Wild and wet 2007

Well that was a hairy couple of days. I mean the rain fell so hard around here that it might have made your head bleed. Good job I was wearing a hat, then. Street patrols got pulled Friday and Saturday because the Roads were more like rivers and the rivers more like tide races.

I saw the weather front coming in on Thursday evening while walking the dog; ait first made it's entrance as a thick band of musclebound cloud followed by a solid sheet of dark grey decorated only with far off lightning flashes. Double timed it home and battened down the hatches just as the first heavy rain hit. Dog went and hid in a corner, poor mutt. I gave myself a stiff whiskey and an early night.

At work on Friday we busied ourselves shooing people out of the levels of car parks that were threatening to become lakes. This didn’t stop one guy deliberately moving the cones we had used to block off the affected car park and getting stuck in the rising waters. Silly bastard. Four or five other cars just sat there as the waters rose, leaving them stranded up to their wheel arches, their owners fuming quietly in the downpour. A number of the guys, including me, were sent home early because otherwise we wouldn’t have got home at all on Friday. All this and the last day of School run insanity.

At home water started seeping under the front door and into the cellar, threatening to soak the electricity meters and blow our power supply, so I spent a while making an improvised seal with a few tea towels and stood duty with a mop and bucket. Fortunately our cellar didn’t flood, but one of our neighbours wasn’t so lucky, as far as I know he’s still bailing, and his cellar had supposedly been sealed against this sort of thing. From the sound of things from elswhere around town, our little area came off lightly. Others weren’t so fortunate. What price waterside property?

What didn’t help was my phone going off non-stop all afternoon. “You all right?” Comes the voice of my Mother in law, who was at her home in the far, and much dryer, southwest watching the dramatised version on the news.
“I can’t talk now, got a bit of a situation on my hands.” I really had to finish what I was doing immediately or no light, heat or Internet this weekend.
“Oh can I help?”
“Not unless you can get here via the floods inside an hour and help me close a few gaps.” I tried to sound casual, but it’s hard to be insouciant when you can see a very real risk of an electrical fire if you don’t do something about it quickly. I’m afraid I might have sounded a bit sharp over the phone as I don’t suffer fools gladly when things get a little tough. Oh what the hell, she can cut me out of her will if she wants to.

Mrs S had trouble getting home as all the roads were gradually closed by the rising waters, but she made it and so did the kids, which pleased me greatly. On my way out to her in a rescue mission that in the end wasn’t needed, I saw water fountaining up from under heavy cast iron drain covers and whole streets inundated by the light brown waters. I had to turn back five times from places where the water was completely impassable. Most of the back roads that ordinarily were dry had been completely submerged in places to a depth of a metre and over at more than one point. Abandoned cars that had tried to go through the floods too fast ended up blocking the shallowest parts of the rapidly deepening waters, and so my possible routes to collect my wife. All the time, the rain hammering down and the nagging worry in the back of my head about the electrical distribution board downstairs.

A worrisome time. Fortunately for us the rain stopped and we, like most of our neighbours escaped inundation. We had a pizza and a bottle of wine between us to celebrate our good fortune. That was nice.

Anyway, the news is that I’m packing this parking enforcement lark in. Although it’s not a bad life out on the streets and car parks, my problem is like so many before me I’ve begun to suffer quite badly in the foot department because of the long distance walking in heavy boots. The pain, even chewing painkillers five days out of six, has had me almost in tears at times, and that doesn’t happen very often. Even my Doctor has recommended that I resign to save any further permanent damage to my feet. “You need a different job.” Were his precise words I as I recall.

Following his informal advice I have submitted my resignation. I think it is well past time for me to look for some different (And softer on the old plates) streets to walk, while I am still able to do so. Wearing heavy work boots to cover an average of 17 miles per working day has done my feet no good at all. So much for ‘elf & safety culture.

How do I feel about finishing with the job? Mildly miffed of course, but there’s a whole other world out there and I’m off to see it. The only issue that leaves me with is what to do about the blog? Keep adding bits about my own particular take on the world? Bin it? Leave it as an archive? I haven’t decided yet.

On this subject, I was chatting online to Merys of “I am not a drain on society” recently via google and I broached the news of my impending retirement. She’s in my neck of the woods this weekend and we’re going to bring our significant others and have a natter over coffee or something. See how I feel about the blog then.

That was then.  June 2007.  Today is 20th December 2014.  A lot of water has flowed under many bridges since.

