Are You Experienced?

As a heterosexual, white male, I suppose it is understandable that I have not experienced discrimination (not knowingly, at least) so I am not by no means an expert on the subject - although as I am now in my late fifties, some sort of age related discrimination may be on the cards at some point soon. In a case that has attracted a good deal of publicity recently, former Apple engineer JK Scheinberg - aged 54 and with 21 years experience with the company - has failed to clinch a job at an Apple Store Genius Bar. Scheinberg retired in 2008 but decided that he wanted to get back into work, and with his background with the company thought that he would be a shoo-in for the role, despite being significantly older than the other interviewees.

JK Scheinberg

 "On the way out, all three of the interviewers singled me out and said: 'We’ll be in touch'.  I never heard back," he told the New York Times. So, was Scheinberg not employed solely due to his age, as has been implied? Apple have not yet commented on this, but their website affirms their commitment to being an equal opportunity employer, and being committed to inclusion and diversity. Which of course amounts to nothing at all, since words are cheap, but on the other hand, could Scheinberg not have been employed because - shock, horror - he wasn't suitable? He must be suitable, you might think, after twenty-one years as an Apple engineer responsible for - among other things - the first builds of OS X for Intel processors. He also worked on A/UX - Apple's implementation of the Unix operating system, and the Rhapsody operating system, so he is obviously highly qualified. "Are you experienced?" they might have asked him, and undoubtedly he is, but is it the right sort of experience?

Because how many people do you think make appointments at Apple's Genius Bar for a Unix related problem? Or have an issue with their Intel processor? Not many would be my guess. People go to the Genius Bar because their iPad is on the blink, the battery in their iPod had died, or because the latest iOS update has bricked their iPhone and no matter how much of a genius Scheinberg might be at back-end, mainframe type stuff, that means diddly squat when dealing with the average Genius Bar query. And of course, he's been out of the organisation for eight years, which in the technology business is a lifetime. That said, it's likely that while his experience and expertise might not be directly relevant to a role on the Genius Bar, it's equally likely that his background would not rule him out entirely as a good candidate for the job.  But, after a career in computer engineering, dealing with similarly minded people, how are his people skills, particularly when faced with a confused, technologically challenged, owner of a new iPhone they cannot make head or tail of?

Updating iOS...

In many ways what happened to Scheinberg is a non-story (unless he decides to take legal action against the company and that becomes some sort of cause célèbre), just one of many that I've seen on media websites and in social media feeds recently. In the days when our news consumption was limited to newspapers, TV and radio, there was only so much news that was printed or broadcast. Now the insatiable appetite of the internet means that the minutiae of life that would never have made it to print is plastered all over the web for our perusal - and increasingly - comment. For example ,there is a story that has appeared in the last week about a car driver getting a parking fine, despite having paid and displayed in a car-park in Poole, Dorset. Apparently Brian Hewlett paid £3 for two hours worth of parking but subsequently received a demand for £100 as when he was asked to enter his car registration number upon buying his ticket, he entered ‘EK002EEUV’ instead of ‘EK02EEU,’ because he was not wearing his glasses.  Maybe Mr Hewlett should have taken more care when entering his registration number. Maybe the company that run the car park should have used a bit of discretion and not penalised someone who had actually paid the parking fee. Maybe the paper that published the story on their website should have spiked it - it isn't a story, and I know that I should not have bothered reading it. It's even less of a story than Mr Scheinberg's tale - which is effectively just 'retired man applies for job and doesn't get it' - but there's little in it.

If Mr Hewlett had worn his glasses, there would have been no story. There wasn't really one anyway.

There is no doubt that legislation that fights discrimination in the workplace - at the recruitment stage and during employment - is a good thing, although there is an argument that it has actually gone too far - and it may be that Mr Scheinberg has a point when he suspects that, given he is at least twice the age of the average Genius Bar employee, his failure to secure a role was based on his age rather than anything else. But consider this too. Scheinberg's motive for applying for the job was that he was finding retirement boring; he was restless and wanted something to do. On his pension from Apple, I somehow suspect that he didn't need the money. So on that basis, a factor in passing him over - presumably in favour of someone younger - could have been that Apple thought it better to employ someone who was competent enough and in need of a job to pay their mortgage, put food on the table and pay their bills rather than a bored, retired Apple engineer who could have done some voluntary work if tackling boredom was his primary objective.

There is a balance to be struck in recruitment between the needs of the company and the rights of the prospective employee. And on the one hand, while experience is important - goodness knows, I often felt that the organisation I worked for seriously undervalued it at times - there's no way to get experience if you cannot get a job. And if you cannot get a job because you are blocked by a bored, retired, former senior employee who wants something to do, isn't that a form of discrimination too?

Eat That Frog!

Of my faults - which, according to my other half, are many and various - one to which I will readily admit is procrastination. While some people may live by the motto, "Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today," I am more likely to follow the maxim that one should, "Never put off till tomorrow what can be put off indefinitely."

