Minnie’s Musings

Random ramblings of a middle aged, middle class, middle income woman

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  • The Wonders of Modern Technology: Final Part, I Promise

    I have two observations about our baggage fiasco:

    A manned bag drop/check-in desk facilitates rapid resolution of issues through effective problem solving. This results in happy transactions and good customer relations, for the most part. A “difficult” customer has to be dealt with whichever process you want to shove them through so you need to pay personnel who can resolve issues quickly and efficiently at the outset. Said personnel will deal with issues far quicker and more effectively if said “difficult” customer hasn’t been incensed by crappy technology in the first place.

    My second observation is that airlines must pay a fortune for the delivery of “delayed” baggage as this clearly came over on some random flight as the new baggage sticker indicated. I can’t help feeling that someone in baggage handling had decided that the final trolley for our flight had been dispatched and the pile of ‘late’ cases including those from the connecting Edmonton flight could “just wait”. Now, I am no expert in airport logistics but a simple cost benefit analysis calculation says that sending a half full trolley out to the plane, which was waiting on a handful of stragglers anyway, would cost significantly less in time and money than forking out for transporting half a dozen cases on a different flight and paying for a courier to take them all around the country and/or forking out for clothing and shoes for passengers not going home who needed tiding over.

    And while I am on the subject:

    I am all for internet security but not when none of the two-verification process thingies work and I have used up all iterations of my various passwords. This was the point – this morning – when I lost the will to live and started this rant.

  • The Wonders of Modern Technology: Part Three

    Wakey, wakey, saga not finished yet…

    Breakfast at Pret accompanied by two very noisy small children and one harassed mother loudly declaring that if they didn’t pack it in everyone who was staring would think they were naughty and they were not naughty children.

    I think she thought I was staring at them in horror which I wasn’t. I was doing that thing of starring at something random while vigorously jigging my bag up and down in the hope that the washbag I was trying to squidge into it would sink to the bottom. She and her family happened to be in my line of sight.

    I rarely condemn mothers with noisy, disruptive children (having a particularly noisy, disruptive brood myself) and if I do it is usually when their little poppet(s) is disturbing my conversation with a good friend over a pot of tea and we are being looked at expectantly as though we should automatically admire the precocious brat who cannot sit in a chair and draw quietly but must race up and down between tables demanding attention from any adult within the vaccinity.

    Anyway, back to my central point: the wonders of modern technology.

    We ventured out to find a train and found one which only involved a single change from National Rail to the Tube. The only glitch being the need to tap into the TFL system which required finding a tapping in thingy, at which point we got separated and I landed up on the wrong platform (I blame poor signage) so we missed the first direct train home. I was forgiven and we sat in exhausted but companionable silence until our train arrived.

    Anyway, again, back to my central point: the actual wonders of modern technology.

    The suitcase was in Toronto so we headed home – me composing my righteous correspondence to the airline in my head, my best beloved doing the crossword.

    “Have you got the key?” asked Best Beloved one stop before home.

    “Look in the pockets of your jeans” I proffered, knowing full well that I had deliberately left them in there knowing he would wear said jeans on the plane and would therefore have them to hand.

    He grunted and proceeded to rifle through the various back packs and carrier bags, and then the washbag from which spilled my abundant supply of feminine hygiene products (those designed for menopausal women who have experienced ‘natural’ births… ladies you know of which I speak…). At least he had the good sense to shield the evidence from the remaining passengers as the toothpaste and brushes also fell onto the floor.

    He searched in vain and then he checked the pockets of his jeans. Gotta love him…

    We got home, had a cup of tea with no milk and crashed out for a couple of hours. To be woken by a call to say that the case would be delivered in the next half hour.

    “Wow!” we done did gasp in awe at the rapidity with which our suitcase had been found and would be delivered. I sent my righteous complaint to the recycle bin in my head and we waited in breathless anticipation for our case of smalls, all ready for the wash.

    Unfortunately for the delivery man, when he hauled said suitcase out of the van, he announced, “It was over weight.”

    “No. It. Was. Not.” I growled as I seized the handle and rolled the suitcase back to the house.

    He did offer to help me and I did remember not to shoot the messenger in time to say thank you , as he recognised the wrath of middle aged woman on the war path and beat a hasty retreat.

  • The Wonders of Modern Technology: Part Two

    The fact that getting through security had involved dismantling some extremely tight packing (when I realised that Toronto doesn’t have the jazzy new x-ray machines that let you pass through with small liquid containers), the shoving of dismantled contents into random shopping bags and then the rush to find our departure gate – with purchase a large bottle of maple syrup and two packets of biscuits for the children en route – meant that we got on the plane with about six carry on bags of varying sizes including one which only contained a now inedible banana and deeply bruised apple. So vexed were the cabin staff with this delay to their planned early departure that we late – but NOT the last to arrive,, so there! – passengers were ushered to our seats without our quantity of hand luggage being questioned.

