This needs to get off my chest

Supermarkets really can't be trusted, and I should know as I used to work for one.
My latest gripe - the latest way in which they are using skullduggery and trickery to catch people out - is a "3 for a tenner" offer that my local hyperstore is fooling people with. It says that you can get any meat or fish products that have a certain sticker on at the bargain price of £10 for any three items. What they don't tell you is that the offer applies to meat or fish, not a combination of both. So, if you pick up two packs of chicken wings and a Sunday joint - fine. If you pick up two packs of salmon and some smoked haddock -fine. But if you pick up some sausages, some pork chops and then a pack of cod fillets, then the deal doesn't apply and you pay full price. The sticker is exactly the same across the products, the signage clearly says "meat and fish" and the information is deliberately misleading and designed to catch people out.  And you're only going to notice if, like me, you have a deep distrust of large companies and an insider knowledge of some of the underhanded tricks they use. Because let's not kid ourselves - this is done deliberately.
The whole thing is set up to catch people out, and if they only get one customer an hour who doesn't realise when they're at the till that no discount has been applied, then they're increasing their already massive profits.
Bastards.

RC 30-9-25

People are Strange...

I must confess to feeling a little low today. A bit down. A cold may be imminent, and I am rather tired after sitting up late watching the NFL, and I did not eat well yesterday, and so lots of things are weighing on my mind a little. Plus, I have had someone who I would have considered to be a good friend let me down a little over the weekend. Nothing major, but it's tough for me when I think someone understands me and I can trust them (which has never been an easy thing for me) and then they decide they can lecture me about my own life and preach at me as if they are the highest authority on life and relationships. I reached out to him about an issue I am struggling with, and instead of listening and being supportive and helping me reach a worthwhile conclusion about my feelings and how I should proceed, he hit me with a terrible and terribly condescending attack in which he told me what I'd done wrong, and what I'm doing wrong, and exactly what I should do next. So I'm feeling a bit beaten up, emotionally, if I'm honest.
I'd like to be able to say that I think he meant well, and that it came from a place of love, but my honest opinion is that having a go at me and making me feel inadequate was a way of him making himself feel better about himself, and feel superior. I know that's a thing that we humans do - 'my life is crap and I can't control it, so I shall point out deficiencies in your life to drag you down to my level, and I shall try to control your life while floundering within my own.'
As you can probably tell, he has upset me somewhat.
I think, the thing is, I don't have many friends at all. I never have. I find it hard to trust people and I find it hard to let people get close to me, and when I do it, I find it hard to believe that it will go well. So when something like this happens, it rocks me. It also tells that untrusting, child-like part of my brain that it was right all along - keep people away because they will only disappoint and hurt you. And that makes me feel really sad.
So I'm thinking this might be an issue to discuss with a counsellor, but in the meantime I really don't know how I handle it. My inclination right now is to cut him out of my life for a while. If I'm feeling shit about something, I don't need someone to make me feel shitter. That's not how this is supposed to work. Or I could be honest and tell him how he made me feel, and how I didn't appreciate it, and hope that he accepts it with grace and that it makes our friendship stronger. But right now, being honest, I'm not even sure what our 'friendship' is. And that makes me feel really sad.

RC 29-9-25

thought for the day (from a very old day)

Writing over 2000 years ago, Marcus Cicero stated, "Wrong is likewise done by those who ban and eject foreigners from their cities.... True, non-citizens are not entitled to the rights of citizens... But the exclusion of aliens from the city's amenities is completely opposed to natural human relations."
I don't know why that rang so loudly in my mind when I read it today on my lunch break.
But I'd like to repeat these words: 'the exclusion of aliens... is completely opposed to natural human relations' and then I shall leave it there.

RC 26-9-25

"Some People" (a quick poem)

Some people like to have their say
some people just get in your way
they witter on about themselves
ignoring how they're seen
They dominate in every sense
they flounder in irrelevance
not seeing anybody else
or how uncouth they've been

 

