says "You can say no, it's okay", and you think that you have managed to get the message through, but still a few weeks later you get that horrid shirt you never wanted. Why is "no" so very difficult an answer to take? If someone tells me that they don't want something (regardless of whether they mean that answer or not), they don't get it. No seriously means no.

Her food is horrible. On Saturday evening, we were treated to some nasty mince meat and tomato water type stuff. I thought there might be some potatoes and vegetables to go with it. There were a couple of dishes of her signature sweet potatoes and carrots in orange juice on the table. Once putting that on our plates we wondered what was next. There was still a good half of the plate completely bare. WTF? If you're inviting people around for a meal, surely you make sure that they have a nosh? I'd rather slit my wrists than eat her food most of the time. Unfortunately I have little choice. The meals are always like that - barely anything on a plate, and nothing with a single bit of taste, as well as completely overcooked. She also forces us to take home nasty food and soup that she makes, in another case of not taking no for an answer.

I didn't want to invite her to our wedding, but I had little choice. I elected to ignore her for the entire day. I don't remember her once saying congratulations, or that we looked great. In the run up to the wedding she was disgusted that my Mother was either going to wear white or black to it. Why does it matter? If we suggested something that she didn't like, she would bitch at us about it for weeks trying to make us cave in. She tried to elicit a response from us about her outfit, but I wouldn't give an opinion. It was 8 months of her trying to grind us down. Epic fail.

But the worst thing has to be her attitude towards the way other people do things. If it's not the way she would [apparently] have done it, it's wrong. An example would be that a relative in a far flung land recently had a kid, but she didn't tell anyone that she was having it. That's the first place that this person went wrong, they were branded evil for that. Then she recalled about an experience in her life that happened almost 60 years ago, and used that as the reason for this other person being evil and wrong. Of course, because it's not the way you would have done it, it's wrong. However, there is a worse sin. The child that this person had is black. Surely that's a non-issue? It doesn't bother me or The Boss, or anyone else. What the hell has skin colour got to do with anything? They're another person, and all people are created equal. You should have seen the look on her face when she told us this. We were utterly non-plussed by it, frankly it's normal, surely a time for celebration? No, of course not. She does nothing but pour scorn on the people involved, and the situation. Why? Because it's different to how she lives/lived her life, therefore it must be the epitome of evil.

There doesn't seem to be the capacity for diversity in her brain. When we go out for a meal, she does nothing but point out mistakes, or say how it is better done, because her way is the right way. She treats everyone like a child too, and has no hesitation in telling people what they should or should not wear, or picking bits off people's clothing.

I have this amazingly passive hatred for her. I cannot bear to look her in the eye for fear that she will try to suck out my soul - or worse - that I won't be able to keep my mouth shut and I will tell her what I really think of her. I cannot stand to be in the same room as her, it makes my skin crawl. I really cannot stand her existance because, over the past four and a half years she has been trying to wear us down and make us as pathetic as her. The best option is to simply ignore her. If that means not going to see her except when it is absolutely necessary, then so be it. I would rather that than having to stay my tongue.

What will it be like when she realises that neither of her children, nor their wives, are ever going to produce for her that coveted grandchild?

Do you ever get home of a day and despair about your experience at work? I've been doing that for a while now about various departments and individuals. The dudes that I work directly with are cool, in fact we are a super cool department. It's those on the outside that are retards.

For a while now, I've been doing photographs for a group of people who are making a calendar for someone that is leaving. We managed to get quite a few together. There were 3 not done. Two of them eventually were chosen from photos that they already had. The last one...well, it was supposed to be of two departments together. I waited for a month for them to get themselves together and do it. It came to yesterday and it still hadn't been done. Eventually, the woman in charge decided not to bother persuing that one and used another photo that they already had.

How freaking difficult is it to get together for 10 minutes to take a photograph? They've had a month, in fact, they've had since July to sort it out, and they're telling me that they didn't have 10 minutes to spare in four months? What a crock of shit. They're too retarded more like.

What pissed me off the most was, what I think I mentioned before, that someone from one of these departments expected me to come in on a Saturday and take photographs at their event. I don't fucking think so. Who the hell does she think she is? Was she going to pay me? Of course not. She would have expected it to be 'a favour'. It completely throws me how selfish and stupid some people here are. Or rather, how much of an over-inflated idea of their self worth.

