It's Always More Complicated

Last week there were a number of nigglesome and annoying things - webinar that would not let me sign in, horrid headache in middle of night, incident involving knocking water all over pillow the following night, weird issue with University of Chicago free ebook where link took me to a book I rather fancied, but it downloaded as pdf, and after I'd queried this, the link they sent me went to an entirely different book that I am not so much bothered with.

O, and the two people from webinars I did attend that I bopped off emails to that never got back, sulk. (In one case may be my personal email being deemed junk by their server?)

And this week has had the Annoying Web Project thing: and then to my response they came back in a snit wanting to Not Include The Whole Thing, so after a pause of chewing it over, I finally wrote back rather milder than some of the responses that occurred to me in the night watches saying that, in the interests of having something about person in question in their project, was prepared to work on this. Don't know if that will work, but am a bit miffed as am after all doing this free for their funded project and have already put in a fair amount of work. If at outset they had said, can you supply research for us to use might have been less miffed?

Then there is a problem which is not just mine: since the weekend WD My Cloud and similar drives have been offline and inaccessible and there is very little info from Western Digital apart from They Had An Incident. Fortunately - you all know me, I am belt, braces, and a spare belt in my handbag - I have other backups, but this is clearly creating critical problems for other people who rely on theirs.

My hip, after a while of being only occasionally troublesome, seems to be kicking up again, sigh.

I had preordered something on Amazon - as it was only available in Kindle, sigh - which published today, and my Kindle app said it could not download unless I updated, so I did that, and you know what, there is no sign that the book in question has actually downloaded even if the desktop app says it has. So I cannot run it through Calibre, moan.

Back in 2008, Gandhian pilgrimage that ended at Calais.

And his present (surely it is the same guy) simple life agenda has crossed my horizon heretofore.

My dearios, I give you I live a healthier life now I’m free of the trappings of modernity.

O, lucky old you, a healthy bloke with sufficient resources to undertake this project and pontificate about it. You are not just lucky to be 'born without any serious long-term health issues' - this is due to various factors including maternal nutrition and antenatal care, vaccination against common childhood diseases (even if he didn't get these, and I bet he did, he would have benefitted from herd immunity), i.e. the benefits of modern medicine and sanitation.

Also, I have no time whatsoever for anyone who dismisses other people's experiences of pain: there is a man who, we must suppose, never sat an exam while doubled over with period pain, or suffered a migraine. Not at all rare conditions. Your body is not 'always aiming for balance and health'.

And we observe that he has had a vasectomy... because one of my questions (among the many stimulated by the thought of all the technological advances that have made women's lives so much less arduous, which I remarked on when his bogosity first impinged upon my aghast gaze), wot abaht contraception?

Perhaps we might introduce him to the notion that being regularly flogged with a large codfish is a cure for pretentious woowoo?

(And do we think that his simple austere life is 'more work for other people', like the process that gets his handwritten ms - written on tree bark in berry juice, we wonder? - from his simple cabin in the woods to the Guardian website?)

My dearios will recall, if you were reading then (hello, new people!) that about a month ago I thought I had finally got the 'create executor account to put late father's assets into' stage of the proceedings sorted?

Hollow larfter.

Heard absolutely zilch, nothing, nada, zero, when I had been told that I should be getting card for the account etc within 7 working days. I gave them a little leeway on account of bank holidays, but having heard absolutely rien, nichts, niente, rang the number on the printout with account details that was given to me at the time.

And when one has got through a couple of levels of phone menus, they ask for the 16-digit number on one's card, that is, the card that NO CAN HAZ that I was calling about.

Eventually got through to somebody, and with a lot of hanging on while they contacted other departments and the branch in question, I got put through to Complaints Department, as apparently the type of account I opened at such cost to my time and nerves and self-presentation as a moderately rational human being rather than a ravening creature from the dungeon dimensions, does not, in fact, get a card. It is operated via the branch where it was opened.

There had been no information conveyed to this effect, at the time, or subsequently. Poor show, what? which was indeed the view of the nice lady in Complaints, who was authorised to make a token gesture of compensation.

Massive SIGH.

Sally don't you go, don't you go downtown:

***

And in Dept, Further Frustrations, is anyone else having problems with latest iteration of Firefox? It's not showing up Trusteer Rapport icon, and now I find that if I try to update my Google Calendar it fails to save the event: but if I use another browser, it saves all right and is visible when I go back to Firefox. WOT.

In the process of going through my father's files, my sister discovered a life-insurance policy that his mother took out for him when he was a very small child.

Over the past weeks I have been trying to find out how much it comes to, so that I can add it to the value of the estate and apply for probate, finally.

I did manage to find the company that took over the original one.

