When I read the headline that David Cameron said people should take their children to work with them on the strike day, I thought what a gift for the scriptwriters of The Now Show. Given that this morning even the Today programme was taking a poke at it, they may feel that by Friday night it will have been done to death. We'll see (or rather, hear), though the Systems Administrator and I may not until Saturday lunchtime. On Friday evening we're going to see a Now Show stalwart live, as Mitch Benn is appearing at The Colchester Arts Centre. ADVANCE NOTICE Mitch Benn and the Distractions are performing tomorrow night at The Colchester Arts Centre, and as of this moment tickets are still available.
Apparently children will be allowed into Number 10 next Wednesday. This slightly makes me think that the government machine is not running as tight a ship as it could be. At my place of work it would be difficult to take children in for the entire day, supposing you had any. The staff room is honestly rather insanitary, and rather cold, and smells rather mouldy, for it to be a suitable place to park a child for the day. They would get chilly and possibly wet wandering around outside, and it is not exactly a hazard free environment for a small child. The owners probably believe that while they are paying their staff, we should be concentrating on doing our jobs, not on preventing our children from ingesting chemicals, drowning in the ponds, messing up the tills, or otherwise causing injury to themselves or disruption to the business.
As a customer I'd like to feel that staff I was dealing with were concentrating on the job. I don't want to go for a haircut and find that the hairdresser's attention is mostly on what four year old Tristan has got up to now, and whether he is safe, while she absent mindedly tonsures me. Nor do I want to have my septic hand examined by the nurse while her bored 14 year old in the corner checks out Facebook on her mobile. Not all places of work have a spare room and a more or less free member of staff to run an impromtu creche for mixed ages.
A friend of ours was recently made redundant by one of the big banks. The bank is cutting 20,000 worldwide, with 250 to come out of the division our friend used to work in until the week before last. Staff set off to work for business as usual on Monday morning. On Wednesday rumours were circulating. On Thursday the people being laid off were told, handed in their laptops and passes and went home. On Friday they didn't go in. Employment finished. Our friend was the last person in his department to get the call, and by 4.30pm he was thinking he'd missed out. He is close to retirement age, has lots of hobbies, and was really keen to be allowed to spend more time pursuing them. Not everybody was in the same fortunate position. I was surprised the bank had bothered to make him redundant, given he'd have soon gone anyway, but the SA pointed out that under new age discrimination legislation he might not have chosen to leave at 60, plus getting rid of one person who wanted to go saved the job of somebody else who didn't. Thus our lives in big organisations hang by an arbitrary thread. A divisonal head has to get rid of 250 people. Are you number 250 or number 251 in the queue?
Meanwhile, back in the world of unpaid work, I have finished weeding the gravel by the entrance. It's as good as it's going to be, at any rate. The creeping sorrel will come up again, as it is impossible to get every scrap of root out, so the improvement is transient and somewhat illusory, but then so is the effect of mowing the lawn. I topped up thin patches in the gravel, taking some from the bag of new gravel, and some from the edges of the drive where it gets spun out by vehicle wheels. I want to use up the bag because then I won't have a bright green bag taking centre stage just inside the entrance, but I grudge running out of the supply of clean, weed-free gravel. The garden layout does not work well for bulky deliveries, but that's one of the things you only discover after the event. I would know next time, but there isn't supposed to be a next time.
Gravel gardening is quite fun, and you can achieve some interesting dynamic effects with self seeding, but it is not low maintenance. It took over two days (admittedly short ones at this time of the year) to weed the entrance gravel, which is a very small part of the whole garden. OK, if you laid a thick layer of gravel and blasted the entire area with weedkiller a few times a year and raked the leaves off in autumn it would be low maintenance, but if you want plants growing in gravel you will spend a long time weeding, picking leaves out from among them, and topping up the bald patches that appear. As for plants growing through holes cut in a membrane mulched with gravel, I wouldn't touch them. The membrane will show at the edges of the holes, and you lose the attractive elements of self seeding. Plants you want won't be able to grow to flowering size sitting on top of the membrane, but hairy bittercress will still find a foothold.
No comments:
Post a Comment