Okay, I may not be entirely serious in saying that, but I'm sure I am not alone in that I have at times put things off for so long that the problem eventually goes away. This can be a good thing sometimes in that a difficult task, put off long enough, might eventually become unnecessary through a change of circumstances. Or a bad thing, as an opportunity is missed or a minor problem becomes a major one. And all too often a task that has been put off becomes still more difficult because there is so much less time in which to complete it. None of this is exactly startling; I have not stumbled on some previously undiscovered trait of human behaviour, but what I did not know (and I have a feeling many of you would not have known either), is that there is a World Fight Procrastination Day, and it was this week; Tuesday 6th September to be precise. Naturally, the first thing I did when I learned this was to Google it, and found that there is no official website for World Fight Procrastination Day: presumably no one has got round to setting one up yet.

What Googling "World Fight Procrastination Day" did find was a whole host of websites that suggest how one should deal with one's procrastination habit, and top of the list comes Mark Twain's advice that the first thing you should do each day is eat a live frog, because that will be the worst thing you have to do each day. In other words, begin the day with the task that you least want to start, and once it is done, the day cannot get any worse and that unpleasant chore will be out of the way.

That's good advice, except in my experience the counter arguments can be seductive and persuasive. First, that task may be a time consuming one, and while it is important, it may not be time critical (well, not yet, but it soon will be), and just look at all those easy, little jobs that aren't as important but are more urgent. Let's get them done, get a few quick wins and then that frog eating task can be attacked without all those other jobs worrying away at the back of your mind; a major justification for putting off some unpleasant, or difficult task is the promotion of other, easier tasks which have far less importance. You know the sort of thing; that task that requires pulling together multiple strands of research and analysing the resulting data and compiling a report for your boss that he wants on his desk this time next week (straightforward, non-urgent but time consuming) suddenly seems a much more attractive proposition than liaising with your HR department to arrange a disciplinary hearing for an underperforming member of your team. For some, it could be the other way round, but for me the most likely tasks I would procrastinate over at work were the touchy-feely, people skill needing, potentially confrontational ones rather than the more technical ones.

And procrastination gives great scope for worriers (like me) to exercise their worry muscles. You can worry about the task in prospect (how do I do it?), worry about putting it off (will I have enough time to do it now?), worry while you actually do it (am I doing it right and have I got enough time?), and worry about it in hindsight (could I have done it better if I hadn't put it off for so long?)

No wonder then that studies have shown that regular procrastination increases stress and anxiety, reduces productivity and may have a negative impact on someone's work performance, to which I would add that it can add a strain on personal relationships too. Just as the procrastinator will put off that difficult or stressful task at work, so they may put off talking about some personal issue, or delivering bad news at home, and with friends or family. At home, the procrastinator will worry about the consequences of broaching a subject - what will the other party's reaction be? And worries about the fact that by delaying bringing the matter up, it will just make it worse. The worst case scenario is that the matter is not brought up until it is too late, with inevitably disastrous consequences.

The garage after a major tidying exercise (sadly, no pictures exist of it before).

Putting things off is frequently justified by the procrastinator by the act of prevarication. If procrastination is the thief of time, then prevarication is the armed robber. Procrastination picks time's pocket; prevarication takes it into a dark alley and mugs it at knifepoint. Prevarication marshals all of the reasons for not doing something, launches them in a blitzkrieg like frenzy and bludgeons the procrastinator  into not doing something because that appears infinitely preferable to doing it.

Some things are more serious things than others if they get put off - the faint but persistent smell of gas that doesn't get investigated is likely to have more serious consequences  than not dealing with that pile of old newspapers that have accumulated in the corner of the lounge and really need bundling up and putting in the recycling.  But even the most innocent of tasks, if procrastinated over long enough, can be a cause of inconvenience, if not exactly dangerous. Val and I have spent the last few weeks undertaking what I can only describe as a major exercise in tut, tat and detritus clearance. We hired a skip (see One Man's Trash) and cut down an old conifer tree that had died a lingering and unsightly death in the corner of the garden, cleared the shed and the garage (where I assembled three new shelving units to supplement the two already there) and generally tidied on a scale not normally seen other than in advance of a visit from the Queen. Going into the shed or garage is now a perfectly normal activity and not like embarking on an assault course.

A rather poorly looking conifer in the rain, and (below) with it removed.

We went through all of the files in the study, binning the old instructions for lawnmowers, hi-fi systems and kettles that have long since bitten the dust (and who needs an instruction manual for a kettle anyway?) The pile of old receipts, bank statements and random letters from random people that, along with a major collection of old boxes and cardboard, we had kept 'just in case' have been dealt with and a major resolution has been made not to allow that sort of situation to repeat itself: no way do I want to undertake the monumental task of shredding that number of old documents that contain some sort of personal detail again. 

