The blind man

Moral dilemma number 362.5.

The blind man.

Not the one in the joke who goes to the nunnery to fit blinds and winds up being allowed into the bathroom while a nun is in the bath.

Not that one.

A real one.

You are on the underground and you have watched as a lady immediately offered her seat to a man who just got on carrying a white stick, wearing dark glasses and occasionally singing ‘For once in my life...’

Okay, he wasn’t singing.

But he was banging his white stick about.

Anyway, he bumped into a spot in the middle of the carriage and straight away the lady had jumped up and offered him her seat. We all heard him decline. He was more than clear that he wanted to stand.

Fine.

So here is your moral dilemma.

At the next stop a seat right in front of him became available when its occupant got off the train. Right there, in front of him and near to me.

Tantalizingly close.

But did he still want to stand?

I hovered, not completely sure what to do. Two people came over making a bee-line for it only to abort at the last minute when they saw the guy and turn around. People are quick to berate us commuters for being rude but in fact most people will not take a seat away from someone who more obviously needs it. One look at the man stood by the seat was enough to make them turn away.

Especially as the seat in question was a ‘priority’ seat. One of the ones clearly marked as being for disabled, pregnant or elderly folk. Those sat in priority seats are under pressure to be considerably more polite than others.

Who, in their right mind, would quietly take a designated priority seat from a blind man?

Who would be that selfish?

Well, someone had to…..  Might as well be me, I guess.

I tapped him on the shoulder and told him about the seat. I reasoned that where everyone else had just assumed he wanted the seat, it was probably worth checking if he even knew it was there, being that he was blind.

“No it’s okay,” he replied, “I’ll stand”

Now that’s clear enough, isn’t it?

So I sat down. I did it, I took the seat. I’d heard him refuse two seat offers; the people in the seats directly nearby had heard him refuse two seats. This guy wanted to stand.

So why did I still feel guilty?  

Because everyone else in the carriage thought I was – that’s why. Apart from those closest to us, nobody else had heard anything. But they could see me.

They saw me take the priority seat away from the blind man. They saw me push past him to get it.

They knew I was a bad man.

The people, who got on at the next stop, took one look at him, then at me and shook their heads in disgust. I wanted to shout out to them and tell them he had declined to sit. I wished I’d brought my “I’m not a git” badge. I could have flashed that at everyone.

The train continued its journey and I sat, he stood, and people glared.

What would you have done?

When good ideas go bad - part 3

When good ideas go bad… Part 1. Part 2.

How long is it – do you think – since mobile phones took over our lives?

Can you remember how we survived without them?

I got my first phone 12 years ago and it has slowly eradicated any common sense I may have once had. Assuming I had some in the first place.

I was in the Navy for 11 years from the age of 16 and travelled the world as well as many parts of Britain. In all that time I did not have access to my own personal telephone and yet I managed to find my way about, get taxis, locate shops and buy things in them, and most obscurely of all, call people.

It’s true. I really did used to phone people even though neither they nor I had heard of Nokia, Samsung or Apple. It all seems like a distant dream now, I feel like my father must do when he tells me about them not having a TV in his house when he grew up, “But how did you know who to vote for on X-Factor?” I would ask him…

My SIM card is currently broken. I have found myself bereft of communications and access to Twitter while outside of my own personal WI-FI zone. The new one is on the way but in the meantime I am shaking with the withdrawal from Draw Something.

It isn’t pleasant.

Anyway.

As you may recall, I was in a car park in Southampton with a heavily loaded car and one child while my wife was attempting to navigate on foot to the train station that she had never been to before with another one of our children in tow. Luckily Jo’s phone is fine and loaded with GPS – again, how exactly did we find directions out when we were young?

I may be a bit old fashioned and vaguely sexist but I was worried. Jo is more than capable of finding her way to a station of course, anyone who knows our infamous PISA story could attest, but none the less I was uncomfortable leaving Southampton without knowing they were safely on a train.

