GIRDING MY LOINS.

I am so stressed out.  If hair fizzed, my head of hair would be standing on end and glowing! Much as I respect the arts and crafts of tradespeople, it is impossible to plan and work with their easy going ideas about keeping appointments.

The time line begins two weeks ago, when I realised a major item I ordered earlier in the year, which was installed in May, was not the equipment I asked for.  The replacement arrived according to plan. So far so good.

The Monday of installation, the guys arrived late morning to pick up an un-installed object.  BUT, there was nothing for them to take away. The installer/s had not arrived at 8.am, as arranged to demount the old equipment for them to remove. Many phone calls later, finally getting through to real people by devious means, (thereby avoiding voice-mail) I eventually got a manager to take ownership of this cock-up.

Thursday the same week, the manager arrives here, because by then, a leaking tap that is under guarantee also needs replacing in the kitchen. He wanted to check it was a genuine guarantee issue.  Seeing it was, he handed over the replacement tap to be fitted by a plumber appointed to arrive  between 12-2pm today. At 11.50am, guess what..........the plumber can't come, earliest  on offer now was sometime later in the week.  So, we are now at non-committal arrangements.  Mental picture of me stamping my foot while trying to maintain my composure during phone conversation. 

New appointment offer, 8am tomorrow, Tuesday 8th.

OF LETTING IN LIGHT- BURNING THE SAUCE AND SURPRISES

I started off this week feeling a bit down with all I was hearing about in the world.  By comparison to others, I had little to be sad about.  I think life sometimes has a way of putting on the brakes, a sort of slow-slow- slowing down for time to take stock.  So, I did take stock.

Those darn trees from next door that were making a dark canopy over large a corner of our garden were too high and too physical for me to attack. Nothing for it then, the neighbours must be asked if they minded some thinning out to allow light through. It was absolutely no problem, the neighbour said in fact as he was free, he would give me hand with it! Like the genie of the lamp he appeared in overalls, with a tall ladder, a hefty branch lopper and saw. While he lopped off big branches from on high, jumping from ladder to wall, back to ladder again, I set to work at ground level reducing the size of the branches with my light weight lopper.  Number one son put in an appearance to give his dad a hand, I was almost redundant. There were two trailer loads of tree branches taken to the tip, (their trailer, we don't have one).  Offers to at least pay for the petrol used were indignantly refused, 
"We're neighbours, you'd do the same for us".  I 
mumbled that I would if I could.  All that physical work gave me awful back-ache, but, it and the kindness of neighbours did lift my spirits. 

Taking things out to make space to put things away in a kitchen cupboard has potential pitfalls. Just as you think you have got it all done, a small 
pottery bowl overbalances and with reflexes working fast, I break its fall. There's a glancing blow onto the edge a breakfast dish in its path, which fractures at the point of impact.  Oh great!  (Except that is not what I said).  Taking stock, I rationalise it could have been worse, I could have broken a perfect dish; this dish was already chipped. The bowl was not perfect either, I notice it has a chip too.  The defrosting fish still in a bag can continue to defrost in the dish after that I will dispose of it.

I have decided to make a tomato sauce for the fish with all sorts of things in it including chopped 
fennel. I left the sauce simmering, just a fraction longer than I should have. I just caught all the ingredients sticking to the pan. After the rescue - the sauce was in need of a fair bit of hydrating - it  was various shades of reddish brown. 

 Hubby wanted to know why I was not going to add olives to the sauce - "They would," he said, "give it a certain je ne sais quoi".

Me -"It will have a certain je sais quoi, when I have finished with it".

What to do to..........I  sprinkled a liberal amount of mild curry powder into the reconstituted sauce 
then chopped up a few fresh tomatoes and added them. This time I kept a beady eye on the simmering sauce and the fish steaming in it.  Hubby ate his meal with real relish and announced that the sauce was "excellent!"

We have an unexpected item to put into our goody bag which I have packed for our self-catering break.  Our farmer neighbours threw a fabulous large white cabbage over the fence into our garden, it is the size of a football. The cabbage, now wrapped up in a bag, is sitting in proud isolation like it's ready for kickoff.

What a strange and varied week it has been.  I have to smile.

OFFICIAL SPIN, BROKEN RECORDS AND VICE RINGS

I am not racist, far from it, but, the latest spin from the major public relations units is making a bad situation worse. It could not be more embarrassingly ludicrous, shameful, and out of touch. 

Do the public relations people, working for the people in power, think that if they get the dummies (Senior police spokespeople) to say it often enough we will all absolutely believe it! They must think we are a nation that is so easily manipulated that we cannot think. Or maybe we are not meant to think; we are not meant to think what they think is the unthinkable, therefore we will not make utterances that could disturb the peace. There has even been very obvious selective research quoted, likely, out of context, to support their statements that there is no racial dimension to the sex vice ring currently in the news. How crass can it get. 

 Perhaps if I say this often enough, I will get a sensible response. If it baas like a sheep and it looks like a sheep, it is a sheep; if it quacks like a duck and looks like one, it is a duck. And as shown in my recent post, if it coos like a dove and looks like a dove, it is one. They may all be different colours and breeds, which differentiates them...but they are what they are. 

Of course, the current case of the child sex ring is ethnically and racially rooted. As the judge said in his summing up of this frightening case, the men involved in grooming and using these vulnerable young girls, would not organise to do it to their own ethnic community girls. 

The spokesperson for the respected U.K charity, The National Society For The Prevention Of Cruelty To Children,(NSPCC) was quoted with sensible comments, (at last) before the judge in this case summarised it. Apart from his comments on the race base of the offences, he added, there is a disproportionate representation of ethnic offenders in prison. To maintain a balance here, it has to be said, they are not all sex offenders, a term, which in itself is an umbrella description of a range of sexually motivated offences. However, there are various shades of white and other ethnic groups who traffic sex in the UK, some of whom have been caught and imprisoned. 

When dealing with sex offending, you ignore the racial and ethnic elements of these offences at public peril. There is a lot of useful knowledge in understanding the various cultural backgrounds and, therefore, what additional distorted thinking supports the generation of these horrible offences. How you deal with sex offenders, will impact on everyone. A public denial of what we can see and officially hear, of what is obvious to a sentient individual, and is a denial by a section of the very authorities who are supposed to be fearlessly upholding the law, is totally unacceptable. 

The message received is, the authorities are running scared. Because of the racial features of this current case,they are working the broken record technique to death, through the media, to lull us into believing there are no racial features.  Bullshit!