To my surprise, I have been inspired by the work we have done, to the extent that I have rooted around through loads of old personal stuff, binning piles of papers, tidying football programmes and generally organising myself. It's addictive and now that the only things I have to do genuinely have to wait, I'm getting impatient and suffering from withdrawal symptoms.

I would like to think that the days of procrastination and prevarication are behind me, although like being addicted to something, it will be hard not to fall into the old, bad habits, but I'm going to try. I'll let you know how I get on...if I don't put it off.

Falling Off A Cliff

Politics is not a particular interest of mine, but I can't help be morbidly fascinated by the current machinations within the Labour party. I confess to knowing only a little about Jeremy Corbyn, and much less about Owen Smith, his opponent in the Labour leadership race, but even a casual glance at the pronouncements of both men leads me to believe that Mr Corbyn has his feet a little more firmly on the ground than his opponent...although it's a close run thing.

Can Owen Smith really eradicate homelessness? No, really can he?

It isn't unusual for politicians to make bold promises when they are trying to get elected and it really is a shame that they are not taken to task more regularly and more robustly when, once in office, they fail to meet their pledges. For the record, I'm talking about all politicians, local and national, and of all political persuasions here - not just Labour ones. But it is rare that anyone, after an election, looks back and says to a Prime Minister, or council leader for that matter, and says, "Where's that income tax cut you promised?" or "What happened to the extra nurses/policemen/doctors/binmen/road sweepers you said you would recruit?" Thing is, we all know it's a game; all politicians make pledges that they soon come to realise they cannot afford - be it politically or financially - to implement. And Messrs Corbyn and Smith are no different.

Jeremy Corbyn's reserved seat failed to meet his expectations.

Jeremy Corbyn has pledged to renationalise the railways if Labour come to power  - and by the by, despite Labour's stance on Europe, a full renationalisation would not be possible had the electorate voted to Remain in the EU rather than in favour of Brexit -and also to build a million new homes within five years of becoming Prime Minister. This scheme would apparently be funded by a new National Investment Bank, and it's all very laudable: I doubt anyone would dispute that house prices and rental costs are becoming increasingly beyond the reach of many young people. But given that the next General Election is not scheduled for four more years, then Mr Corbyn's scheme has a minimum of nine years before it can come to fruition, assuming he wins the next election - actually, assuming he is even leader of the party come the next election.

But anything Mr Corbyn can promise, Mr Smith can top, it seems. Pledging to build a million new homes is small beer to Mr Smith, as he has pledged to eradicate homelessness completely within five years, apparently by passing the buck on to local councils and putting the problem in their court, which would enable him to take the credit for any success and pass on the blame for the more likely failure. Mr Smith has also promised to scrap university tuition fees, build 50,000 homes a year solely for rent by the under-30's and guarantee a high-level apprenticeship to every 18-year-old who gets good enough exam grades. Precisely how much this would cost - and more importantly, how it would be funded - is anyone's guess, but given that one of Labour's traditional methods of funding such exercises is increasing taxes for higher earners, perhaps this will lead to more of the wealthy becoming tax exiles, like Sir Richard Branson, whom Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has suggested should be stripped of his knighthood. Mind you, that wasn't simply because of Sir Richard's tax exile status, but rather because, according to McDonnell, Branson was trying to 'undermine our democracy' after he, or rather Virgin Trains, had responded to Jeremy Corbyn's remarks about overcrowding on one of their services. Whether it was Corbyn or Branson who was right, I do not think that responding to an attack that one feels is unjustified - which is obviously how Virgin felt about the criticism they received from the Labour leader - is an attack on democracy. If refuting an assertion you believe to be incorrect undermines democracy then almost every MP is guilty of it every time they speak in the House, or anywhere else for that matter.

It's funny that Mr Corbyn's claims morphed so over a short period of time. First off, the train was packed, with no spare seats. Virgin refuted that, produced CCTV footage of Mr Corbyn walking past empty seats, to which the Labour leader responded that the seats were occupied by other passengers' bags, and later, that there were empty seats, but insufficient together for him and his wife to sit together. As my wife is wont to say, "When you're in a hole, stop digging."

Brendan O'Carroll looks as stunned as everyone else on hearing the news that his show is best sit-com of the 21st century.

While the news of what has now, inevitably, been dubbed Traingate amused me, there was another story that I saw at roughly the same time that I did not find funny at all, which is odd, since the news related to a television sit-com. And not just any old sit-com either, but the sit-com that 14,000 readers of the Radio Times have voted best sit-com of the 21st century so far. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you -and I can hardly bear to bring myself to do so - Mrs Brown's Boys. Now I will accept that what constitutes the best of anything that has to be judged as subjectively as a television comedy programme is predicated on the principle that anyone's opinion is as good as anyone else's, and the fact that Mrs Brown's Boys beat a whole host of programmes that I consider to have greater merit is neither here nor there. Just because a show is voted best comedy of the century doesn't actually make it the best, just the best in the opinion of enough people who could be bothered to vote. I wasn't among the voters, but had I been there were quite a few candidates that would have got my vote before I got to Brendan O'Carroll's creation.  In this poll, innovative, genuinely funny (well, I think they are innovative and genuinely funny) shows like W1A and Outnumbered trail in the wake of what appears to me to be a tired, old fashioned and unoriginal show.  Mind you there are a few  others in the top twenty (listed below), that most certainly would not have got my vote either, plus a few I've not even heard of.

