This is not meant
to paralyse or depress. It is instead
a meditation, observation
and a fact of life laid bare.

Rotten stinking and always unfair
it comes and fires us. Alan Sugar
with a scythe. We are dismissed.

Whatever we were doing
whoever we are with
no matter our plans
we are to put down our pens
set aside our paperwork
and walk
crawl
or limp

to the exit.

Bags will be searched
for useless nick-nacks
before boarding the ferry.

All our petty swirlings
are unspun. We are run down
like clockwork. Hearts have
a limited run. Only memory
and love
together linger on.

From today’s Guardian:

People who think they may have flu are now being advised to go online and check their symptoms on the NHS website or call the swine flu information line, on 0800 1 513 513. Anyone still concerned after that should phone their GP, who can provide a diagnosis over the phone. If swine flu is confirmed, they will be issued with an authorisation voucher, which a “flu friend” can take to an antiviral drug collection point, which may be a pharmacy or a health centre.

This is not what happened to me and mine this week. Yes, we’ve been ill. Very ill. We checked our symptoms, called our GP and got a callback two hours later to tell us “you may have swineflu or you may have viral gastroenteritis” (the symptoms can be identical) and that with either virus the advice was the same: quarantine yourself until you are better and if you don’t improve, seek medical help. We got better. If it was swineflu we will never actually know because a telephone diagnosis, as evidenced from our experience, is inherently flawed and dodgy, and people are no longer tested unless they encounter complications. Whatever those are.

I can tell you, if (again, italicised by necessity) we had swineflu this week it lasted 3-4 days and the first 24 hours felt like a near-death experience. I seriously thought I was going to die, and trust me—I’ve been very ill with things in the past. This was something else. Intense nausea, stabbing and swirling pains in the belly and chest and diaphragm, diarrhoea (never comfortable to mention but these are the facts), loss of balance, high fever, sheets of water pouring from the skin all over your body, hallucinations, inability to stand up, laboured and painful breathing.

I didn’t, as we say in Britain, know my arse from my elbow. I didn’t know where I was. Hell, at one point I don’t think I knew who I was. My beloved, who was hit with the virus first and was slowly recovering when I was hit with it, had to drag and push me like a heavy corpse up the stairs to the bathroom, removing my soaked clothes (they became so drenched in the space of five minutes, to the extent that you could have wrung them out) and applying cold wet towels to bring my temperature down. My pulse was racing, my heart was banging. I was so gravely ill I caught sight of myself in one lucid moment in the bathroom mirror. My flesh was wet, and a uniform snow white. I looked like the character of Odo from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I remember very little else. I do know if I had not been so gravely ill I would have been mortally embarrassed at the complete loss of bodily control I experienced.

I’d have certainly fallen unconscious if I hadn’t had David shouting at me to stay with him. I fear for all those singles who are going to get swineflu. It’s a dreadful thing to come down with on your own. If you do, you might just be able to call 999 before you collapse. Might. It’s dreadful, full stop, for everyone. But, for the overwhelming majority of people, at least so far in the evolution of the virus, it stops. Hell ends. Life returns.

But how can the government talk of 7,447 diagnosed cases in the UK when diagnosis is made by phone unless you end up in hospital, and we are not tested when told by our GPs that we might have swineflu but it might be something else with the same symptoms? I’ve had viral gastroenteritis before; this year, in fact. If this was not swineflu, if it was viral gastroenteritis, then it was the most vicious I’ve ever experienced. I think it was swineflu. I. Will. Never. Know. So…. Am I one of the 7,447 cases or not? Is my partner? If not, why not? How many people are told they might have it, or something else? If something else is the same in its effects, these statistics that keep being bandied around are absolutely not to be trusted, nor are they any real use in tracking the progress of swineflu. Telephone diagnosis also doesn’t provide information on how the virus is evolving. Because it is, and it will.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Swine flu ‘can no longer be contained’ (guardian.co.uk)
• UK Swine Flu Cannot be Contained (netnewsdaily.com)
• Surge of flu cases ‘on the way’ (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Swine flu cases worldwide surpass 77,000 (cbc.ca)

This is a photograph of Hepburn, one of our two Cuckoo Marans hens, sitting on 12 eggs. The other Cuckoo Marans is her mother, Alice, who hadn’t laid an egg in months before we took her last year as a replacement for Dietrich, a cockerel, from a breeder who wasn’t very clean or scrupulous, who we’d never use again now we’ve got a bit more experience. After a week with us Alice started laying again and, so far, hasn’t stopped. Go figure. It’s obvious she wasn’t as happy on an unclean farm as she is in our town garden.

