Curses retracted

Yesterday I complained over my frustration over an online application form. Well today I got an email back from Anglia Ruskin University to say my form had been received and did I want to study full-time or part-time. I am relieved I do not have to fill in a hard copy form in full capital letters.

I was also able to do something that the net excels at. I linked two people with overlapping research interests. I introduced an economist to a mental health policy wonk. I am hoping they have interests in common and I would like to foster an alliance between LSE and the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health.

Slight frustration at the bike shop. I bought inner tubes with the wrong type of valves so I can't fix my puncture.

Dontcha Wanna Cry

I have spent four hours trying to complete an online application form for a course with Anglia Ruskin University. Each time I got a "Page not found" message when I pressed the submit form and when I pressed the back button on the browser I lost all the data I had typed in. I tried three times to submit the form and instead gave up and resorted to hard copy. That means filling it all in by hand. I don't relish the prospect of filling in all my educational and professional details by hand in block capitals.

So much for technology. The irony of this is that the course I am applying to do is called Internet Management and Web Design. You had thought they would have their online application form sorted.

Killing a Squirrel

It all happened so quickly. One moment my Whippet had run ahead into the trees by the water. The next moment I saw a woman remonstrating with him. He had a squeaking squirrel between his jaws. By that point it is too late to intervene as the dog will not let any human approach it. He shakes the creature until its neck is broken and then there are no more squeaks. He refuses to give up his prey and instead trots down to the mud beside the water's edge and digs a hole not quite deep enough to take the whole corpse. He flicks the earth back over the body but he can't quite cover the head. He will not return to that spot.

Now I don't feel strongly about squirrel rights. They are not a native species and they are prolific though I am embarrassed when Milo does his killing in a public park. I don't want to upset the sensitivities and I do recognise that other people have the opposite view to me. I don't want to run into the same kind of headlines as faced by this dog owner in Worcester.

It is not politically correct of me but I have to admire my dog's hunting skills. He was bred for it. You can try waving rags at whippets and that will excite them for a bit but there is nothing to beat actual wild live prey.

Anne Summers

Anne Summers is opening a store in King's Lynn in the new shopping precinct. I saw the shop fascia newly erected in one of the new shop units just near the Post Office.

I suspect the store will thrive. The Anne Summers catalogue is passed around like samizdat amongst female students at the College of West Anglia. Never mind text books when you can view lots of pictures of battery-powered toys in all kinds of garish colours. The nurse's costume was a winner and crotchless tights had them in hysterics. You name it. The girls of the College of West Anglia go for it. At least they did on the advanced secretarial course that I did a year or so ago. One of them was an ex-lap dancer and I shouldn't think that the girls of Lynn have changed that much. For that reason, I forecast bulging profits for Anne Summers.

The Blitz

I have just watched a Channel Four programme about the London Blitz, complete with archive shooting, re-enactments and eyewitness accounts. The Nazis wanted to bomb St Paul's. They didn't succeed. They bombed practicularly every street around the cathedral but the building stayed intact. The area to me now is so familiar that I find it hard to think of it as a war zone. Last time I was there I had gone to see Pericles with my sister Margaret and an American family. I suppose I take the road blocks for granted. Being a Londoner one just gets used to anti-terrorist road blocks and the like that litter the city. They just merge into the background. But to have an enemy air force overhead raining down bombs - that is much more terrifying. Now that the eyewitnesses to the war are fewer in numbers I think it important that we do hang on to their memories. It is vital that we do recall what it is like to be attacked and it important to remember how and why we resisted.

Ztroller hits Google

When I first decided to blog I had to come up with a unique name for my blog. I chose "Ztroller" because it was a made-up word with no particular connotations that I could think of. I tried Googling the word "Ztroller" and I got no results at all. That had to be a good thing. There were no web sites named Ztroller so I named my blog Ztroller. True enough there were one or two buggies named Ztroller with the word Ztroller in the text but no web site titles of that name.

Dutifully I registered my site with Google, Yahoo and Britblog but with no real expectation of recognition. With Britblog inclusion is simple enough. I think it took a day or so for me to be included.

