August 2018 – A View From The Lanterne Rouge

A limerick a week #102

On retirement and the gender of Daleks

In May, I gave my employer notice of my decision to retire at Christmas. I reiterated it this week with three months to go (just to make sure there was no doubt that I had provided the obligatory three months notice!).

Our corporate electronic HR system now requires my boss to press the right buttons to end my employment. I’ve done it for my own staff in the past, so I know that after navigating the system and entering the relevant details, the final button is reached – it’s labelled Terminate!

Here’s what I think…

Although work’s not a thing that I hate
I’ve struggled along as of late.
So please don’t delay
To help me on my way.
“Terminate! Terminate! Terminate!”

Whovians will recognise that the limerick works best if the last line is spoken in ‘Dalek’, ie, where the vocal pitch and volume rises dramatically with each repetition of the word ‘TER-MIN-ATE‘ and finishes with an upward inflection known as a high-rising terminal.

The high-rising terminal is also known as the Australian question intonation and, in California, as Valley girl speak (although I first heard of it as the Australian interrogative and blame the Aussie import TV show Neighbours for popularising it in the UK in the mid-1980s, but I think the Daleks got there first with I WILL O-BEY)

According to linguists a high-rising terminal is primarily associated with younger women in both the USA and Australia, which is indirect (albeit entirely specious) evidence that Daleks are predominantly female. QED!

Postscript: If you really do want to sound like a Dalek you can find all the techno-geekery you need here.

A limerick a week #101

ALAW has previously quoted the actor Philip Glenister’s line in his role as Daniel Cotton in the TV series From There to Here:

“I’m NOT angry; I’m just permanently IRRITATED!”

That quote pretty much sums up my current humor when at work these days.

It’s not a question of me looking at the past through rose-tinted spectacles (my ‘good old days’ were peak-Thatcher and all the ills that brought down upon public sector science), but of senior leaders failing to recognise the ills brought about by their handling of the organisation over the last decade and their blinkered view of the present.

C’est la vie, but at least I no longer carry that irritation with me outside of work. Or do I? I’m sure others will tell me😉

Here’s the limerick…

It’s not, as has oft-times been stated,
A fact that I’m infuriated.
It’s rare that I’m angry
Or even quite cranky
And (sometimes) I’m not irritated!

There’s more than clouds and daffodils…

Longfella’s about

I’ve just been reminded of a quote from a former colleague, a statistician, who said:

“Coincidences are a most paradoxical thing; they should never happen, but they always do.“

What reminded me of that? Simply this – a couple of weeks after posting about Tony Walsh’s poem Up ‘ere (See Quotes that made me laugh #51) I’ve just read in my hometown’s local rag, Kendal’s Wezzy Gezzy, that he has now debuted his latest poem, a commissioned piece on the English Lake District; a part of the country that just happens to have been my childhood backyard.

His poem comprises the narrative to a short film, Reflecting On The Lakes, and his rendition seems typical of his style.

Poet Tony Walsh lives up to his moniker ‘Longfella’ as he shakes hands with a shortfella (the Chief Executive of the Lake District National Park) at the launch of ‘Reflecting on the Lakes’.

I suppose it was inevitable that Walsh would refer to the (in)famous Alfred Wainwright in his Lakeland verse, but at least he didn’t laud him in the way that seems de rigueur these days when anyone mentions the Lakes (‘AW’ as the ignorant, fawning masses call him lived just up the road from us and was a miserable and grumpy old git!).

If I had to be picky about the poem it would be that it mentions Kendal mintcake (a dentally-challenging confection) even though Kendal is not in the Lake District…

Kendal mintcake, a bête noir of dentists the country over! (In my teens I was in the same youth group as Dan Quiggin’s daughters, but even that is not enough reason to commend the stuff.)

… and fails to touch upon the area’s finest culinary confection, the remarkable Grasmere Gingerbread.

Anyway, there’s now a trio of pivotal ‘northern’ performance pieces by Longfella on the web:

This is The Place

Up ‘ere

…and Reflecting On The Lakes

Give ’em a shot!

Postscript: For anyone interested in knowing why coincidences occur all the time, I’d recommend the book How Not To Be Wrong by Jordan Ellenberg. Not always the easiest of reads for the non-mathematical (despite what the review, below, states), but sufficiently textual to give anyone an insight (it also covers, among many other things, how to win the lottery and why all electoral systems seem to have a democratic deficit. See a review here for a better insight into the book).

A limerick a week #100

The most pathetic cycling event ever!

Cyclists in and around Aberdeen got rather excited when it was first revealed they would have the opportunity to ride the pristine tarmac of the Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route before its opening to vehicular traffic (after which bikes will be banned from it).

