Smudger Snippets
Created | Updated Jul 3, 2008
I suppose it's because I have so much time on my hands these days, that all these memories come flooding back to me.
The Past
I have always been accused of living in the past, and I suppose they are right, as all my Snippets are based on the past. For example as soon as I wrote that, I remembered an old mate of mine saying that I was a refugee from the sixties when we used to meet up in our local pub when I got back home from working offshore. See, there you go, I am right back to the past again. I think the reason I feel happier with living in the past is that I am not all that comfortable with the present. I am not saying that I don't like the present day; there are certain advantages, all this modern technology for example. I know I bang on about trying to keep up with it, but you must admit we have come on leaps and bounds over the past few years. For example, take these modern computer games, a far cry from the very first one I saw back in the early eighties, where a line at each side of the screen represented the pads, and a square box that went back and forth was the ball; the game was in fact table tennis! At the time we thought that was really amazing, plus the fact that you could speed it when you got the hang of it. Then of course along came Space Invaders, which we had to play on a table in our local pub, they even had little ports where you placed your pint while playing. Now it comes on a small screen on the Nintendo Game player! That is just a couple of examples, yet there are many more.
I even enjoy watching those old films from the 1950s and 60s, as you get to see the fashions of that time, along with the old cars and other transport. When I watch them, I can quite easily drift back to those days, and many memories come rushing back to me, and I would drift away into another world, one that I felt happy and secure in.
Of course living in this modern world comes at a price, and the main one that seems to be top of the list is Political Correctness, followed by this Health and Safety regime we live in now. It seems we cannot say what we want to these days, in case we upset the Political Correctness brigade or even be called a racist. The way things are going it won't be long before we will be the ethnic minority in our country.
When I left the Navy and started work in the oil construction business back in the early 70s, Health and Safety was never heard of. Some of the practices we did back then would be totally out of order these days; in fact they might even be illegal! Yet our accident record was quite low considering the amount of dangerous situations there is on such a construction site. Even when I worked off-shore in the North Sea, where the danger was more prominent, health and safety was in its early days, and we started the hot work permit scheme which was one of the first changes. During the 14 years I worked in that industry I personally worked alongside and knew 19 men that died working in the construction industry. Some of these accidents were helicopter or fixed-wing aeroplane crashes, and some were due to the explosion on the Piper Alpha field and a few were due to cranes when we used to work out of baskets suspended high up by cranes.
Of course some of these new laws are for the better and do in fact make the workplace a lot safer, but some seem to go overboard, to the point of being ridiculous. For example, we live in a ground floor flat and there is another flat above us, and we had just had our front garden stone-chipped as the grass was getting too much for me to cut. So I had two slabs laid for the window cleaner's ladder, so that it would not puncture the ground sheeting that was below the stones and cause the weeds to grow through it. That worked well, and the window cleaner had no problem with that at all, as he could easily reach the windows upstairs; yet it seemed to be a big problem for the council painters who came to our door and asked us to have a whole row of slabs laid right along the front of the building, so that they could paint the guttering above. When I went out to look at the problem I could see that they could easily reach the whole front guttering by using the slabs that were already there, so I refused their request. Later that day their supervisor arrived and said that there had been a misunderstanding, and that they never really wanted a whole row of slabs laid, all they wanted was to remove the existing slabs, so that their ladders would have a more secure footing! It seemed as if the painters had changed their story. Of course, at this point I began to lose it completely, and asked them all to leave as they were indeed on private property, as we are not council tenants; we bought our flat some nine years ago. After they had all left, I had a feeling that there was more to come with this, as the supervisor was very agitated when he left, clutching his clip board, while replacing his pen back in his jacket pocket, along with all the other pens.
Early the next morning we were woken up by strange noises, we heard this loud bleeping noise along with revving engines. It turned out to be one of those very large cherry pickers with the remote control work baskets, reversing into position. It was massive, it filled the whole width of the street and that was before it put out those hydraulic feet to steady it. We just could not believe it, they blocked off the whole road which caused a large traffic jam. All the neighbours had to move their cars and park them on a nearby street. The police soon arrived and I saw them talking to the supervisor and could see his hands waving about as he explained the situation to them. Fortunately it never took them long to paint the guttering from the basket suspended from the hydraulic arm. It must have cost the council a lot of money to hire that cherry picker; still it's comforting to know that they are spending our council tax money wisely, and not wasting it.
The police stayed on the scene until they finished and directed the traffic down the other street, even they shook their heads when they saw what was going on, and I am sure the sergeant had a smile on his face as he climbed back into his car. I couldn't help but smile myself, for if I had not seen it with my own eyes I would have never believed it. No, I don't think I fit into this modern world, it seems that there is no place for folk like me who have to bite their lips before the say anything that might upset the system. It's probably just as well that we don't get out much these days, as we are both disabled. So we live in our own little world in here which is not all that bad, as we have the Internet and cable TV along with a good deal on our telephone where we pay a fixed sum for all calls. We are not entirely cut off from the outside world and we still get to read about or see even more similar stories of Political Correctness and Health and Safety regulations.
