Squander Two Blog

A conundrum solved.

2008-07-19T04:17:00.004+01:00

I'm contracting for a big firm at the moment, and I've just started there, so have had to do some training courses. I don't mean actually learning to do my job — though I am having to do that, too, yes — but the corporate stuff that everyone has to do, regarding fire escapes and secrecy and so on. They're those online courses with multiple-choice tests at the end.

So one of them's about security and confidentiality and maintaining frankly paranoid levels of suspicion, and, in amongst all the easy stuff ("An evil spy asks for your Windows password. Should you (a) tell him, (b) not tell him, or (c) give him all the company's money?") was a genuinely tricky one. It went something like this.

You've been given a promotion and so will from now on have lots of highly confidential documents. You have therefore been given a filing cabinet. You put the documents in the filing cabinet and lock it. But where do you put the key?

Now, since the course has been at pains to point out how easy it is to drop your keys or to have them knicked, this is actually rather a difficult question. You can't put them in your pocket, 'cause of pickpockets. So you can't take them home with you. But neither can you leave them lying around anywhere at work, which would be the equivalent of not locking the filing cabinet in the first place. So what the hell do you do with them? I don't mind telling you, if it hadn't been multiple-choice, I'd never have figured it out.

The correct answer is: In a lockable key cabinet.

But of course.

Bowdler.

2008-07-19T03:55:00.003+01:00

It may seem — and, in fact, is — churlish to complain about someone who's been nice enough to link approvingly to this here blog, but honestly, some people. Joanna Higgins of BNET United Kingdom ("The go-to place for management") has included this post of mine from t'other day in their Friday Round-Up, and... well, firstly, the link's under their Insight section. My blog provides insight into business management? I'm not sure whether to be flattered or baffled.

More to the point, though, Joanna's done something quite horrid to my Achewood quote. Here's the original:

Shrovis-Bishopthorpe lead the pack in considering the Internet a nuisance. To this end we have installed a lock, so that the decision to leave the real world behind and venture into a land of codswallop and hastily documented buggery is anything but a thoughtless one.

And here's Ms Higgins's version:

Shrovis-Bishopthorpe lead the pack in considering the internet a nuisance. To this end we have installed a lock, so that the decision to leave the real world behind... is anything but a thoughtless one.

I don't hold her responsible, much. No doubt BNET have rules about which words their bloggers may use. But I've sat through enough company presentations over the years to know that this is hardly an isolated incident, and so I do have to ask: is there some rule of business management that actually requires you to suck all the humour out of life?

Oh, looks like I have provided an insight into business management after all. Oops.

And it was all going so well.

2008-07-19T03:51:00.001+01:00

Amazon have, I think, finally made a mistake:

New feature! Amazon now allows customers to upload product video reviews. Use a webcam or video camera to record and upload reviews to Amazon.

I'm finding it hard to imagine a worse idea.

More shoddy journalism.

2008-07-17T03:00:00.002+01:00

Just how far back does British history go, anyway?

From The Telegraph:

Home owners and "have-a-go heroes" have for the first time been given the legal right to defend themselves against burglars and muggers free from fear of prosecution.

The first time? What, like, ever?

When journalists get these press releases from Number Ten, don't they question any of it?

The British way.

2008-07-15T01:09:00.002+01:00

I don't go on about it completely incessantly, but I am a bit of an Apple fan. I prefer their operating system, so buy their computers. Simple.

But there's a new competitor on the scene, and they really do look rather like they might wipe the floor with Apple. And they're British, would you believe?

Yes, it's Shrovis-Bishopthorpe:

THE 2008 SHROVIS-BISHOPTHORPE Envaliant III.

Here is a proper British computer, soberly cased in good Dartmoor tin. Hand-turned brass dials and latches come in high- or low-burnish.

And look:

Shrovis-Bishopthorpe lead the pack in considering the Internet a nuisance. To this end we have installed a lock, so that the decision to leave the real world behind and venture into a land of codswallop and hastily documented buggery is anything but a thoughtless one.

What's not to like?

The Web encourages strangeness.