    Fully prepared this time for petty tightness of the modern airline where they will charge you for sneezing if they can possibly get away with it, I plugged my own earphones into my screen and watched two mediocre movies and then made friends with a delightful Canadian student sitting next to me. She was on her way back to Swansea and her boyfriend where she was completing her law degree.

    Said Canadian shared my alarm as our plane wobbled down through the clouds at Gatwick to execute a bumpy landing with cacophonous squealing of breaks (I was clutching Best Beloved’s hand with enough strength to cut off a blood supply. Canadian student would have grabbed hold too, if our acquaintance had been just a little longer) and joined us in our trek through passport control to baggage claim.

    After a considerable wait at the far end of the hall, cases were spat out and trundled along the conveyor belt into grateful waiting hands. In two batches with a significant pause between. Canadian student’s very smart travel themed case arrived but she stayed to chat as her bus to Swansea was some two hours hence. There was no third batch.

    We waited. We mused. We speculated. We took it in turns to go to the loo. We went to check the over-sized baggage area (our case wasn’t over-sized OR over-weight). We looked to see if there were other passengers looking as anxious as us. There were. They were all from the connecting flight from Edmonton. Best-beloved – who had the bar code sticker stuck to his passport – went to make enquiries.

    Canadian student said a regretful good bye and wished us the best of luck in finding our case as she went to find her bus. I picked up our hand luggage and trotted off to find Best Beloved. By this time I had acquired followers namely a British Canadian family who had only one out of their many cases.

    Best Beloved was tapping away at the ‘Delayed Baggage’ terminal. Lost baggage has been rebranded it seems. Two members of staff were on hand to help with the tapping in of details for which read negotiating the vicissitudes of the online tracking service which was decidedly picky about the form and format of personal details. We finally pressed enter, took a picture of the reference and trotted off to find some breakfast.

    Deep breath and do try to stay awake…

  • The Wonders of Modern Technology: Part One

    Or lack there of.

    I am spectacularly annoyed. In only the way that computers and the internet can make you annoyed. If I didn’t have jet-lag and therefore have no strength in my entire anatomy including my hands, wrists and arms, I would fling my computer out the window and emigrate to Patagonia.

    Even getting back to Blighty from the far reaches of Niagara Escarpment (no I didn’t know Niagara was a huge escarpment, bigger than the one in the Tarzan movies, so it goes to show you learn something new… where was I?) caused me and my best beloved the unremitting fury of those who remember face-to-face customer service fondly and ever more distantly.

    Having stretched our legs in a picturesque Toronto park – between downpours – we made it back to the car hire place in plenty of time to be ludicrously delayed awaiting the free shuttle bus to the terminal (which incidentally went no where near the terminal and plonked you at the train station to await the next shuttle). Said free shuttle bus had gone on quite the most circuitous route around the airport – which is ginormous – while the driver strained not to corner on two wheels to earn his tip.

    Anyway, to cut a long and tedious story short, we attempted to drop our bags at the self-help bank of four machines (with one person helping numerous confused passengers). Said queue was a little long but not catastrophic, though our fellow queue-ees were getting increasingly twitchy as it stuttered forward.

    We eventually got a place and Best Beloved hauled the case onto the conveyor bet. And I am telling you now, the machine clearly stated that our suitcase weighed 22.8 kg. While simultaneously accusing it of being over the 23kg weight limit. Be Beloved rotate the case. It still weighed 22.8 kg and the machine still claimed it was overweight.

    Single individual helping confused passengers had changed gender but was otherwise occupied so I went to find someone else, who refused to come and help. By which time the machine had decided that our bag was not only overweight but we were now so late we needed to check it in at the check in desk. Single person helping confused passengers finally came to help we two furious and deeply, deeply confused passengers. ‘It’s overweight,’ she said. ‘No it isn’t’, said I, prodding the digital screen and the bright red 22.8 kg with a vicious index finger. Sensing she had lost a potential argument before it got going, she pressed some buttons, our case trundled off and we were briskly instructed to go through to boarding.

  • Moral Debate, Continuation Of

    Claim to fame No 1 is that my god father (a major general whose father was heavily involved in Bletchley Park during the war) was the MoD talking head in a Channel 4 program several decades ago (I think it was Channel 4 in its early, slightly amateurish stage).

