Complaining!

I Can Tell What You're Thinking
"Why is the grumpy old whitehair bothering to even mention "Complaining", as if it were an unusual matter?  Most of BOOJUM! consists of complaints rendered at length and with venom."
     You are absolutely correct, much of the blog consists of Conrad whining, hopefully in amusing fashion, yet I refer to Mike of "25 Things" on Youtube.  Art?

     That's Mike, plaintively pleading for petulant pernickitiness to take a day off.  What comes in at Number 24 of his things that the Pond Allotment of Eden* does better than the South Canadians?  Art?

     "Nobody complains like the British", he quotes.  This is a little ambiguous, because Because We Are British, we don't like to complain.  We are stoic.  Full of sang froid**.  Phlegmatic, even.  Stolid unemotional North Europeans, and it simply isn't on, you know, to go bleating about circumstances.  Unless we are provoked.  PROVOKED!  Then, Sir, watch out for our Frothing Nitric Ire!  Why, in 1940 <goes off on long rant that has been mercifully edited out by Mister Hand> - a contemporary one.
     I apologise for posting a copy of an insert from as recently as June, but it ups the word count illustrates my point perfectly:

"Dear Sir, Madam or Other

                                        Just as drama derives from conflict, so surely must excitement derive from uncertainty.

     At least, this is how I understand the administrative and planning functions of First Bus operate.

       "Won't it be so much more EXCITING if our passengers enjoy that frisson of uncertainty!"

     I also suppose your managers agreed.

     "Reliability and timetables are so blase!  What passengers need is a little sampling of the eternal chaos that drives the universe."

     Thus the 24, 181 and 182 services are become - erratic.  And that's being kind.

     Let us examine your slogan "Get on board with First Bus".

     Firstly, to be able to get on a First Bus, it needs to be there.  A small point, perhaps, yet quite important.

     Next, there is the issue of being physically able to board the bus.  The 24 service runs only every 30 minutes and is consequently totally "rammed" with standing-room only being the rule, not the exception.

     

     - here an aside.  Are the Master Timetables engraved on granite?  Or stone? Etched, perhaps, on a sheet of platinum?  Never to be altered?  Because the 24 maintains the same frequency at rush hour as at noon.  At these times when travellers are greatest in number, when logic would dictate more buses - "Ah", says First Bus management.  "Our timetables were laid down by our ancestors in times long past.  We dare not amend them for fear of offending the gods."  One supposes you have to consult the entrails of a goat before altering a schedule?

(A Transcription of a Timetable and Route Meeting)

     SENECA: Forsooth, Tarquin!  The omens are not propitious!  This goat's liver has three lobes to it.

     TARQUIN: Aye, Seneca.  Last night a black cat crossed my path, and there were owls.

     SENECA: So - we ignore the roadworks and use the same route?

     Back to your slogan "Get on board".

     Thirdly, it's no use me getting on a service that is supposed to go to Rochdale but stops in Royton, or which should go to Shaw and which stops in Chadderton at random.  Do your drivers get an Arbitrary Destination Alteration bonus?

     Lastly, and I make this point because I am not convinced that First Bus's HQ staff actually understand the world of work - as they are all independently wealthy and only come into the office to stave off boredom - but those of us who catch the bus of a morning are usually trying to get into our place of employment.

     Big hint: employers like employees to arrive ON TIME.

Let us amend your slogan to one a little more accurate.  "Get on A board".  The board in question being a skateboard, a far more efficient, reliable and accommodating form of transport than First Bus."

     There you go, Frothing Nitric Ire in literary form!

Degsy's Detective Work
This is no complaint, it's fulsome praise instead.
     For lo, these many years Conrad has wondered "What was the name of that television series ..." and has never found out.  Ben Cross had something to do with it.  It's about a girl who draws a picture that becomes real - of a boy trapped in a lighthouse, under siege from rock monsters.  She is able to visit this frightning reality.  Made in the mid-Seventies, I thought.
     It was very creepy indeed, especially so for a children's television programme.  Could I find the title?  NO!  But I did put it to Degsy as a challenge - 
     Who came through!

No, it's not "atmospheric", it's creepy.

     "Escape Into Night", a 6 part series from 1972, set in a house (not a lighthouse, sorry, no idea how that crept in) and was adapted from the novel "Marianne Dreams".  Also adapted into a film called "Paperhouse" with Ben Cross.  EIN was originally broadcast in colour but only B&W episodes now remain.
     So, now I know, and so do you, too.

Creepy!

We are now well over count, and I don't want to risk alienating you lot, gentle readers, which might lead to - complaints!  So I shall almost end today's post here.  Even though I had another screed about First Bus and the 24 ...

But first - 

Finally
Here's a photo of the third secretary-general of the United Nations, U Thant, who held the post between 1961 and 1971 - so he will have been in at the creation of U.N.I.T. I wonder if he knew Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart?


*  It's dry today.
** "Cold blood" - Conrad excepted