Christmas noise
It’s started – Christmas noise is all around us. I am no Scrooge or Grumpy Old Man (honestly)
but my patience and good nature are being sorely tested at the moment.
Can’t a person step out to do some shopping without their
eyes and ears being assaulted by flashing lights and deafening noise from a PA
system? Twice last week I ventured out
to local shopping areas. On a
late afternoon, I chanced upon the build-up to the
switching on of the festive lights.
Every child within a radius of 10 miles appeared to be there, mostly in
their buggies, which made walking around for the rest of us such a pleasure,
and almost without exception crying or shouting or making some other noise at
high volume. Within a few minutes of
finding the relative tranquillity of a shop I then heard loud music from a PA
system outside. At least, I assumed it
was just outside since it was so loud, but when I left the shop there was
nothing to be seen, apart from a phalanx of buggies rushing along the road
obviously on a mission to get somewhere important. Swept along by the tide, I turned the corner
to see a makeshift stage on which a young lady, apparently from a local radio station, was addressing the crowd in what
can only be described as Radio DJ Estuary English, babbling along about nothing
in particular and desperate for some interaction with the massed force of
buggies assembled in front of her.
What with that and the fairground rides and light-sabre
sellers and tacky merchandise on hastily erected stalls and I was soon beating
a retreat, saving my cash for another day.
I thought that other day might be last Saturday. This time, partly because of the atrocious
weather, the venue was a shopping centre.
It was crowded, but then it was raining and shopping centres are where
people go in such circumstances. It was
noisy, but then that’s the nature of indoor shopping centres. It was full of
what seemed suspiciously like the same buggies as I had encountered a couple of
days earlier, but there was more room for manoeuvring round them so things didn’t seems
so bad. There was a band of carol singers at one end of the mall, so I moved away fairly quickly. But once down the other end the loud music started and then I spotted another makeshift
stage. Surely lightning couldn’t strike
twice? Oh yes it could! Admittedly it
was a different young lady and a different local radio station, but the
approach and effect were the same – too much noise, too little enjoyment, and I
was out of there as quickly as I could.
I still have money to spend at Christmas, but I think I
will do most of my shopping online in the peace and quiet of my own home.
What’s the point, and
what’s the cost?
The EU summit last week to discuss the budget for
2014-2020 was as predictable as it was disheartening. Get the EU’s 27 leaders together to agree a
budget? More chance of winning the
lottery than that they will agree anything at the first such meeting. It’s all a rather weary charade isn’t
it? We all know what the respective
positions of the member countries are and we all know they will not be able to
agree. But we still have to go through the nonsense of these important people
drawing up outside the building in their limousines, getting out, walking over
to state their prepared positions to the waiting press, and then disappearing
inside for the summit. Two days later
they will all emerge to give press conferences to say they are determined to
stick to their positions, that the others are inflexible, that the European
Commission has not worked hard enough to come up with an acceptable package,
and then they will all disperse to their respective countries to play out the
next round of the charade for their domestic audiences.
They will be back.
And so will the circus that surrounds such events, including hordes of
journalists and camera teams from every broadcaster in the EU, eager to catch
the utterances of these god-like leaders and then play them back to us during
the evening news bulletins as if there was something happening that was really
newsworthy.
I’m fed-up with it all.
And I want to know how much all this costs – not just the costs of the
summits themselves, but the preparations beforehand, the travelling and
accommodation. And I want to know the cost involved in the assembling of the world’s
press at such events. How much do the
BBC, ITV and Sky spend on sending their own teams to relay back to us the news
that there is no news, only what we all knew already?
Someone ought to call a halt to it all. Make a stand. Save some money. Demand that we
all stop pretending that the meetings are anything more than a charade along
the way towards eventual agreement.
Spot the difference
Now
that I am a man of leisure I get time to look at things in more detail. Some might say this results in me finding
things to moan about that really aren’t worth getting bothered about. They may be right, but isn’t that the
attitude that allows people to get away with things that ought not to be
allowed?
For
example, now that I shop more than I used to I have noticed how confusing
everything is when you are trying to assess the value of what you buy. Picking just one thing at random, I decided
to buy some biscuits for Christmas last week – buy early and then avoid the
hassle later, I thought. I spotted a box
of Crawford’s biscuits that appeared to be the same as the one I bought last
year – yes, that would be an easy option, so into the basket it went.
But
when I got home and put it side by side with last year’s, all seemed slightly
different. Instead of 12 varieties of
biscuits we now had only 10. It took
some forensic examination to discover that the ‘missing’ biscuits included
jammy dodgers – how could they! Further
close examination revealed that the weight of biscuits included in the box was
actually more this year than last.
Curious. My initial instinct was that since the price was unchanged from
last year this must mean the box was better value this time. Fortunately, my wife was on hand to add the
appropriate note of caution, suggesting that removing the jammy dodgers and one
other ‘exotic’ biscuit meant that the weight gain could only have been achieved
by increasing the proportion of plain, boring biscuits, so the overall value
was diminished.
Far
too complicated for me – just what the manufacturer’s intended, no doubt.
Didn’t he used to be good?
Watching
Match of the Day last night we had the now familiar discussion after any match
involving Chelsea of what was wrong with Fernando Torres and when was he going
to rediscover his form.
The
experts flap around looking for reasons why Torres no longer looks like he
knows how to score goals. They remember him as he used to be and wonder who or
what can spark him back to life. It’s
all very repetitive and pointless.
My
wife interjected – “why are they bothering with this, he was rubbish at Liverpool
and he’s rubbish at Chelsea”. She was
right, of course. Although I should add
that he was only rubbish at Liverpool after his two knee operations in 2010. Might be a bit of a clue there, perhaps? Prior to that he had been a real goalscorer, but
he never recovered this form.
Liverpool
made one of the most astute transfer deals in recent years when they sold this
crocked Torres to cash-rich Chelsea in January 2011 for £50m. Laughing all the way to the bank? Not quite, because the gloss of this clever
deal was almost rubbed out by their decision to blow £35m of it on Andy Carroll
– so Newcastle were actually the astute dealers in this little exchange.
Anyway,
the point is that Torres might one day discover the form that once made him a
great striker, but don’t bet too much of your money on it – the English game is
full of ex-Liverpool strikers who lost their touch but were still purchased by
a succession of clubs dazzled by their former prowess – think Robbie Fowler and
Michael Owen, for example.