2008-07-15T01:03:00.002+01:00

It's the way you no longer need the tiny minority of people who think the same way you do to be in roughly the same place for you to reach them. No matter how scattered, there they are, a market.

Erfworld is the strangest damn thing I ever did see. I'm not even sure I understand it, but it's superb.

The state of things.

2008-07-11T00:41:00.002+01:00

Watched Idiocracy last night. It's not exactly a masterpiece, but good fun if you fancy a laugh and can't be bothered thinking too hard because your daughter's got tonsillitis and you've therefore had too little sleep all week. For those of you who don't already know, it's set in a future in which the whole of mankind has become absolutely unremittingly stupid.

When it was over, Vic said, "They didn't need to set it five-hundred years in the future."

Job requirements.

2008-07-09T01:45:00.002+01:00

Daisy has tonsillitis, poor thing.

She gets it quite a lot. The infection responds well to antibiotics, but her taste buds don't. This is because antibiotics for small children have the nasty taste of the drug disguised with the even nastier taste of sickly sugary chemicals with names (but definitely not flavours) like "banana" and "strawberry". They are unforgivably disgusting, and Daisy won't touch the orange stuff, which seems to be full of the same fake migraine-triggering accident-in-a-chemical-lab crap they put into "orange" Revels. They used to put it in orange squash when I was a kid, and I couldn't even smell the stuff without getting a migraine, so I can't say I blame Daisy. (Incidentally, why the hell not use chocolate flavour? Kids love it, and even rather cheap fake chocolate flavour tastes of actual chocolate.)

The first time Daisy had tonsillitis, she was prescribed the orange stuff and Vic and I had one hell of a fight on our hands four times a day. We tried sneaking small amounts of it into food and drink that she liked, and she responded by refusing to touch food or even drink milk from us for two days in case we tried it again. In the end, we had to resort to having one person hold her down while another forced the stuff into her mouth with a syringe and then clamped her mouth shut. Not fun at all — especially since, when your child's ill, what you really want to do is comfort her, not torture her. That method worked that first time, but it doesn't any more, as Daisy has now taken to simply vomiting if anyone succeeds in getting any of the noxious orange crap into her stomach.

We did try asking a doctor at the time if there were any other flavour we could try, and he told us we'd just have to pull our bloody fingers out and get the stuff into her. This was all the more annoying in retrospect when she got tosillitis for the second time and was prescribed the "banana" stuff, which she decided in the end that she actually rather likes, which just goes to show that that bloody doctor, true to the long-standing traditions of his profession and the NHS, could indeed have done something for us but preferred to be rude to us instead.

Anyway, so, now, when she gets prescribed antibiotics, we make a point of telling whichever doctor Daisy sees that she won't touch the orange stuff. Last time, this was good: the doctor knew which drugs were which flavours and so prescribed the banana stuff. This time, however, the doctor we saw didn't know — which is fair enough, as it's not specified by the drug manufacturers for some stupid reason, so it's just one of those things a doctor either happens to know or doesn't. So the doctor, perfectly reasonably, gave us a prescription and advised us to ask the pharmacist before getting it dispensed.

So that's what I did, but the pharmacist apologetically explained to me that the drug manufacturers don't specify the flavour on the outside of the bottle. The stuff comes in dry powder form and the pharmacist adds water when dispensing it. The powder, annoyingly, is just sort of bland grey, so you can't tell by looking at it whether it's going to turn bright yellow or bright orange. This pharmacist even helpfully let me smell the powder, but it smelt of nothing. So I had to just go ahead and try it and see what happened. And, of course, by the time the pharmacist gave me the bottle, its contents were bright orange. By then, the prescription's dispensed and it's too late to change my mind. Bugger.

It was only when we got home that Vic noticed four words on the label of the bottle: "orange colour" and "orange flavour". They had been cunningly hidden in amongst some other words under the heading "Ingredients".

I have to say that I find the idea of a pharmacist who doesn't know that you can find out what's inside stuff by reading the list of ingredients slightly worrying. If you do too, you might want to avoid the Alliance pharmacy in Newtownards.

One of the greatest blogs.