But I couldn’t phone her.

So I drove to the station and had a look to see if I could see them. I couldn’t. Daniel asked me what the problem was, after all Jamie was safe because he was with his Mum. He was right, obviously, but sometimes you just can’t help worrying.

I just wanted to speak to her, to check that they had caught a train and were on their way. After that 

I wouldn’t worry, it was just the thought of them being lost on the streets that troubled me. But I couldn’t phone her.

I sat in the little pick-up-drop-off layby and worried. What should I do? Should I just go and stop being so silly? Or should I drive around the streets looking for her?

There was no possible way I could call her because my mobile was stuck in emergency calls only mode.

Then, Daniel once again asked what the problem was and I, once again, explained that I wanted to call Mum but couldn’t.

“Well,” he calmly said, “why don’t you use those?”

I looked at him, he was pointing out of the door.

I followed his finger.

I was parked directly next to a row of about eight public phone-boxes.

I’d seen them but not for one moment thought about using them. Have I really got so stupid?

I laughed and mumbled something about how I had been just about to do that already actually, and got out of the car.

Sixty seconds later I got back in the car relieved and content even though I had probably contracted Aural Syphilis from the receiver.

I laughed with a mixture of embarrassment and relief that my wife was able to across a road and walk five minutes through a town without me holding her hand and protecting her from evil.

It is actually possible to make a phone call from a different phone from the one in your pocket. Who knew?

With Daniel smiling smugly in the back of the car, we left Southampton.

All I have to do now is find some way of getting to my toolbox without cleaning the beach gear and I can make a start on putting this bloody wardrobe together.

When good ideas go bad - part 2

When good ideas go bad – part 1.

So, to be completely honest, I had a bit of an inkling about our destination based upon the measuring we had been doing in my son’s bedroom and the amount of times my wife had mentioned about how dilapidated his wardrobe was.

Admiral Boom had noted the change in the wind and announced it with his cannon so it’s fair to say I’d seen it coming. Even so, let’s just assume I wasn’t at my happiest.

My wife loves IKEA, it’s like a little treat for her to go there, I think. I’m fairly sure it’s her Disney World. If they built a themed IKEA hotel she’d be there like a shot. Jo skips about the Market Place like Veruca Salt in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. My youngest, Jamie, remarked (after pointing out the umpteenth object on a shelf that he recognised) “Does everything we own come from IKEA, Dad?”, “Pretty much, Son” I sighed, “pretty much”.

It is a misconception, I believe, to think that IKEA is cheap. It isn’t. You can certainly buy cheaper furniture but to be fair it usually is just that, cheaper. And sometimes ‘cheaper’ can be a false economy, The one-year old £80 Argos wardrobe that we were replacing can certainly attest to that.

It would also be unfair to say that IKEA is the best quality furniture available. Of course it isn’t. Spend more elsewhere, if you can afford it, and you can find substantially better quality.

However, what it is – is value. What you get is considerably better quality per pound than in most other places. Also it builds easy. And that is the key.

I’ve bought drawers and wardrobes from MFI before – never again. Once you’ve put up a Billy bookcase you can’t go back.

So there we were. In IKEA.

We got there early and so it wasn’t too bad – it really wasn’t.

The boys were on their absolute best behaviour. I was really impressed. My wife had bribed, threatened and cajoled them mercilessly and they were responding superbly. I think they were a little excited as Jo had told them they could pretend they worked there when we got to the warehouse bit. Nothing like giving them ambition.

We worked our way slowly around the store, following the path like sheep with the other early shoppers. Eventually finding ourselves completely off-plan and with a list so long it needed two different tick-off sheets. But we were getting somewhere.

Meatball based refreshments were taken (obviously) and we were ready for the hard bit.

The Market Place.

This, for me, is where the fun ends and the stress begins but for my wife – well that’s a whole different kettle of fish.