I did a bit of a trawl round Norfolk web sites to see if I could exchange links with them and I linked my site to theirs. Two responded. I was working on the basis that if I linked to them they might link to me and I might actually attract readers. Attracting them to what is another matter. I have no grand plan for content or style. I just write about whatever is on my mind.

I really did not expect Google to pick up on Ztroller. After all I have read whole books on how to get your site listed by search engines and I know I have not consciously followed the advice of these volumes so it was a surprise to me today to type "Ztroller" into Google and see my web site come out top. That is great for people who know that there is a word called "Ztroller". I know their numbers are few but it is progress.

Afro Caribbean Hairdressers and Barbers

I was somewhat bamboozled the other day when a black consultant psychiatrist kept referring to hairdressers as suppliers of social capital. I had not come across the term "social capital" before but I took it to mean the support you get from friends, family and colleagues. It is a bit of a mercantile piece of jargon but I suppose the suits need some way of referring to mates without lapsing into the vernacular. One cannot be too colloquial in a formal situation. Jargon aside I could not understand the repeated references to hairdressers until I talked afterwards to a Jamaican friend of mine.

She explained that when people first came over from the Caribbean there were no hairdressers or barbershops for black people so the immigrants learned pretty fast that they had to cater for their own hair care. There was one lady who was a musician by profession. She wrote the theme tune for one of the snooker programmes and is one of the most successful women composers. No, I don't know her name. Anyhow this artiste needed a hairdresser so she set one up in Brixton. These hairdressers and barbers came to act as hubs for the the black community. You could leave messages for people. You could collect messages. Once you got off the boat in Liverpool you would go to the hairdresser to leave a message for your family and friends.

Many is the time I have passed the barber in Coldharbour Lane, Brixton and marveled at the sculptural skills of the staff. These guys would shave ornate designs into the scalps of boys and young men. They looked so cool. I knew guys liked to hang out there but I never imagined the wider social significance of barbers and hairdressers.

Pride before a Fall

Falling over is part and parcel of being a kid and it is a hazard for the elderly. You don't really expect to do it when you're middle aged as I guess I am but I fell rather dramatically this week when carrying two sacks of garden waste through my hall. There was a sheet of cardboard on the lino and my foot just slipped and I banged my elbow hard. It first sported one of those cartoon-type bumps and then the whole elbow area began to turn a fetching shade of purple but at least that fall was in a private place.

It is not so cool to fall over in public in the Walks. I was ambling down a muddy embankment when my trainer just slid beneath me. This time I didn't hurt myself but I did have the mortification of having to endure the rest of the walk with muddy jeans.

Dogs, having four paws, have an inbuilt stability advantage over us bipeds but even they can come unstuck at high speeds. My dog once tried chasing geese over muddy ground and he slipped and went head over heal and gashed his head against a stone. He still bears the scar. He was very lucky to miss his eye. He has never tried racing over that mud bath again.

Dogs and Copyright

I am glad two of my readers came back to me with comments about the Walks. I feel fairly certain that I must have met one of them because I know most of the regular dog walkers on the Walks. My dog is pretty distinctive. He is a white and gold parti-coloured whippet called Milo, usually to be seen chasing the squirrels. He would miss the trees if they were gone, principally because he could no longer pee against them but, as one of my commenters has pointed out, not all the trees are going to go.

I haven't been surfing or mixing it today or yesterday owing to a minor cold. Instead I have been wrapped up in bed with a book on publishing law and procedure. My dog took the very sensible approach of stretching out and going to sleep. The contents of the book did have a soporific effect on me but sadly they did not actually send me to sleep.

I feel I ought to be familiar with copyright law as once upon a time I passed an exam in the subject but the process of revision is hard. I keep asking myself hasn't the advent of the internet cast a bull into this precious little china shop?

Jargon

I have a problem. A group of us are supposed to draft a research proposal. That is fine. The problem is that I come from a journalistic background and I am intolerant of jargon. My colleagues are healthcare professionals and they use jargon and acronyms as a kind of shorthand.

