Thank you for your e-mail. I’m aware that when you took the crime report on Friday morning, I was still upset from the events of Thursday evening and was not making a lot of sense. So I thought I’d summarise the facts, especially since whoever it was took another couple of shots at my house on Friday afternoon (15th) around 16:30, when I made another emergency call (CADXXXX15112019). Two officers visited me at 17:30, looked around and seemed surprised at what they saw.
The earliest date I am sure my house was attacked was Wednesday 6th November when a number of ball-bearings were shot at my house around 22:00, one breaking a window in my back room. (Backroom_20191106 attached). For various reasons (I leave for work when it’s dark, and get back when it’s dark) I simply didn’t notice this until the week of the 11th.
There were at least two more incidents of what I thought was pebble-throwing in the next few days, both in the late evening. I was wrong to think these were pebbles.
On Thursday evening 14th around 22:30 someone shot a number of metal ball-bearings at the back of my house. One came through the kitchen window, leaving a neat round hole and scattering small glass fragments the length of the kitchen. This was followed by two closely spaced shots which broke the glass of a window in my back room.
At that moment I felt I was under attack. One pellet against a wall is a prank, two in quick succession through the same window is malice.
I made the first call to 999 immediately after that. (CADXXXX14112019.)
I recovered two ball-bearings while cleaning up the next morning. The officers who visited on Friday evening (15th) found seven more ball bearings (Ballbearings.jpg) near the back of my house: these must have bounced off the wall. I still have two more to find inside the house.
I discussed two possibilities with the officers on Friday. The first that it’s someone on Camrose Avenue shooting from a window. Second, it’s someone shooting from the back alley. Taking a look along my back alley, all the other houses on Elmgate Avenue have higher fences or trees blocking the line-of-sight. So my house looks like a target of opportunity.
The first could be dealt with by a friendly enquiry from the most likely houses. No allegations need to be made, and it would eliminate the possibility. Your colleagues suggested that the Safer Neighbourhoods Team might take this on.
I will be drawing my curtains and taking a couple of other simple measures for a while. Your colleagues said I should call if there were any more attacks on my home.
----------
So there's something that's been going on and gave me some bad nights' sleep at the end of my week off. I'm waiting for the insurance assessors to visit.
I decided that in the chaotic lives of teenagers who shoot ball bearings at houses in the evening, and will soon be spending months in Young Offenders Institutions, that a house with no lights on at 22:00 must be empty, since it's owner must be out, probably at the pub. The idea that it is occupied by a hard-working man who wakes up early is so far out of their experience that they wouldn't even know what the words mean. Hence leaving the lights on. With the curtains drawn. Because if the lights are on, and they can't see anyone moving around (when I sit on the couch, my head is out of sight), they will assume that I am out, or possibly passed out in a drunken stupor like their parents. As you can tell, I wish whoever it is nothing but the best for their lives.
Thursday, 28 November 2019
Monday, 25 November 2019
We Apologise For This Break In Service
Regular readers will have noticed a lack of regular writing, or even pictures, over the last three weeks. There’s sure to be a reason for this, but I’m not sure I know what it really is.
A lot of blogging and even more You Tube-ing is commentary, and usually on some article in the mainstream press or TV. For all the posturing about the decline and irrelevance of mainstream media, it’s still the source material for most of the commentary. Very few You Tubers do their own research. I don’t blame them: original research is difficult and if it’s to be more than digging around public records, it needs contacts and networks. Digging around in public records can still be a good way of getting the dirt.
Some of this blog is commentary, some of it is part of an internal debate with myself on various subjects, some of it is a record of what’s going on in my life. I’m kinda done with the commentary: one can only say so many times that most journalists and politicians are on the wrong side of history and desperate to maintain their status until the last minute. The internal debates will go on, but right now I can’t write any of it down. Perhaps I’m looking for too much and should stick to working out what size of TV I want, or if I want a new one at all. As for what’s going on in my life, I haven’t known how to write about some of it at the moment.
A lot of blogging and even more You Tube-ing is commentary, and usually on some article in the mainstream press or TV. For all the posturing about the decline and irrelevance of mainstream media, it’s still the source material for most of the commentary. Very few You Tubers do their own research. I don’t blame them: original research is difficult and if it’s to be more than digging around public records, it needs contacts and networks. Digging around in public records can still be a good way of getting the dirt.
