warning: what follows is a rant. a petulant, self-indulgent, unkind, stomp-my-feet-temper-tantrum kind of rant. look away now if you don’t want to read further.

it’s the kind of rant borne of two cruddy, miserable days. it all started yesterday morning when the tube was suspended – i had to walk to the rail station with blistered feet in heels, and when i arrived, i was greeted with the sight of a massive hoarde of people bunching up and spilling out of the station.

this is one of the things i hate about brits: the tendency when everything goes tits up, to just wait like a herd of lowing, passive cattle, waiting for someone to tell them what to do. (told you i was going to get nasty.)

and the fact that i hate that characteristic just irritates me even further when a service like the tube (a very expensive and ill-run public service) seems to go haywire far too often. and people just put up with it.

so i was in a crummy mood. they weren’t letting people into the rail station (even though the rail *was* running, unlike the tube), and they were letting a bunch of people out a side exit, and i saw a few people slip into the station through the side exit. hell, i had a rail pass (and therefore didn’t need to validate my ticket at the gates) so i tried to do the same.

only to get violently shoved by the rail employee. yes, i was physically assaulted by a guy in a fluorescent vest on a fucking power trip who shouted, “what’s wrong with you?! you’re jumping the queue!” (i wonder if he would have dared lay a finger on a male passenger?)

because really, that’s all he cared about. not the fact that i pay through the nose for a tube service that never functions properly. not the fact that i was severely inconvenienced and made late for work. not the fact that the rail service which *was* running, was being curtailed in the name of crowd control rather than expediency.

no, no. the fact that i jumped the fucking queue gave him the right to shove me with his shoulder like a linebacker and scream in my face.

(my formal complaint of being physically assaulted, is now being dealt with – had i not been so shocked, i might have had the presence of mind to call the cops at the time.)

so i got home, and i was annoyed all evening. then today, i walked out the door to see this:

this is the shit from the neighbours. they don’t seem to understand that the front of my house is not a rubbish dump, so they regularly engage in what’s called “flytipping” here – illegal dumping of garbage, refuse, waste, etc. they dump their household rubbish bags in front of my house. they dump their old furniture in front of my house. they dump computer monitors and old ironing boards in front of my house.

this morning, i was treated to several piles of accountancy textbooks they’d apparently decided they no longer wanted. so i shoved them back in front of their driveway, and went off to work.

i had another crap day at work dealing with other people’s incompetence. (gah – can’t *anyone* do their jobs properly??!) and then came home to the pile of books… moved *back in front of my house*, papers flying up and down the street. i stormed off to the hardware store on the corner (who abut the alleyway where the entrance to these people’s flat is) and asked them if they knew who was dumping the shit. turns out, they don’t have anything to do with the people living in the flat, but have just been calling the council to come clear away the rubbish every time. same as i’ve been doing.

so this is what happens: we all know who dumps the rubbish. the council comes and cleans it up. then they just dump more rubbish again. and my tax money pays for it. argh!!!!! it’s beyond infuriating.

and finally, to cap it all off, the postman decided in his/her infinite wisdom, to leave my amazon parcel outside my front door – probably because they were too lazy to make out the collection card and drag the parcel back to the depot. when i found it, the two books which i was soo looking forward to, which were supposed to be inside were long gone.

this is what happens, though, when you’re an expat – a bad few days turns into a bout of effing and blinding about what a shithole of a country you live in, how you can’t believe you live in such a back-asswards place that’s stuck in the victorian era, how you can’t wait to get out because everyone and everything is supremely incompetent. how the most mundane things (transport, litter, post) can’t even get done properly, the natives are cattle, and it’s all gone to hell in a handbasket, god save us when the olympics arrive!

the little (and not so little) annoyances pile up until they become a mountain of self-pity that you can’t seem to dig yourself out from under. the difficulties of daily life become magnified until you attribute them to an entire country and people who can’t possibly do anything right, and it would all be different *if only you lived somewhere else*.

and i do want to live somewhere else. i am keening to live somewhere else. this smae thing happened with new york, and it happened with boston – the familiarity really does breed contempt. but when it’s another country and culture, it’s just so much easier to say the brits suck, than to acknowledge that urban living can be crummy sometimes. the city closeness starts to press in around you until you feel you can’t breathe, but you can’t yet escape, so let’s blame everything on the british. you can’t appreciate any of the beauty of the city (look! historic buildings and sushi restaurants side-by-side! the river and the theatre and the lights and the multi-culti populace and the palace!) because you’re so busy staring downcast into the dirty gutters and breathing the bus fumes. i’m sure vancouver doesn’t have any dirty gutters and bus fumes, and it certainly doesn’t have any sucky brits.

this will pass. i know it will. but right now i’m looking down at the gutters. the city is squeezing the life out of me, i have no books, and there’s rubbish outside my front door.

bloody britain.

