Day 22: A Night Bus with 'Doctor Hemp' (Or, As soon as 'Alt-Med' starts working consistently they drop the 'Alt')

When in London you may find yourself on a night Bus. The temptation is always to put in earphones and doze away the creeping hangover and/or party induced nausea that is almost certainly occurring if you're on that bus in the first place.

This can be a mistake, because you rarely get as strange a conversation as you might overhear

For example, as I was trundling towards Oxford Circus after a pretty boozy night, a couple got on. They were in the middle of a heated debate. Well, he sounded 'heated' she was obviously just getting a bit bored with continuing this conversation. I tuned in, because they were right behind me and tried to figure out what the cause of contention was...

I have to say, it surprised me. It wasn't the usual Saturday night relationship fall out. No, he was trying to get her to 'Promise to never get chemotherapy'. Yes. Never. No matter what the condition, or the prognosis. She quite reasonably, but certainly wearily, responded. 'Well, it's not part of my life.. so I don't really want to think about it now'. Now, a more subtle student of the feminine mind (Such as my good self) might have read the slight double use of words in that sentence, where 'think' also stands for 'talk'. 

But he continued, explaining all about cellular damage and how it never worked, painting a lurid picture of tubes and lost hair. She again said 'Well, it's not really part of my life, so I can't really commit to that decision'. A very sensible position to take. It isn't in her life and so she doesn't have any evidence as to it's necessity in the future, therefore a promise to her jackass boyfriend would be ludicrous. But still he persisted, going on about how there was a new extract from hemp that could.. blah blah blee blah...

Now I know hemp and it's extracts does have many useful medicinal properties and furthermore is great for almost everything and if we committed solely to just using that then the 60s utopia would spring from the concrete and we'd all join hands and sing 'Let the Sunshine in' naked, but this is the point where I snapped... I turned round and bellowed into his face

"Wow, you must really love that girl... trying to protect her from a treatment to an illness that she doesn't have and hopefully never will.. it really shows your caring side that you are at 5am browbeating her into giving a potentially fatal promise... and I know that a 20-young man in skinny jeans and a t-shirt on a nightbus at 5am probably does have the medical credentials necessary to diagnose hemp for an illness that hasn't even happened yet, but in the future, if something terrible did happen she might decide she wants a second opinion from someone who has done some training, perhaps even actually has a job doing this kind of thing, has an actual condition to diagnose, rather than a hypothetical one and has the most resources to make it a reality rather than sucking on a hemp bag for the extracts... and then if that happened, and they chose targeted chemotherapy, which has saved the lives of people in my own family, she would be torn between surviving, albeit with possible side effects, or keeping a promise to a douchebag flash-in-the-pan ex-boyfriend that she, hopefully, split up with on a night bus on the morning of the 22nd September 2013 for being an utter utter utter bellend."

Of course, I didn't say that. I put in my earphones so I didn't have to.

They got off at the next stop. I'd like to think they are spending today apart. I also really hope that neither of them ever have to choose between chemo and hemp.

(Yeah Yeah I know, Big Pharma Shill blah blah blee... Of course not. Big Pharma USE Hemp by the way, where it's benefit has been established. They aren't perfect by any stretch, and should be constantly questioned and challenged, but that doesn't mean that something is bad just because they use it.. oh and they DEFINITELY save more lives than you ever will)

Day 21 Why so Serious? (Or, U-Kip if you like, I'm staying awake and vigilant against Migrants Puffs and Wimmen!)

Oh it's an interesting time to be driving the Ukip bus.
Once it was all so easy, you just had to pretend to not be too much of a posho and spout rhetoric that you think your imaginary audience of 'common men' (Who drive a white Van, reads the Sun and hates 'Puffs') might like and try not to let it slip that your interest is actually a mix of establishment conservatism, xenophobia and business interests...

The trick was to not look too serious, not too slick. You could fall over in an amusing way (learnt, of course, from Boris) you could say risque cliches, you could always be photographed holding a pint of lager with all the natural ease of someone holding a pot of live snakes and as long as you didn't say anything overtly racist that might get wide interest, you could imply things that were...

Now it's all gone a bit serious though, with a member having the whip withdrawn just for the tiny misstep of calling all of the women in a room at the Ukip Party conference 'Action for Women' type thing; 'Sluts'. Why, because they didn't clean behind the fridge... or something.

Now he says it's a joke. You know what, I'm pretty sure it is... and to be honest they probably did laugh. They're at a Ukip thing... chuckles must be hard to come by.  But what it indicates to me is how much the rules have changed. Farage has his deep set eyes on some glittery prize somewhere down the line now... a pact with Tories in marginals perhaps, or even the prospect of replacing the Lib Dems as the traditional protest vote for people who can't be arsed to find out about politics...

So Farage is cleaning house, but some of the members don't seem to have got the memo.. they think it's just the same ol' ragtag of elite pub-bore Poshos, who think Jeremy Clarkson isn't acting and like the idea of bossing about real working people who they have essentially conned into believing they work in their interests (Little Heads up. Nobody is working in your interest, that's not the way to look at politics folks.. pick a side and get with it, but never be fooled into thinking they're looking out for you)

So what could a slick Ukip do?