2008-07-08T23:11:00.002+01:00

Some excellent stuff on Language Log, as ever. Firstly, the coining of a new word, "nerdview":

Language Log readers may appreciate the following classic example of writing in technical terms from the perspective of the technician or engineer rather than from a standpoint that would seem useful to the customer or reader.

....

The problem I am pointing to, however, is not about web programming or sorting technicalities. It is a simple problem that afflicts us all: people with any kind of technical knowledge of a domain tend to get hopelessly (and unwittingly) stuck in a frame of reference that relates to their view of the issue, and their trade's technical parlance, not that of the ordinary humans with whom they so signally fail to engage. ... The phenomenon — we could call it nerdview — is widespread.

I really hope the word catches on. I'm going to be using it. It's great when a new word comes along for something that you've been talking about for years. And it's great that the word sounds a bit derogatory, 'cause then, if it does catch on, it might discourage that which it describes.

Then there's this photo of the single greatest IT fuck-up I have ever seen.

And finally, following some link or other, I found this gem in their archives:

Let's be clear (since so many people seem to think the French always have a word for everything): this is a language used by people who are supposed to be the big experts in love and kissing and sexy weekends of ooh-la-la, and they don't have words for "boy", "girl", "warm", "love", "kiss", or "weekend".

....

I know, I'm going to get a whole flood of stupid email defending the beautiful French language and its expressivité: "La langue française, elle est si belle", they'll say, referring to their language as if it were a girl (not that they can say "girl"); Le français, they will say (inexplicably switching their gender decision from feminine to masculine), "est une langue" (O.K., so we're back to feminine again) magnifique, la langue de Racine et de Molière et de Balzac et de Rimbaud... All this from people who think a uvular scraping sound like a cat bringing up a hairball is a perfectly reasonable noise to use instead of an honest "r". From people who simply cannot make their minds up about whether an attributive adjective should precede the modified noun (sensible!) or follow it (silly!): the ever-indecisive French say un bon vin blanc ("a good wine white"), with one before the noun and one after. Get a grip! Pick one or the other!

So let me see if I've got this straight.

2008-07-06T23:13:00.002+01:00

Boris Johnson is a dangerous racist who stupidly and naively trusts black people.

Oh, miaow.

2008-07-03T23:19:00.002+01:00

I had no idea there was a World's Ugliest Dog Competition, but it turns out there is. It looks like the Chinese Crested has the thing pretty much sewn up, I have to say.

I had also never heard of Beth Ostrosky, but it looks like one of the Belfast Telegraph's subeditors has, and isn't too fond of her. Look at the caption on this photo:

Model and TV host Beth Ostrosky (L) kisses a Chinese Crested named Rascal

Now, that's just mean.

Another great metaphor.

2008-06-28T22:10:00.002+01:00

I'm currently reading Terry Pratchett's Making Money because it's just out in paperback and I'm too cheap to buy hardbacks. Generally brilliant, of course — the man just keeps getting better. Well, apart from his health, of course, poor guy.

Anyway, specifically, further to his previous "gayer than a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide" and Achewood's superb "straighter than John Wayne voting for Reagan on a horse" (for which, incidentally, I am now the top Google result, which surely makes me A Man), Pratchett has now set the metaphor bar to a new high with

the girl could flounce better than a fat turkey on a trampoline.

Wow.

Doing the job.

2008-06-28T21:50:00.002+01:00

There's been much discussion about whether Boris Johnson was right or wrong to sack James McGrath over his alleged racism — and I must say that the "It absolutely definitely unequivocally wasn't racist but I'd better sack him for alleged racism anyway" approach doesn't exactly send the sanest of messages. I would just like to chip in and say that this affair makes it clear that Boris Johnson is unfit for office.

Not because he was wrong to sack McGrath — though I think he was.

Not because he's a closet racist — I doubt he is, but, really, why would it even matter if he was? Let's say, for the sake of argument, that he doesn't like black people. So what's he going to do? Deport them? Lock them all up in special camps? Make it illegal to employ them? Even if he did have such private views, he's simply not in a position to make them into any sort of policy, and anyone seriously worrying about the truly terrible things that could befall black Londoners if a racist were to become Mayor is, frankly, insane.

