Handling illness

 

As I type this apart from having to wait until the battery in the Chromebook charged back up as I kind of drained it earlier in the day, it's the season of the great wind up as the grump attempts to move the clocks all a hour ahead as British Summer Time (B.S.T.) starts Sunday.

I just alter my watches as the chromebook looks after itself and given I can't tell the time, I've always used other ways when out of knowing what the time is.

I was reading on one site a piece regarding how an individual who volunteers for free their time was approached on the way to work with the message that "words were said against them" as they'd missed some training sessions due to severe illness and being told everyone else just plows on regardless as they have to be responsible.

Well few can deny that obviously if you take a role you need to understand that others are counting on you performing it but a situation where people are doing tasks that include being responsible for others when being so ill as to be physically sick is the working definition of an unsafe working environment that puts everyone at risk.

That way of handling such issues is also distinctly unprofessional as an individual should be invited to discuss  any aspect of their role including any health issues and support should be explored rather the subject of whispering campaigns by others.

Understandably the individual has now resigned so they have to find someone else and finding volunteers isn't that easy.

Given I had issues with some for having periods of ill health and taken calls from ironically people in Mental Health charities about lack of support, denial of breaks and the like it doesn't surprise me and the generally negative and condescending approaches people take towards people with disabilities either.

Ableism is rife in my experience.

1977 and all that Part II

I hadn't been too great this weekend - even the grump noticed which is rare - with ptsd issues so we're playing catch up from the great unopened to trying to get things done that just weren't.

Now that's not so dissimilar to how it was with me as a child and certainly in 1977 when it was more the mountains of school work to catch up on as they were more into that than your well-being  so I opened a super audio cd set of Tchaikovsky Symphonies that came out this week and am playing a few as this is typed.

As now and with a fairly rudimentary hifi made of what could be got and aired up, with some super tuning up I did read a bit around it in 1977 and this was a popular magazine with me not least for the record reviews beyond the great Penguin Guides for classical recordings.

If you could "save a bob" or two by finding a excellent mid or budget price recording back then building up a basic library of standard works by diligent research then I did

This it had to be said was my favourite, a mixture of news, technical and practical features and aspects of getting good sound, reviews and lively readers letters and a variety of records reviewed with attention to sound quality.

Back then we did believe in graphs and published test results which became a dirty word in some circles with some types believing they didn't matter a jolt.

I don't think they're the final word but they are useful not least in understanding where something may not be performing as good as it should.

Audio to me is as much an art as a science and they will always be trade offs.

In time I soon got a great system going.

1977 and all that

Parts of my feelings around certain times are complicated by the distance between where people of expected my own interests to had been and where in reality they were be they about gender issues or age dysphoria.

1977 as far as the birth certificate went put me in as a teenager but that felt like a distant country to me with its own ideas about what you'd do, what you might like and your peers were in that other land.

 

Scratch the surface and you'll be interested to hear scouting was the kind of thing I liked, learning new skills, being outdoors, being together as unenlightened as that era was to my gender feelings or able to find ways of accommodating my disabilities.  

It was the Silver Jubilee back then so I was presented with a special mug at school when we had special events such as a garden party with games and in Guides and for that matter Scouts you had badges you wore.

It was a very big deal back then and many held street parties.

I did have comics and back then you had loads of choice and I had the Beano and Dandy and while I'd of sooner had Tammy I did find girls who's loan copies to me although with attitudes back then you had to be discrete with it.

The common like musically was Abba as while my tastes were moving toward people like Elvis Costello and the New Wave from the pure pop of my tweens it was so well arranged, written, produced and performed I shared in that like reading magazines, buying records and having posters.

1977 wasn't a bad year with me.

Birthday

 

Some days seem as if it's just a continuation of the other really, little really separates it from the other and others stand more for being like that as much as times aren't as they were either domestically or in the wider world involving current affairs presently.

One day late last week was different for being my birthday, less "getting older" more getting more polished as we go around the sun one more time which was marked at EB with birthday wishes from the members of that great fiction site and a couple of persons at GT who did remember.

My BFF remembered and sent me an e-card, then she never forgets and we do have rather a lot in common both with interests and this other life.

I did a couple of cd sets that looked at that point where things moved from the late 1950's when rock and roll seemed to drop out of favour with relatively tame singers and groups to the period modern music exploded and all the social conventions just changed.

It's not that I don't have some compilations on cd overing this period but this is a broader collection from many labels as licensing tracks can be difficult,

This set has notes on each track helping to place them in context although I generally prefer year by year sets and takes us from the last months of 1959 to the end of 1962 when things were going to change rapidly.

The Second volume came out a week or so ago that covers a shorter period - 1963 and 1964 where that bug name group from Liverpool came from just strong support in the North-west of England to international stars and on the back of that many UK groups had great success in the United States that had been largely insulated from transatlantic trends. 

The Beatles and the Rolling Stones are not represent due to licensing issues but many british acts such as Herman's Hermits, Animals, Searchers and the Kinks are as are american acts whose appeal still held such as Elvis Presley and american surf acts whose novelty status got them some UK attention such as Jan and Dean and the Surfaris and acts that were to become massive in a years time such as the Beach Boys.

Bond movies started in 1962 and the songs from them are represented within these sets such as Goldfinger and Motown, a cult interest in the UK around 1960-63 became more popular by 1964 scoring well on the charts as much as in the main british acts dominated that era and in time Tamla_Motown the UK imprint of Motown was established in early 1965.

Spring cleaning

Rather crazy weekend with ahem "events" taking place in the Middle East as I type this as much as I prefer not have deal with everything the alleged groan ups are responsible for not least as they do affect children, often fatally.

Apart from trying to deal with the excesses of Amazon's packaging that makes filling the mixed recycling bin a challenge most fortnights requiring massive amounts of compress to get it all in, one thing I have been doing is removing a few things like box sets that have either been superseded by new and better sets or simply of artists I have lost that degree of interest in.

Sometimes you find with changing your stereo the set you had doesn't sound that good and that was certainly the case with one Abba and Bruce Springsteen set that for all the packaging just didn't sound right to my ears.

Then obviously you do get new things - events in a few days time will most likely bring some - and you do have to find ways of storing them so you reduce things that just aren't used and maybe no longer matter that much to you.

Usually they go to things like children's charities like Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital, a national centre for very ill children where it'll do some good.