"Ooh, you are awful!" Too flippin' right you are!

The result of the poll has certainly caused plenty of people - television critics and the general public (via social media) alike - to voice their opinions, and those opinions are, as one might expect, polarised. My view on it is coloured by the fact that Brendan O'Carroll plays the part of Mrs Brown; not that I have anything against Mr O'Carroll personally, it's just that I really cannot abide men playing women. It's probably a reaction to when I was a child and being subjected to programmes starring Danny La Rue, or Dick Emery or Stanley Baxter. Emery was OK when he stayed in menswear, but when he put on drag, I switched off -metaphorically, if not literally. And as for Baxter, well unfortunately I found him uniformly unfunny and as an impressionist, totally unconvincing - every impression looked the same, and every impression looked and sounded like Stanley Baxter to me.

"You don't have to fall off a cliff to know it hurts."

At this point I should point out that I have never watched a whole episode of Mrs Brown's Boys, just clips and trailers. These alone have been enough to put me off. On that basis there are probably those among you who would argue that I can't have a proper opinion if I've not seen a whole episode. To those who say that, I would refer you to a line from my comedy hero, Tony Hancock: "You don't have to fall off a cliff to know it hurts."

I Can't Stand Currys

There is a dearth of electrical retailers on our High Streets these days. The Electricity Showrooms (not to be confused with the trendy bar/restaurant in Shoreditch), Powerhouse and Comet have all gone, and while there are a few independent traders,  when it comes to stores selling white goods, televisions and computers, Britain's retail parks are dominated by one name - Currys PC World. And I hate Currys PC World, or more specifically, I hate the Currys store on the Eastern Avenue in Romford, which has now incorporated PC World and Carphone Warehouse.

No fridges or PCs on sale here.

And the demise of Comet has limited competition, and choice.

PC World stores may be anonymous barns selling a fairly narrow range of middle of the road PCs, but I've generally found them OK in a 'you know what you're getting' sort of way, and I never had any complaints about the PC World that was, until recently, separate from the Currys in Romford. Similarly I've not had bad experiences in any other Currys stores, but now that PC World have moved in to the Romford store, I hope that I never have to set foot in there again.

PC World, Romford - as was.

I cannot now remember the reason for our first run in with Currys. It was many years ago and we had to return a faulty product - it might have been an MP3 player, although not an iPod - and we were made to feel, as seems to be case in most experiences with this store, not only wrong, but an inconvenience, and idiots. The next experience came when I went to buy a new camera for my daughter. Just a simple, compact, digital camera. The sales assistant wanted to sell me the extended warranty; I didn't want it. He persisted, I continued to refuse and yet he still wanted to try to sell it to me. "Mention it once more and I will walk out without buying the camera," I told him. His arrogance, or maybe it was stupidity, knowing no bounds, he again tried to convince me to buy a warranty: I walked out.

Then when I went there to buy a cheap DVD player for my other daughter I was made to feel like a cretinous cheapskate for not buying a top of the range Blu-ray machine. I went to Tesco instead, got what I wanted without being judged and got Clubcard points to boot. Next on the list was the visit to return a set of cordless landline phones because one was not charging properly (if you are wondering why I persist in buying things from Currys in light of experience, it is a question I often ask myself and I have no answer really). The assistant changed them, but could not do so without a little bit of attitude. "Course, you shouldn't leave these plugged in all the time, that's what ruins the battery," he said - I was surprised he didn't suffix his remarks with 'chief' or 'squire,' he certainly didn't say 'sir' - a statement that, for a cordless phone is such arrant nonsense when the manual actually says that the phone should be left plugged in all the time. I can only presume that there is so little job satisfaction to be had working there that the only way the staff can get any pleasure is by baiting the customers. And I am clearly not alone, there are several unfavourable reviews of the store online.

I hate this store with a will.

In contrast, while I wouldn't say they were perfect, the PC World store generally had helpful staff. They efficiently repaired our desktop computer and a laptop (the latter had a cracked screen, the faults with the former were many and various) and I had no problem shopping there.

My most recent visit was intended to be just a reccie[1]; I had nothing to return and absolutely no intention of buying anything - unless they were literally giving away the item I wanted - and that was just as well because the experience was, as per usual frustrating. We had already been to Currys PC World in Lakeside to look at computers - ours is on its last legs - and having given it some consideration, wanted to have another look. So rather than go to Lakeside again, we decided to go to PC World in Romford...which had moved into Currys. The first thing that was frustrating was that in comparison with the range at Lakeside, or what the range would have been if PC World were still a standalone store, the choice was very limited. Secondly, while most of the machines came with wireless keyboards and mouses,[2] none of these were connected, meaning that actually trying out any of them (apart from the touch screen machines, where some functionality could be tested) was impossible. So we tried to enlist some help from an assistant, who unsurprisingly was of no assistance whatever. She disappeared in search of a colleague, at which point we decided that she would probably either return with an excuse that none of the machines were capable of connecting, or just as likely, with a colleague who would know no more than she and who would make exactly the same point. So we left.

