Seems the humble three pin plug figures highly at the moment. Fiddling about in the workshop, making up a bunch of deadly trip hazard extension leads, to trail across the floor like a rat’s nest, or rather snake’s nest (do they make nests? I’m sure they do) of demented bright yellow snakes. This will be an improvement on the cat’s cradle of cable currently in use. Still with me? Lot of animals in the first paragraph.
All brand new bright yellow electric cable, a whole unopened roll which I found dumped in the adjacent car park, and promptly put to good use. Must be 200m or more. Presumably some scroat robbed an electrician’s van, then couldn’t be bothered with lugging the considerable weighty reel to flog in the local boozer or wherever.
Ordinarily this would all have been witnessed on CCTV, but said scroats have worked out that if they routinely swing on the large galvanised steel pole, supporting what looks like a hefty bit of NASA tech up top, spying on us all for seemingly no useful purpose, the pole will snap at the standard waist height weld and then the whole thing keels over, pole, camera, motorised gimble, the lot. Fortunately quite slowly, thus allowing pedestrians to avoid serious injury. It normally spends several days leaning over at a crazy wonky angle before finally giving up and snapping completely. The Council camera operators, or the sub-contractors paid by the Council to toss it off watching screens, never seem to notice that their field of view is now way off kilter. Similarly it amazes me that the fuckwit happy shoppers seem completely oblivious and merrily park their cars within the pole’s obvious doomed trajectory, most probably due any time soon. Taken out by falling CCTV. Pole axed, so to speak. Eventually all coming to rest against a low brick wall bounding the car park. Third time now, same method and the local Nottingham City Council has yet to twig there just might be a design fault in the system …
They usually send someone out to inspect, a week or two later, after the regular bin men have phoned it in. Belly straining against hi-viz vest, hard hat, photo card on a lanyard. He/She, maybe They, most likely fat middle aged bloke, and most unlikely They, walks up and down the road coughing, photographs snapped pole, speaks in to phone, walks up and down a bit more, twiddles lanyard, has a fag, sends a few texts, phones mates, cordons pole off with a roll of red and white barrier tape and then summons a work crew to retrieve the NASA cameras. Broken stump of pole then remains in situ for weeks or months, safely taped off, before being replaced with exact same kit, same design. Ground work crew digging, Hiab lorry cranes new steel pole in place, then a gang return with cherry picker and new camera gear is attached, the old camera either already having been lost / broken or nicked down at the depot. The cycle then continues back with the scroats. What does all that cost?
Footnote – while reviewing this rant, it’s seven months since I first wrote on this matter and no sign of a new camera. The locality declines on a weekly basis.
Ironically, due to the geometry of it all, I very much doubt that a CCTV camera can actually view what’s happening right at the base of its own pole, what lowlife maybe slithering up or swinging around down below, preparing to deal it a death blow and snap the weld. Can’t even film its own attackers. I’d just connect the fucker straight to the mains. Drop the first six foot in a thick rubber sleeve and then stick one of those tiny little warning notices on it, about the same size they use to announce parking restrictions, so pretty much impossible to read that is, unless you’re a hawk. But they don’t generally drive or indeed park.
Don’t get me started on Councils. Strangely they erected the cctv pole, without consulting any residents, in the only location that clearly does not witness the regular multiple serious street crime events in the locality and the addicts and their dealers. Rather they selected a spot that just happened to overlook one of their own buildings and car parks. Or it did when they first installed the pole. I think they subsequently flogged it – the building not the pole. Part of their enormous, badly managed, property portfolio. Jobs for the boys, or something like that.
In the last six weeks the Old Bill have been in the shop multiple times to view my CCTV, just in case it happened to pick up the recent machete wielding bloke, assault, robbery, drug deal, car crime etc. Fortunately, I just missed machete man by a couple of minutes. That was about 2pm on a Sunday afternoon. Did you know you need to buy a licence to operate CCTV in your own shop / commercial premises? Another government gouge.
So, wearing my stab vest, I decided to nip out to Wilko’s to pick up a couple of three pin plugs in order to finish off my nifty yellow extensions and get the machinery up and running again. Make more guitars. I then remembered I couldn’t, as Wilko’s had sadly gone bust. Their old shop unit now just another statistic. A grubby, shuttered, vacant blemish on one of the main retail thoroughfares in Nottingham city centre. It doesn’t really stand out as such, there are loads of them, empty shops, not dead Wilko’s. On the plus side, the Wilko’s did have a large, deep canopy, projecting across their once very substantial frontage. This now provides a relatively dry, sheltered spot for the abundant rough sleepers.
It’s ironic that Nottingham is striving to facilitate the construction of 1000’s of new student beds, in multiple new build hi-rise blocks, across the city centre, but nobody ever does anything of consequence for the homeless. Want to live in a large civilised society? Well, you will always have people on the edge, people with problems, unproductive misfits, addicts, basket cases, rejects, out of work graduates. Deal with it. Properly. In a civilised manner. Help them.