She was a blur.

I’m no expert in these matters but I think she may had one of those female organisms that you hear women having in films but I, for one, have never actually witnessed in real life before. Maybe – who knows? Do they really even exist? There are approximately fourteen million different products on the shelves in this Swedish Narnia and my wife will attempt to justify buying every single last one of them given the chance. There isn’t a single thing in there that we don’t need. The market place in IKEA is a very dangerous place for a husband to be.

Then, my biggest IKEA nightmare of all came true. Jo escaped. My wife managed to give us the slip while I was momentarily distracted looking at rather useful looking electrical extensions. There is nothing scarier than a free-roaming wife in a wonderland like IKEA. I naively tried to reason that she didn’t have a trolley and I was carrying the magic yellow bag so she couldn’t be doing too much damage.

Sometimes I forget how resourceful that woman can be!

Eventually, we found her stumbling towards the warehouse section carrying a hastily but impressively constructed ‘Billy’ yoke, laden with half a tonne of plastic tat.

It was at this point that things started to get a bit difficult.

Out of nowhere, people appeared. Suddenly it was crowded with people zooming up and down the aisles looking for Hasvik or Lack or Malm. Struggling along with an over-burdened trolley, while two children try to “help” in that very special way that kids do, was raising my blood pressure somewhat. For the record, the boys were brilliant all day, they really were, but walking slowly in front of you beeping loudly and shouting “Warning – vehicle reversing” every few seconds remains amusing for only about a tenth of the time that they think it does.

Still. We found the wardrobe. And the drawers. And the chair. And the desk. I still aren’t sure when it was exactly, that we had suddenly needed a chair, desk and drawers combo as well as the wardrobe.

I squinted at the packages and said “You know? This isn’t going to fit in the car with us.” I’d spotted the fatal flaw in our plan. Our car is not small but it certainly isn’t big enough for four people and half of the annual Swedish export for 2012.

Jo looked at me with a smile and what would have been a shoulder shrug had the yoke not been weighing them down, and said “Delivery! We’ll get them delivered.”

She really is very clever you know.

Except.

It turned out that IKEA Southampton do not deliver to our postcode. At all.

Jo smiled again. This woman is unbelievably strong willed when it comes to shopping.

In the car park, I tried every combination I could but there was no way I could get both the packages and the people home. Home. Only an hour and a quarter away but suddenly I felt an awful long way away from it.

The solution came yet again from Jo. She took our youngest, Jamie and walked off to the train station to make their way home by rail. Daniel and I loaded up the car and drove. It was brilliant. It may not have been perfect but it worked and it was cheaper than delivery would have been. Had they delivered to our house. Which they didn’t.

So there you go.

That’s IKEA.

It didn’t create one blog post, it didn’t even only create two, because there is a third coming. One more element to the day that I need to tell you about and that doesn’t even touch on putting the spoils together because I haven’t actually started that yet.

I had intended to set to work on them when we got back, but when I went into the garage I discovered a dirty pile of sand and mouldy ice-cream covered buckets, spades and windbreak sat on my toolbox. 

“Oh you are good” I sighed, “You really are good…”

Stay tuned...

When good ideas go bad - part 1

Florence and the Machine are doing their thing on the car’s CD player as rain pelts onto the windscreen.

The boys sit unusually quiet in the back while my wife hands out wine gums with an excited smile on her face. Wine gums – at 9 O’clock in the morning? In a car? On a Sunday?

Something is wrong, I can feel it in my bones and I don’t like it.

I don’t like it one bit.

I’d watched in a daze as a whole family got manoeuvred through breakfast and out into a car that had also been surreptitiously emptied of all the coats, bags, rubbish and boxes that usually infest it so that we were all actually sat it in it, on  the drive, by half past eight.

On a Sunday.