The reason for our wanting a new PC is that our eight year old machine is positively decrepit. If switched off for any length of time - for instance while we go away on holiday, or just for a long weekend -  it shows a painful reluctance to work properly once it is switched on again. After switching it on it will often lock up completely, such that the mouse stops responding, the keyboard stops responding - even the on/off switch stops responding - leaving one with only unplugging it from the mains as a means of hard booting it. Often it will spontaneously reboot, sometimes in the middle of typing something. I have launched Startup Repair with monotonous regularity and more than once restored the damn thing to its factory settings, all to no avail, since just when complacency sets in and it seems that it is working properly, it reboots or - and this is really common - displays the dreaded blue screen of death.

Bad...

...worse.

Having walked out of Currys PC World we went to John Lewis, where a very helpful and knowledgeable chap sold us a PC which - as far as I can tell - meets our requirements. And he was able to let us test it out because unlike in PC World, the mouses and keyboards were connected. And as for the extended warranty, which I am sure PC World would have tried to sell with more enthusiasm than is decent, there was no hard sell, and since it was just £20 to extend the free, two year guarantee to three years with the added bonus of accidental damage cover for the whole 36 months, it was a simple decision, especially since I'd just spent about that amount in Caffe Nero without demur. And, unlike PC World, there was also no hard sell of Norton Ant-Virus or Microsoft Office, both of which I already have - not that that would stop Currys.

At present the new PC is still in its box, and I am not so complacent that I think I will be able to unpack it and install it seamlessly and without any issues, nor that there won't be some point in the lifetime of the machine that I have to run Startup Repair, restore it to its factory settings or take it back to the retailer. My consolation is that I didn't have to deal with Currys, and won't have to, and if I ever mention the possibility of shopping in that store again, you have my permission to physically restrain me.

---

[1] Reccie - short for reconnaissance.

[2] Debate rages as to whether the plural of computer mouse is mice or mouses, but since some people hold that mouse stands for manually-operated user-select equipment, I will opt for the latter; for the moment.

One Man's Trash

The first time I saw an advertisement for a car boot sale, I confess that I was mystified. Common sense told me that it could not be a sale of car boots, but otherwise I was perplexed. Today there can be few people who do not know what one is and there are literally hundreds of such sales up and down the country - there are over seventy regular car boot sales in Essex alone.

The car boot sale apparently originated in Canada - where, unsurprisingly, it was known as a trunk fair - and the idea was introduced into the UK by a Catholic priest from Stockport, as a charity fundraiser in the early 1970's. Val and I have done a few boot sales to sell off household items that have been surplus to requirements - most recently, we did one last weekend - and we are always amazed by the amount, and type, of things that people will buy. We have sold books, CDs, toys, clothes, furniture, jewellery, perfumes, shoes - you name it, it seems folks will buy it. Arriving at the boot sale and setting up, it was amazing how many other sellers (they must be sellers, as the sale wasn't open to buyers for another hour) descended upon us asking if we had particular items - watches and perfume were especially popular, not that we had any of either. These hardened sellers obviously know what things sell best.

The good old British car boot sale.

Five or six hours later we had made a few quid - not as much as the last time we did a boot sale, but an amount not to be sniffed at - and we packed up the remaining items and took them home, either to take to an unsuspecting charity shop, or to throw away. One reason for going to a boot sale last weekend was to coincide with our having hired a skip so that we could clear out our shed and garage, the latter being used for storing everything except a car. There are two reasons why our car doesn't go in the garage; firstly, even if I could get the car in it, the garage is barely wide enough to open a car door and get out, and secondly, the garage is full of the flotsam and jetsam we accrue and then dispose of on a regular basis. Annually it seems we accumulate piles of detritus; cardboard boxes and other wrappings from domestic purchases that we keep on the offchance that either we have to return said purchase or in case the box comes in handy, which it rarely does. After spending a few days last year trolling back and forth to the local tip, we decided to hire a skip this year, to save time, if not money,  and like the car boot locusts who descend the moment you arrive at a Sunday morning sale, our skip has attracted a few passing totters who have relieved us of sundry items like chairs, an old lawn mower, scooter and ironing board.

What really is remarkable is the amount of stuff we manage to amass these days and how much of it is rubbish. Outside our back door we have four wheelie bins; one for normal waste, one for recycling and two for garden waste (we have a large garden and the first lawn cut of spring will easily fill both bins) and they are always full come collection day. Contrast this to fifty years ago when I was a nipper and my parents had one bin, small in comparison to any of my wheelie bins, which was for all of their refuse and which was emptied each week.