Captain Buttercup, our Buff Orpington cockerel, was from the same breeder and because we felt such guilt at swapping Dietrich we didn’t swap the Captain. We found him a wonderful home on a farm near York where he services in excess of 70 free-range hens whose eggs are 95 per cent fertile, meaning he’s probably going to bust a gut and die within two years from being a manic shagmeister supreme—but hey, at least he’ll end his days happy doing what cockerels are supposed to do! We miss him, though. He was and by all accounts remains a wonderfully affectionate and surprisingly intelligent big yellow bird.

Hepburn went broody over the weekend and every day sees her get deeper into the trance-like state that drives a hen to sit continuously on eggs until they hatch. The 12 she has right now are unfertilised, and will be composted when the 12 we’ve ordered that are fertile arrive later this week. We will replace the eggs when Hepburn takes one of her brief breaks to toilet, eat, and drink. She’ll be none the wiser, even if, as planned, we pop just half that number under her and the rest into an automatic incubator that our friend AmethystDragon has kindly offered to loan us. It will be easier for Hepburn to handle a smaller clutch, and when the incubated chicks hatch we will just pop them under her in the dead of night and she will wake in the morning and think Santa Chicken has been to call and blessed her with more babies!

We’ve ordered six Blue Wheaton Marans eggs and six French Copper Blue Marans eggs. A hen will quite happily hatch eggs from other breeds, even other bird species entirely. The eggs will be allowed to sit and ‘rest’ for 24 hours upon arriving through the post, and some may not hatch anyway as a consequence of their journey but chances are better (so many say) if you allow the resting period.

Of course some may not hatch because they die in the shell at any stage during the 21-day incubation period, and hens can sometimes accidentally chip an egg and therefore make it unviable. If we get six youngsters surviving not only the incubation and hatching, but also into young adulthood, we will be happy. We may well get more. Part of the excitement is not knowing. We’d be incredibly lucky to get all hens (or pullets as they’re called when immature) but as the breeds we’ve chosen are sought-after and very beautiful, we should in theory have no problem finding homes for boys. I’ve learned to accept if I want to breed chickens, cockerels may well end up on dinner tables—just not ours!–and we have one family of friends who would take any we can’t sell, for that specific purpose, and would raise them ethically (assuming they’re not old enough at time they leave us) and despatch them humanely when the time came. I accept others choose to eat meat; it’s animal cruelty, factory farming and greedy over-consumption I take big issue with.

This is a learning situation for Hepburn, whose fate it was to be our first mother because she’s the first to go broody and stick with it, and for ourselves. I must try not to get too attached to the youngsters, distinguishing the kindness they’ll get from the sentimentality that I’m prone to as well. We won’t keep all the hens, either. Hopefully we can sell those we don’t want at sufficiently good prices to cover not the time involved (you can’t put a price on that) but maybe the additional costs of bedding and chick feed (called crumbs).

So. I await the arrival of the eggs and it’s the closest I’ve got, excitement-wise, to back when I was a kid on Christmas Eve listening out for Santa’s reindeer.

Here’s a handy hint for other poultry keepers: get hold of some tobacco stems or, as we’ve used, the ‘bee tobacco’ used to pacify bees in smokers, and chuck some around the broody hen’s nest. Don’t use cigarettes or ordinary rolling tobacco! The stems or bee tobacco, like all tobacco, contain neonicotinoids. These are found in many insecticidal treatments, but on their own don’t carry the toxicity added to such treatments to boost their effectiveness without regard for environmental concerns. On its own the tobacco simply deters bugs from getting into the nest for the duration of time the mother and, later, babies are in residence. You can’t clean a hen-house around a broody hen, you can’t disturb her much at all. I’ve already had a few warning pecks when I went near her to check whether she was able to cover all the eggs or not, and she’s taking breaks without being forced to, which is not always the case, so there’s no reason at all to even touch her while nature performs a most fabulous miracle of procreation.