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my biggest pet peeve these days? titles.

over here in the u.k., titles are *mandatory* for practically everything. every form you fill out, every account you open, every online purchase you make, you are required to choose a title.

stop! until you choose a title, you may not pass go! you may not buy that set of plastic mixing bowls for £9.99 until you answer the very important title question!

and while most of the time, it’s the standard mr./mrs./ms./miss choice, being that we live in the u.k., often the choices will include the more exotic honourifics lord/lady/sir/dame etc. etc. etc.

i’ve always been against titles on principle – there are very few instances where my gender and/or marital status are required knowledge for a retail exchange or provision of services to be carried out smoothly and successfully. it’s really wholly unnecessary in 99% of all instances. but in such places where it was required, i have always, always used ‘ms.’ as a title – partly as a nod to second wave feminism, but mostly because it’s none of their damn business whether or not i’m married and i like being cryptic.

over here though? even though i’ve always selected ‘ms.’ every bloody time they force me to use a title? they still put ‘miss’. without fail, on every item where jonno’s and my own differing surnames are included, i am ‘miss’. but even on my own bank account, my paycheque, my junk mail… all ‘miss’, every last one of them. for some reason, ‘ms.’ in the u.k. is not widely used… or, it would seem, acknowledged.

frankly, it pisses me off to no end. the insistence on a title where none is needed (does it *really* make any difference to my veg box order if i am baroness jen, or professor jen, or mrs. jen?) is idiotic enough, but in a country where arbitrary class designations are still so rife (as if by being born into a “noble” family, lord poshbottom of earlchestertonshire is somehow better than anyone else), and where the outmoded queen still sits on her throne pretending to be important in the world, i can kind of understand it.

but to force me to use a title and then not even honour my elected honourific? well that’s just galling. i may not think that titles are important, but to blatantly disregard what i choose to call myself is downright rude.

so lately i’ve been rebelling in my own childish, but amusing way – selecting titles at random. my grocery account is under ‘captain’ jen, my cable bill arrives for ‘mr.’ jen, and so on, and so forth. if they’re going to force me to play their little stupid, bullshit, classist game, then play it i will. it’s petty and small, i know, and entertains no one but myself.

but i can’t wait to use ‘marchioness’. or hell, maybe i’ll just start making some up.

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the lies they’re slanging around in the u.s. about healthcare, have now reached my shores.  i said the other day that i wouldn’t dignify the absurdity with a response, but now people with absolutely *no* experience of what they’re talking about, are slagging off my nhs.

that’s right, my nhs. the system i have, in the past 6 years, come to regard as quite precious to me.

in case anyone stateside is looking for some truth, here it is:

in this country, we view basic healthcare is a *fundamental human right*.  that means it is free at point of service to everyone, regardless of age, ethnicity, gender, weight, sexuality, pre-existing condition, income level, employment status, maternity status, mental status, or disability. that means when i go to the doctor, i never once have to take out my wallet. not once.  that means i don’t have to worry about eligibility periods, or COBRA payments, or copays, or excluded conditions, or health savings funds, or coverage levels, or HMOs, or PPOs, or staying in-network, or annual deductibles, or employer contributions, or payment plans, or contract clauses, or invoices.

i simply go see my doctor, and they treat me.

it’s not perfect – in fact, far from it.  but it’s still a damn sight better than any system currently in place in the u.s.

oh, and if i don’t like it? i can go private.

but don’t take my word for it.  check out the facts for yourself here and here.

i’m tempted to say that if people are stupid enough to buy into the lies and fearmongering, they’ll get the system they deserve…  but they won’t.  because what everyone actually deserves is universal healthcare.