Today, a row of wheelie bins has replaced the single bin and the old fashioned dustman:

These days we, and I'm sure many of you, have more rubbish than we can cope with. There are innumerable reasons for this. Firstly there is packaging. Everything that my parents bought loose now comes in layers of packaging. My Mother would go to the greengrocers and have pounds of potatoes, onions, carrots and whatever, weighed loose by the shopkeeper and tipped directly into her shopping bag. Nowadays supermarkets insist on selling everything in plastic, with some fruit or veg sitting on polystyrene trays in the bags, and while I try and buy as much loose as possible, with some things there is no choice. Convenience foods when I was young were tinned, by and large. Ravioli and rice pudding out of a can were the nearest thing to ready meals that my Mother ever cooked (or should that be heated?), whereas nowadays you can see shoppers' trolleys piled high with microwave lasagne or paella all of which generate obscene amounts of waste card and foil containers. My parents' generation cooked more food from scratch, meaning that the waste they generated was more likely to be potato peelings and the leaves from a cauliflower (both of which were of course compostable).

Secondly there is the conspicuous consumption that many people indulge in and from which few are immune. Despite the undoubted hardships that many people have suffered and continue to suffer as a result of economic downturn and austerity measures, a good many things are cheaper, both relatively and actually, than they were twenty or thirty years ago. Look at video recorders, which I wrote about recently. The first one I bought, in 1989, cost £350; fast forward (pun intended) to the days when the last ones were on sale in the High Street and they were going for under fifty quid. And clothes: thanks to shops like Primark, the price of polo shirts, shorts, lightweight jackets, even winter coats, are lower than they were in the days when I had a full head of hair (about 1985).

We live in an increasingly throw-away society, even though that term is hardly new, having been first coined in 1955 in Life magazine. Few people 'make do and mend' like our forebears, we dispose of things because they bore us rather than because they are worn out. Manufacturers of consumer items like mobile phones, televisions games consoles, all forms of computers and tablets - most electronic devices really - constantly bring out new versions of their products, encouraging us to upgrade, upgrade, upgrade.

The amount we throw away is astonishing. This graphic shows the domestic waste from each home in the London Borough of Barking & Dagenham.

At one time many people would fight shy of buying used goods - there was a certain stigma about doing so. Today, with the proliferation of boot sales, the rise of the charity shop and the stores selling pre-owned or vintage, cherished items, and the incredible popularity of websites like Gumtree and eBay, buying second-hand is to some extent fashionable - and cheaper. We all generate more rubbish and things we simply tire of or outgrow than any previous generation, which means  that anything we can do to reuse or recycle more and more must be a good thing. Today more than ever, one man's trash is another man's treasure. 

"We Are Sorry For Any Inconvenience Caused"

The most mealy-mouthed, insincere apologies you will ever encounter are those that routinely accompany announcements made on public transport systems, tacked on the end of messages informing you that your train is formed by only four coaches instead of eight, delayed for some reason, or simply cancelled outright.

The number of times the average commuter hears that sort of apology is so great that quite quickly they are tuned out, thus it is only the more remarkable, ad hoc apologies that stick in the mind. One of my favourites has to be the apology from the driver of a train as it ground to a halt at Goodmayes Station en route to Liverpool Street, to the accompaniment of a loud bang. The delay in our service, and the cause of the bang, he told us was due to a pigeon landing on the overhead power cables...and exploding. Fortunately this did not cause sufficient delay for me to be late, although the pigeon was very late.

More frustrating than the disingenuous apologies, however are the complete lack of announcements - useful or otherwise - when things are not running properly. When I worked at Canary Wharf, the Jubilee Line station there would resound to frequent announcements stating the obvious, that "A good service is operating on the Jubilee Line" when the trains were running properly. There would be signs reinforcing the statements made on the public address, and cheerful Transport for London (TfL) staff would be (superfluously) manning the ticket barriers and generally milling about. On the day you arrived on the platform to find the indicator board blank, or one suggesting that the next train would not be for another twenty minutes instead of the usual three or four, announcements there would be none and TfL staff would be conspicuous by their absence, having probably barricaded themselves in their offices to avoid the wrath of the thousands of disgruntled commuters.

Station staff are not responsible for signal failures, broken down trains or people trespassing on the tracks, which are the sorts of reasons that services grind to a halt, so I cannot say that I blame the staff for going into hiding.  After all there is nothing worse than being subjected to abuse from unhappy would be passengers  when the problem is not of your making; and having worked in customer services I've experienced the shoe being on that particular foot; and if running away is not an option, then grinning and bearing it is the only recourse.

Less easy for rail travellers to sympathise with are the occasions when rail workers take industrial action. There are at present at least two industrial disputes on the railways, one on Eurostar and another on Southern railways. I don't pretend to know all of the ins and outs of either dispute, but on a very basic level the first appears to be about the detrimental effect on the work-life balance of train managers caused by what the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) call " the company’s failure to honour a 2008 agreement" on unsocial hours and duty rosters. If the union are to be believed, and the company have not honoured an agreement that presumably forms part of the employees' contracts then you have to have sympathy with their position.