I need a diplomatic way of asking them to explain themselves. I don't understand the beginning of the proposal nor the middle nor the end and none of the bits imbetween. Other than that I think I agree with the general thrust of the initiative! I am exaggerating slightly but I don't think I could explain it yet to other service users and that is a problem seeing as I am supposed to be on this group as a service user representative. Even the term "service user" is a bit of jargon that is probably not comprehensible to many a lay person.

So I need to draft a polite email to the proposal writer to explain my predicament with the earnest hope that he can help understand his wise words. The author is a good guy in my books. He actually cares about helping psychiatric patients get and keep jobs. He is a useful ally. I don't want to alienate him but I do want to understand the meaning of his words especially given the fact that my name is going to go on the end of this paper alongside those of my colleagues.

Glad to be Home

This evening I made it home. I always feel a sense of relief as I slip the dog off the lead and let him run loose in the Walks. It is as though this is a place where I can feel comfortable and at ease with myself. I know the trees in the avenue are going to go and that is sad but right now I do not need another issue with which to get angry. I am content simply to amble through the avenue and enjoy that this is my route home through a park.

I made it home in time to watch A Very Social Secreatry on television. I have never liked David Blunkett as a politician but I can't feel much of a sense of mirth over his temporary demise. The television play was done as a comedy and it actually made me feel more sympathy for Blunkett than perhaps I had realised. It is just I find his policies odious and not his blindness.

Seeing an old friend

Today I went to see an old colleague of mine from the Western Morning News. In our day the paper had around four reporters covering Plymouth but now they do not have any. They just take stories from PA and from the Evening Herald. It sounds like that paper is withering away. It felt fusty enough when I was there in the late eighties and early nineties but at least then it had hacks on the patch. Readers notice if there aren't any real news stories. They drop away.

That said it was very nice to see Polly and her two children Lucy and Joshua. We went to Kew Gardens and played in the puddles. Polly, being a considerate mother, had bought wellington boots for the children so they could stamp in the water to their hearts' content.

I can't say I was sorry to say good by to London for the second time this week. I find traveling on the underground so oppressive. I cannot think how I used to bear it when I did live in the capital. I did manage to buy the red suit I have been coveting for so long. The city is good for some things. I grant that but I am happy I live in King's Lynn.

Trip down Memory Lane

Today I attended a meeting at the Institute of Psychiatry. Last time I was there I was there to attend an examination for entry to the Royal College of Psychiatrists. The examinee was a would-be psychiatrist and he was being examined on his ability to interview me, an ordinary patient. Two examiners were present from the Royal College. I was paid the princely sum of £5 for my services. This time round I am to be paid my travel expenses from King's Lynn to London and the occasion today was a meeting of the mental health and employment research network. The reference to Memory Lane is a real one. It is an officially named road within the Institute of Psychiatry site.

Perhaps I am childish but I always want to smile when I see terribly serious people playing with different coloured marker pens and a flip chart. The exercise reminds me rather of Blue Peter. Have a brain storming exercise and encircle one category of ideas with a blue pen, another category with a green pen and the third category with the red pen. We ended up with two large pieces of paper covered with wise thoughts about mental health and employment. Actually the chairmanship was pretty good. We finished one hour earlier than the stated end time. That was thanks in no small way to assiduous time-keeping on the part of the chairman.

Sheep Worrying

My mother's dog Merlin (left) has been worrying sheep. At Wandlebury Country Park just south of Cambridge he charged a flock. The sheep began to flee but Merlin, being a whippet, rapidly gained pace on them. As his excitement grew so his speed grew faster until suddenly his muzzle hit a wire fence. He bounced off it like a rubber ball, picked himself and walked round in bemused circles. Later, when he calmed down a bit we were able to inspect his muzzle. There was a swelling the size of a coin and a small incision. Nothing major but maybe that will teach him not to run into fences. I think high-speed dogs are particularly prone to this sort of crash. My whippet Milo once bounced off a barbed wire fence with no apparent injury. He missed the barbs. The evidence is that Merlin does learn from injury. When he fell off a bridge into a moat of water he refused to use that crossing again. Maybe he will learn to look out for fences. I am not entirely sure that he will have learned to forgo the pleasures of worrying sheep.