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back in april, when the metropolitan weather office was optimistically forecasting a “hot and dry” summer season ahead, i sniggered. in may, when they began warning of a genuine heatwave and recommending people paint their houses white, i laughed. i nearly bust a gut laughing – that info practically became the punchline to the running joke that is british summer. it may take me a while to catch on, but after 6 years here, i’ve finally come to understand its cruel annual tease.

still, in spite of my cynicism, some part of me was kind of hoping it would prove true. sadly, this morning’s news was an all too familiar refrain: august will be wet and cold. as per fucking usual.

so, unsurprisingly, no sun outdoors. luckily, i’ve got my own supply in…

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a few years ago, we bought a secondhand television (£50).  we buy a monthly cable package (£40).  we pay for our electricity quarterly (£100).

all the ingredients you need for watching television, yes?

oh no, not so fast.  here in britain, if you wish to *use* the television, electricity, and cable you’ve already paid for, you need to pay the government an additional £142.50.  per year.

see, the uk has this public commodity called the bbc.  it’s essentially the same thing as pbs back in the states – publicly subsidised media which is supposed to provide independent, impartial and educational media to the masses.  now, leaving aside the matter of bias (because it’s simply not possible for media to be entirely free of bias, and the bbc is no exception), the bbc is funded by this “television license”, which is collected annually from every household which owns a functioning television.  this pays for 8 national television channels, 10 radio stations, the online website, and some regional/local media. (other services are paid for through other funding streams).

lots of people argue that they don’t use any of the bbc services, therefore should not have to pay the tv licensing fee.  personally, i have no problem with paying for public services i don’t use – i do it all the time, in fact.  i pay for roadworks when i don’t drive, education when i have no kids, libraries which i don’t visit, etc.  i believe these things serve the greater public good, and i’m happy to have money withheld from my paycheque to contribute.

what i have a problem with, is the notion that this television licensing fee is not a flat tax.  because while it may have begun in 1946, days when few people owned a television, and the bbc was *the* only broadcaster, (and therefore only taxed those people who actually used the service is supported), in 2009, the idea of television as a luxury which is taxed only for the 98% of families who own one, is just dumb. even sillier, it’s not the *television itself*, or even the actual service (e.g. transmission), but the *reception* of the service, which is taxed.

i don’t have to buy an annual water license for receiving my water, or electrical license for allowing current into my home.  yet every year, i have to pay for allowing television airwaves into my living room.

furthermore, the method of collection is so blatantly inefficient as to be laughable.  the idea that you have to renew your license each year, means that there is an amazing breadth of scope for omission/evasion.  if they don’t have you on their database as having a valid license, they first send you a standard warning letter.  more than 20 million warning letters are issued each year.  if that fails to produce the desired response, the tv licensing people come personally knocking at your door, and try to get you to allow them into your home.  they have “tv detector vans”, which can tell if you have a television operating in your household.   they make around 3.5 million personal visits each year.  they threaten prosecution, tell you that you’ll be “cautioned and interviewed”, and could be subject to £1000 fine.

according to their 2009 report, the bbc spends they spent 4% of all revenue from the television tax on collection and enforcement.  £181 million each year is lost through evasion, about 5% are evaders.  the cost of collection is £122 million, of which, £73.4 million is spent on direct collection and enforcement.  of the 3.5 million visits, 603,000 end up as “sales” (i.e. people purchasing a license), which roughly adds up to income of £84.4 million pounds.  £20 million was garnered in prosecution fines.

in other words: they spend £73.4 million a year to collect £84.4 million pounds, plus an additional £20 million from people they prosecute (minus prosecution costs, natch, which they’ve neglected to specify in their report), and continue to lose £181 million per year.

doesn’t sound terribly efficient to me.

if all this rigamarole sounds antiquated, bizarre and farcical, it’s because it is.  for fuck’s sake.  stop the intimidating and inefficient harassment campaign.  collect the television tax like every other tax applying to household utilities – either at the point of service (add an additional sales tax to cable, satellite and internet services), or as paycheque withholding (like we pay for almost all other publicly subsidised infrastructure and services).  easy peasy – no opportunity for evasion, no need for enforcement, no adversarial intimidation.

good god, even traffic enforcement is more advanced than the tv licensing regulation!  why are they still stuck in an era where people require little pieces of paper that prove they’re entitled to operate a television?  we no longer live in 1946.  the bbc need to stop pretending that we do.

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just when i begin to think i just couldn’t be more fed up with this city, it has a way of turning around and surprising me into falling in love with it all over again.

an incredible sunny warm summer evening.  husband on the barbeque.  wimbledon on the television. and this view at the end of the couch.

you’d be too lazy to blog too.

