Yes, There Will Be Pictures Of Presents
However - how great it is to use that word as the first of the Intro - I will start off with an item completely different from presents,
Art! Bafune!
and which instead focuses on Malicious Compliance, unusually being a Reddit Youtube saga that relates to This Sceptred Isle. Art!
Your Humble Scribe wanted to establish the mise en scene first, so we have this item from the BBC's News website, about an idiot who learned the hard way what that yellow line means and is for. Unless you're Iron Man or Supes, you are always going to come off much, much worse in a collision with several hundred tons of metal doing seventy miles per hour.
Our Heroic Narrator, OHN from now on, had just started working as a Safety Officer and Customer Service Adviser in a train station. Art!
You might see them as officious jobsworths, British Rail sees them as essential to ensuring passengers do not die, because once again, hundreds of tons of high-speed metal with a stopping distance in hundreds of yards. They need to keep passengers behind that yellow line mentioned earlier. People have died from not observing this rule.
OHN also informed that this station sat squarely on the approach to the city, and there were no alternative branch lines that trains could take to miss it. Stick a pin in this, it will be back later. O How It Will Be Back! To quote OHN, "If a train is delayed, nothing else moves." Art?
Enter the Bottomhole Boss. These stories always have one, don't they? OHN gives an hilariously unflattering description of your archetypal Little Tin Hitler, who was obsessively engrossed with how awesome they are. His management style appeared to be Shout Loudly. Not mentioned, but he probably windmilled his arms, too.
BB then tears a strip off OHN for not keeping people behind the yellow line AFTER THE TRAIN HAD STOPPED. When it's not an issue. When it's not an issue. I know that's the same thing twice, I just wanted to emphasise it. Incensed, BB decided to make a new rule up on the spot, because the worm in his brain had wriggled extra hard. Or something.
"I want to see everyone behind that yellow line for a full 30 seconds before you signal to let the doors open. If a single person moves you talk to them about safety and wait again."
O boy. You may be able to see where this is going. Art!
This is Malicious Compliance after all.
After two hours the consequences of this trainwreck (SORRY!) of a policy come home to roost, like vampire chickens. The BB comes racing up to OHN to demand to know what's going on, as Head Office have been in contact and they are Not Happy. There were ten trains bottlenecked on the station approaches - because OHN had been enforcing BB's bright shiny new policy rule.
Ooops.
Not only that, the Area Manager was about to descend upon the station (breathing fire, brimstone and bits of coal) to seek an explanation as to what had happened. You only get these kinds of visits when you've been either very good or very bad. 'Very good' was not on the table. Art!
A table. Just so we're clear.
The AM had a twenty-minute convo with OHN, who learned that his BB had been <ahem> 'moved on' from several previous stations thanks to what were coyly stated to be 'various issues'.
The AM's meeting with BB took less than two minutes, after which a defeated-looking BB confirmed his utter trust in how OHN handled passengers and made himself scarce. The bottleneck vanished, as did BB, this time at his own request.
What's interesting to consider here is that the company running the trains will have Key Performance Indicators built into their contract, where they suffer whacking big fines for breaching certain standards - such as trains kept waiting on the line instead of being locomotived up and down it. And there was obviously real-time observation of traffic and progress, being monitored by management. That makes me feel soooooo much happier.
Yellow lines! Art?
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| Make like a banana and split |
I Warned You
If you're not familiar with the visage of Conrad, Your Humble Scribe, you may want to look away now. Especially the 'smiling' picture. Art!
A Guinness bobble-hat, to complement my Guinness-cosplaying with black sweater and white hair. Which pales next to - Art!
A face not made for smiling
Conrad: Portrait Of A Serial Killer. Cool sweater, though.
NB: The only cereal I kill is porridge, on a daily basis. Just so we're clear.
More Of 'Major, Ursa'
Someone in Modern-day Mordor had a sense of humour about christening this vessel, as it means "The Great Bear" in Latin <spit hack>.
Well, Sal of "What Is Going On With Shipping?" took this one in his stride, and Conrad was quite chuffed to find that his - professionally qualified - opinions also gibed well with mine. Art!
What Sal also discovered is that the UM has not been regularly inspected by what he called a 'Classification Society', which is an independent third party who carry out physical checks to monitor safety compliance. For South Canada this would be the US Coast Guard.
The last time the UM had an inspection was over two years ago in the land of the Teutons, where it had a plethora of failings. Art!
If you can't resolve that, be advised that it consists of 13 'Deficiencies', which included minor points like "Records of Rest" but worrying ones such as "Doors within main" and "Access/Structural Features". The list here is over two years old, and one can safely assert that these deficiencies were never remedied and would have had more added. Over-worked, under-maintained and now under the sea <insert bad taste joke about submarines>.
Gluten-Free Cookies
Conrad, having gotten back into the swing of baking, decided to have a peruse of his Phil Vickrey cookbook, which had a recipe for "Peanut Butter, Chocolate and Fudge Cookies" which is gluten-free by virtue of the fact it uses no flour. Art!
Before and after. I decided not to include the 'Fudge Chunks' as the packet is still intact and unopened, BUT the 'Best Before' date is in 2018.
If I do these again I'll double the quantities used as it only made 12 small cookies, as my audience feedback informed me. Not had any myself yet as each contains about 6 grams of sugar.
"Department S"
I happened to watch the pilot episode of this series on Youtube last night, called "Six Days", wherein a passenger jet turns up 30 minutes late, as the crew and passengers believe, only to be told they are 17 hours overdue. Cue a great theme tune, and lots of British character actors. Art!
That's the trio of agents we follow. Jason King, the playboy in yellow, is an ideas man, not very good at fisticuffs. Stewart, the pragmatic South Canadian, is the strong-arm chap, and Annabelle was there to look pretty and run computers. I think 'entertaining tosh' sums it up pretty well.
Finally -
Make your escape before more Christmas present pictures arrive!
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