No, it's because of the rationale for the sacking:

'We both agree that he could not stay on as my political adviser without providing ammunition for those who wish to deliberately misrepresent our clear and unambiguous opposition to any racist tendencies.'

Politics is, if nothing else, about understanding people's behaviour. Boris is correct that those who are determined to paint him as a racist would have continued to bring this up ad infinitum had McGrath stayed on his staff, but appears to be under the impression that, with him gone, they won't. This is such a fundamental and major failure to understand his political enemies that you have to wonder how he ever managed to win an election in the first place.

Yes, yes, I know: it wasn't Boris's decision, it was David "Bloody" Cameron's. But, look, I know he's only been in the job a couple of weeks, but he should be standing up for himself — and for his office. He needs to understand that, in London, he's actually more important than Cameron, party politics be damned. He's supposed to be running one of the world's largest cities, while Cameron, on the other hand, party leader though he may be, has the far less important job of asking the Government questions on behalf of the people of just one constituency. Boris has been elected to a position of wielding power; Cameron has been elected to a position of criticising it. For Boris to obey orders from Cameron is akin to Schwarzenegger running California according to instructions from John McCain. And his failure to understand that is not a point in his defense, but merely another reason why he's not fit for the post.

But you never know. Maybe he'll figure it out.

Poverty and progress.

2008-06-24T01:14:00.003+01:00

There's a superb piece here by Tim Worstall:

It was found that at the bottom end of Primark’s supply chain were some child labourers. This was considered an outrage.

....

No, it’s not what I want for myself, not I would want for any child I know, not even what I want for Mantheesh herself: except that, of the available options that sewing is the best one there is.

Is her life going to be made better by hysterics insisting that she should have no work and thus no income? Or should we continue to do the best we can for the poor? Something which, as we all know, means buying the produce of poor people living in poor countries?

Yes, we can also do more than that, but it does seem very strange to start the process of making the world better for such children by denying them the best of the limited range of alternatives that they already have.

We know how we got to our current comfortable lifestyles, because our ancestors helpfully wrote it all down. We know how to get on top of infant mortality and have an industrial revolution and create such massive amounts of wealth that luxurious civil rights become viable and end up working puny eight-hour days and eating foreign food three nights a week in our multi-bedroomed houses. It took about two hundred years, and it took our recent ancestors a lot of bloody hard graft; it killed a lot of them. I for one am grateful to them that they worked their arses off and lived through appalling crap so that I wouldn't have to.

Now, two hundred years is a long time. Having had quite a few societies find their way down the painful road from getting up at five to milk the goat to staying up till five playing Tomb Raider, I'd hope that by now some people out there had some decent ideas of how to get that time reduced. Maybe we could get it down to a hundred years of sweatshops — that'd be cutting it in half, which is really pretty damn good. Or maybe even fifty years, which would surely be an astounding achievement.

Instead, I notice that we as a society have decided not to tolerate even twenty minutes of some bloody foreign poor people trying to do for their descendants what our ancestors did for us. And we don't wade in and stop the hard work because we've got a new magical off-the-peg just-add-water industrial revolution for them to try out for free. No. We just wade in and stop the hard work. We replace it with absolutely nothing. And then we pat ourselves on the backs about how fucking compassionate we are.

We're pulling up the ladders 'cause we don't like the rungs. But it's really, really nice up here.

The BBC.

2008-06-24T00:55:00.002+01:00

A lot of people get very upset about the BBC's bias — although they disagree about exactly what that bias is, even after the BBC have finally sort-of admitted it. But, annoying though that is, it doesn't piss me off half as much as the sheer crapitude of their news coverage. I mean, if this headline had appeared in one of the red-tops —

Prison had 'criminal subculture'

— we'd at least know that it was meant to be funny. From the BBC, it's just more of the dreary soulless formulaic cut-and-paste shite that typifies the "reporting" on their Website. When this happens, we know we're laughing at them, not with them.