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8 years living in nyc. number of subway strikes during my residency? zero

21 years living in boston. number of subway strikes? zero

2 years living in montreal. number of subway strikes? zero.

6 years living in london. number of tube strikes? not counting the one that began today and runs to thursday? i seriously can’t even remember, what with the constant strike threats and partial strikes and strike balloting and full-scale strikes and narrowly averted strikes… think i’m exaggerating?  well let’s just see…

since march 2003:

what a fucking joke.

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“i’m going to shoot you!!!  i’m going to shoot you!!!  i’m going to shoot you!!!”

i abruptly surface from the depths of a dream to hear someone screaming this in the street just below our bedroom window. it’s 3 am.

shaking jonno awake – “did you hear that??!”

“i’m going to shoot you!”

jonno rolls over, “wha??”, and then attempts to go back to sleep.

adrenaline pumping, i get up and call 999 in the dark, relay the details whilst peeping out the window to try to see what’s going on, then creep back into the bedroom.  jonno is still lying there.

“c’mon, let’s move away from the window.”  “why?”  “because if someone’s going to start shooting, i’d prefer to be as far away from the bullet trajectory as possible!”  he reluctantly gets up and pads to the back of the house with me.  the cat crawls under the bed.

people still shouting outside.  surely someone else has called the police as well?  this is a residential street.  the shouting moves up the street away from our house.  i crawl back to the window looking for the police.  a minute or two later, they arrive, bringing an ambulance as well.  they stop in front of our house.  the phone rings.  it’s the police, wanting to know which direction the guys went in.  i indicate the general direction and they head off.

we climb back into bed, and lie there for a bit, heart still racing.  i say, “that’s the thing about living in a city – everyone always thinks someone else must’ve called the police.”

j says, ” well if it made you feel better, it’s good that you did.”

“*what*!??! what do you mean, ‘if it made me feel better’??!  what would you have done?”

“i wouldn’t have called the police.  people who announce they’re going to shoot someone, never actually shoot someone.”

“oh really?  is this in your vast experience of witnessing shootings?!”

“i’m just saying that people who bluster about it never do it.”

“you know, i’ve lived in major cities since i was 17, sometimes in rather dodgy areas.  i’m as jaded as the next urbanite, and hardly someone who overreacts to general city craziness.  but when someone’s shouting that they’re going to shoot someone, i’m not going to be the one to make that judgement call about whether or not they really mean it.  i’d rather call the police and say, ’someone is threatening to shoot someone outside my front door,’ than call and say, ’someone just shot someone outside my front door.’ ”

so, dear reader: what would you have done?  ignored it on the assumption that it was just bravado? or called the police?

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boris johnson, the buffoon mayor of london, made a campaign pledge to fund four rape crisis centres around the city – a resource sorely needed in a city where reported rapes increased by 14% last year alone, yet only 6% of all rapes result in a conviction.  just a year ago he said:

I have made it a key Manifesto pledge that I will use GLA funding to substantially increase financial support to the charity sector working with the victims.   There is currently only one Rape Crisis Centre in London – located in Zone 5.  I will provide the funding for four new Rape Crisis Centres in London, paid for by reducing spending on the Mayor’s personal press officer budget.

today he reneged on that pledge.

in related news, the cab driver who was convicted of a dozen serial rapes over 18 months, (and suspected of attacking up to 85 people back as far as 2002), was sentenced to at least 8 years today.  he went unapprehended for so long in part because the sex crimes unit of the metropolitan police was understaffed and in disarray.

yet boris outlined a new domestic violence strategy in which he says:

For any plan to work we must have the police, local authorities, community organisations, health sector and criminal justice system all working together across borough boundaries. We also need to get tougher. Tougher on the perpetrators of violence, who currently enjoy a ridiculous level of immunity, and tougher on the attitudes that condone violence against women.

no kidding boris.  tell me when you’re willing to get serious about it, instead of just paying lipservice. actions speak louder than words.

women in london deserve better.

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today is my six year anniversary of my arrival in london.

in many ways, i think i learned more about myself by getting on that plane than probably anything else i’ve ever done in my life.  charging off into a completely unknown future.  it felt like both a running away, and a running towards – what? at the time i couldn’t have said.

i know now, that that indescribable, ineffable *something*, was a self i sensed existed somewhere within, but couldn’t quite visualise, and it took throwing myself up against some hard things to begin to determine her outline.  yet while the emergence of this new self coincided with landing in new city, it wasn’t the scenery that changed so much as the internal landscape.  although i arrived lugging two heavy suitcases full of stuff, i left a whole lot of baggage behind.