Hepburn is, however, moderately accepting of the occasional photograph. That’s so long as it’s me taking the picture. David got growled at just looking at her through the hen-house door yesterday, and I’ve no doubt whatsoever she’d attack a stranger, such is her bolshy attitude at the best of times. And I think you’ll agree, the little madam definitely has something of the bloom of motherhood about her. She’s clucking away to the eggs already and occasionally we hear something you might call singing at night when she’s supposed to be asleep…

Related articles by Zemanta

• Are you a meat eater? Read this if you dare. (boston.com)
• Build a Backyard Chicken Coop For Your Pastured Eggs (realnutritionsupplement.blogspot.com)
• Buttercup, King of the Chickens (spicycauldron.com)

It’s Saturday tea-time, 5.30pm.

The kitchen table is piled high
with washing basket, paperwork;
the kids are out and mum’s gone,
dad’s just doing the best he can.

He’s out as well: work business,
a client, couldn’t meet him earlier,
not during another busy week.

The bar in Soho, so continental,
is full. A Police car goes past at speed.
Some teenager’s drunk against a wall.

Do we know the other people with keys to the front door?
Whose grandfather is that? What’s he wearing a poppy for?

Video games and alcohol and working girls and boys;
chicken legs or beef burger or a pizza. Coke and fries to go.

Somehow we ended up with much less than we bargained for.
Disintegration. And loneliness. Plenty is strangely a danger, a bore.

Why don’t we say grace any more? Are we lost?
Have we forgotten all the things we should be grateful for?

Got this message from O2 today, re their forums:

Comment(s) you have made contain general criticism of O2’s products or services. You are more than welcome to share your experiences with O2, whether they’re positive or negative. Doing so may allow other users to provide support as well as providing us with insight to areas that are going wrong. What we cannot accept are widespread, malicious or gratuitous criticisms of O2 as a company or a brand.

We hope you continue to use and enjoy our O2 Forums. O2 moderation team.

This was in response to my saying in O2’s forums, in reply to someone (possibly an O2 troll) saying O2 ‘couldn’t do better’ because they sold out (they allege) on day one of the new iPhone 3GS:

That’s day one, if true. CPW has stock lying around unsold, and we only have the word of O2 that they’re selling well, and Apple telling us a million iPhones have been sold but not telling us where, plus a million worldwide isn’t that many. Most of those I suspect are in the US. They could do better if they sell well on day two, day fifteen, day thirty, day fifty… And I do not believe that will be the case. Many thousands* of current iPhone 3G customers have gone from enjoying a good indeed great relationship with O2 to loathing the company. It has taken customer loyalty and spat on it**. That kind of vicious, greedy, unyielding behaviour never goes well for a company in the long-term.

The iPhone 3GS costs Apple no more than £109 to make. And yet O2 has increased UK prices this year by 87 per cent, suggesting to the media ‘it isn’t us, Apple made us do it’. I say that’s rubbish. They have a popular product, they hike the price thinking people will buy and they ask for huge sums to end all our remaining contracts to upgrade because they think we’ll do it. Most won’t. You’d have to be stupidly rich to do so. And so, we simmer and we seethe and we plot to get away from O2 as soon as we can. Way to go.

*What’s more, at least one online petition to get O2 to show any sign whatsoever that it gives a damn what customers think has over five-and-a-half thousand signatories.
**While a tad stronger than my usual responses to corporate greed, I stand by what I said and there’s no swearing or personal abuse above. They just don’t like being criticised, that’s what this boils down to; that, and they don’t like me using their forums to disseminate the truth of how much it costs Apple to make an iPhone 3GS, and how whoppingly huge and obscene the mark-up is that O2 has enforced this year compared to last—but those facts are distributed all over the net, I wasn’t the first to reveal them.

It is, of course, O2’s right to censor its own forums—but it is bullshit to state my ‘general’ criticisms are the reasons for removal, because if general criticisms aren’t allowed, what kind are? And to go on to say the criticisms are ‘widespread’ (what, that means if they appear all over the net elsewhere, they’re damn certain they won’t be allowed in O2 forums as well?), ‘malicious’ (I suppose pointing out how angry a company makes its customers could be conceived as harmful to its reputation, which would do much better if everyone only said nice things about O2) or ‘gratuitous’ (whatever the hell that means—I thought something was gratuitous if it featured sex or violence unnecessary to plotlines before 9pm on TV).