God (if He exists) help us

I heard a radio advert this morning that has disturbed me a little. I'm guessing it's about a new version of AI on a mobile phone. I didn't catch the whole thing, but the bit that fell into my ears clearly and set off a bit of an alarm said, "If a friend asks you a question, and your phone knows the answer, why not let your phone reply automatically?"
Personally, I can think of a lot of reasons why not...
I'm already noticing that there are several people I have regular dealings with who use ChatGPT to write all their e-mails. It's obvious. It doesn't sound anything like them, and the e-mails all follow a similar pattern and structure. And I hate it. Artificial Intelligence has been put forward as this amazing world-improving advancement and all we seem to be doing is making people lazy by replacing simple tasks that shouldn't be too much bother. Do friends really mean so little to each other that we are now happy to let our devices talk to each other on our behalf? Is that friendship? Because you can be sure that the next step with this is to take the individual person out of the process completely. Very soon, there will be an advert that says something like, "why bother asking any questions when your phone knows you well enough to ask it for you automatically?" We'll just end up in a state where we make no decision whatsoever, we just respond to what our mobile devices prompt us to do. It's scary, and it's the thing that old sci-fi books warned us about, and it's not that far away in the future. In fact, we're already on the path to it now, and we're allowing it to happen. It frightens me, and devastates me, and I dearly hope there might be a possibility that I can go and live on an island sometime soon with a group of people who are determined to avoid it. We'll set up a happy commune where we talk to each other verbally and make decisions together, and ignore the wider world and it's slide into cataclysm.
But I'll still want a telly there to watch the NFL, obviously.

RC 24-9-25

film review

Philippa and I had a rare night out together, and went to see the film "A Big, Bold, Beautiful Journey".
I think they should rename it "A Big, Steaming Pile of Bollocks".
My God, it was awful.
An interesting idea in there somewhere but no-one knew what to do with it for the best, and it just dragged on and on. I was honestly bored shitless, but Philippa seemed to enjoy it, so maybe it was aimed more at the ladies. Their aim might have been way off, though, because I just couldn't see any point to any of it, which is almost unheard of for me in the cinema.
We should have stayed at home and watched the curtains.

RC 23-9-25

an unembarrassed love of the library

I've been thinking a lot more about the things I wrote about last night.
It's amazing to me that a lot of this stuff is so readily available to me - if I want to get into Bible study, I can order a tonne of books online, or I can join lots of forums and chat rooms, or I can read other people's insights and articles and conclusions. Years ago, I would have to make the effort to travel to my nearest library, and then hope they had something relevant available. I'm so grateful for the new paradigm, and it is genuinely amazing to me still that I can look into all this without even leaving my home, but there's also a part of me that wishes it was still the old way.
Wouldn't it be incredible if everyone had to make an effort to find out everything for ourselves? If we had to work hard for information instead of having easy access from our fingertips? It wouldn't put us off, I feel, it would inspire us. And the ones who couldn't be bothered would never feel the benefits.
And what if we went even further back? To past centuries, when books were rare and libraries hundreds of miles apart, and the only way to learn was from a learned, experienced elder who has been taught by a learned, experienced elder before him. The only way to keep knowledge alive was to pass it on to another, and the only way to find things out was to travel to where you could find them. I think that's a past way of life we can be proud of.
And actually, the way things are going, I can see that as a possible future.

RC 22-9-25

Sunday night thoughts

Sometimes, the right glass of red wine at the right time is the best thing in the world.

I am really enjoying the return of the NFL. I know I've watched it for years, and I know this is nothing new, but it still surprises me how happy and comfortable I feel once the season starts again, and it really does change my weekly schedule, and my life. 

I am seriously thinking about revisiting my old idea about studying the Bible. I think a lot of the problems that people struggle with these days are down to the modern ways of communicating, and the way we're connecting in a way that isn't really connecting, it's just sharing online crap. We're trying to deal with these scenarios using instincts and thought patterns that are based on thousands of years of evolution and simply haven't yet developed enough to keep up. So, I'm thinking, the further back we go into those instincts the more likely we are to find the answers. Too many modern 'help' books use modern methods that have only been created to sell the books they are featured in; they're not based on research, experience or common sense. So I want to ignore all the weird mock-philosophical, pseudo-scientific stuff about colours and crystals and emotional attachment types and read about people who existed before technology, and read about how they dealt with life as it was for them; as I have a suspicion that the basic problems they faced are fundamentally the same as the ones that most of us face today.
So... back to the Stoics, back to the Greeks and Romans, back to Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, and yes - back to the Bible.
I mean, if you're looking for guidance on how to live your life, the Ten Commandments aren't a bad place to start, are they?

RC 21-9-25

a quick (weird) poem

'A Summer's Day in September'

by R.C.

Unexpected brightness
Moods lift as recent events
fade into nothingness
Lost in the shadows
cast by an unexpected sun

Nature is beautiful
Resplendent in Autumn hues
yet bathed in Summer warmth

Confusing
Unexpected
Welcome
Loved

RC 19-9-25

manifestation?