“wherever you go, there you are.”  any expat or traveller will tell you how true that is.  there is something about the act of uprooting that challenges you beyond the superficial acclimatisation.  it forces you to take stock of yourself in a way few other experiences can.  it tests your ability to be independent, your ability to operate outside your comfort zone, your ability to make and maintain relationships, your ability to learn and internalise language and customs, your ability to deal with loneliness and obstacles, your ability to navigate new environments.  in short, it gets to the core of everything you know about your place in the world, and turns it upside down.  then gives it a good shake, like a snowglobe, just for fun.

the trick is not in learning to right yourself – the trick is in learning to live upside down.  and be happy in it.

because getting off the plane was just the beginning.  getting off the plane and stepping into the unknown, was actually the easiest part.

it’s taken me 6 years to learn all that, in lessons big and small.  so as i contemplate uprooting in the near future, for canada (or perhaps other parts as yet unknown), i look back and wonder: can i really do it all again?

some days it is louder than others, to be sure -  but that piece of my brain that lights up, and the pit in my stomach that leaps up into my chest like it’s cresting a rollercoaster, ring out with a resounding and definitive answer:

hellz yeah.

the prize fighter inferno – the going price for home

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happy mardi gras! for those of you stateside, the uk celebrates “pancake day” for shrove tuesday. which entails eating pancakes for dinner – an enterprise i could thoroughly get behind, except that “pancake” here refers to a crêpe. with lemon and powdered sugar. or golden syrup.

they do sell bisquick here though, thank goodness, so we had fluffy american shortstacks with maple syrup and butter.

the bottle of maple syrup we purchased says, “delicately smooth taste of butterscotch and creme caramel.” um, no. butterscotch tastes like butterscotch. caramel tastes like caramel. and maple tastes like maple.

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it’s midnight.  the people in the flat one down, one over from ours are having a party.  which apparently includes extremely loud techno music, lots of screaming/yelling/shrieking/singin at the top of ones lungs, and stomping (??!).  the whole apartment is shaking and it’s just ridiculously excessive, even for a friday night.

in the uk, you do not call the cops for this.  noise is a council problem.  this is what we pay our council tax for.  so at about 12:30, we ring the emergency noise line, and they say they’ll send someone out.  even more shockingly, no one in the flats immediately adjacent or above/below this craziness has bothered to complain.

a little green wandsworth car comes out.  and then leaves.

jonno rings back the noise line.  apparently they cannot ask the people to turn it down because there were people “loitering”, and they deemed it unsafe.

loitering? at a party? well i never!!

seriously.  they tell us they can file a report.  that’s it.

we try to go back to bed.  j has to go into work in the morning.  it’s 1:30.

and finally, i spring up, put on slippers and go downstairs.  there’s a 20-ish guy outside the flat with a beer, the door open, insanely loud music blasting out.

he seems a bit unsettled by the approach of a woman half-asleep in pyjamas.  i ask him what time it is.  he (in all seriousness) looks at his watch and tells me it’s 1:30.  he begins to look sheepish.

i say, “which means that that noise is beyond ridiculous, and completely unacceptable.  i live here too, and it’s incredibly rude to be this loud at this hour of the morning.”

he starts apologising, says he’ll take care of it, and immediately begins to start yelling at the people inside to turn the music down.

i shuffle back upstairs.  the noise drops off immediately.

climb back in bed and fall asleep.

the damnwells – bastard of midnight

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got to hang with my friend stacey who was passing through london for a day, and we spent an evening wandering around down by the southbank, then going to see this show.  bizarrely enough, with all the pics i took, i somehow didn’t get a pic of the two of us.  go figure.

but i love hanging out at the southbank at holiday time.