Some of this blog is commentary, some of it is part of an internal debate with myself on various subjects, some of it is a record of what’s going on in my life. I’m kinda done with the commentary: one can only say so many times that most journalists and politicians are on the wrong side of history and desperate to maintain their status until the last minute. The internal debates will go on, but right now I can’t write any of it down. Perhaps I’m looking for too much and should stick to working out what size of TV I want, or if I want a new one at all. As for what’s going on in my life, I haven’t known how to write about some of it at the moment.
Thursday, 31 October 2019
What Money Buys
There seem to be as many financial You Tubers are there are dating coaches. All of them are, of course, about not spending money, or, as we Brits would say, not pissing it away. A lot of them are about saving or investing money instead of spending it, and how much better a person you will be if you save or invest instead of spend.
Right. (cracks fingers)
Money buys four different things: necessities; peace of mind; quality of life; options.
Necessities are the the things you need to make the money you need so you can get the things you need to make the money you need. And not be living in your Mom’s basement. And not looking like a homeless person. Rent, council tax, travel to work, raw food that you cook yourself, water, electricity, gas, clothes, shoes, mobile phone. (If you don’t think a mobile phone isn’t a necessity, you are a privileged white person who doesn’t work. If you did zero hours or temp work, you’d know the only way an agency gets in touch is on a mobile.) Soap, shampoo, toothpaste, nail clippers and nail file. Detergent to wash your clothes with. Razor and shaving cream. Towels. Bedsheets, duvet, pillow and pillow cases. Haircuts.
Peace of Mind is what comes when you know you can handle something going wrong. Being the guy who tears his hair out because he doesn’t have the spare cash to handle a minor upset, from a blown tyre, or water on the laptop, or missing the holiday flight home and having to buy the expensive one-way ticket - being the guy whose world falls apart at that kind of stuff is not a good look, and it’s a lousy way to feel. Anything goes wrong, and you flip off the deep end, because you may have to starve for the next week. That’s why you buy contents insurance, even if you don’t own your own place. It’s why you put money into an Oh Shit account. At today’s prices, you will start to feel comfortable with about £2,000 in the Oh Shit account.
Quality of life. This is two things: less shoddiness, inconvenience and effort, and more pleasure, health, education and personal growth. Shoes from Northampton cobblers instead of cheap things that look awful after six months; good noise-cancelling headphones to avoid the pointless sounds of commuting; my weekly minutes in the sunbed; parking at the station now and again; having a car, even though I don’t drive to work; my movie streaming and music streaming subscriptions, DVDs, CDs, books, movies and occasional live shows - entertainment is quality of life. Dental hygienist once every three-four months.
Quality of life is not indulgence. The difference is not in the act itself, but in the purpose and affordability.
One indulgence is acceptable. Mine is the gym. It’s a fancy one. They provide towels. There’s a swimming pool. The soap and shampoo is Cowshed. I rent a locker. Get there early enough in the morning and pick up a free copy of the Financial Times. I could go to a much cheaper one, but it wouldn’t be twenty yards from Piccadilly Circus. I’ll go to a chain warehouse gym when I retire.
Where I differ from the gurus is this: it’s your money, your life. You want to piss it all away and be poor for twenty years after you stop working, please by my guest. I’m not going to stop you, and I’m not going to vote for a Government that wants to bail you out either. You want to be dumb, go ahead. I have no idea how people can spend thousands on gaming laptops and games, but they have no idea how anyone could live a life as boring as mine.
Because, unless you make a pile of cash and keep it, or unless you are in the top five per cent of salary-earners in your economy, the difference between all those spending-saving strategies is in two things: first, the exact degree of genteel poverty you are going to live out the last twenty or so of your post-retirement years; second, the exact degree of insecurity, anxiety and inconvenience in which you live the forty years you’re working.
Right. (cracks fingers)
Money buys four different things: necessities; peace of mind; quality of life; options.
