Minding my ps and qs

Funny how I don't swear in front of my father. I have sworn in my mother's presence, but not very often; hardly ever more than a bloody or two - perhaps the odd bugger - and almost always felt awkward once I did so. Especially that time I said 'cunt' as an experiment. Having been informed that there is a new audience for this drivel, I will ensure that I display more caution with my language in future writings.

Just returned from a very brief trip to Oswestry, cut short by a combination of snow (which could possibly have prevented us travelling, and which would certainly have meant staring out of a Morda window for a day. Not really recommended) and a rotten head cold (now thankfully on its way out) which has left me with a red raw nostril and a sore eye. The bracing walk to the top of the hill fort on Wednesday morning may not have helped much, even though I am skeptical about cold causing colds. Anyway, as often happens, Oswestry always brings home to me the true brutality of the current political dogma.

I pointed out in a Guardian CiF article once that the town (and I do realise it's not the only place in the country suffering) is an economic basket case. Certainly, recent unhappy events in the retail cursed earth cannot have helped the situation much. Some people I know are currently availing themselves of whatever they are deciding to call sickness benefit these days (DLA, ESA, NFI... Who knows?) and it is salutary indeed to hear them talk about the risk of being filmed by the DWP walking up a hill, which would mean instant loss of the payment because it doesn't meet the criteria of not being able to walk more than 50 metres. My Dad believes that certain pubs are full of the unemployed, who somehow manage to stay in them all day despite only bringing home £45 a week. He may be right, but I think I might end up that way myself if faced with the alternative of watching daytime telly and waiting for signing day to come around.

In addition to that disgraceful state of affairs, I hear that online activity on the new DWP Universal Jobmatch website is now monitored by staff. Failure to conduct enough job searches leads to sanctions of one sort or another, ultimately I suppose leading to the 156 week ban recently introduced. Now, I don't agree that this kind of thing is in any way defensible even in a vibrant job market. The way things are - especially in Oswestry - it is no less than inhuman. Surely there must be some human rights or privacy legislation which can prevent this? How little dignity do you want people to have? All in all it was a rather depressing return to the old haunts, and gave me much food for thought.

To cheer myself up, a routine and slightly disappointing easy win over Fulham after Stoke beat Palace to face us in the next round of the FA Cup. Then it's on to 'Arry's lads at Fortress Loftus Road. No disrespect, but I don't think we'll be feeling too much pressure in these matches. Let's just hope that (snow willing) Spurs give the Rags a good tonking to open things up a bit.

Trefonen

As you may be aware (and if you're not - pay attention!) I have a Flickr account.

I am strictly amateur, and use the site mostly to capture pics of my loved ones. However, I do occasionally also record 'social history' in the shape of streets, shops, houses, etc. as they are. It's amazing how things can change without us realising it, and then we are suddenly looking at a place that we no longer recognise.

One such picture is 'Trefonen Road' and it is a wholly unremarkable shot (I'm sure you will agree) of a few windows in Morda, with the street sign clearly visible. It was shot from outside the Miners Arms (Drill, as was) and was taken with a partly sly attitude, serving as a commentary on how dead the area is. Truth be told, there really is bugger all in Morda. The aforementioned pub doesn't open every night; there is a 'social club' next to the football ground, and then there was the shop.

But, as I would guess with most people, vanity is one of the main drivers for my browsing activity, and I was stunned to see that there were over 500 views of my Flickr pictures during a single day one week not so long ago. One of these was my shot 'Trefonen Road' and - looking a little more deeply - I saw that the picture had been used on a travel website, which for some reason provided people with information about the village of Trefonen.

My original description read - 'Morda's only shop. Now closed down' but I felt so bad for the people of the area that I had to change it, and so it says 'Now that this photo has 'gone viral' I feel I should report that the shop is either now open or will be very soon. Happy days!' I believe this to be true

Zippin up my boots

Is it only me, or is anyone else getting fed up with all this god stuff in footy at the moment? Has it escaped anyone's attention that the game is now owned by Muslims?

So, only City, Spurs and Chelsea hold that elusive 100% record. Based on yesterday's appalling rubbish, at least one of those three is likely to drop out of the equation before long. Of our players, only Ireland and Adebayor looked as if they could make something happen. Wright-Phillips did a lot of running around, but with limited results; Barry did not look a quality player, as evidenced by the amount of time he had on the ball, and the actual production of something decent at the end of it. Tevez gave his best impression of the waspish Wayne across the road at the Sty, with the crucial difference being that his sting had been removed, leaving an awful lot of pointless buzzing. Bellamy was even more of a waste of space than usual, stuck out on the left wing like that. In actual fact, we should have beaten a truly crap side comfortably, but were fortunate not to blow the game. Pompey had one shot on target and nearly scored from it! I have a bad feeling about the Arsenal...