Interestingly I’ve read much, much harsher criticisms than mine of O2 on the company’s customer forums since the news first broke of its iPhone 3GS upgrade and tethering rip-offs a fortnight ago. Maybe I’ve been singled out for less tolerant treatment because my username thereon is the same as this blog–’spicycauldron’–and so they saw the name and decided to strike back for all those nuisance ask-too-many-awkward-question tweets. I’ve really no idea. And I don’t actually care. What I wrote has a place here now, for anyone and everyone to read. Permanently. Eat that, O2. Change your policies, be fair and flexible, you’ve still got a chance of undoing the damage you—not your customers—have caused to your own reputation.

I recently found out that I can now drop my O2 iPhone tariff by one level every month. Stupidly, that will mean for O2 that the £312 they demand now to upgrade (plus cost of new iPhone, plus new contract) will actually propel angry customers to reduce their outgoings to the company by way of protest. Less profit, albeit peanuts to O2 (it isn’t to me).

If I drop from £44.05 to £34.26 this month, I retain £9.76. Next month if I drop from £34.26 to £29.38, I retain an additional £4.88 making a total compared to today of £14.64. Of course I’d be making less calls and sending less texts as a consequence of all this but I could take the hit—I usually end up with unused minutes and texts as is.

Assuming I’m still eligible for upgrade in 6 months, a month early (unlikely if I employ this tactic) then they lose a total revenue of £87.84 between now and then. If I have to go to January, they lose £102.48. It’s very little to a company like O2 but it’s almost a third of the huge sum it demands for early upgrade plus it’s going in my direction, not into O2’s bank balance.

An iPhone 3GS right now costs £274.23 on the £29.38 tariff for 18 months. Take the £102.48 from the price of that 3GS model, in January I’d have to find £171.75 to renew the contract on that lower tariff, not paying a get-out fee but all the money going on the new handset price. Selling my damaged iPhone 3G would bring me another £77 at present market rates. O2 could conceivably try not to allow a new contract for anyone doing this, but penalising people for taking advantage of the terms of the contract they entered into in this way would be seriously open to investigation and punitive action by OFCOM. If a contract term is there not to be used at risk of penalty—effectively at risk of being denied an ongoing business relationship even when you’ve honoured the terms of your contract and paid your bills—then that’s surely capable of being classed as a deceptive lure to get you to sign up initially?

Of course the chances are high that we’ll see the cost of the iPhone 3GS drop significantly before Christmas, to try to tempt people to buy handsets for presents. This would transform the above calculations, making the plan—if I decide to go this route—even better for me. Of course I still have to limp along and make the best of it with my headset-requiring iPhone 3G.

I still don’t get how O2 can argue right now, on the £44.05 tariff with six months left to go (if I get the month early upgrade), that there is a get-out fee of £312. Not when anyone can reduce their tariff once a month after being in contract for nine months. These get-out fees seem to have been produced out of fresh air with a dollop of greed and nonsense. That £312 is based on six months of ‘lost’ revenue (allegedly) but only if I remain on the £44.05 tariff. As I don’t have to, why the fixed get-out fee? Some people, I know, argue quite coherently that a get-out fee is fair, but the arguments I’ve seen in favour of O2’s position fail to take account of our ability as customers to reduce the tariff down to the lowest level.

There must be a bottom line. There must be a reasonable, modest upgrade fee O2 could charge for all current iPhone customers wanting to upgrade to the 3GS, perhaps an amount that does vary depending on how long you’ve been in contract but surely dropping to an even level for all after a period of one year in contract.