    Anyway, Henry was asked by the interviewer whether the government really would use their nuclear arsenal in the face of Russian aggression. Henry was a kind man not prone to putting people down, so he chuckled gently and said, ‘Well if you aren’t prepared to use them, they aren’t a deterrent.’ Which ended the interview quite succinctly.

    Why this is relevant to previous post is that what Ben Thingummy also said is that once you have invented something, you cannot un-invent it.

    The tragedy is that man thought it a good idea to invent a weapon of mass destruction and subsequently enhance its power to create missiles capable of mass obliteration.

    It would be nice to blame the less than gentle sex for this alone, but I don’t feel we can as there were women physicists out there doing important work on nuclear fusion (I got this off a Facebook page I follow which is attempting to bring historic female accomplishments to the fore). The fact that their presence is largely unknown is symptomatic of men’s capacity to erase women from the record by either ignoring their research or putting their own names at the top of it.

    My favourite movie is Hidden Figures, BTW. Alongside True Grit, Oklahoma and Sleepless in Seattle, Pretty Woman and Arsenic and Old Lace.

  • Random Moral Debate

    Having watched a couple of episodes of previously mentioned Long Road North, recalled A Town Like Alice, Bridge on the River Kwai (claim to fame to follow) as well as several series of Tenko, I was struck by the conflicting emotions evoked by the 80th anniversary of Hiroshima.

    The Today program covered this anniversary with an interview of a child survivor (a Japanese American who, with his brother, was staying with his grandparents while his parents were interred in the US). It was extraordinarily moving, especially as this gentle man had spent the majority of his life campaigning for peace.

    A scene in Long Road North had the principal character being confronted by a youngish female journalist about the atrocity of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who was told, somewhat sharply, that the Japanese captors were ‘monsters’ and, when she pursued the question, that she had never experienced war.

    I was reminded of this when The Today interview was followed up by a discussion with former defence secretary Ben Thingumy, who put the decision in wider historical context and corrected an assumption that is widely held. The latter is that it was not solely an American act rather than an allied decision to shorten the war using the ultimate weapon. Given that aggressive pursuit of imperial ambitions had started way before WWII and the loss of life was extensive, ongoing and brutal, he felt that it was justified on balance. That is for you to agree or disagree with.

    Claim to Fame: on some Saturday night variety show during the late 1980s Dudley Moore played his party piece, Happy BIrthday on a Theme of Bridge Over the River Kwai. My father was standing in the drawing room door and laughingly commented, “He used to do that when we were up at Oxford”, to which my mother retorted, “He used to do that when we were at The Guildhall”. To which I said – with all the sarcasm of teenage hubris – “Ooooo look, a competition! ‘Who Knew Dudley Moore First’”.

    There is a Part 2 to this post so hand in there…

  • Catch Up: Tuesday

    Had even more productive morning doing little jobs like shifting and sorting random things that are either not in their rightful place, are not on the correct floor of the house and therefore nowhere near rightful place or need to go to charity/in the bin/into the recycling cupboard.

    Met friend at station and caught the train into London. Ostensibly this trip was all about visiting the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy. However friend had never visited before so, after a spot of lunch, we had a wander round the free but (not extensive, and found the Young Artist Summer Exhibition which is quite delightful. Lots of bits and pieces created by children and young people of all ages. Some of it was quite extraordinary.

    The catalogue gave the name and age of contributing artist and a quote about their thinking, some of which was way too well constructed for the average six-year-old (a shame, as a child’s voice is so distinctive) . My friend listed all the pictures she liked as she did several circuits of the room. What was originally a ten minute pop in turned into almost an hour of looking and re looking as more and more pictures captured our interest. We never made it to the main exhibition.

    Having knocked some packs of cards off the shelf in the gift shop (the man at the counter says this happens the whole time), I refrained from buying yet more art supplies that will sit on the desk then migrate into the cupboard. Instead we pottered down – past luxury store front after luxury store front housing expensive jewelry and some oddly dodgy high fashion choices – to Green Park and had a picnic.

    People watching in the shade of a tree in one of London’s many beautiful parks is an absolute delight. ‘How incredibly lucky we are to have this combination of vibrant capital, varied architecture and idyllic green spaces on our doorstep’ we agreed.

    Wandered up to Hyde Park corner – a route I rarely take – and perused the NZ and Australian war memorials. The NZ memorial uses Māori art to reflect the sacrifice of their two peoples. The Aussies lists all the towns the soldiers came from, including Hemel Hempstead. This was particularly poignant as the BBC is showing The Long Road North with its vivid portrayal of Japanese brutality towards prisoners of war.