Even the sand covered buckets, spades and windbreak from last summer that my wife and I had been locked in a battle of nerves over ever since, had gone from the boot. She had finally cracked and taken them out - I’d won! Jo would have had to clean them and put them away in the garage. I’d nearly faltered so many times but my bottle had held and I was victorious.

But it didn’t feel anywhere near as good as it should. Something was going on.

Jo had set the satnav and all I had to do was follow it.

We were going on an adventure. I’d been instructed to drive mainly, I believe, so that Jo could take charge of the wine gums.

Slowly, Southampton docks approached. Odd, I thought, a surprise cruise but a car with no suitcases in?

I still felt uneasy about the whole thing.

I was right.

The machine announced our destination’s presence pretty much exactly at the same time as the entrance to IKEA’s car park did.

IKEA!

On a Sunday.

With kids.

“Oh Koonst-Billy-Paxing-Meatballs” I gasped.

“Look on the bright side” chanced my lovely wife, “chances are you’ll get a cracking blog post out of this.”

Come back in a couple of days to find out if she was right…

Bring on the armpit stench

There is something very unsatisfying about working on a bank holiday.

Really.

Now don’t get me wrong, there are an awful lot of worse things you could be doing than working on a public holiday. Not having a job, for instance, would be considerably worse. So just to be clear on this – 

I’m certainly not complaining. Much. Maybe just a small chunter – but nothing more than that.

It’s just a bit unsatisfying that’s all.

I mean look at my tube train last week.

See – it’s just so wrong.

Who wants to have all that space? A choice of seats and absolutely nobody’s crappy music within earshot? Rubbish! That photo was taken at 07:30 on a Monday morning and look at it! I couldn’t even smell anybody. Where’s the fun in that?

I certainly hope it won’t be like that this week.

Seeing everyone’s grumpy expressions as they squash in next to me and try to educate me in the world of Hipperty-Hop through their malfunctioning earphones, is much more like it.

There’s nothing like the smell of rancid armpit to set you up for a good week’s work.

Happy days.

Women have the power, so use it

A storm is brewing.

Is it a hurricane or just a storm in a teacup?

Only one way to find out and that's by clicking here…

This week I got somewhat onto my soapbox. I really do hate the whole celebrity obsessed culture we see about us all over the world. It is time to get a grip.

And who better to lead that change except you lot…

Readers.

And more specifically.

Female readers.

Women have the power – so use it.

Jubilee bun catching

We went a bit overboard on the decorations

60 years on the throne – I hope she opened a window...

Well done Your Majesty.

And there is nothing like a Jubilee to bring out the Brit in the British.

Bunch of absolute nutcases, we are.

Because it rained today – not just a little but a very lot and yet still we went to catch buns.

you can't tell just how much it was raining

Ah yes, the buns. You may possibly recall last May, I posted about Abingdon’s traditional bun throwing that marked the Royal Wedding? Well they were at it again for the Jubilee. The scaffolding from the Town Hall has gone revealing the building within but then so had the sun. This time it absolutely poured down.

Really, very wet.

And yet there were hundreds and hundreds of people there! Crazy loons desperate to catch a bun. And we were well and truly among them!

I hate crowds. I don’t particularly enjoy getting soaked in a cold rain. But I laughed like a ten year old. It is such a ridiculously silly thing. For every major Royal event since forever, Abingdon, in the heart of Oxfordshire, has celebrated by having the Town’s Mayor and a handful of local dignitaries lobbing buns from the roof of the Town Hall, down to the common masses below. And we lap it up.

there were a lot of buns

It is the stupidest thing you will ever do, especially in the rain, but I insist you all – yes all of you – make sure you go to the next one. Keep your eyes on the press. They might not mention Abingdon itself but they might say something about Prince Charles getting crowned – one day!

Then get your bottom to Abingdon and bring your Goalkeeper’s gloves or Baseball style catching mitt!

Personally, I believe that it’s worth Britain’s while having a Royal Family just for this one single 

tradition alone.