Southern rail trains have been going nowhere recently.

The second dispute seems to stem from a desire by Southern rail's train operating company, Govia Thameslink Railway, to introduce driver only operation on their services, which the RMT oppose on health and safety grounds (not, apparently, as the cynic in me might have thought, in order to preserve jobs where one no longer exists). Concerns over health and safety are, like accusations of racism, hard to resist. Everyone, from management to unions to passengers must consider that health and safety are not areas anyone should be skimping on. Except that other rail networks run one man operated trains - and have done for many years - without any undue problems, and only yesterday (Wednesday, 10th August 2016), two-hundred passengers were evacuated without incident from a C2C train at Dagenham after a fire onboard caused by overheating brakes. C2C operate without guards; why they can do so without compromising health and safety but the RMT maintain that Southern rail cannot, I do not know.

Whatever the wrongs and rights of these disputes, one thing is for sure, the transport unions in general, and the RMT in particular, remain the most confrontational of Britain's trade unions. There is no doubt that trade unions are generally a good thing, going all the way back to the 1830's and the first real union, the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union (GNCTU). But while it is generally believed that the withdrawal of labour should be the last resort, it all too often seems that the railway workers' unions are way too trigger happy when it comes to initiating strike action. And, as is so often the case, it is the general public that suffers the most when they do. Shop workers, cleaners, office workers, teachers, nurses; you name it, there is hardly an occupation unaffected by a rail strike.  However, while the travelling public may have little sympathy with the unions, then the rail companies don't get  much either, generally being held in fairly low esteem by commuters anyway. You might say that rail companies and the unions are a match made in heaven - or hell.

By and large the travelling public has become so accustomed  to the inconvenience that is caused to them by strikes that they simply ignore them and make alternative arrangements. Back in the late 1980's a series of weekly strikes by railway workers meant no trains and no tubes in London for six consecutive weeks. My employers, Midland Bank, ran coaches from all points of the compass to ferry staff to Central London. On week one they underestimated the number needed and my first wife June (who worked with me at Threadneedle Street) and I were left standing on the pavement (largely because June insisted we went to the back of the queue!)  In weeks two to five the bank ran sufficient coaches, but our working day was condensed between 11am and 3pm, although there were four hours stuck in traffic either side of that period. In week six our coach took us to North Woolwich where we were decanted onto a boat to sail to Tower Pier. Having got used to truncated hours on Wednesdays, we actually arrived at the office earlier than was most people's normal arrival time, much to the chagrin of many!

Under BR, Liverpool Street was dirty, smokey and dingy.

Nowadays, Liverpool Street is a much more pleasant place to be.

Some people may say that if it were not for the parlous state of the railways since they fell into private ownership, the unions would not have to act in the way they have. That if the railways were in public ownership and not in the control of companies interested primarily in the return to their shareholders, there would be peace and harmony between bosses and unions. Except, of course that during the days of the nationalised British Rail the railways were chronically underfunded, rolling stock was dated, uncomfortable and unreliable, stations were dirty, dingy and potentially dangerous, and industrial action was a regular occurrence; more regular than it is now, in fact.

At the Labour Party conference in 2015, nationalisation of the railways became official party policy and Jeremy Corbyn, speaking recently about the Southern rail dispute reaffirmed his party's commitment to nationalisation. European Union law, and in particular the First Railway Directive, make competition in the rail industry compulsory - under the directive, multiple train companies must be allowed to use the same track, making nationalisation difficult, if not impossible. Ironic, isn't it, given that they were ostensibly in the Remain camp during the EU referendum debate, that a central plank of Labour Party policy will become much easier to implement now that the UK has voted for Brexit.

Frost* In July

To use a sporting comparison, if the Royal Albert Hall (RAH) is like Wembley Stadium, then the O2 Academy in Islington is more like Dagenham & Redbridge's ground. With a capacity of just 250 (all standing), the O2 holds about a twentieth of the number of punters that can fit into the RAH and while the RAH is an eye-pleasing piece of Victorian design, the O2 is a somewhat featureless hall in a shopping centre that is unlikely to win any prizes for architectural merit.

Frost* in July (and June).

Both fulfil similar purposes as concert venues, and I've been to both in recent months. In May I was at the RAH to see Yes (see A Fragile Drama), last Saturday I was in Islington to see Frost* and as well as a contrast between the venues, there was some contrast between the experiences and the shows themselves. The show that Yes put on at the RAH was, as one might expect from a band that have been recording and performing for nearly fifty years, thoroughly professional but - and this was probably due more to the fact that I was way up in the circle - lacking a certain intimacy. No such risk of a lack of that at the O2 Academy where I ended up about ten feet from the stage, which inevitably put me at a similar distance from one of the speakers, hence the fact that from the moment I left until nearly twenty-four hours later I was afflicted with partial deafness and a ringing in the ears.