Actually less, they are essentially the 'Boris' party. People trust them because they appear to be a shambles. The moment they start getting slick and polished, getting rid of the ludicrous 'Poundland' style logo perhaps, or ironing out Farage's perpetually pub-crumpled face on billboards they will lose the one trick that holds them together.. The idea that this lot are too dumb to be conning us...

I'm not a fan of them Ukipers... they seem to have a bad attitude to Women and Homosexuals as well as Migrants... I mainly feel sorry for them though, they are a party based on fear and neophobia... and one thing you can never hold back is the 'new'

Interesting side point. I've heard on the ol' grapevine that BNP and Ukip have a fundamental disagreement. Apparently The BNP don't like the Ukip policy on migration from Eastern Europe, because although they are migrants and thus less than a British born man with more Bulldogs carved into his flesh than battersea dogs home 3 days after christmas, but at least they are 'White' people who are less than a British born etc etc etc...

If anyone can confirm this I would be grateful, because despite being ignorant and bizarre, the fact that at some point a group of morons might have had that discussion with another group of morons is somehow delightful...

Day 20: The Worst Nurse? (Or why why why do parents hand certain labels around their baby's neck when they are too young to defend themselves)

Please note: All names in this following piece have been mildly fictionalised in order to not break any Data protection laws at the place I work. Also out of common decency, because I'm about to offer some juvenile sniggering about them...

I think we'd all agree that there are few crimes as unthinkable as matricide or patricide. Not only is it murder, it's also staggeringly ungrateful and show's that worse than being a mere psychotic, you're also incredibly rude. There are however exceptions to this, the Fritzel's would probably have been applauded, or perhaps that kid who was put on Wogan as a Hooky Antique expert who then lost the plot a bit... but none more than those poor sods who have been given an utterly ridiculous name...

Now I have an unusual name. I really don't mind it, and due to nomenclative determinism it has led me to be an unusual person, at least I hope it's that... I can't really imagine that my parents were sat around looking at my pudgy face and goggling eyes and thought 'Oooh he looks a but of a rum 'un... better make sure the branding matches the style'. But at least my name is a name. Well, my first name is a name... a Surname perhaps, but a name and my second is a barnyard fowl, but family name's are really nobody's fault except history. What I'm saying is, I don't judge people for having odd names.. I can sympathise.

Nowadays I work with huge lists of prospective employees for Healthcare providers and therefore I get to see a whole lot of names. There are a surprising amount of girls named 'Precious', 'Princess' or 'Queen'.. I even had a 'Beautiful' yesterday. Sadly these names sometimes seem to have been attached based on the emotion of having a child you love, rather than with any descriptive intent.. it would have been like me being called 'Butch' or 'Rambo'.. at worst it can seem sarcastic...

This is all understandable though. Everyone's child is beautiful to themselves, and so your biased eyes will see the reality behind the fiction of the name. It is more unusual when seeming to imply other talents like the honest to goodness (But still slightly fictionalised) Lyrical Jones. Yes. That is a name. That is a name given to a child for whom the parents had a dream of one day being a rapper, but that dream became the less moniker specific, but more socially useful placement as a health visitor.

The fact that I deal mainly with health leads to some particularly interesting combinations.

A Student specialising in Geriatric care called Marcus Death.
A Trauma Ward specialist called Annette Raper.

But my favourite at the moment... and the perfect argument for nomenclature Determinism is a lady called Isabelle Nurse.
Yes a Nurse 'Nurse'

Now if I was to make up* that name in a book I'd be roundly mocked, but the universe seems to do this all the time...
(*of course I did slightly make it up... Blah blah blee blah law and decency)

It is these kinds of things that get me through the day while I steer a massive and leaky IT project through a gauntlet of Icebergs and dodgy metaphors...

Day 19: It's international Let everyone know you're a Douchebag who works in a design Company Day (Or, Why is everyone talking Somali?)

It's international 'Talk Like a Pirate Day'... celebrated only by self employed design types, the odd celebrity on Youtube, most of Camden and Brian Blessed*

(*Brian Blessed is of course the only person in that list who isn't a Total Douchepump)

Does anyone ever observe this? I mean, really.. are you that keen to show that you have a job that is of no importance, or are unemployed... do you really need to pretend so hard that work in the entertainment industry?

Of course we have no idea how Pirates talked in real life, our conception is entirely based on Robert Newton and a handful of other performers who made it up for films. Newton's performance is a particular joy, a alcoholic mumble with a side order of bulging-eyed insanity that has done more to cement 'Yarrrrgggghh' as the call of the pirate than anything else...

Now, of course, the poster Boy for the eye-patch and parrot brigade is Johnny Depp and his impression of someone doing an impression of David Bowie doing an impression of The Fraggle from the Rolling Stones doing an impression of David Frost doing an impression of Johnny Depp playing Hunter S Thompson in Fear and Loathing.

Initially the idea of Talk Like a Pirate day was a bit of a laugh.. but the joke really is over now... it only exists so that people on Twitter can pretend they are doing it... But they aren't really..

Which is good. Do you want to go to a vet and them bray that 'This Mangy Curr be heading to meet Davey Jones' or visit a Doctor and have them snarl a 'Yarrr' at you before delivering your H.I.V results, all the while referring to the killer condition as 'Scurvy'

But it will go away again for another year, and that's the only good thing about this sort of nonsense...
Oh.. and it gives me something to write about when I'm REALLY struggling to find a subject...