Compromise

Sometimes one has to compromise. My London friends thought me weird for choosing to move to King's Lynn but by moving from an expensive housing area to a cheaper one I was able to move from a utilitarian 60s flat in a grotty part of south London to an Edwardian terrace house round the corner from Lynn's main park. I like the fact that I walk through the old town virtually every day and see all its fine buildings. It is a pity about the more modern developments but the grand buildings in town were largely built during the town's prosperous period. At one point this town was really rich and the splendid architecture shows it but the wealth did not last.

I have yet to meet anyone who actually likes the new shopping centre. The most I can hope for is that the shops prove profitable. An ugly thriving shopping centre is much better than a white elephant. So far the most of I've bought has been a packet of aspirin from Superdrug. I understand Stegbeetle's despair at the quality of the new town centre development but my bet is this. The Town Hall and all the other jewels of the town will outlive these new soulless concrete shop units.

Books for Change

Bookselling in King's Lynn is due for a shake-up. The town is currently served by two regular bookshops - Waterstones and Ottakers - but that may be changing. Waterstones, owned by HMV, has bid to take over Ottakers and I cannot see that Waterstones will want two bookstores in a small market town. I talked today with a Waterstones bookseller. She was not sure if her job had a future. King's Lynn is not great bookselling territory. I am sure that specialty shoppers go straight to Amazon. Both chains in King's Lynn rely heavily on television promoted titles and celebrity books. Lynn is not a university city. Even at the local college staff use every strategem possible to avoid referring their students to books, presumably because they know the average college student won't bother to pick up the reference. The town does boast two literary festivals a year but the festival organisers run their own book stalls without any help from either Waterstones or Ottakers. I would be really cheesed off if both stores were to close but I suspect there is probably enough local demand to justify the existence of one book store.

Cost of Advice

A few days back Stegbeetle raised the point about the cutback in services at the local Citizens Advice Bureau. I am a volunteer adviser. It is not very pleasant shutting the doors when you know there are people out their in a quandary in need of advice. That advice is free to the clients but it is not free to provide. There have been two staff redundancies and the staff trainer is going back to her old role as a general adviser. That leaves a vacuum which will have to be filled. Plus the King's Lynn Bureau is merging with the Marham bureau. This means a fair amount of upheaval for staff and volunteers but we still aim to give the same service to the public.

I am actually taking a bit of time out from advising because I need space to sort out my own affairs. I don't want my own preoccupations to distract me when I should be focusing 100 per cent on the needs and wishes of clients so for a few weeks I will be absent from Thoresby College, home of King's Lynn CAB.

One of the distractions I face is a self-imposed one. I am doing a short Open University course on Web applications. We are only two weeks into the course and already I am behind. I printed out a rainforest of handouts, so many in fact that I had to go down town to buy some page dividers so that I could keep my notes in order.

It is always interesting to take a wander through the new town centre these days to see which shops are up and running. I am not at all convinced that this is the best time to open a shopping centre. This may be the run-up to Christmas but retailers generally are feeling the pinch and I am not sure that the Lynn shopping scene can absorb so many retailers all at once. I noted today that W H Smiths reported good figures - that is a break from the general trend. I am pleased at that. I have a fondness for Smiths. I buy loads of newspapers and magazines there but I never buy stationery goods at Smiths. I go to Stationery Box because they are cheaper. Most high street shops are down. I am wondering whether King's Lynn is going to find itself with a shortage of shoppers and a surfeit of stock. Inevitably there be some shopaholics who will find their way to the CAB to have their debts sorted.

The trouble is this. You never tend to see clients until the problem has grown out of hand. I have an idea that I might write a book aimed at people with serious illnesses, injuries and disabilities about how best to make the most of their educational and vocational future. A populist book aimed us folk with the problems. About Mail Money standard in terms of readability. It is just an idea as yet. I have not sketched out a contents page or written any sample chapters but if I do do it it will have to be quick if it is to take advantage of the government's reform package.