The other night I was asked to justify my reasons for being a City supporter. Well, I said, I was born in Shropshire, so there were no local teams I could support. Truth be told, Oswestry did have a football team when I was a kid. They played in the Northern Premier League at that time, before committing the unthinkable sin of playing in the League of Wales. and then went into administration before merging with TNS - now known as The New Saints. It would not have been easy to have supported them, though I do of course look out for the New Saints results as they come off the vidi-printer. For obvious reasons, I could not have supported Wrexham, and as far as many of us were concerned, Shrewsbury may as well have been London. Extend that, and you will see why I reacted negatively when asked if I could have supported one of the Midlands teams, like Aston Villa, Wolves or Birmingham. Wolves would have been the least offensive of the yow-yow lot, but it still just wasn't an option, quite frankly.

No, all eyes looked north from Shropshire. In my mind (and in fact, when I return to Oswestry these days, it is still largely the case) there were always loads of City fans, quite a few Liverpool and Rags, the odd Toffee and a decent smattering of Leeds United. The fact of my uncle John's support for City swung it for me, and I guess I grew into the age for following footy at a peculiar phase in history when we were a decent side.

The fact that I was having to justify myself to a Toffee from Stockport is neither here nor there.

Golfing with sharks

On the eve of a trip to Shropshire (Mum duties, as Mother's Day stuff didn't arrive - sigh) and then Cheshire (40th birthday celebration for a certain donkey driver) as part of an extended sanity-restoring Easter break, I am taking stock of where I stand, work-wise.

I don't know if anyone who reads this has ever played the sublime Super Mario Bros 3, but if you do, you'll know about the block on which you land - in World 1, Level 2, I think - after jumping on and then booting the tortoise shell and watching it bork back and forth beneath your feet. If you're not careful, the action you instigated will cause your own downfall as the shell destroys the block and you slip dim-wittedly into its path, tumbling backwards feet up with a stupid grin before floating slowly down off the bottom of the screen. Well, that sort of sums it up.

If you have never played the game, and have no intention of doing so, then I guess you will just have to try and imagine the allegorical illustration.

I'm reluctant to go into too much detail, but I always dreaded needing to know anything more about golf than was strictly necessary, and I now feel that this may be a requirement. Ringing in my ears is the 2 and a half hour conference call from this afternoon, and burned into my mind's eye are so many sharp suited fellas with 3G cards worshipping at the altar of commercial service delivery. And an old lady. Crying.

Lick the window of life

I've recently had the misfortune to see the latest incarnation of the Müller ad campaign on TV, prominently featuring Shropshire as some kind of bucolic heaven where everywhere has vaseline smeared on the lens and smiling kids with gaps in their teeth and summer dresses laze around in meadows. I had intended to post something snidey about the good folk of the county being as far from this idealised bollocks as possible, with their Superkings and their Poundstretchers and scollops, but I feel a little differently now that the piece has evolved.

Clearly, the company has carried out extensive research which shows that the great British public somehow identify the county of Salop with the honesty and wholesomeness of some bullshit idea of the countryside which never really existed in any case. I mean, have these people never watched the Thomas Hardy serialisations on Sunday nights? Are they unaware of the grinding poverty, virulent disease, widespread illiteracy and random violence? And things were even worse in the old days...

At the risk of getting a person into trouble, I will say that I know someone who works - if not in a dairy - then in a dairy packing plant (the place is actually known as The Dairy, but this is I think a misnomer) where all forms of lactose related products destined for the supermarket shelves are picked and packed 24x7. I don't know if Müller products are packed there, but what tales of woe are told, what a Dante-esque picture of hell is conjured up when describing the working conditions. Here are some examples:

The company provided an occupational health visit for the staff, as a result of which one older worker was found to have cataracts in both eyes. He was - naturally - told to get these sorted out as soon as possible. I didn't know this, but it makes perfect sense, that when cataracts are present in both eyes, two separate visits for operations are necessary to remove them. On his return to work, the man was issued with a verbal warning for taking two sickness periods in a given time frame.

A younger worker with breathing difficulties (I believe asthma related) was struggling for breath while on his 12 hour packing shift. Despite the pleas of the other men on the shift, the supervisor insisted that the man finish his work, even though he was barely able to breathe at the end of it. He was hospitalised almost immediately, and made a recovery, but was again issued with a verbal warning on his return to work.

The management of the place seem to be able to act with total disregard for employment law, or even basic respect for human dignity, which is startling in this day and age. But, a job's a job they say, and that has never been so true as it is now. So, when I see the Müller ad, I feel genuinely sick for the poor bastards working in this place, and doubtless many others around the country, and I now look at the cheese in the chiller cabinets at Waitrose in an entirely different light.

And that's without even getting into the whole vegan thing.