Necessities are the the things you need to make the money you need so you can get the things you need to make the money you need. And not be living in your Mom’s basement. And not looking like a homeless person. Rent, council tax, travel to work, raw food that you cook yourself, water, electricity, gas, clothes, shoes, mobile phone. (If you don’t think a mobile phone isn’t a necessity, you are a privileged white person who doesn’t work. If you did zero hours or temp work, you’d know the only way an agency gets in touch is on a mobile.) Soap, shampoo, toothpaste, nail clippers and nail file. Detergent to wash your clothes with. Razor and shaving cream. Towels. Bedsheets, duvet, pillow and pillow cases. Haircuts.
Peace of Mind is what comes when you know you can handle something going wrong. Being the guy who tears his hair out because he doesn’t have the spare cash to handle a minor upset, from a blown tyre, or water on the laptop, or missing the holiday flight home and having to buy the expensive one-way ticket - being the guy whose world falls apart at that kind of stuff is not a good look, and it’s a lousy way to feel. Anything goes wrong, and you flip off the deep end, because you may have to starve for the next week. That’s why you buy contents insurance, even if you don’t own your own place. It’s why you put money into an Oh Shit account. At today’s prices, you will start to feel comfortable with about £2,000 in the Oh Shit account.
Quality of life. This is two things: less shoddiness, inconvenience and effort, and more pleasure, health, education and personal growth. Shoes from Northampton cobblers instead of cheap things that look awful after six months; good noise-cancelling headphones to avoid the pointless sounds of commuting; my weekly minutes in the sunbed; parking at the station now and again; having a car, even though I don’t drive to work; my movie streaming and music streaming subscriptions, DVDs, CDs, books, movies and occasional live shows - entertainment is quality of life. Dental hygienist once every three-four months.
Quality of life is not indulgence. The difference is not in the act itself, but in the purpose and affordability.
One indulgence is acceptable. Mine is the gym. It’s a fancy one. They provide towels. There’s a swimming pool. The soap and shampoo is Cowshed. I rent a locker. Get there early enough in the morning and pick up a free copy of the Financial Times. I could go to a much cheaper one, but it wouldn’t be twenty yards from Piccadilly Circus. I’ll go to a chain warehouse gym when I retire.
Where I differ from the gurus is this: it’s your money, your life. You want to piss it all away and be poor for twenty years after you stop working, please by my guest. I’m not going to stop you, and I’m not going to vote for a Government that wants to bail you out either. You want to be dumb, go ahead. I have no idea how people can spend thousands on gaming laptops and games, but they have no idea how anyone could live a life as boring as mine.
Because, unless you make a pile of cash and keep it, or unless you are in the top five per cent of salary-earners in your economy, the difference between all those spending-saving strategies is in two things: first, the exact degree of genteel poverty you are going to live out the last twenty or so of your post-retirement years; second, the exact degree of insecurity, anxiety and inconvenience in which you live the forty years you’re working.
Monday, 28 October 2019
OceanLab's On A Good Day
I ran across this on one of the Ajunabeats CD’s I downloaded for train music.
Listen to it first, and reflect on the fact that Schubert never wrote a song this good. A lot of the impact comes from the singing of the then 38-year-old co-writer Justine Suissa,
and the time change between the rhythmic suspense created by the 7/4 of the lead-in to the release of the 4/4 for the chorus.
So here are the lyrics, courtesy of one of those lyric sites:
(verse)
A little bit lost and
A little bit lonely
Little bit cold here,
A little bit of fear
(Lead in)
But I hold on and I feel strong
And I know that I can
I'm getting used to it
Lit the fuse to it
Like to know who I am
(Chorus)
I've been talking to myself forever, yeah
And how I wish I knew me better, yeah
Still sitting on a shelf and never
Never seen the sun shine brighter
And it feels like me on a good day
(Verse)
I'm a little bit hemmed in
A little bit isolated
A little bit hopeful
A little bit calm
Repeat Lead-in and Chorus
As I (first) read it, this is someone who made a decision to leave someone or something (Lit the fuse to it) and hasn’t found any replacement (I’m getting used to it) nor do they really understand why they did it (Like to know who I am) or what they are going to do next (Still sitting on a shelf).
‘Strong’ is an interesting word. Women feel strong, and it relates to will, specifically to defiance. The song’s character is defying the emotional collapse she knows is one Really Bad Day away.
I see Instagram posts showing this month’s super-food, some yoghurt, a salad, a yoga pose or maybe a climbing wall session, and her (the song’s character, not Ms Suissa) smiling in front of some cute or scenic background.