My (somewhat distant) view of Yes at the Royal Albert Hall.

My rather closer view of Frost* at the O2 Academy, Islington

For those of you unfamiliar with Frost* (and that asterisk is part of the name, not a reference to a footnote in this blog, by the way), they are a prog-rock act formed in 2004 by singer-songwriter Jem Godfrey, who has written for acts such as Atomic Kitten, Shayne Ward and Holly Vallance - about as far from prog as one can imagine. Frost*'s first album, Milliontown, was released in 2006 and was on repeat on my CD player for quite some time after I received it. Experiments In Mass Appeal followed in 2008 and then there was a hiatus until Falling Satellites came out this year. As you might expect, the most recent album featured heavily in the live show, meaning that in the weeks leading up to the gig that album got a number of spins so that I could acquaint myself with it. And how joyous was the sound of tracks like Signs and Closer To The Sun, but for me (and I suspect I was not alone), the highlight of Frost* at the O2 Academy was the encore, consisting of Black Light Machine and The Other Me from the Milliontown album. I left the concert buzzing, metaphorically and in the case of my ears, literally.

The walk back to Liverpool Street (engineering work on the Northern Line meant that Angel tube station was closed) took me through parts of Shoreditch that were also absolutely buzzing. The area, which has undergone considerable gentrification in recent years, has become one of  London's most popular and fashionable quarters, even if the hipster sub-culture that has become synonymous with the area has courted some controversy, viz the protest at the Cereal Killer Cafe in September 2015. The walk also gave me time to reflect on Frost*'s support act, which actually consisted of fifty per-cent of Frost* themselves, namely Jem Godfrey and John Mitchell, playing under the name Twats in Hats and who played, among other songs, the fabulous Losers Day Parade.

The night before the Frost* gig, and back at the Royal Albert Hall, the BBC Proms featured what the corporation's website described as "A celebration and reinterpretation of the music of David Bowie with the Berlin-based, genre-defying musicians’ collective s t a r g a z e and its Artistic Director André de Ridder." Following Bowie's death in January this year, this show was both eagerly awaited and tickets sold out within an hour. Had I had the opportunity I would have loved to have been there, but as it happened watching it on television was in the end probably preferable, since it was a show that was quite difficult to enjoy. In truth, had I been there for it I would quite possibly have walked out before the end.

Now, I don't have a problem with weird stuff, and given that David Bowie was a great innovator and an artiste who constantly reinvented himself, it was both inevitable and appropriate that the concert was anything but a slavish copy of his material; it was fitting that it reinterpreted his songs, showcasing them in a new light. But much of this was not a reimagining, more a mutilation. It started well enough, though. Despite the fact that Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy looked disconcertingly like a young David Blunkett, his performances on Station To Station, and particularly This Is Not America were excellent, even if the rapping from Kid Elf on the latter song did not contribute much. But thereafter it went downhill. 

David Blunkett - sorry, Neil Hannon, performing Station to Station

Marc Almond's rendition of Starman was slightly better than his attempt at Life on Mars (which was terrible), but not much. John Cale, looking like Billy Goat Gruff in a skirt, performed a version of Space Oddity that might have sounded fine in his head, where there was obviously a tune quite different from that being played by the musicians going on,  not that the tune being played by the orchestra bore more than a passing relation to the one penned by David Bowie. Meanwhile a highly truncated version of Rebel, Rebel concluded with the conductor,  André de Ridder, asking the audience, "Recognise it?" to which the answer in our household was a resounding "No", and judging by the lukewarm reception given it by the audience in the RAH, a similar one was on their lips too.

John Cale, whose arrival on stage was greeted more rapturously than his performance.

But the highlight of the concert in the Woods household (one which reduced Val to tears of laughter), was the performance of Jherek Bischoff. Bischoff is an American musician whose album, Cistern, was partially recorded in an empty two million gallon underground water tank under Fort Worden in Port Townsend, Washington. It's that sort of fact that immediately makes me think that the resulting output is going to be pretentious twaddle with more than a shade of the Emperor's new clothes, although having now heard parts of it, I'd just say it is more dull than anything else. Bischoff's performance at the Prom was bizarre, although I imagine it was quite normal for him. Playing guitar with eyes tightly closed, his melodramatic style of playing was at times quite out of keeping with the music. Looking like the tune playing in his head was Johnny B Goode rather than Blackstar, he seemed poised to burst into a Chuck Berry style duck-walk even during the most sedate passages.

Jherek Bischoff (centre), contemplating a duck-walk.

There's a school of thought that Bowie would rather have enjoyed the adaptation of his music as performed in the Prom; I suspect he would have enjoyed the concert more than the audience at the Royal Albert Hall did, but I doubt there was an audience anywhere in the country who enjoyed a gig last weekend as the one that saw Frost* in July.