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this must be the newest stage of expatting. the stage where you stop trying to replicate what you’d do at home (and never really coming close enough to satisfy anyway) and just do something completely different instead.

tomorrow is thanksgiving in the states. brits here have a hard time comprehending the importance of this holiday, but it’s one of my favourites because it remains relatively “pure” – family, friends and food. it’s not yet been turned into an obligatory gift-giving occasion, or wholly commercial enterprise. and while the roots do, of course, harken back to a time when we mistreated and exploited the people and land that were here first (and in many ways still do), the theme of the holiday itself is about gratitude for what we have in our present day lives.

we cannot change the past, nor predict the future – but here and now, on this one day, if we have people in our lives that we love, and enough food to fill our bellies for this meal, then that is something to be grateful for. if you believe in a god, then you give thanks to that god. if you believe in mother earth, then you give thanks to her. if you simply believe in family and friends, then you give thanks to them for their presence in your life.

nothing more is required – a meal shared with loved ones, and thanks. so simple, yet so profound. it’s that which i love most about thanksgiving, but is so difficult to communicate to those that haven’t grown up with it.

each year here so far, i have been lucky enough to have fellow americans join me in my celebration. people who “get it”, who understand the emotion that thanksgiving conveys, and how difficult it is to be far away on a day when others are drawing near. and there’s a shared acknowledgement that while we try to recreate the holiday in our own way as best we can, we also know that it is never going to be quite right, simply because we are here… and so many of our loved ones are there. people back in the u.s. are coming together, and we are far away.

this year, through a variety of circumstances, the thanksgiving meal with fellow americans just isn’t going to happen. i thought about moving the date around, or trying to change the venue… but in the end, i decided to stop trying to put a square peg into a round hole. it’s never going to be right, because it’s just not right. i’m here, and they are there. it’s an american holiday, and i live in the u.k.

so we’re going out. to an american themed restaurant, that promises turkey and pumpkin pie and football and sam adams beer.

i used to think that going to a restaurant for t-day was sacrilege. but i think i’ve finally come to the realisation that no matter how i juggle the turkey and side dishes in a teeny british oven, no matter how i search out the traditional tinned pumpkin and cranberries and stovetop stuffing, no matter how many americans i gather together to celebrate with, no matter how hard i try to make everything the same as it would be back home, thanksgiving will never be the same, because it’s different here. my life is different here. and somehow this year it seems fitting to finally embrace that by doing something different. maybe i should be depressed about that, but somehow, i find myself relieved – like i’ve finally given myself permission to be okay with it all.

so i’ll be sitting in bodean’s tomorrow evening, with loved ones, a meal, and thanks.

in the true spirit of the holiday, nothing else is required.

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running along wandsworth common this morning, and what did i spot? the notoriously craggy face of gordon ramsay.

to be honest, i’m surprised i even noticed – i’m notorious for being oblivious to these kinds of things. he was running with a guy who looked like a personal trainer. didn’t look like he was sweating too much though – c’mon gordo, put some effort into it!

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people often think i’m some sort of alarmist when it comes to privacy issues in this country.

i submit exhibit “a”:

Everyone who buys a mobile telephone will be forced to register their identity on a national database under government plans to extend massively the powers of state surveillance.

Phone buyers would have to present a passport or other official form of identification at the point of purchase. Privacy campaigners fear it marks the latest government move to create a surveillance society.

A compulsory national register for the owners of all 72m mobile phones in Britain would be part of a much bigger database to combat terrorism and crime. Whitehall officials have raised the idea of a register containing the names and addresses of everyone who buys a phone in recent talks with Vodafone and other telephone companies, insiders say.

another completely useless proposal. this is meant to get at terrorists who use pay-as-you-go mobile phones. what the government fails to understand here is that:

a) we’re only 2 hours away from the rest of europe… where no such registers exist, and current law says you’re allowed to bring in pretty much anything from the eu into the UK as long as it’s not illegal or exceeds “personal use”

b) the rate at which people swap sim cards in and out of phones, or amongst friends, family, etc. makes any such register hopelessly inaccurate from the start

c) there’s this thing called the internet where you can buy all sorts. clearly no one in government has ever shopped for a mobile from hong kong on ebay.

d) the only way in which this register could possibly work would be if they

- first outlawed private sale of mobiles by individuals (new or used)
- second outlawed private sale of sim cards (which is really what they’re after)
- third outlawed swapping of sim cards amongst individuals
- fourth signed on all mobile service providers
- fifth managed to sign the entire eu onto the notion of restricting mobile/sim sales and import/export in the uk
- sixth outlawed the purchase of mobiles from non-approved sources (such as the internet)
- seventh devoted more enforcement resources to monitoring the internet for sales (because they don’t already have enough to do with trying to restrict guns, drugs, child pornography)
- eighth restricted sales of mobiles only to adults (as the idea of having children’s info on a database would be most unpalatable to the public)
- and ninth devoted more resources to monitoring the mail for the illegal transport of sim cards smaller than postage stamps.