Today I got an e-mail from someone who is getting this calendar printed, who was saying that they had uploaded some of the photos to whoever they were using print (even though I had told them to wait until I had finished tweaking them). She was complaining that one of the photos was saying that the resolution wasn't high enough for printing. She couldn't tell the difference between the images? Some are almost 4000 pixels wide, and the one of 'poor resolution' was no bigger than her hand. Can't see that there's something wrong there? Truly, can't see that? How the hell can people have a proper job if they can't see the differences between things? It's such a massive difference when you look at the two images. Honestly guys...just how did you get a job? How do you survive out in the big wide world?

That last bit there reminds me of a woman whom I know in passing. She is the wife of one of the guys that I work with. She happened to be in the room with me once when I was watching some kids outside the office have an epiphany about the LED sign that tells them which teacher is in which classroom. It was such a dumb conversation that I sat open mouthed at it. She then said to me "Do you ever wonder how they will get on in the real world?"

I choked.

This was coming from a woman whose only job was for a few months at McDonald's, and who then decided to give up working completely because she was pregnant. A woman, who, at the first sign that she might be forced to go out into the big wide world to get a job, decides to get pregnant again. She does nothing but frivolously spend her husband's money on things that they don't need, and then complains that they do not have any money. A woman who dreams up grand ideas for herself, completely forgetting she has any kids or a husband and expects him to look after two kids while working full time. A woman who saw fit to dump two children on her husband at work while she went off for hours to do something that she wanted to do. Trust me, where we work is a million miles away from being suitable for children. And, perhaps most tellingly, a woman who seems to think that she can just drop into a science degree at a university and then immediately become a teacher. Errr...your children, woman? Last I heard, she was waiting until the youngest one starts school (in about 3 years time, by which point I will be close to finishing my degree with the OU), and then she would go onto University. It's about 40 miles away...who is going to look after the kids? Her Husband goes to work early, and comes home pretty late - he can't do it, but of course she is expecting him to.

It just riles me so much that people are that retarded. That people see nothing outside of their own personal space. That they cannot see they are pissing others off. That they are so selfish when it comes to what they want to do - their family can play catch up.

There's a world outside your own head people. Get with it.

So...we went to London on Friday. I bought The Boss tickets to see Russell Howard (of Mock The Week fame) at the Hammersmith Apollo for his birthday back in August. The show was on Friday night.

West London + Friday Night = Err...I'd give it a miss.

Really, it's less of "West London" and a Friday night, it's more "Hammersmith Apollo + Lack of Management = Err...I'd give it a miss". I am not joking when I say that I think it's the worst organised event that I have ever been to. RIAT was cool, and they had approximately 100,000 people, but then, it would have been organised with military precision. The Hammersmith Apollo was just appalling.

Take my advice here. If you want to see someone that is appearing at the Hammersmith Apollo, but you have the opportunity to go elsewhere to see them...definately go elsewhere.

The tickets that I got through Ticketmaster said that the doors open at 18:30. Cool, right? Well, we turned up at about 18:45. The tickets also said that the show started at 19:30. When did they start letting us in? 19:15. I kid ye not. Is 15 minutes enough time to get anything up to 5000 people seated? Is it bollocks. We were seated pretty quickly, probably by 19:20. We were sat for the next fourty minutes in sweltering heat and really oppressive noise waiting for something to happen. Yes, you read that correctly, the show didn't start at 19:30.

It got to 20:00 and the lights dimmed. Everyone seemed to think that Mr. Howard was coming on. We were all slightly disappointed to find that it wasn't. It was the warm up comedian, whose name I cannot remember, but who was rather amusing. He stayed for 20 minutes, maybe 25 at the most and then buggered off, at which point there was an 'interval'. An interval in a stand up comedy show? WTF?

We were sat for between 30 and 40 minutes, again is sweltering heat, and oppressive noise waiting for Mr. Howard to come on. He didn't come on until 21:00. We had been sat in those seats for an hour and a half waiting for it to start before he came on. It just smacks of piss poor management. If nothing is going to happen for two hours before the show starts, then don't open the fucking outside doors two hours early. Not exactly rocket science, is it? Don't allow 4000 - 5000 people to pack into a tiny little space and then leave them hanging around for two hours. I was amazed that I didn't pass out considering how hot it was.

FFS. It's not difficult. And another thing - don't print a start time of 19:30 on the tickets if the fucking thing doesn't start until 21:00. What's the point in that? Probably to get us in and drinking. Doesn't fool us. We sat through the heat without a drink because it didn't appear that they accepted cards. How is it sensible to have that many people loitering around for hours? FFS.