But, at or with, on a per-laugh basis, it ain't cheap.

Two funny things.

2008-05-30T21:50:00.002+01:00

Even by his usual standards, DumbJon is on superb form here:

Forget all this talk of time limits, medical necessity and the like, I have the answer right here: we simply pass a law asserting that all women have the right to 'reasonable termination'.

....

Once they've dug up enough dirt, the police will carry out a series of interviews in which the suspect is asked questions like 'I notice you have "Silence of the Lambs" on DVD, do you like films with killing in them?'. Or maybe 'I've heard you used to hang out with a couple of feminists, I bet you girls had a few laughs talking about how you'd like to abort a kid, right?'.

And a good post from Gary led me to find this gem:

Mr. Cameron told cheering supporters in Crewe that the victory was a watershed moment in Britain's march towards becoming a Russian-style plutocracy, ruled by two clans of indistinguishable, public school-educated management drones who intermittently trade power while each pushing near-identical Thatcher-lite policies.

"Today marks the beginning of the end for New Labour," he said. "Britain is tired of Labour's faceless, bureaucratic, authoritarian government, and the people are recognising the Conservatives' brand of faceless, bureaucratic authoritarianism as the way forward."

Thank you.

Winning and losing.

2008-05-30T21:27:00.002+01:00

So we lost Eurovision again, unsurprisingly. And, apparently, this is bad news for some reason.

The Great British Public's attitude towards the Eurovision Song Contest is a thing that baffles me. Firstly, we seem to be obsessed with winning the damn thing. Why? Why are we so determined to beat those colossi of popular music, Latvia, Hungary, and [cough] France, in this one pan-European pop music contest that happens on just one day every year, when we totally wipe the floor with them and every other country in the world bar one in that other international pop music contest, called "sales", every single day, and have done for the last fifty years? All these people that, on Eurovision night, vote for the Croation entry over the British one, when they're actually in a record shop deciding what to buy with their hard-earned cash, what music they'd actually like to own so that they can listen to it again and again and again, they don't buy Croation records. They buy British. We know this. They know this. So why on Earth do we give a damn about how they vote on the one night every year when their decision costs them, and means, nothing?

However, given that, for reasons that escape me, we do give a damn, why don't we try a bit harder? When we consistently produce some of the finest popular musicians in the world, and certainly the best in Europe, why, every year, do we dredge the country for the worst amateur pap on offer? Wouldn't it be nice, one year, to see the looks on the other contestants' faces when the hosts announce "And now, with the British entry, The Rolling Stones!"?

No, I didn't watch it.

Was in a car crash this morning.

2008-05-27T22:57:00.002+01:00

Don't worry, I'm fine. Just a bit shaken and tense and angry, but it wasn't even hard enough to set off my airbag or give me whiplash. It's the situation that's pissing me off.

I won't give any precise details of the location or the make of car in case any of this ends up in court or something, but I'll describe the crash itself because I'm genuinely interested to hear what people think about the liability for this one.

It's dual carriageway; the limit's 60 usually, but there are roadworks bringing the limit down to 40; so I reckon most people in the rush-hour traffic are doing about 50. So arrest them all, already. I'm approaching a point where the two lanes get divided by bollards on the cat's-eyes. The brake lights of the car in front of me come on, so I slow down, but the traffic is still moving quite fast. I then go through that excruciating and very quick series of — why are they slowing down? — brake a bit more — why are they still slowing down? — brake a bit more — oh shit — and I realise just too late that this car has inexplicably come to a complete stop and I can't swerve into the hard shoulder because it's full of a bloody great roadworks sign that I'd rather not have through my windscreen and head and I hit the back of the car.

My first thought was to wonder how I could have been so amazingly stupid not to have seen a tailback. But then I looked and saw that there wasn't a tailback. It was just this one car that had stopped.

The problem wasn't my stopping distance — I had plenty of that. The problem was that I didn't use it to stop. In fast-moving traffic, on a dual carriageway, with no junctions or traffic lights or obstructions or anything, I interpret brake-lights to mean "slowing down", not "stationary". I think most other drivers do the same. This, of course, is why so many drivers — me included — flick their hazard lights on at the first sign of a stoppage on a motorway: brake-lights alone aren't a strong enough signal in that context.

