Common people

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_fCELuMsAs

I was at Hogwarts last night; well that is how it seemed. Tonbridge School is quite something and a mere glimpse into how the other half live. Other half is probably more like one percent now as most people have, over the past years seen their own incomes fall whilst those at the high end have all benefitted enormously. Fees at the school are thirty seven and a half thousand a year, for which I assume that you get a good education and plenty of contacts to keep the old boy network alive and well. The school seems to occupy quite a lot of the centre of town, with huge houses for those who board. I have no idea of numbers but the chapel that we attended last night has seats for over 500 and is in itself a magnificent building.

Everything is in pristine condition, and there is no sign of graffiti or other rebellion; even the hymn books looked barely used. They grounds of this school are enormous, there are rugby pitches and cricket squares in abundance and there seem to be no plans to sell any of them off. The drama department has its own theatre name after E M Forster, who, I assume was an old boy. A lovely theatre it is too, full equipped and able to accommodate audiences of more than a  hundred.

Students who attend the school are very very privileged and have come from families who expect that.  They have probably come from long lines of privilege and to them, school fees a written off against tax.  I can only imagine that students there have a number off motivations, one of which being fear of losing that privilege.  The boys in the town are always well turned out and well behaved, and that you would expect. What goes on behind the closed doors though is anyone's guess, though I am pretty sure that is doesn't involve wizards.

Money makes the world go around

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8P80A8vy9I

The economy seems to be largely concerned with manufacturing stuff that people can buy whether they need it or not. Thus the money goes around and around and with each rotation the fat bastards who own the world take out their bit, putting every country in the world into a spiral of inescapable debt. As they own the countries, they control the laws and so have made themselves pretty much untouchable.

Looking around the house, there is so much clutter; so much stuff that we simply do not need, and yet getting rid of things can prove to be very difficult. Take books for example, I have books in every room of the house, most of which I will never read again and some of which I never read at all. I could be ruthless and bundle all those memories into boxes and take them to the charity shops but they seem to have plenty and besides if I have empty shelves I will just buy more books to fill the space. The same applies to almost everything I can imagine. We seem to have more music outlets than rooms and so some lie unwanted and unused along with stuff that is rapidly becoming outdated junk that no-one will ever want.  I have disk drives and other extensions for old outmoded computers and boxes filled with leads of every description. I dare not go into the loft these days as I know that we have stuff there that I have completely forgotten about.

In the basement we are storing stuff that does not even belong to us along with piles and piles of stuff that I see just in case.  I must have hundreds of plastic plant pots down there. I think I have three sets of golf clubs and yet I don't play any more, I keep them in case I do, but  three sets?
I confess that I am a hoarder by nature and I do find it hard to throw away anything that looks like it might be useful.

I have hundreds of CDs on shelves in the dining room and yet I almost never play CDs any more as their contents are stored on hard drives and are more easily accessed. Again I could take them to charity shops but they get very little for them as they are dying out with people accessing music online. I even have shelves filled with vinyl albums and audio cassettes.

My wardrobe has stuff in it that I will never wear again, largely because it will no longer fit, and so it goes on.

If we all had a really good clear out, the charity shops would be inundated as would landfill sites. Maybe we should do that and start again, rebooting the economy at the same time. I am sure that the likes of the Rothschild family would be delighted. On the other hand if their fortunes were put to good use we'd have a wonderful health service and  quality education free for all.

Electric Avenue

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtPk5IUbdH0

I had an electric shock this morning. The pull light switch in my study failed and so I set about replacing it. Things are never as easy as they should be are they? This time the fitting was smaller than the original- anyway that is irrelevant really. So I armed myself with the necessary tools and bits and headed for the consumer unit. I switched off the lighting circuits for downstairs and also the garage as I knew that there are overlaps there and I set to.

It is a one way switch so the wiring is simple and the old one came off very easily.  The new one as I said was slightly smaller, but after some fiddling I manage to fit the new base in place and started to attach the three leads. It was at the point when I was wiring in the earth lead that I must have touched one of the others and was rewarded with a jolt that I did not enjoy very much and sent me scurrying down to the consumer unit  it with the rest of the lighting circuits off.

It was a reminder of shocks in the past. I grew up in a rural environment. Electric fences were all over the place; they are used to keep livestock from wandering and make effective, temporary barriers as long at they are on. They are powered by vehicle batteries which need to be periodically refreshed or recharged. I can still hear the  periodic clunk that they make as they release surges of current. Mostly fences were recognisable from their insulation even if you couldn't hear the clunks. Animals would occasionally brush past and receive a small shock, this deters them from going that way again.

As boys these fences were one of the fascinations of farm life and wherever there was a hint of danger, there would always be dares. It would start with touching the wire with a stick - don't.  Then we'd progress to actually touching it; not recommended, and then holding it for the longest - Oh boys can be so silly. One day we went too far - there was a boy in the group; we were a disparate band, probably dissolute too; anyway this boy - I'll call him Eric, though that wasn't his name, was not very bright. He lived in a different reality from the rest of us - maybe he was just exceptional, I don't know, but we dared him to pee on the fence. Now should anyone feel the need to copy him, I can still recall his scream as he leapt backwards still holding his boyhood and ending up flat on his back. I think that puts this mornings episode into a context.