But to demonstrate that the road’s sponsor, Transport Scotland, comprises a bunch of pillocks, they have turned a terrific PR opportunity into an absolute shambles. How? By banning bikes, or at least the riders’ own bikes.

Yup, in another “I don’t believe it” moment, the imbeciles in charge of the event have decided that cyclists will be bussed to the road and then loaned a bike so that “cyclists of all levels can (sic) wiz, wobble or weave on the closed road, promoting active travel and greener transport”. Frankly, I’d rather ‘wiz’ on Transport Scotland!

“Before you say anything nasty about someone, just pause for a second and browse through some really good adjectives in your head” (Ian Martin).

The move led to the online road cyclists’ website and forum, road.cc, to question “Is this the worst cycling event EVER?”. I pretty much think so…

Sadly, it won’t happen, but…

It’s a thing that we should not let pass
So, perhaps, we should set off en masse
Like at Kinder Scout
When the walkers strode out
And took part in a large-scale trespass!

This is class #1

A limerick a week #99

The dunny’s done-in (or “Wor netty’s knackered, but you should see the size of the rhubarb!”)

Short and sweet this week ‘cos I’m not proud of it. (Haha! Of course I am, and it’s anapestically correct as well).

A ditty inspired by a friend’s lavatorial break down:

A. A. Milne thought he knew what to do
When he found that he’d broken his loo.
He just said: “Oh, f**k it!”
And peed in a bucket,
But what happened to Winnie the Pooh?

You’re welcome!

Quotes that made me laugh #51

That bright and fierce and fickle is the South,

And dark and true and tender is the North^*

Despite being a Graun-reading, socially liberal ‘bit-of-a-leftie’ I chuckled at Management’s recent despairing exhortation:

“Do you always have to be an unreconstructed 1970s northern male?”

Me? A wannabe Gene Hunt?

Gene Hunt: I think you’ve forgotten who you’re talking to.
Sam Tyler: An overweight, over-the-hill, nicotine-stained, borderline-alcoholic homophobe with a superiority complex and an unhealthy obsession with male bonding?
Gene Hunt: You make that sound like a bad thing.

Really? I think not! But not quite renaissance man either, although I have had a bit of a soft spot for Longfella’s poetry ever since he performed his 2013 poem ‘This is the Place‘ at last year’s vigil in remembrance of the Manchester Arena bombing.

In fact, Longfella (aka Tony Walsh and now surely the de facto northern laureate having gently nudged Roger McGough aside) has written more generally in praise of the north in his poem ‘Up ‘ere‘ and there is nothing of the unreconstructed northern male about it (actually, the poem is explicitly about the north-west). In it, he writes in a rather overblown way:

“… and some things run right through us just like sticks of Blackpool rock;
Courage, kindness, humour, hope.
Sometimes … it’s all we’ve got.“

I suppose that’s the price of his declamatory style and can be forgiven, but now, be honest, does an unreconstructed 1970s northern male quote Tennyson and Tony Walsh in his blog posts? Nay, missus! Nay, nay and thrice nay! So, now that’s out of the way, any chance of a brew, luv?

* The Princess: O Swallow, Tennyson

A limerick a week #98

HR – working hard to underwhelm you!

I was ‘put before the beak’ a few weeks ago by an HR zealot that didn’t like the fact that I had challenged some weasel words spoken by a senior member of staff at an ‘all-programme’ meeting.

The zealot’s recollection of the event was intriguing as, when I challenged it, she had then to acknowledge she hadn’t even been there, but was simply parroting the words of a ‘leader’ that couldn’t, it appears, accept challenge!

It seems that in her little world it is an HR violation for scientists to be questioning; that is, of course, the antithesis of the way that science works in the real world (and if it operated according to her rules then we would still be living in the Dark Ages).

As an aside, I work in an organisation whose management culture across the piece seems to “overemphasize control, as opposed to fostering creativity, to meet their goals”. Neither our HR zealot nor the organisation’s leadership recognise this despite the motherhood and apple pie vision they propound to the world.

More recently, my domestic ‘Management’ had an exchange with the HR bods at her place of work (not the same as mine) when she questioned a decision about staffing levels in her department.

Their HR team’s response to her enquiry demonstrated a risible grasp of the facts coupled to an heroic level of condescension.

So, is it any wonder that folk who carry out the real business of an organisation have simultaneously to suspend both belief and disbelief at the inept administration of their organisation by idiots in HR and out-of-touch management from senior leadership teams?

I’m sure that many of my colleagues would agree with Peter Drucker’s view that:

“So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.”

Oh well, at least it has inspired this..

It’s a pity, and truly bizarre,
That the most vacuous people by far
In our places of work
Are the pillocks that lurk
In the ‘abode of the damned’ that’s HR!