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Archive for the ‘Baldy Tales’ Category

The other day, a friend of mine who has a decent desktop PC which I support, told me that he wanted to buy a laptop to add to it and outlined his various ‘needs’ with regard to it. As he was in London, he took a wander down Tottenham Court Road to have a look at what was available.

I had pointed him to look out for Lenovo/IBM Thinkpads, well made and highly functional. A little later he came back and said that what he wanted was something discreet but stylish in looks not some lump of ‘nasty plastic’, he does have a design background but it made me think about the whole concept of ‘beauty’ and question what it is…

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The following is a totally daft tale but sadly, true and concerns BT the so called telecommunications company who have designed a system to ensure that as a customer, you will never ever be allowed to ‘disturb a manager’ with a question or a complaint

On my return from living and working in the States I rented a flat in Bedfont, near Heathrow Airport and at the time BT launched ‘broadband’ which was technically fine except that they wanted you to pay for it monthly by Credit Card for some bizarre reason.

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Early last Saturday morning I called the Ambulance and my Mother was taken into Weston Hospital. It was an “odd call” in the sense that there was not any one specific ailment to point to like say a heart attack. Possibly she had Flu, certainly a leg infection that was very painful plus she has the most awful pressure sore on her bottom. In fact it turned out that she had three separate infections but none responded to treatment.

I visited her and spoke to her on Sunday morning when she was a gibberish truth to tell but as I looked at her lying in her bed, I was taken straight back to a Hospital in Wandsworth in the late 1970′s where her Mother was just prior to her death, exact same look. When I visited again later that afternoon, she was very deeply asleep although she was apparently pretty sparky that evening when my eldest Son, his wife and my Granddaughter visited her.

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The film “Groundhog” starring Bill Murray is one of my favourites and in some ways, we all have Groundhog experiences in life, mine and for over a year has been a personal saga of in-growing toenails which hardly sounds that exciting which, it isn’t to an outsider but both painful and crippling to the person living with them.

The truth is, like a latter day Boston Tea Party, my two Big Toes have risen up in rebellion against the rest of my body. They are demanding one to one attention on an unprecedented scale and will brook no negotiations upon the matter, their war of attrition continues unabated as they take it in turns to cause aggravation !

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So here we are again, the end of another year and decade, the start of a new one and what an odd year 2009 has been. At a personal level I am frankly amazed that my Mother is still with us, bits fall off and yet she still struggles on ! My own year has been dogged with repeating ingrowing nail problems and as a consequence, repeating infections and my immense frustration with Doctors ! But having said that, I close 2009 with the best photographic kit I’ve ever had and a very clear mind.

On the political front, Gordon Brown has stumbled from one crisis to another, all Members of Parliament have been bought low by the “Expenses Scandal” which I have always thought rather overblown but the public have used it as a stick to beat with in terms of “payback time” and a General Election must be held within 5 months… good fun all round.

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Today is my birthday so that I have now reached the great age of 64 which is probably equivalent to 54 compared with my Parent’s generation so I do intend to make the best use I can whilst I can enjoy good health and to be as physically active as I can.

My wish is not so much a long life as a fully active one that finishes suddenly rather than peters out in poor health and dependency, God willing. To my mind, continuing to live whilst you can do the things that you enjoy doing and still make a positive contribution of some kind is fine plus keeping yourself physically active makes good sense. You may not live longer but you will enjoy a better quality of life until the end.

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Well with Christmas almost upon us, time to take a break and concentrate on other projects and other people. The political scene which has been unbelievably dull and boring with journalists and news articles to match, will do little between now and the New Year when the campaigning for the General Election will start to gear up. In theory and given the state of the Country, there should be a March General Election to avoid Labour having a pointless Budget but given the usual dithering by Gordon Brown, it may well go through until May anyway.

I will check this blog over Christmas if only because I have Russian Spammers who mail in all the time. Why don’t ask me it is the most idiotic waste of time imaginable because it all gets trapped and deleted, even they are giving up on being spammers, the messages are now all in Russian not even English still I suppose it keeps them amused in their Gulag.

Cheers and see you on the other side.

PS. Yes I know, looking at the above I really can’t resist a ‘story’ !

At the beginning of October I mentioned in another piece that I had picked up a rather nasty bacterial infection called Cellulitus which inflamed one leg to twice the size of the other. I detest being “ill”, have never been the kind of person who described a cold as “Flu” and have a reasonably high pain threshold but I must admit that in the earlier stages, it was very painful.

Still the main problem was that as I have a housebound 89 year old Mother to look after, being “not well” can only be a part time activity at best and so all activities have to be prioritized into essential and non-essential tasks. To me though the biggest loss due to necessity was having to suspend my morning bike rides.

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Over the years and sometimes painfully, I came to learn that most things “take twice as long to do and cost at least, twice as much in resources – generally money, as originally planned. As a consequence, by the time I hit 40, I had evolved into a pretty reasonable Project Manager who delivered to time and to budget on the things I undertook.

However, the real “breakthrough” for me had come when I realised that the “development” elements or phase had to be totally separated from the “production” phase. Now whilst this may seem an obvious move, if you look at the most spectacular project failures, at their heart lies just this very problem whether it be on Military, Business or Civil Projects. It is sometimes simplified to a question : “What real problem are you trying to solve ?”

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To most I suppose, it may mean nothing but over the past year or so I have become very attached to our local Herons and perhaps simply because they are such magnificent looking creatures. I am no ornithologist and what I know about birds could be written on the back of a postage stamp but whether the pair of Seagulls I inherited from my Father who like a breakfast to the Herons on the Brue, I really like my “bird people”.

There is a very large old Heron on the Brue, he is a magnificent creature, pretty cool and not easily spooked but, for the past 6 weeks or more, I haven’t seen him and I worried. He probably has many fishing grounds and two younger Herons were fishing the Brue but, was he okay I asked myself. Then yesterday on the high tide, there he was, just lovely and to share…

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