Messages

'The Killing' is in volume 2.

[The King's Speech]

Today I got things I liked in the post, I had a good enough day at work, my car runs better after its service, I bought 175ml bottles of wine after work and had one with bread and stilton when I got home. I bought six halogen spotlight bulbs for £4, the rabbits went into their hutch without having to be cornered and manhandled, and the sausage casserole that was for dinner was delicious.

This evening I went to an art gallery preview show and saw some installations that were really exciting, prior to going to see The King's Speech at the same venue. It was a superb film. That's what a good film should be, not all this pointless and repetitive running around shooting.

...and Strontium Dog Agency Files vol.4 arrived in the post today.

[Jane Eyre]

Jane Eyre and I are going to be constant companions throughout February. If I had ever said you'd have to pay me read it, I'd have spoken truer than I'd intended.

Awww, no! Margaret Johns has died. 

This week I am mostly reading Strontium Dog Agency Files vol.2

 

Put the BB286 Gundam Daishogun on hold until you've attended to more pressing business!

This girl, yeah? Does she share your passion for Japanese... erm... oh God, I don't even know what they are. Mecha?

Oh noes! My new working hours involve three 6am starts per week, indefinitely.  

On the bright side
* that's three days a week I can go home at 1pm
* I've now got a proper, open-ended work contract and don't have to scrape around for bits of agency work to pay the mortgage
* I get two consecutive days off per week instead of having all my days off separated by work days
* anything I earn from self-employment is now 'extra' rather than essential
* I am pretty sure I can afford to get the roof fixed this summer.

Here's a minor impediment. I found myself agreeing with a Tory cost-cutting policy on education: namely that they want to reduce the number of secondary school teacher training places and scrap the maintenance bursary for everything but maths and science teaching*.

The reasons why I think this isn't anywhere near as evil as most Tory policies are:

1) there are already enough teachers for the time being
2) there are plenty of unemployed teachers because jobs are so scarce
3) by training up yet more teachers, we're denying jobs to people we've already spent money training who may never get their turn to teach
4) a lot of graduates go into teaching because they think they've got few career options, and for no better reason than that
5) most of the opponents of the cut are thinking in terms of students' employment prospects being harmed, but more training doesn't produce more jobs: it just keeps you busy and off the dole for another year
6) the taxpayer doesn't owe under-employed graduates a living
7) people tend to think, when things are good, that things were always the same; they forget that teachers had to pay for their own maintenance under the last Tory government anyway - it was only under Labour that they started funding teacher training properly again
8) there was no catastrophic shortage of teachers the last time the Tories kicked recruitment in the balls: a recruitment drive with incentives under Labour fixed the situation in time, just as the Tories are probably expecting will happen four years from now, unless the gaps are all plugged by the quarter of trainee teachers who graduated without jobs every year for the past several years.
9) lastly, when the Tories are cutting vital services left, right and centre, it doesn't make sense that they would lavish money on topping up the qualifications of graduates who had to borrow the costs of their undergraduate tuition in the first place!


* They're increasing primary school teacher training places at the same time.

Strangely, this reminds me of the restaurant at Tate Modern. Firstly, when I'm at an art gallery or a museum, I want a cafe, not a flipping restaurant. At Tate Modern you have to go right to the top floor for a cafe, a cramped and unloved space - actually, that could describe the gallery rooms themselves, but that's another story - an unloved space, where all the other plebby, provincial, poor people huddle together around tables strewn with discarded packaging and empty paper cups because there are too few staff to clear tables as well as serve customers. Nobody has time to empty the bins either.

But in the restaurant, for the benefit of the metroplitan, middle class customer they actually want to attract (no riff-riff!), you have to Wait To Be Seated. On no account should you presume to sit yourself down, take the weight off your feet and peruse the menu to see if you fancy ordering from it. No! Customers will wait to be seated, with undue ceremony by a besuited specimen whose presence serves no particular purpose when the point is to refresh yourself quickly and get back to looking at art. Only then will you be given a look at the menu, at which point you will see there's nothing you really fancy, coffee doesn't even appear on it, and you weren't planning on spending that much on lunch anyway. At that point, if you get up and walk out after being seated by a man in a suit it's going to seem discourteous if you get up and just walk out. Discourteous it is, then.

John Woo is remaking The Killer.

Wrong thread?

Nah, it wouldn't be a ring for obvious reasons (That and I don't know his ring size)

That probably rules out butt plugs as well.

This on top of trying to make staff pretty much harass customers and then try to sell them a bunch of rubbish that they don't really want.

Sounds like WHSmith. And PC World. And Dixons/Currys.

Go for it, my man! Bowling, McDonald's, the pictures, walks in the park, feeding the ducks, shopping, sharing a train journey, watching a video together - the sky's the limit!!!

She's even made it so you don't have to beat around the bush or use any inventiveness whatsoever: you can even get away with putting it as bluntly as "will you go out with me?"

Don't kick yourself. Just get it right next time you see her!

You say that as if tartare sauce would be a good thing.