Maybe an additional tax on the private, lucrative, student developments? Do they even pay council tax on the new buildings and beds created? I suspect not, students don’t pay council tax. Gone also are the business rates, contributing to council coffers, from the old commercial premises now converted into new student accommodation and no longer business premises.
The city centre is changing into a huge student ghetto. Massive corporate landlords, some based overseas. I suspect virtually none local. The huge rental income is certainly not spent locally. Purpose built accommodation, but not easily re-purposed, should the wind change. Retailers failing all around and a continuous rise in take-away food outlets, coffee shops, nail bars and vape sellers. Probably very much the same all over the UK, but without the student issues. We’ve actually just had a large MacDonalds, prime pitch, close down and change hands to another big clogger, fried chicken this time – that’s got to be a first. Maybe better the devil you know.
Anyway, no problem thinks I. I’m in a busy, thriving, bustling city centre. Even got our own tram system. Packed lunch and flask under my arm, I set off in search of a plug, well two actually.
Took some time. Like wading through treacle, along the sticky paths, carpeted in myriad multi-coloured gobs of chewing gum. Poor man’s permanently tacky Pollock at pavement level. Through a swirling fog of many-flavoured second hand vape smoke, dodging around the multiple queues for fried chicken, dodgy looking women blowing on their nails, pumped up lips. All to no avail. Tried them all, every shop I could think of. Two retailers didn’t even know what I meant for fuck’s sake. Three pin plug? What’s that then? What do you mean?
I ended up in the Pound Shop, got to be a safe bet thinks I. I’d have paid two quid, Two Pound Shop. No chance there either. I could however, buy a travel adapter. Now correct me if I’m wrong here, but can people who shop in the Pound Shop actually afford to travel, like abroad, where the electric is completely different stuff? Seems a bit incongruous to me. Should such one pound people actually be allowed to travel, anywhere really, never mind abroad? How far can you get for a quid these days?
So, return journey, a wasted hour, should have been a pleasant diversion, out in the fresh air, but I’ll chalk that one down to experience. On-line, order up from Screwfix. They’ll be in tomorrow, a mere drive away. Back to the snake’s nest for the afternoon. Tread carefully.
Anyway, the shop, workshop actually, now much improved, dispensed with all the strings, guitar bollocks accessories and ephemera. Complete waste of time and money. I’d had some of the same straps in stock for twelve years. You actually get about the same net return / profit, paying your hard-earned in to the building society, rather than buy shop stock to hang on the wall collecting dust, staring at you all day long, occasionally price checked on a phone by some surly passing customer, who’s not a customer in the true sense, never will be, just a fuckwit wandered in out the rain. Maybe wants to know if I can repair one of his ear buds.
‘Repair this John,’ thinks I. Visions of jabbing 450’ red hot soldering iron straight through his ear drum.
Plectrum for a quid? No, fuck off, as I said before.
I really do need to get out more, oh I just did. Wilko’s wasn’t it?
There’s a brave new soul opened up a guitar shop locally. Good luck to him. Great looking little shop unit, crammed with budget to medium guitars and bits of kit. Bit of a showcase. Sells a lot of gear on-line. Apparently he has a return rate of about 50% with on-line guitars. Imagine that. Free shipping and returns? Nothing’s free. Discounted. Shop soiled? B stock? Returned stock?
A mate of mine recently went to work at Nottingham City Council, some temporary agency appointed position. The council operate out of a huge building down by the train station. Terrible experience, said it was like the Marie Celeste, everyone working from home, hardly a soul to be seen. He’d only been there a couple of hours when his point of contact fucked off to ‘work from home’, leaving him with no work or instruction.
He jacked after a week as there was no one to tell him what to do and on the face of it no actual work to do. ‘Working from home’, don’t get me started. What are the conceivable benefits? None for the employer. Employee gets to jack off, do their washing. Listen to that new vinyl just delivered, walk the dog, mouse tapper set up on the desk / kitchen table.
In an earlier life, as a fresh graduate, I worked in professional offices and on construction sites. Looking back, the amount I learned by watching and listening was immense. My education had only just begun. Not to mention the potential for social interaction.
A little later in my working life the best deals were always done, and highly important, maybe confidential information, gleaned in the pub after work on a Friday evening for an hour or two.
General dilution of learning, experience and ability, 100% reliance on tech, producing insular people, slow slide from a lack of discipline and self-respect, no awareness of others, lack of empathy. More fuckwits than ever wandering around entombed in over-the-ear headphones, guided by the phone, being spoon fed god knows what. Younger generations now know no different and it’s hardly their fault.
It will be a telling time for employers, as long leases start to expire on massive office suites. Do they go with the flow, down size on space, reduce rent and overheads? Or would you, as an employer, want to actually see the happy little faces you pay and keep the space?
And while I’m at it, the rent the Massive Employer was paying, but has just downsized, was helping to pay your pension, as the landlord was probably Massive Pension Co. What goes around doesn’t come back.
I’m going to go and calm down, plug myself in and make another guitar.