Now, I reckon I'm partly to blame for this. No matter what else, I am responsible for not driving into the car in front of me. But I don't think I'm mostly responsible. I know that you can fail your driving test for taking evasive action to avoid hitting a dog or cat, precisely because unpredictable driving makes the road more dangerous for every other driver on it and their lives are more important than an animal's, so I'm pretty sure that coming to a complete stop on a dual carriageway for no apparent reason would be an instant fail too. The other driver claimed afterwards that she had stopped because she suspected, but wasn't sure, that the car to her right might be trying to change lanes. This is another thing that was drummed into me in my driving lessons: never give way — again, because traffic is safe when it's predictable, and giving way when you don't have to makes it unpredictable and therefore unsafe for every other driver on the road.

What annoys me is that, as the law stands, absent witnesses to say otherwise, the person behind in a tail-ender is 100% to blame, no matter what. This instance strikes me as a little more complicated than that — and, to be fair, the other driver didn't seem to think she was blameless either. Trouble is, since she was in front, no matter what she thinks, her insurers will deny all liability, because they can. My insurers were quite reasonable and honest: they said that, if she's come to a complete stop on a dual carriageway, then she's largely to blame for the accident, and I stand no chance whatsoever of having the official record reflect that.

I only have third-party insurance. I was going to be selling the car in a couple of weeks anyway, and it's hardly worth my while getting it repaired just to sell it on. It's a few hundred quid down the drain for me either way. Oh well.

The master of disguise.

2008-05-27T01:48:00.002+01:00

It's great when they screw up.

Looks like Al Qaeda have a new tactic: find the stupidest people in the world, and recruit their friends.

Locals claimed that the 22-year-old changed his name to Mohammed Rasheed last year ....

He repeatedly watched video footage of the September 11 attacks and had a poster of the burning Twin Towers on his wall, friends claimed.

They said that he was “naive and easily lead” and had attempted to commit suicide several times.

....

Friend Alli Turner, 17, said Reilly would watch videos of the New York terrorist attacks and tried to kill himself several times.

He said: ... “He always used to say that he had been told you will get a better life when you die if you are a Muslim.

“He was on his computer all the time and he changed his wallpaper on his computer to a picture of the Twin Towers.

“He once said he goes to 'secret meetings’ when no-one is allowed if they are not a Muslim. ...”

That's certainly a tricky jigsaw. What kind of a man could ever put such pieces together?

Well, not this one.

“Everyone thought it was weird and something was going on but I didn’t think it was anything as serious as terrorism.”

No, could've been anything.

Taste and purity.

2008-05-06T17:19:00.002+01:00

Beck's beer have been running their "Only four ingredients" ad campaign for a while now. Don't get it, myself: I mean, Diet Coke's got hundreds of ingedients, and it tastes great. But it appears to have triggered some competition: there's a Stella Artois poster gone up in my street boasting that they, too, only use four ingredients. (Are Evian going to go down this route, I wonder? "Only one ingredient"? Come to think of it, Shredded Wheat have been running that one for a couple of years now: "Nothing but absolutely nothing but one hundred percent whole wheat, because reading ingredients labels is just too damn complicated and the only food you can really trust is stuff with nothing else in it." For some reason, these ads are always followed immediately by "And why not try our new Shredded Wheat Bitesize with fruit and sugar and loads of other stuff added?" Go figure.)

Anyway, the thing that struck me about the Stella Artois poster was, well, this:

Only four ingredients.

Hops. Malted barley. Maize. Water.

Is there some brewing-industry technicality that means that that isn't five ingredients? Or are they just hoping that no-one notices?

Absolutely right. And wrong.

2008-05-02T00:36:00.002+01:00

This is from a couple of months ago. (So sue me. I'm busy raising a kid here.)

The second-rate comedian Marcus Brigstocke is off on a trip to the Arctic to show how awful Global Warming is. Chances of his mentioning that the Earth hasn't warmed for years and is predicted not to warm for years are, of course, zero.