'If you can think it, you can be it,' they say. They also say, 'once you acknowledge the idea, you can make it become a reality'. That all sounds like a load of social media bollicks, but I have to admit that after writing my 'positive points only' posting yesterday, I have found my mood raised considerably and I am heading into midweek on a real high. Well - 'high' may be a slight exaggeration, let us say I am heading into midweek on a real 'level stance', which is 'high' enough for me, having felt a bit down for a few days.
As usual, I have confused the point I was trying to make. So the point I was trying to make is that I'm in a good mood, and life feels good, and I'm enjoying my Wednesday, and I'm looking ahead without dread, and that's lovely.

RC 17-9-25

++plus points++

Today, I have decided, will be a positives-only posting. No more moroseness about the weather, no more recounting the weird crap that visitors have voiced after drinking too much vino at lunchtime, and no more mood that is darker than the upcoming evenings. I shall, for this day, be committed to comedy, dedicated to delight, and full of fun and friskiness.
So... my first 'utterance of up' is this - our plans for Hallowe'en (sorry, I forgot, we're sticking with HALLOWEEN - without the apostrophe) are all signed off and set to go, and we've already sold most of the day tickets for our family fun events with barely no advertising AND the park will be at almost full capacity already, with the two half-term weeks (depending on which part of the country you are being schooled in) all-but fully-booked.
As a sub-point to the point above, it does make me feel good to know that our October festivities have become so popular so soon after we instigated them onsite. There are lots of local possibilities and yet we seem to have struck a chord in a good way and our numbers are growing each year, and a lot of it was my idea, which is lovely.
Another good thing is that the 49ers have won their opening two NFL games, despite being hit by injuries and despite having a major upheaval to their squad during the off-season.
Mathew has settled back into school life pretty quickly, and even seems to be enjoying the whole thing a lot more than he has before.
Philippa is building up a little base of regular clients for her sports physio stuff. I'm so proud of her. She's still working at the GP surgery too, to keep her base income the same, but the solo stuff is taking off well and she's getting such great feedback, and the truly wonderful thing is to see her confidence and self-appreciation grow accordingly.
We are getting into the time of year where roast dinners and regular home-made soups will once again become a staple part of our diets. And I LOVE doing both roasts and soups, and they always go down well with others, so I'm excited to get back into it.

Apologies for all the parentheses and long sentences. And bad punctuation. And lack of clear space between the different points I was making. Sometimes I'm very excited about what I'm writing and I just want to get it down, and I don't think it through before I start, and I can't be bothered to edit it once I've finished, so I sort of add bits in as I go...

RC 16-9-25

It works for me

I had a long conversation with a guy at work today. A visitor. Despite the fact that it was the first day of his holiday, he was in a rather glum mood, I have to say. I was bracing myself for the complaint that I seem to get weekly these days - where someone decides that the British climate is completely my fault and they should be given a full refund because the sun didn't come out - but actually his unhappiness was not down to the weather. It wasn't self-centred at all, in fact, which is quite a rarity among most of the people I encounter.
"I just don't know how we can forgive ourselves for bringing our children into this world," he told me. "This world where online anger is more attractive than natural light, and where those who shout the loudest are more important than those who got the most votes. Have you seen what's been going on? I'm a Londoner and I'm ashamed of what's happening in my home city."
"I don't know much about it," I told him (because I didn't know much about it). He explained to me about various protests that took place over the weekend, which I was pleased to report I had managed to avoid any knowledge of the existence of. I didn't appreciate him dragging me into the real world, but I didn't want to appear rude so I just said, "If you put lots of angry people together in a room, they're not going to calm each other down, they're going to rile each other up. I don't see why a protest would be any different."
"I just don't know what they think they're going to achieve," he said, exasperated, "and it looks like our days of discussing things peacefully are extinct now. Everything has to be confrontational, and it all has to be instragammed and snapchatted."
A lot of work was waiting for me back in my office, but I could tell he was needing to get this off his chest, so I sat with him a bit longer. He told me a lot of weird stuff about his teenage years, and then said, "I worry about my children growing up amongst all this madness; and worse - I worry they might aspire to get involved."
I shrugged my shoulders and smiled as reassuringly as I could.
"You seem so chilled and unconcerned," he said, "How on Earth do you do it?"
I smiled and answered him honestly: "I concentrate on my work. I concentrate on my family. And everything else I ignore."

RC 15-9-25

pathetic phallacy

I have to say, it's been a wonderful week weather-wise.
Then today happened.
Our garden is now wetter than it has been for about two years.
I am finding myself looking ahead to the next 6 months or so with apprehension and dread. Nothing but darkness and bad weather, I am thinking. But you know what? I have two great sons to spend time with, a gorgeous wife to cuddle up with, and plenty of movies in existence that still remain, by me, unwatched.
And tonight, right now, there are a number of NFL games live on British TV. What's not to like?