They couldn't find the info so I had to send them various data, and then WAIT.

I have finally heard back.

You would think that they might manage to put the documents with the letter into their coherent order so that I didn't have to spend some time going WTF, and rearranging them.

The amount involved, as far as I can make out - I am still not sure all the actual documentation was in there - is Utterly Derisory, and looking at what they expect me to send them in order to release this deeply non-munificent sum - expressed in a form letter which, you know, doesn't seem to acknowledge there has been previous correspondence* - I'm not sure it's even worth applying for, except as a matter of principle.

Grrrrr.

*If you are going to start your letter with an obviously stock piece of boilerplate acknowledging that bereavement is hard and this is a difficult time, how about not making it more difficult by putting your communication into the envelope in such a fashion that it becomes a puzzle rather than the conveyance of information?

I've just been in touch with the people who provided my work private health insurance, who have offered the possibility of private continuation under favourable conditions, because whatever my political views on the subject, possibly this is something I should be thinking about in the current circumstances that pertain.

And they have quoted me a totally ridiculous monthly amount because I disclosed, when asked about any forthcoming medical tests or checkups, that, oh yes, I am due for my 3 yearly routine NHS mammogram and apparently for their purposes this counts as something that puts up the premiums like whoa.

WHUT.

I have been conscientiously taking up the kind offers of routine screening so as to catch conditions early if they exist for decades now and now I find that this somehow marks me as an expensive proposition?

I am screamingly furious about this, because it seems to me that it undercuts the whole idea of preventative screening if one is penalised for it in this way.

I may have indicated to my dr rdrz over the years that there is one topic on which I have more or less for adventitious reasons fallen into being consider A Nexpert and asked to talk about, and I will concede that I know about the topic and have opinions about it based on my hystorikle knowingz and nonetheless I really rather not be doing this. (See also, joint-authored chapter which just went on and on amid mentions of projectile vomiting from sheer boredom at the project.)

It is also one of those topics that people will keep dragging up because Contemporary Relevance and Continuing Controversies.

As I may have mentioned, my dearios, late last year I was beguiled into talking on this topic at an event at which I felt there was a certain mismatch between the invited panel and what the audience felt they were there for, but, anyhow, this led to an invitation to turn the talk into a short paper for imminent publication in an online postgrad journal, which evolved into a lot of faffery and deadline waving and the thing has not, some 6 months after we were told it was going live, actually appeared. (Am particularly bitter as I was obliged at a time when I was already very busy with other commitments to dig up at extremely short notice relevant references contradicting a misconception that the editor had somehow gleaned from another source and misinterpreted and wanted me to address.)

I have now been asked to bring my Expertise to an event in the autumn and am v ambivalent, especially as, although it is big important event they cannot actually pay me. However, I am also concerned that if I don't do it, they may get someone to do the history bit who perpetuates the Vulgar Errours which my decided inclination is to nuance, if not flat-out contradict.

These are all very first-world problems, but, on top of my not feeling 100% well with vague and intermittent symptoms that don't constitute me sick enough to get off work and existing commitments, aaaaarghsome.

I was not entirely prepossessed by the dermatology clinic at London Teaching Hospital last week, since, although it was no longer in a building large swathes of which were being closed down and echoing around it, it was in a really unwelcoming hole and corner space on the floor over the clap clinic, with the receptionist concealed behind the door, a queue across the doorway to see her, and everything seemed really disorganised. I will, however, concede that I did manage to get seen (by a doc who did not seem to have had prior access to my notes) within 15-20 minutes of arrival.

I am also in a 'financial transactions badly aspected' phase, and while none of this is actually critical and it is not as though I have the bailiffs at the door due to these various instances of inefficiency, it has involved more time than I like listening to hold music and please hang on messages, repetitive phone conversations, and naggy emails.

Would my dearios not have imagined that, two months late and counting, I would have had paid my expenses for being Guest Speaker at Ottawa conference? Ha!

There is new system at work whereby instead of minor sums coming out of petty cash with proferred receipts as necessary, all expense claims have to be put in the same way and signed off by line manager. Our LM is currently away so I got a minor matter of a taxi fare signed off by someone who used to be my LM before the reshuffle, who, it turns out, is not authorised to sign off on that account.

Also I am having Immense Faff with Financial Institution which already has Massive Incompetence Form, in which people give me the wrong information as to why they are calling me, are not giving me pertinent information, and signally failing to transfer my money that they happen to be holding to the place where I would like it.

Added unto which, I am trying to find a pillow that suits my requirements (non-down, fairly flat) and discover that the various purveyors of beds and bedding along Tottenham Court Road have masses of cushions and jolly throw pillows and snazzy pillowcases but are really coy about committing to just plain ol' pillows that you can then put your existing cases on, and seem to have very limited ranges.