He clearly likes to think of himself as an environmentalist, as all affluent Guardian-reading jet-setting media-class types do. So I was pleasantly surprised to read this:

I don't much care if you don't agree that global warming is caused by human activity. It is quite possible that you are sick of the entire eco movement and that phrases like 'Carbon Footprint', 'Reduce Re-use Recycle' and 'offsetting your' this, that or the other make you want to scream or bury your head in the sand.

It doesn't matter. The Arctic is melting faster than the Wicked Witch of the West in an outdoor bath with the shower on in the rain, so whether it's our fault or not may not be that relevant. Whether or not we can change it certainly is.

Apart from the lame Oz joke, I couldn't agree more. If the Arctic is melting, then the question is not "Was the melting caused by humans?" The question is "Can we humans cause the melting to stop, and do we want to?" Absolutely the best reason to save polar bears is because we like them.

Thing is, though, that position is pretty much the polar opposite of environmentalism. I wonder if Brigstocke knows.

We all sound the same to them.

2008-04-04T01:37:00.002+01:00

While in Corsica, people would regularly refer to us as "Anglais" and we got into the habit of correcting them (nicely) with "Irlandais". (Yes, yes, I know I actually am English, but Vic and Daisy are Northern Irish and they outnumber me. "Irlandais" is a correct description of the family.) Anyway, so one nice shopkeeper, explaining why she made the mistake, says, "C'est la meme accent."

Well, I found it amusing.

A recommendation.

2008-04-04T01:13:00.002+01:00

We've just had rather an excellent holiday in Corsica. We booked it through Direct Corsica, and I hereby recommend them. They're basically a translation and money-changing service: their translation service allows Corsicans to advertise their holiday apartments directly to the British without having to worry about the language barrier, and the money-changing simply turns the rent money from Sterling into Euros. They do actually go out there and assess the apartments themselves, so it seems fair to assume that they're all of a similar standard as the one we stayed in, which was utterly superb. It even had a dishwasher. And, when we initially emailed them, they got back very quickly with good advice about which apartments would be most suitable at the time of year we were going.

An excellent service.

Oh, and Corsica Ferries are excellent, too. You can hire a cabin even if you're not travelling overnight, for not much extra. Clean and plush and comfortable. On the outward journey, there was a woman playing jazz on a grand piano. The whole experience was just so much better than crossing the Irish Sea.

One little niggle, though. If I were running a ferry company that plied between two countries, I'd require all the customer-facing staff on my ferries to speak both the languages of those countries. Even if they were pretty bad at one of the languages, as long as they could manage, however hesitantly, to communicate with passengers from that country, that would be enough. Corsica Ferries travel between France and Italy — and are indeed named after part of France — and have at least one member of staff to whom French is marginally less meaningful than Martian.

People who aren't from Northern Ireland don't really exist.

2008-04-04T01:07:00.002+01:00

Speaking of Pisa Airport....

We're at the gate waiting for a plane to Gatwick, and Daisy's stomping around happily meeting everyone, and I start a conversation with a woman who has a little girl of Daisy's age, also stomping around. Then I recognise her accent: she's Northern Irish. She's not even getting the same flight as us — she's going to Dublin — yet she's from Bangor, same as us. Not only that, but she teaches at my niece's school, and will be teaching my niece next year.

As anyone from Northern Ireland can attest, this happens all the time.

Douglas Adams once expounded the theory that there are only about four-hundred people in the Universe, everyone else being a figment of your imagination, which is why you keep bumping into the same people again and again. He was right, of course, but missed a detail: all four-hundred of them are Northern Irish.

Oh, except me, of course.

The Italians.

2008-04-04T01:04:00.002+01:00

Having spent a little bit of time there lately, I have three observations.

The Italians really love babies. Adore them. Can't get enough of them. So why the hell aren't they having them anymore?

The Italians really, really, really should not be allowed to drive cars. Put them behind the wheel and they turn batshit homicidal. I vow never to drive in Italy again.

The gin-and-tonics they mix at Pisa Airport are strong enough to stun a mule.