On another note, Mr. Howard was very good. I certainly enjoyed that part of it. I'd recommend people to go and see him...however, I would look for somewhere other than the Hammersmith Apollo if I were you.

The following morning we had decided to get some food somewhere and ended up walking about 1.5km further than we needed to. We stayed in Southwark, and took an exceptionally long route to Waterloo Station which took us about 20 minutes, when we could have walked for about 5. Heh...it was pissing it down with rain too. After a visit to CyberCandy on Garrick Street (yes, the same street as The Garrick Club), where we spent over £30 on sweets, we went for some lunch at Ed's Diner on Rupert Street, and then we made our way home. Wonderful. Lots of processed junk food, and a visit to Britain's capital of consumerism and capitalism - what a lovely way to spend 24 hours.

I, normally, have one of these.

But at the moment, I'm using one of these.
Why?

Turned the thing on the other day, noticed a line of dead pixels. A few minutes later I had arranged for a return. I posted it today.

Oh phonieo, phonieo, wherefore art thou phonieo?
I already miss it, especially as I spent 3 hours yesterday trying to get it to connect to the freaking computer.

They are supposed to dispatch it pretty much as soon as they get the one that's been sent back. It should arrive before 1pm tomorrow. Let us hope that they don't try to deliver on Friday when we're in London.

And, a little while ago, I had some asshat trying to entice me into work on Saturday. She can blow it out of her arse. FFS. I'm not paid to do photography for this place. I don't see why I should piss away my Saturday on some stupid function. Some people around here are just so...presumptuous.

I decided to do this entry in two seperate parts, otherwise it would be too long, and thus here is the part about the tutorials.

The first tutorial was painful. It was in Chelmsford, at the university which I had never been to. I arrived late, which didn't help, I felt like a fuckwit. I nestled down between a couple of people. The tiny room was full, there were at least 15 people there which was a complete departure from DD100 tutorials, where, more often than not, I was the only student to turn up. We went around the room saying who we were and why we were doing the course. I made the mistake of being a smart arse and saying that I was doing AA100 because "I didn't like sociology". My Tutor picked up on that (he agreed that he didn't either), and I made a mental note to take it a bit further at the end of the tutorial. And I did, I think I came on a bit strong and told him in no uncertain terms that AA100 was, from what I had seen so far, just thinly veiled sociology with pretty pictures. He concurred but said that it got better. I hadn't given him a chance. Guilt set in the following day.

As for the people in the tutorial group. I was one of only 2 people in the room who was not doing the course with the aim of becoming a teacher. It made my skin crawl to think that so many people in one concentrated area wanted to be school teachers. I had to hold my tongue, otherwise I would have told them what it's really like being a teacher - just from what I have observed, mind you. I couldn't believe the shallowness, the 'easy-way-out-ness' of it all. It really is like those spoof "Become a teacher" adverts from Armstrong and Miller. I don't just say this because I don't want to be a teacher, and therefore I don't think anyone should do anything different to me: that's just pathetic and it's not that at all. If you want to become a teacher, then fine, be my guest and become a teacher, but don't come crawling back to me when you find it too difficult to cope with, because it's not as though I didn't warn you. I quite fancy the idea of ending up as a University Tutor or lecturer - at least the people I would come into contact with truly want to be there and are not there solely out of legal obligation.

Another thing that I realised from the tutorial was that born and bred Essex people (out of the tutorial group there were only 2/3 of us who were not from Essex) really have no idea of the world outside of their own living room windows. They were openly admitting that they had never heard of a lot of things that they had been reading, even though these are cultural legends. They'd never seen these films or unbelivably famous paintings - where have you been for your entire lives? I was, once again, the youngest person there, so where have these people been for the first 40 or so years of their lives? I truly felt as though I was the only person in the room, bar the tutor (no idea what he was thinking), who had any idea of culture or cultural identity. I know that out of everyone in the room I was probably the one to have most recently been in a classroom setting, but does that excuse the inability to shut the fuck up and listen? No, of course it doesn't. There was no reason why people in that group could not have listened rather than asking the poor guy to repeat everything a couple of times. This was one of the moments that I almost couldn't stifle my disgust and I just wanted to beat people about the head with the text books. It made me realise that, perhaps in a complete paradox, I was both at a very comfortable depth and completely out of it.