SIXTEEN CARS

Recently I’ve found myself whistling “Sixteen Tons” an old Country and Western song when I’m walking some of the quieter streets, and I thought I’d have a go at rewriting the words for my current situation; don’t laugh too hard at my lyrical ineptitude

Some say Traffic Wardens are lower than mud
This poor man's made outta muscle and blood
Muscle and blood and skin and bone
A mind that's weak and a back that's strong

You book sixteen cars, don’t they want more?
Another day older and my feet are still sore
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I sold my soul to the box tickers laws

Born one mornin' when the sun had no heat
Pulled on my uniform, walked out on my beat
Booked sixteen cars on double yellow lines
And the boss man said "Make more motorists whine"

You book sixteen cars, don’t they want more?
Another day older and my feet are still sore
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I sold my soul to the box tickers laws

If you see me comin', better get off those lines
A lotta folk didn't, and those people got fined
I’m out clearing bus stops so traffic can flow
You want to know where is? Do I look like I know?

You book sixteen cars, don’t they want more?
Another day older and my feet are still sore
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I sold my soul to the box tickers laws

One day I’ll get free of this whole sorry mess
Walking these Streets will be behind me I guess
I’ll free up my body and master my fate
Hell, maybe I’ll even try to emigrate

You book sixteen cars, don’t they want more?
Another day older and my feet are still sore
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I sold my soul to the box tickers laws

By Bill Sticker 2007, with a gargantuan shedload of apologies to Merle Travis

Comedy legs

Back when I was a wee slip of a lad (A very long time ago) I used to watch silent movies from the Mack Sennett era in the 1920’s and 30’s. See an example posted on Youtube here. In the ‘Chase’ scenes there was a stylised art of running; An exaggerated double take followed by a stylised grab at whatever headgear the person is wearing; in turn followed by wildly theatrical pumping of elbows and knees with a skidding about turn. Oliver Hardy of Laurel and Hardy was next to Chaplin, one of the most skilled exponents of this art.

Now I never thought I’d ever see these movements in real life but I just did today. I’m patrolling past a one hour limited waiting layby outside a shop to see a car that has been there longer than it should. I’m just about to start logging in the details when a guy exits a house, takes one horrified look at me, grabs at his baseball cap, skid turns and runs inside in the aforementioned fashion shouting “I’m moving! I’m moving!” I was so curious as to what he’d do next that I stopped what I was doing.

Next thing chummy runs out of the house pursued by spouse, I swear, both making the best slapstick movements since Charlie Chaplin retired. He does this curious arms and legs pumping run, drops his car keys, goes on four steps, double takes, dashes back to pick them up, almost crashes into his panicking wife, she picks the keys up and they almost have a clash of heads; next he drops the keys again, she almost falls into the hedge, he gets to the car, drops the keys which nearly go down a drain cover; then fumbles them under the car before discovering he’s got the wrong keys. He runs back inside his house, almost bowling his wife over in the process and returns to the car before finally jumping in and driving away.

I was so busy trying not to laugh I clean forgot to book him.

Pieds en feu (Feet on fire)

At every shift’s end you can hear the complaint “My fucking feet are on fire.” Or “My bloody feet are burning.” It’s guaranteed. We’re all dog tired at a shift’s end, and the pace has been upped to a point where it takes me over an hour to recover enough from work to cook or even write when I get home. I slump at my desk, literally exhausted. Even my rest days don’t give me enough time to recuperate properly.

I can’t speak for the others, but it’s a fair bet that many are feeling the same way. This whole new regime has us missing much needed breaks, simply because there is no way you can manage your beat properly and fit everything in. All the zinc oxide tape and talc in Christendom isn’t making much difference on the foot front either. In addition, an old Rugby injury is making its presence felt. In the words of Marvin the Paranoid Android “I ache, therefore I am.”

While I’m ranting on the subject of ‘targets’; first thing this morning I was reading about the new educational ‘targets’ being set for pre-school children and babies. Is someone having a laugh here? Is this a joke? If not; I’m bloody well not having any putative step-grandchildren of mine anywhere near a state monitored nursery. The powers that be can keep their inept and greasy mitts off them. Even at the end of having to forcibly and terminally remove busybodies like this from the household (Sorry, thought they were a kidnap gang. No, never saw any local authority ID – Really Officer, I didn’t. Sorry about the blood). Even if we have to smuggle the poor little mites out of the country.

Is it just me or is everything being driven by ‘targets’ nowadays? Would someone with more than two properly functioning brain cells kindly tell me what real and practical use these ‘targets’ fulfil? Apart from driving the people who actually do a job of work somewhere up a very large and precipitous wall? Having given the matter a little thought I wondered; isn’t it funny those who set the bloody targets are never the ones who have to meet them, day in, day out. How they must laugh at us poor fools.

Excuse me, I just don’t understand the need; but then I’m just a thickie Parking Warden type aren’t I?