There may even be a cat.
Because how does she feel? Lost. Lonely. Cold. Slightly fearful. Hemmed in. Isolated. Hopeful. Calm.
That’s a very specific list of emotions. The last two look positive, but aren’t.
You don’t feel hopeful unless things are bad. You don’t notice you feel calm unless you should be agitated and upset.
And only people who feel Bad most of the time talk about having Good Days.
So when I started on this, I thought the song’s character was a woman who had made a drastic decision that has de-railed her life. Or found that her life has hit The Wall.
But now I wonder.
In fact, if she’s talking to herself forever and wish[es] she knew [herself] better, is she in fact a Psych patient?
Listen to it first, and reflect on the fact that Schubert never wrote a song this good. A lot of the impact comes from the singing of the then 38-year-old co-writer Justine Suissa,
and the time change between the rhythmic suspense created by the 7/4 of the lead-in to the release of the 4/4 for the chorus.
So here are the lyrics, courtesy of one of those lyric sites:
(verse)
A little bit lost and
A little bit lonely
Little bit cold here,
A little bit of fear
(Lead in)
But I hold on and I feel strong
And I know that I can
I'm getting used to it
Lit the fuse to it
Like to know who I am
(Chorus)
I've been talking to myself forever, yeah
And how I wish I knew me better, yeah
Still sitting on a shelf and never
Never seen the sun shine brighter
And it feels like me on a good day
(Verse)
I'm a little bit hemmed in
A little bit isolated
A little bit hopeful
A little bit calm
Repeat Lead-in and Chorus
As I (first) read it, this is someone who made a decision to leave someone or something (Lit the fuse to it) and hasn’t found any replacement (I’m getting used to it) nor do they really understand why they did it (Like to know who I am) or what they are going to do next (Still sitting on a shelf).
‘Strong’ is an interesting word. Women feel strong, and it relates to will, specifically to defiance. The song’s character is defying the emotional collapse she knows is one Really Bad Day away.
I see Instagram posts showing this month’s super-food, some yoghurt, a salad, a yoga pose or maybe a climbing wall session, and her (the song’s character, not Ms Suissa) smiling in front of some cute or scenic background.
There may even be a cat.
Because how does she feel? Lost. Lonely. Cold. Slightly fearful. Hemmed in. Isolated. Hopeful. Calm.
That’s a very specific list of emotions. The last two look positive, but aren’t.
You don’t feel hopeful unless things are bad. You don’t notice you feel calm unless you should be agitated and upset.
And only people who feel Bad most of the time talk about having Good Days.
So when I started on this, I thought the song’s character was a woman who had made a drastic decision that has de-railed her life. Or found that her life has hit The Wall.
But now I wonder.
In fact, if she’s talking to herself forever and wish[es] she knew [herself] better, is she in fact a Psych patient?
Thursday, 24 October 2019
All My Cars: 1980 - 2019
I passed my driving test in February 1979. In rough chronological order my cars have been:
Fiat 850
Saab 900
Lancia Fulvia
Vauxhall Cavalier 2.0 (1991/2)
VW Polo
Volvo V40 (2000/1)
Ford Ka
Renault Clio
Fiat Punto 1.4 Active
Fiat Punto 1.2 Pop Star
The first three were end-of-lifers: I was the last owner. Those were my 1980’s cars. The Cavalier and the V40 were company cars. The Ka got thumped in the boot by another driver in something like 2008, and I swear I found the Clio in a dealership somewhere in south-west England. I do remember a couple of blokes driving it up to deliver. Trade plates and all. The Clio got flooded, though I can’t find the blog post, in about 2010, and then the Punto Active got hit this year.
The Cavalier was a 2 litre automatic and changed my driving style forever. Everyone should drive a bigger-engined automatic at least once for a few months. What I can’t believe is that I ran the family Polo for eight years in the 1990’s when I was unemployed. But I sure didn’t have the money to buy even a beater in those days.
All boring stuff. I live in the suburbs, don’t travel much, my let’s-go-somewhere-two-hundred-miles-away-for-the-weekend days are over, and I regard cars as tools. Not as status symbols.
Let’s hope no-one drives into the new Punto for at least ten years. Please.