The second tutorial - I was softer, much softer towards the tutor, but still pretty steely towards the other students. Only 9 of us turned up this time - was it something I said? It was again one of those moments when I couldn't believe what I was hearing from the other students. The second part of our assignment is to compare two paintings and they were bemoaning this saying that they couldn't do it. In my head, I was screaming. "Look at the two freaking paintings! Write down the differences between them. It's not bloody rocket science", and that is pretty much what the assignment booklet tells you to do, point out the differences. I really felt for the guy this time as people were asking him about it. He even prepared a sheet for us to take home about "Reading Paintings" - helps me, I guess it's going to help those who were bemoaning it. This tutorial, no-one wanted anything repeating, and TFFT. He's got a PhD for fuck's sake, he probably didn't envisage when he stepped up to receive it all those years ago, that he would be spending his future tutoring a load of Essex born and bred, culturally inept monsters who are incapable of listening to or reading even the simplest of instructions.

This all sounds snobbish, that I know and can identify. I probably shouldn't say a lot of this, but I must otherwise I feel as though my brain is going to explode - not that that feeling is in fact any different to any other day of the week at any time of the year. I find my steely, cold resolve and patience often surprises me, I find it amazing at times that I can keep my tongue. I guess I have had a fair amount of experience with that over the years. But, it is beyond me how some people can have such a little concept of so many cultural items and have never seen them. I get the impression I would be one of few people who goes to museums.

There was one fleeting moment in this second tutorial where I felt "I should be doing this. Don't give up". The tutor asked a question and was eliciting responses from us. He got a couple of responses from people but wanted more. I opened my damn huge mouth and gave a response that was a million light years away from the type of answer everyone else was giving. It was one of these moments when the room falls silent and everyone turns to look at you, either through shock, disgust or sheer bemusement. Everyone did just that. There was at least one instance of each of those three emotions. They looked at me like I was a nutjob, an asshat, as though I had been smoking something, and no, they didn't want any of it. He paused. Looked at me straight on. He seemed to be slightly taken aback by it, but he said he would talk to me about it at another time.

At the end of the tutorial I just left. I didn't feel as though I could hang around and talk about it - I was still a nutjob in the eyes of the rest of the students, that was an image that I didn't really want to perpetuate.

In case you're curious, the question asked was about emotions and the colour "red". Other students were answering "Anger" and "Hate". My answer was "December".

I feel the need to write about my course so far. It has only been officially going for about a month, and my first TMA is due by 14th November, I decided to write as I've pretty much finished the TMA and thus am moving beyond the first stage of this course.

In truth, when I first opened the course book a number of weeks ago I was cynical. I don't really care two hoots about Cleopatra, and once I got to the first half of this TMA, I realised that I most definately do not connect with the source text. You see, it was easier with sociology because there was no connecting with source texts: it was mostly a case of seeing data, interpreting data, writing about it. It's all truth, no lies (as much as government statistics can be truthful, I suppose), and it's less opinion but more telling the truth by using long words.

The Humanities took me by surprise. I don't think that I was expecting to be thrown into the first assignment and told to analyse a text, I thought that would come somewhat later after we'd been taught how to do it. No, we were just thrown straight in there. Fine by me, I'm always up for a challenge - too scared to ask for help, but always up for a challenge. I still have something to prove.

Having been thrown in at the deep end with this course I decided to get ahead, and now am something along the lines of 2 - 3 weeks ahead of where the planner tells me I should be. I was able to do this because we just had two weeks of half term when I wasn't working. Suits me. I think it has helped me to warm to this course, because from the outset I was rather cold - I was seeing the course as Blue, and not the warm orangey pink that the OU want me to see it as. It was not giving off an air of being welcoming, but rather just ushering me in the door to do my worst and then getting rid of me as soon as possible because I was a quitter.

And you know what...I did think of quitting. In the first few weeks, I seriously considered giving it up. I had barely done a single thing on the course, but I wasn't connecting with it, and meeting the people in my tutorial group didn't help - I felt even more out in the cold. A larger part of me wanted to quit than wanted to carry on - but the part that wanted to carry on was, at the time, only doing it out of a "but £600 is a lot of money to lose" ethos and that's a bad way to look at things. Now that I'm ahead, things don't feel so distant and disconnected from me, in fact I feel as though I have embraced them, taken them under my wing, they are my ducklings now and I will nurture them.

I hope that I can continue to nurture them, especially now that I've seen book two. Irish Nationalism, Violins and Gothic Revival Architecture (probably three passionate subjects for me) are all included.