I’m not actually sure what to do. If my iPhone was fully functional and didn’t need the headphones in to make and receive calls (it’s fine doing that, just awkward, and every other function works just fine) then I’d hold out, probably way beyond end of contract to see what model is released next year. But I want a working iPhone, now, and Apple wanted a fortune to even consider repairing liquid damage. I still don’t get that when I was willing to sign up for a longer contract –24 months if need be —and take out O2 insurance as well, which was my mistake that I didn’t, sending therefore a lot more money O2’s way for the next year or two, the company chose instead to offer me and other iPhone customers a ‘hammer over the head’ approach by demanding what it has. My way, the company wins and I win. O2’s way, it wins in the very short-term (you’re trapped, deal with it, we don’t care) causes serious anger and upset at its stubborn inflexibility and short-termist approach that takes customer loyalty and pisses on the concept from a great height.

Apparently if I’d got the phone from Carphone Warehouse they’ve lots of new stock that isn’t shifting and are reportedly (according to some posters on Twitter) negotiating some very reasonable upgrade deals. One such deal quoted was a £59 upgrade fee for the 32Gb model on the £44.05 tariff. How? If true, that’s one lucky customer (though how much they had to pay for the actual handset wasn’t revealed). But I got my iPhone direct from the O2 web store, and the company refuses to consider on a case-by-case basis let alone promise to re-examine its overall upgrade policy. As always I’m open to reading other people’s opinions, ideas, theories, arguments, respectfully couched below. So? Am I missing something in these calculations and trains of thought? I don’t think I am but I’m open to the possibility.

The BBC has decided swear words could be bleeped out in programmes going out after the 9pm watershed after publishing a report into taste and standards commissioned in the wake of the Sachsgate scandal, when Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand left messages on actor Andrew Sachs‘ answerphone.

Senior executives recognise that many parents today think nothing of allowing their young children to stay up very late watching shows aimed at adults. They have decided in their infinite wisdom that grown-ups, many of whom started growing hair around their private parts decades ago and learned all the big scary words there are to learn from dodgy individualistic French teachers, reruns of The Sweeney and their first-ever work colleagues, need to be denied access to realistic dramas in order to help ensure the nation’s children avoid words like shit, fuck, buggery, arse and titty.

In those instances around the land where parenting involves very poor judgement, the BBC will step in to fill the gap resulting from people too ignorant and stupid to breed nevertheless doing so with gay abandon. Perhaps, in this instance, gay is the wrong word to use. It is, however, perfectly acceptable as words go so long as it is used in its original context, to denote happy and carefree, and is not intended to suggest rampant bottom-doing or wearing of glittery crop-tops over otherwise manly pectorals.

If only our little ones had been protected in this way before now, we would not have the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in Europe, widespread illiteracy and poor numeracy upon leaving the education system, and more clap than you’d hear at the end of a concert. We would not have youngsters who, while unable to name the capital city of France, know how to roll a fatty and spark it up.

The widespread use of words like fart, wank, cock and vagina on TV after 9pm is undoubtedly to blame for the fact that nearly every high street in the UK is besieged on Friday and Saturday nights by hoards of tanked-up teenagers staggering out of bars, peeing on cars, getting creative with impromptu vomit murals and rutting like goats up every dark alleyway (and, sometimes, in front of shop windows or in the middle of roundabouts).

Words are the most dangerous things in our society. In the wrong hands they can be used to corrupt and deprave. Only those with appropriate training in editorial standards, and our politicians and educators, should have access to the most frightening words which, even then, must be used with caution and only very rarely, perhaps for demonstration purposes in private rooms after midnight.

We can, of course, in all fairness, blame Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand for practically everything that is wrong with British society. Where Ross and Brand lead, everyone under the age of 18 follows blindly and enthusiastically. Had calls for the public hanging of both these media criminals (preceded by the stripping of their flesh, and subsequent salting) not gone unheeded, the BBC might not have felt it necessary to introduce these new progressive measures and we’d all be enjoying the mobile phone footage of their executions on YouTube right now.

The BBC promises that Eastenders will, despite the new regulations, continue to be as dull and boring as it has been for the past five years. Rumour has it John Barrowman (Captain Jack in Torchwood and national homosexual treasure) has been ordered to keep his clothes on at all times from now on and to restrict his conversations with the press to the subject of musical theatre.

Related articles by Zemanta

• BBC to crack down on ‘intrusion’ (guardian.co.uk)
• Call over taste after Radio 2 row (news.bbc.co.uk)
• BBC will continue to air programmes that might cause offence says Director General Mark Thompson (telegraph.co.uk)