The stately homes of Yorkshire

Came across the Bramham Park website earlier today. It's a 17th century pile near Leeds. On the history page one reason for the parlous state of estate finances in 19th century was 'dissipation due to illegitimate children' - perhaps their late lordships should've kept it in their trousers.

As Dennis Skinner so rightly observed, when the rich kids are in trouble they always blame the servants.

Who are Eric and Ernie?

I was watching a programme about Morecambe and Wise when my 22 year-old son came into the room. He looked at the caption on the screen and then asked: 'they look like Morecambe and Wise, but who are Eric and Ernie?' The right blokes, just not necessarily in the right order, as Eric might have said to Andre Preview.

There's no I in TEAM

True. But saying it makes You the W before the Anchor.

Skipping the start of a restful break

 I've been looking forward to this week off work, after all, the pandemic has been stressful and a nice lie in on Monday morning would start the holiday a treat. Unfortunately, my holiday has coincided with the arrival of a skip next door just after 8.30, as my neighbours are having a new kitchen. Add to this the people opposite have just had a new bathroom fitted. Their skip is just being collected as I write at 16.30. In between times, the day has been - loudly - punctuated by the sounds of building work from both houses, most notably by liberal use of an angle grinder and power tools from next door. It's like a holiday on a building site.

Update: the bathroom waste skip is staying put - driver said it was too full, so there'll now be another skip delivered and then both will be taken away later in the week. As Slade so alliteratively put it, Cum on Feel the Noize.

New boots, longer days

 The advent of noticeably lighter nights and mornings has coincided with the need to make an emergency purchase of new walking boots. Last Sunday, I made the unwelcome discovery that my left boot was letting in - very cold - water; hence the emergency replacement.

Can't wait to test schlep this new pair of bad boys...

Wearing in around the house. Clumpy and stiff, but enough about me - the boots are fine.

Saving money, having fun

 One of the more surprising things for me in lockdown is the realisation that menu boxes are a 'thing'. Several companies advertise their willingness to rock up with all you need to cook dinner, so presumably there's quite a market for this.

Just imagine the money you could save and the excitement to be had by making a list of ingredients, then taking it to Lidl, where you can browse at leisure, out it in a basket - or trolley if feeling sporty and adventurous - paying for it, then going home to cook it.

Menu delivery? As Harry Enfield's character put it so well 'I saw you coming'.

https://youtu.be/lq7-cXqDIFM

Lessons from the past

 A couple of years ago, I was working at a place where the boss was much younger than me. He was the typical HR wunderkind - believer of corporate spiel and psychobabble, but generally harmless. Until, that is, we had a disagreement about the way he'd implemented a new policy. In the great scheme of things, it wasn't too big a deal, but - and this was a min wage job - it could impact you disproportionately if you had to take time off due to being injured at work.

By way of explanation, I was employed as a support worker for adults with learning disabilities. The residents, or 'service users' as we were expected to call them, could get frustrated and 'display challenging behaviour' - in other works, they'd give the support staff a slap, punch of kick if they were pissed off or faced with a set of circumstances that were causing them stress and anxiety.

I'd got on the wrong end of a kick doled out by a large resident whose behaviour had been 'challenging' all day, and by the end of my 12 hour shift, decided to lash out. The result was that I ended up with two cracked ribs and a month off work. On my return, the policy implications were made painfully clear - I would only be paid for three days at my full rate, the rest, was at the positively miserly statutory sick pay rate. Perhaps not surprisingly, it was then my turn to display challenging behaviour of my own. This led to an exchange of views with my boss, who fell back on a variation of 'just obeying orders'. Which is when our age difference became apparent.

You see, I'm a child of the 60s, and also a child of parents who went through the Second World War, in my father's case as a conscripted combatant and life long 'antifa', as we'd call it now. The concept of 'only obeying orders', was utter and complete bollocks to me, thanks to my upbringing and later legal education. And I told my boss this, by giving him the reply 'a Nuremburg defence is no defence'. He responded with 'what's that?' - which is when I realised that there are some lessons that have to be learned anew by each successive generation.

It also meant that I was going to get no-where by trying to appeal to his sense of justice - there's simply no room for that type of cock-eyed sentiment when you're climbing to the top and going by the book. Private sector involvement in the social care sector isn't necessarily as evil as Nazism, but at times it sure comes close.