Getting a Handle on Handel

There is something reassuring about the unchanging demands of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music. The syllabi have varied slightly but not dramatically. Coming back to music study after a break of some 25 years is like returning to a familiar touchstone. You still have to play scales and arpeggios. You perform three set pieces. You do aural tests and sight reading. It is the same routine now as I faced when I was a child.

For me the most daunting challenge is the performance of the set pieces. I don't know what they are yet as I am doing the exam next June and the pieces for 2006 have yet to be published. What I worry about most is my technical facility. Scales and arpeggios improve with practice but there is a limit to how much you can improve a piece merely by slogging away it. Sometimes my playing standard actually deteriorates the more I try to improve. That is usually a sign that I was not ready for the piece in the first place. However right now I am learning a Handel piece:
an Allegro from the 2nd movement from Suite no.2 in F. It is on the 2005 exam list. The right-hand consists of non-stop quavers while the left-hand accompaniment consists of quavers. All very Baroque and jaunty. I have only been going at it for two weeks and already I feel quite confident with it. That is good because it makes me feel that I am ready to have a go at the grade 7 exam.

Coffee Wars

When I first moved to King's Lynn five years ago one of the things that attracted me was the lack of identikit coffee shops on every street corner. Phone shops there were a plenty but coffee shops - no.

There was and still is a café called Crofters in the basement of the old Guildhall. The setting is great. It is an old wool warehouse with a vaulted ceiling but the food is dull and the air is fusty. There also used to be a cafe in Tower Street called Downey's. The owner carried out an expensive refit and shut down shortly after - I assume through lack of business. There was also Café Crème, also in Tower Street. That too has shut. The windows are white washed. Tower Street has rather been blighted by the nearby building works. Lately another cafe has opened at 3 Saturday Market Place. It is nicely furnished but often empty. People say it is pricey. Its location a little away from the main shopping streets probably does not help. There is a café attached to a baker's shop. The lighting is grim and the food is unispired. The town has outlets of Macdonalds, Burger King and Whimpey but I don't patronise these establishments.

I'm the type that likes to nurse a single cappuccino for hours as I sit and read a book. That probably doesn't make me the ideal patron but at least I am a regular patron. I rather like to relax in a cafe with an individual sense of style so it is with mixed feelings I learn that the revamped town centre is to be home to two new coffee shops, both of them chains.

Caffè Nero and Costa Coffee are probably run by hard-headed managers who would not bother investing in a town unless they thought they could make money. Both chains have chosen better locations than the indepentally run cafés. I assume they can afford the higher rents charged in the more central locations. I do like the ambience of the Caffè Nero branches in London but they are not cheap and one Caffè Nero is much the same as another. Walk down a high street in the UK - any high street - and you'll see much the same brands. When I was in Stratford last weekend I saw Pizza Express and Pizza Hut. We have them both in King's Lynn. I would rather see the shop units occupied and trading but I think it is a bit of a shame that there are not more flourishing independent tea and coffee shops for those of us who like to dawdle over the dregs of a cup as we read just one more chapter.

The Convert

My 13-year-old niece Stella did not want to come and see a Shakespeare play. "I don't understand him," she told me and I fully expected her to shun the family's invitation to her to see A Midsummer Night's Dream at the RSC's theatre in Stratford Upon Avon. Much to my surpise Stella came. I think the chief draw was having the chance to see her friend Jessica in London the night before. Unlike me she did not dress up for the occasion. I was wearing my new tweed suit. She was in jeans and a pink hoodie. She left that auditorium face glowing and eyes shining with a huge grin on her face.

Undoubtedly the comic highlight was the performance of the rude mechanicals. The wall was brilliantly played. At first the actor playing wall stood foursquare to the audience feet together. His wall costume stretched down from his face to his waist leaving his tight red underpants exposed. The lovers could only speak through the crack between the wall and, when they launched on their amorous exchange, it became evident that they had to communicate by crouching down and speaking through the crack between the legs of the actor playing wall. Each time a lover spoke the wall actor would jump round and thrust his groin into the face of the speaking lover. The actors playing the star-struck lovers made much of their disgust at having to face the groin of the actor playing wall. The players had the auditorium in stitches, everyone including Stella. I don't think she realised Shakespeare could be so crude.