I will concede that this morning I am certainly Dr Grumpy-Hedjog of That Ilk, but my level of bile was raised still further by this:
a Pulitzer-winning critic who became one of the first to combine cultural theory with unabashed populism.

Okay there is a vague fleeting gesture towards Pauline Kael, but the idea that before the 1960s film criticism was the province of puff-pieces by any staff hack who could be persuaded to go to a press showing -

Well, no.

Possibly more the case in the US than in the UK (but am less informed about the former), but just because the British press management tended to see film as the kind of unimportant area that could be entrusted to the ladies on the staff, doesn't mean that, from that professional lemon, they didn't make some very culturally critical lemonade.

E Arnot Robertson! (whom the Rank Organisation tried to ban from their press showings for insufficiently positive reviews.) C. A. Lejeune! Dilys Powell!

(We might, in terms of cultural cred more generally pre-WWII, also mention one G Greene whose film criticism for Night and Day led to a libel suit and its demise.)

This is such a pattern - there is a point at which some thing is sufficiently unimportant and lacking in cultural capital that it can safely be entrusted to the gurlyzz, and then once they have made it, well, actually, significant, the boyzz take over, and do not give credit.

One of these days, Some Bloke is going to get All The Props for bringing a critical perspective to videogames, no?

Also, of course, the pattern of journos NO NUFFINK about the history of anything they're writing about.

They're making what appears to be a thoughtful (yet feelgood) film about LGSM: Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners and the striking miners in 1984.

And, fair dos, I am possibly more likely than the average commuter on the Northern Line to know that this was a thing -

- but, srsly -

Beresford's problem was how to make contact with the survivors from the mining community and LGSM with no obvious internet trail to help him.

It's described by the writer:

"I first heard about it when I was at Rada.... The story had become a legend in the gay community. But it was like Chinese whispers – I wasn't sure whether to believe it. I did think, if it is true, I'll write about it one day."

Are there no BOOKS*? are there no ARCHIVES?

My head, it is banging: 'The archive is in the People's History Museum, Manchester – but nobody would have known it was there.'. I personally would have guessed the Hall-Carpenter Archives at LSE, but that probably also has quite a bit to offer. But anyway, absolutely NUL POINTS for that implied 'hidden in the dusty archives'.

Also, at one point there is a mention of an image in the contemporary documentary film they did find of someone 'shaking a donations bucket outside Gay's the Word bookshop in London's Marchmont Street. Still there, folks! - and was simultaneously fighting hassles over censorship (mailings including works by Wilde and Gide were routinely being intercepted).

This is yet another instance of this 'we have found this amazing thing WHOLLY HIDDEN FROM HISTORY', when, really, NOT.

Wot next we ask: the completely forgotten tale of Greenham Women's Peace Camp?

*There is actually a book Gay Men and the Left in post-war Britain, plus the topic is, I think, covered in accounts of the GLF.

I am in a really foul mood this morning.

Partly no doubt to not sleeping well last night and having the prospect of various rather wearing things to do towards the end of the week, some of which I can't even sort until a colleague returns to the office.

Several things which are all massively first-world problems but cumulatively, very irksome:
- my tablet expired, or rather, went into a 'let's stay with the pretty coloured X screen' at the weekend (this was probably purely a coincidence and nothing to do with downloading an app the library wanted staff to test...?), wouldn't respond to the procedures for a factory reset, and I was obliged to take it in to that firm of loathsome scamster shysters where I bought it (at least it's still in warranty), who tell me they will send it away for repair, which takes 2 weeks. Aaaargh.
- The home internet connection has been particularly up and downy the last couple of days. Yes, we should get somebody to come and look at the phone line. However, this would involve moving quite a lot of furniture and books so that the interior cabling was get-at-able. This would be tiresome enough that I think 'and if we did that, perhaps we should take that opportunity of having shifted substantial amounts of STUFF in that room to replace the carpet?' And then I hide under a blanket, missing my woolly stuffed dog.
- I think my iPod needs a new battery. The charge runs out very quickly.
- Never not irritated by the sluggishness of the logon of my work computer.

I have more or less got a whole lot of things with March deadlines in sufficient state of preparedness to go out into the world, littel myne chaptyre/artykel: and then I get a message re chapter I sent off (probably the only person in the project to get it in by the New Year deadline) asking for a revised version by early May. There is going to be a workshop for the papers in July anyway. I have desperately been trying to clear my desk for March/April so that I can focus on Important Thing I Am Doing, and this request cast me into despair and fury.

I am not sure this all accounts, however, for my spiny sea urchin state of grouchy this morning. Or maybe it does.