    I was somewhat relieved when my friend suggested hiring deck chairs as my knees cannot cope with kneeling down to sit down and then kneeling up to get up. As friend is somewhat my senior, this was her motivation as well. As it was she still had to haul me to my feet when our hour was up as park deck chairs are low lying slings at heart.

    Bus back to station and onto a packed train where we dove for some empty seats. A lovely day with

  • Catch Up: Monday

    Did lots of organising for holiday to Canada about which I was very pleased with myself. Only to discover that the cottage on Lake Huron at the end of our trip doesn’t offer bed linen or towels. This is annoying.
    But it does explain why it was cheaper than the rest. Hi hum.

    Abortive call to SQL tutor as the Teams I have is connecting an obsolete account. Rescheduled for later in the day.

    Productive bout of swearing at the computer for several hours. Refrained from therapeutic bout of retail therapy. Am saint.

    Tutor I attempted to guide me through the setting up of sub queries and CTEs (no,I don’t know either…) so felt a bit more enlightened.

    He also did a couple of other clicks and coding which solved another mystery. My Business course talked about ‘assumed knowledge’. I feel the architect s of this course should watch that bit.

    Cooked a goulash and then remembered we were only two for tea so had fish and chips from the freezer.

    Our freezer contains a lot of fish, a lot of chips, a lot of frozen spinach and a pack of Brussels sprouts. And a pack of prawns whose expiry date is some time away but I am still wary. Might consign to the bin, just in case.

  • Catch Up: Sunday

    Did more work trying to fathom SQL coding. Made scrambled eggs on toast for lunch. Eyed the sky suspiciously.

    Departed for Oxford to visit son, rang residential home to say we were half an hour away and drove straight into a traffic jam. Shortly after idly wondering why lots of drivers were exiting the motorway at a minor little used junction with sudden swerves to the nearside lane. Spent a good half hour in said traffic jam measuring progress against branded lorries in adjacent lanes.

    Decided that we would stick to original plan and go to local stately home (where I could visit another gift shop and have more tea and – possibly – cake). Downpour erupted but we persevered.

    After random purchase at gift shop and tea with scone and cream – in for a penny, in for a pound – we took a leisurely stroll through the gardens. There was quite the most enormous flotilla of ducks on the pond. Best Beloved’s fun fact for the day: it is the females who do all the quacking. He didn’t know why, so I offered several suggestions including herding ducklings and sources of food.

    Detouring to avoid a steep slope, I met an Indian tour guide, occupying herself while her party visited the house, who asked me how to get back to the entrance. She had never visited before and wanted to know a bit more about the gardens. Just above us was the memorial walk to Winston Churchill about which – Best Beloved had archly observed (not half an hour previously) – neatly avoids his more controversial antics including India and Gallipoli. It does this by focusing on key dates alone.

    In this day and age, one feels obligated to acknowledge that one nation’s hero is another nation’s enemy. Our great historical figures are littered with such persons (Elizabeth I, Oliver Cromwell etc). There are very few people who can claim to have been wholly good and made sound, entirely ethical decisions during the course of their lives. For some, by accident of birth or naked ambition, the actions they take have consequences for many if not millions. It does nothing to detract from the victories won or atrocities committed to acknowledge the atrocities committed or victories won. I would argue that the crucial word to use is not ‘but’, which implies excusing or criticism, but ‘and’ which acknowledges both.

  • Catch Up: Saturday

    What did I do? Something happened. Can’t remember what.

    Oh yes. Went for a walk round local common with friend and husband.

    Discussed our children, our lives, our retirement plans, our siblings; random actions or inaction of various persons at home and abroad and then stopped for tea and cake.

    Ahhhhh yes! I remember. We were sitting in a pavilion cafe having said tea and cake when we noticed a small child (probably about 2 years old) cheerfully wandering around the corner. This little moppet was a miniature blond bombshell in pretty summer dress, clearly on a mission.

    As is the way of experienced parents whose children have survived into adulthood, we watched her progress, idly wondering when mum or dad would appear round the corner. Mum or dad did not appear. Moppet was toddling rapidly towards the car park. Can I just say – and I am not one to boast – but I was the first person to move. As I scraped back my chair and rushed to the door, I heard others doing the same. Only to be beaten to the rescue by a younger, fitter and infinitely more mobile waitress.

    Dad appeared at precisely the moment moppet was caught and laughed jovially. He smiled down at his progeny, took her by the hand and led her back round the corner. Leaving her brother (possibly her twin judging by the size of him) on his own, with a glint in his eye as he spied the car park and adventure…

    I am not one to judge. I have a long history of losing my children. Sometimes by accident.