Whatever Suits You

A little while back I wrote about a darling little red suit I had seen in Hobbs. I originally saw it in Cambridge. Then again I saw it in London. They did not have my size in stock and in any case I told myself that red is an impractical colour for a suit as it is bound to clash with more colours than a suit in a neutral colour and yet the more I tried to convince myself the more I began to covet that suit. So today I went back to Hobbs in Cambridge to buy the item but again they did not have my size in stock. The suit had been very popular but it had been in the shop since the summer and was now at the end of its run. Downcast I left the shop and went in for a bit of retail therapy in Heffers. I bought a book on the history of computer games and convinced myself that this was an educational title, good preparation for the computer course that I am about to do. I had tea and a chelsea bun in a cafe that used to be known as Belinda's and then I steeled myself to go back and buy a black and white tweed suit from Hobbs. I got lots of cheap and colourful sweaters from Marks to go with my new acquisition and I tried telling myself that a black and white fleck suit was a more practical colour choice than a red suit but in my heart I was not convinced.

So why this desire for formal wear? After all I normally go around in jeans, a t shirt, a fleece and trainers. You see this weekend I am going to see A Midsummer Night's Dream with my family at Stratford-Upon-Avon. This is a big occasion. It is my family's celebration do for my fortieth birthday. One sister is flying down from Edinburgh together with her reluctant 13-year-old daughter. (The child is not a Shakespeare fan). Another sister is coming from Cambridge as are my mother and me. We are staying in a hotel and the dogs are going into kennels. Mother does not want me to wear my jeans. Not only are they denim. They are also frayed and dirty. You would have thought a forty-year-old would be old enough to decide what she wore at her birthday party but then you have not met my mother.

Delegation

When in doubt delegate. At least that is what I did today. Peter the carpenter finished varnishing my shelves while my mate Angela hacked a rampant buddleia down to size. By accident she knocked a loose down pipe free of its fittings so I had to call on the services of Mike the builder as that pipe carries away the waste water from my bath and basin. My function was to feed and water people and hand over wads of notes. I lack the skill to fell treelike shrubs or to fit shelves or to fit down pipes to walls. I do not have the tools either so it is just easier to hand the job over to other people. I am quite prepared to erect flatpack furniture but that is about my limit.

My 75-year-old mother puts me to shame. Drill in hand today she fitted a post box to her garage wall. This manouvre is meant to relieve the postman of the need to walk up the garden path. The postman had been bitten once by my mother's whippet Merlin and the hound had taken to baying loudly at the timorous postman. I would have been defeated by the challenge of attaching a post box to a brick wall but not so my mother. However I do have to smirk slightly that even she could not fix the loose mechanism in her WC. She called in a plumber to deal with that. Even my Mum has limits.

Home Improvements

"I like to set aside weekends for home improvements," my cousin Janet mused to me. "An especially good one involved the replacement of the cheese grater. The old one was broken and it didn't grate well. It hadn't grated properly for years but we only got round to replacing it the other weekend."
It is nice to hear that a property litigation partner can get so much joy out of such a cheap investment. Janet's household is a paradoxical one. On the one hand much is clearly invested in the three lovely kids, all of whom are privately educated. Their huge house is a solid one in a good Islington street but the matriarch of the home still takes such pleasure in cheap but invaluable kitchen implements. The major drawback of the home, at least from the point of view of the middle child, was the lack of a paddock. Phillipa covets a horse. She goes riding every week but one of her friends has been given a horse. Ah, such is envy...but I didn't feel in the least envious of Janet's home in London. Janet likes the anonymity of the city but I dislike it when you can't say hello to people as you pass them on the street. I am a small town dweller at heart and in fact. It was a good thing I was only in the city for the weekend.