in other words, this is another harebrained scheme by government designed to “crack down on terrorism” by infringing on the rights of many millions of innocent citizens, which is easily circumvented well before it is even put into law… much like the i.d. card initiative.

unfortunately, that won’t stop them from trying.

my morning jacket – off the record

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coming home from shopping today, i saw you get on the tube. your haircut and clothes were neat, expensive looking, chosen with obvious care, but you had no handbag or jewellery. your face was naked and pale, your eyes bleary, red and wet.

you sat opposite me, avoiding eye contact, head slightly bowed, as silent tears streamed down your face. you neither hid them, nor made any motion to wipe them away. it was a look of resigned but dignified grief. an open and honest sorrow, plain for all to see.

as the train hurtled on through the tunnel, i thought about asking you if you were okay, though it was clear that you weren’t. i thought about offering you a tissue, but your carriage stopped me from breaching that invisible wall.

in the end, i did nothing. see, i’ve been there too – with private emotions on display in a public space, because there’s no place to hide them, and the shock of deep sadness inures you to caring. it happens in big cities – you can cry anonymously in front of a group of strangers, who all pretend they don’t see.

as we pulled into my station, i got off, and as the doors closed behind me, i glanced back one last time to look at you through the window. you knuckled your eyes dry, smoothed your hair behind your ears, sat up, fixed your gaze straight ahead, and the train sped away out of sight.

powderfinger – passenger

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argh! why oh why do people in london not move aside for ambulances!!!

it’s infuriating! they all sit there passively, not even attempting to pull to the side of the road. and now, having actually been in the back of an ambulance, it’s even more maddening.

that could be someone’s family member in there, suffering a heart attack, or with internal injuries, or going into anaphylactic shock. and they just sit there in their cars on their mobile phones, or playing with the radio, or twiddling their thumbs, without any sense of urgency whatsoever.

*move the fuck over*

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i’m watching the closing ceremonies of the olympics, and the “handover” of the flag and flame to london for the 2012 summer ceremonies.

i wish i could be excited about the prospect. i wish i could say i’d still be here and be proud to be hosting the festivities. watching the olympics live and in person has been one of my lifelong dreams ever since i was a little girl. i should be ecstatic at the opportunity.

however day after day, i am continually astounded by the sheer ineptitude and poor infrastructure of this massive city. when i can’t reliably get to work on time, do errands after 6 pm, or get customer service that even remotely resembles anything like *service*… well i despair of the idea of adding *millions* of tourists to the mix.

i mean, they couldn’t even get the bloody logo right, the budget has ballooned from an initial £2.3 billion to over £9 billion, and the london olympic committee is already downplaying expectations.

whilst i have no doubt that four years from now it will be a sparkling televised affair, i can only breathe a sigh of relief that i won’t have to be subjected to the unmitigated disaster it will make daily life for ordinary londoners.

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i have never spent so much time chasing people to *do their fucking jobs* as i have had to in this country. every little thing takes 20 phone calls to follow up. people who’re supposed to call back, don’t. people who are supposed to arrange things, don’t. people who’re supposed to fix things, don’t.

at the moment i am chasing a doctor’s appointment (for three bloody weeks now!), a parcel (which was meant to be delivered two separate times), and our landlord (who after calling her for a week, *promised* someone would be out to fix our boiler *today*… but they were a no-call, no-show, and after spending the nicest day of the year at home waiting for him, i’m particularly pleased!) last week i was chasing the human resources guy at my new job to send me my paperwork, the human resources guy at my old job to sort out my annual leave, and the cable company.

every simple task turns into a monumental chore of chasing people with phone call after phone call just to get them to do their jobs, and my mild phone anxiety doesn’t make things any easier. screwing up my courage to ring people over and over again is emotionally draining.

you’d think after five years of dealing with the farce that is customer service in this country that i’d be used to it by now. but somedays it’s so goddamn tiresome i could just cry – and the few times when things get sorted straight away, i could positively weep with relief.

is it really so much to ask that things just work the way they’re supposed to??!

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british summer may have many flaws…

…but they are nearly all redeemed by the british strawberries.

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