Fiat 850
Saab 900
Lancia Fulvia
Vauxhall Cavalier 2.0 (1991/2)
VW Polo
Volvo V40 (2000/1)
Ford Ka
Renault Clio
Fiat Punto 1.4 Active
Fiat Punto 1.2 Pop Star
The first three were end-of-lifers: I was the last owner. Those were my 1980’s cars. The Cavalier and the V40 were company cars. The Ka got thumped in the boot by another driver in something like 2008, and I swear I found the Clio in a dealership somewhere in south-west England. I do remember a couple of blokes driving it up to deliver. Trade plates and all. The Clio got flooded, though I can’t find the blog post, in about 2010, and then the Punto Active got hit this year.
The Cavalier was a 2 litre automatic and changed my driving style forever. Everyone should drive a bigger-engined automatic at least once for a few months. What I can’t believe is that I ran the family Polo for eight years in the 1990’s when I was unemployed. But I sure didn’t have the money to buy even a beater in those days.
All boring stuff. I live in the suburbs, don’t travel much, my let’s-go-somewhere-two-hundred-miles-away-for-the-weekend days are over, and I regard cars as tools. Not as status symbols.
Let’s hope no-one drives into the new Punto for at least ten years. Please.
My very first car - in that colour
Monday, 21 October 2019
Buying the Replacement Car
Car Giant having failed as a source of the kind of second-hand car I look for, I looked on the internet. Fiat Puntos with low mileages don’t fill a page, and there was one in West Molesey that was exactly what I was looking for. Phone call to establish it was still available, appointment for 09:00 Saturday morning to look at it.
The car was fine, though the battery was out-of-condition and they replaced it for me. If I had driven it straight away I might not have found that out. I found out because I had to park it up so I could return the rental car.
The logistics were a bit involved: Rental car from home to West Molesey. Buy car. Call AA insurance to get it insured. Drive rental from West Molesey to rental office in Hanworth, stopping to fill tank with petrol, and return car. Call cab firm for taxi back to West Molesey. Battery not yet fixed, walk up road for a coffee and toasted. Walk back to car sales place. Collect car. Drive to Sainsbury’s in Hampton to do shopping
How much did all this cost?
Visit to Car Giant: £0 (Thank you 60+ card)
Car itself: £2,995
Car rental: £110
Taxi from rental: £20
Lost fuel in old car: £25
Payment from Insurance company: £667
Net: £2,483
So because someone didn’t look where they were going when doing a three-point turn, I’m out £2,500.
Okay, so ‘shit happens’. The catch is that usually the shit costs one party way more than the other. In this case the guy who drove into me will face higher insurance charges - if he’s even insured, but nothing like what I’m out. He’s just going to have higher insurance premiums for a couple of years. Had he been driving a car, he might have had a more expensive time of it, but he was driving a solid metal trailer van with what amounted to battering rams on the back, so his vehicle is unaffected.
So now I have a new second-hand car. It’s the size and style I want, and from the little driving I’ve done, the 1.2 engine makes a slightly more sluggish drive than the 1.4 in the previous Punto.
The car was fine, though the battery was out-of-condition and they replaced it for me. If I had driven it straight away I might not have found that out. I found out because I had to park it up so I could return the rental car.
The logistics were a bit involved: Rental car from home to West Molesey. Buy car. Call AA insurance to get it insured. Drive rental from West Molesey to rental office in Hanworth, stopping to fill tank with petrol, and return car. Call cab firm for taxi back to West Molesey. Battery not yet fixed, walk up road for a coffee and toasted. Walk back to car sales place. Collect car. Drive to Sainsbury’s in Hampton to do shopping
How much did all this cost?
Visit to Car Giant: £0 (Thank you 60+ card)
Car itself: £2,995
Car rental: £110
Taxi from rental: £20
Lost fuel in old car: £25
Payment from Insurance company: £667
Net: £2,483
So because someone didn’t look where they were going when doing a three-point turn, I’m out £2,500.
Okay, so ‘shit happens’. The catch is that usually the shit costs one party way more than the other. In this case the guy who drove into me will face higher insurance charges - if he’s even insured, but nothing like what I’m out. He’s just going to have higher insurance premiums for a couple of years. Had he been driving a car, he might have had a more expensive time of it, but he was driving a solid metal trailer van with what amounted to battering rams on the back, so his vehicle is unaffected.
So now I have a new second-hand car. It’s the size and style I want, and from the little driving I’ve done, the 1.2 engine makes a slightly more sluggish drive than the 1.4 in the previous Punto.
Thursday, 17 October 2019
Why We’re Helpless When Things That Don’t Go Wrong Finally Go Wrong
There should be a snappy title for the law that states: the longer any given thing in your life works, the less competent you will be at fixing it when it goes wrong.
Contrast:
Ten years ago you found a decent plumber to put in the gas boiler. Then the boiler goes. The plumber isn’t working any more, and you have no idea where to find another one
Vs
Every six months something happens to one of the damn pipes in your house. Like mice can eat copper or something. You have three currently active plumbers in your phone. People you know ask you to recommend plumbers.
It’s also known as the I used to know how to do this, but I haven’t had to for years effect.
Two out three of the last cars I’ve had were from Car Giant: a Ford Ka and the Fiat Punto. In the middle was a Renault Clio that I bought from a dealer in a town in south-west (say Swindon, though I don’t think it was) because I happened to pass it when I was in the town on business. I look for a low-mileage, previous model of a mainstream car: The Ka, a Renault Clio, then the Fiat Punto. The fact that it’s the previous model means it’s a lot cheaper than the latest model, even if only six months older, for the same mileage.
This time round Car Giant failed me. Totally. Utterly. In the nine years since I bought the Punto, they seem to have adopted a policy of only selling the latest model and no older than three years. Minimum price £5,500 (+£150 ‘admin fee’). Main price range £6,500 - £9,500. For a supermini (Corsa, Fiesta). No Puntos. For that kind of money, I want a car I really like, rather can just live with. And I am not a rear spoiler guy (Corsa). Nor do I like an instrument panel that seems to be right in my face (Fiesta). The Fiat 500 is way too small.
So that was Plan A gone.
As I trudged along the alley between Hythe Road and Willesden Junction - which is marked on the map as an un-named thick grey line, and you have not experienced the full range of what London has to offer if you haven’t walked it at least once - I realised I had no Plan B. I had no idea how the heck one buys previous-model, low mileage cars in +TheCurrentYear.
Why would I? The one I had would still be going strong if that guy hadn’t backed into it.
The better your life works, and the longer it works well, the less resources you will have to fix it when stuff starts to break.
Contrast:
Ten years ago you found a decent plumber to put in the gas boiler. Then the boiler goes. The plumber isn’t working any more, and you have no idea where to find another one
Vs
Every six months something happens to one of the damn pipes in your house. Like mice can eat copper or something. You have three currently active plumbers in your phone. People you know ask you to recommend plumbers.
It’s also known as the I used to know how to do this, but I haven’t had to for years effect.
Two out three of the last cars I’ve had were from Car Giant: a Ford Ka and the Fiat Punto. In the middle was a Renault Clio that I bought from a dealer in a town in south-west (say Swindon, though I don’t think it was) because I happened to pass it when I was in the town on business. I look for a low-mileage, previous model of a mainstream car: The Ka, a Renault Clio, then the Fiat Punto. The fact that it’s the previous model means it’s a lot cheaper than the latest model, even if only six months older, for the same mileage.
This time round Car Giant failed me. Totally. Utterly. In the nine years since I bought the Punto, they seem to have adopted a policy of only selling the latest model and no older than three years. Minimum price £5,500 (+£150 ‘admin fee’). Main price range £6,500 - £9,500. For a supermini (Corsa, Fiesta). No Puntos. For that kind of money, I want a car I really like, rather can just live with. And I am not a rear spoiler guy (Corsa). Nor do I like an instrument panel that seems to be right in my face (Fiesta). The Fiat 500 is way too small.
So that was Plan A gone.
As I trudged along the alley between Hythe Road and Willesden Junction - which is marked on the map as an un-named thick grey line, and you have not experienced the full range of what London has to offer if you haven’t walked it at least once - I realised I had no Plan B. I had no idea how the heck one buys previous-model, low mileage cars in +TheCurrentYear.
Why would I? The one I had would still be going strong if that guy hadn’t backed into it.
The better your life works, and the longer it works well, the less resources you will have to fix it when stuff starts to break.
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