RC 14-9-25

fri-ku about the past 7 days

Summer Holidays
Leave me exhausted and drained
Thank God it's Autumn 

The lunar eclipse
Wasn't really visible
in the Suffolk sky

Barbecues are fun
but the digestive effects
can be so messy 

Work is calmer now
I have time to think and breathe
and get some things done

Time for family
and the NFL is back
Sundays will be great

RC 12-9-25

...and relax (a bit)

It really is starting to sink in that our craziest period of the year at work is over, and that the next nine months or so will be calmer, quieter and more peaceful. We're still at high capacity, but with the average age of our visitors now at 45 or so, rather than 10, it doesn't seem that way. The pace is slower, the noise levels lower, and the general atmosphere much more reserved and mature. We're already having to put plans in place for the October half-term, as our esteemed leader Gavin likes to pressure us and not give us too many days of breathing space, but that's only a two-week run, and it's nowhere near as hectic as the Summer. And a lot of that is just repeating what we did last year. I mean, how many different ways are there to package a Hallowe'en event aimed at families?
As a little side note - we had a long (and I do mean long) discussion in a meeting yesterday about whether or not it should be stylised as 'Halloween' or 'Hallowe'en' on the advertising. Is the apostrophe redundant or important? Someone got a bit irate, insisting one was "American" and should be avoided at all costs, someone else pointed out that it's just a nod to the original full title of 'All Hallow's Evening' and most people couldn't even work out why it mattered and why we were talking about it. Personally, I thought we should lose the apostrophe, as it would save on printing costs, but when I said that I got accused of not taking the issue seriously. In the end, common sense (I think) prevailed. We're going with HALLOWEEN because it simply looks better, and because it's now accepted in the wider world as the correct modern spelling.
It's also exciting to note that I am now just two months aways from not having to work every Saturday. Get myself through to the end of October, and I have proper weekends again! And I assure you, I am determined to enjoy them.

RC 11-9-25

Holiday?

I am not enjoying the rapid onset of darkness that seems to be sweeping over us this week. I know that we're not losing a huge amount of daylight time each day, but it bloody well feels like it. It seems that both ends of the day are rapidly rushing towards each other, lessening our daytime by about 10 minutes every 24 hours.
God, how I hate it.
Still, it is provoking me to make some plans that will hopefully help counteract the depressing nature of Winter, which include, but are not limited to:
Using the dark evenings to finally start practicing cardistry.
Spending as much time as possible outside with my sons.
Rewatching the entirety of 'The West Wing'.
Booking a Christmastime holiday.
Making good use of the sauna at work.
Keeping up with some kind of exercise program - if I feel fit, I feel fine.
Trying to see more of my sisters.
Reading.
Writing more poetry.
Guinness.

RC 10-9-25

back at work, work on back

I am pleased to report that my digestive system-based unpleasantness is well and truly behind me. I don't think I'll need to use the toilet for two weeks, such was the effectiveness of the overnight clear-out I had on Sunday.
But let us not dwell on such matters, the point is that I am back onsite and enjoying having work to concentrate on, even though I am still feeling a little bit queasy.
Philippa has promised me a nice massage tonight, too, so I have that to look forward to. She wants to practice some new technique that she has read about in an online journal, and she wants me to be her guinea pig so she can 'try it out without hurting anyone important, like a paying customer'. That doesn't exactly make me feel special, but as long as she doesn't press on anything that helps control my bowel movements, I don't care.

RC 9-9-25

bedridden

I am off-work today, and that is not something I say very often. In fact, I have a feeling it might be the first time I've had a sickness day since I started this job, but I may be misremembering. I am rather under the weather, after all, and my memory isn't quite on full force. Oh - of course - the playful Covid virus kept me off a bit, didn't it. Or was that my old job?
Anyway, the point is, I'm at home today, because I was very ill overnight. Partly self-inflicted, but it wasn't a terrible hangover or anything like that. We just decided to take advantage of the Summery Sunday weather by having a barbecue lunch, and I was out in the sun cooking and drinking and not realising quite how hot it was and quite how dehydrated I might be getting. Then, throughout the course of the day, I ate enough meat to satisfy a carnivorous dinosaur, and I think my body was slightly over-proteined, and decided to act accordingly. So I had to rush to the loo 4 or 5 times during the night and I think I lost about 4 litres of liquid each time.
A shame, because I love Autumnal Sundays, and yesterday was the start of the NFL season, so I was enjoying the live games while eating cold sausages, which sat very heavily on top of the other sausages I had eaten hot earlier in the day. Nice at the time, but then the aftermath of the overindulgence was rather nasty.
I think a part of it might also have been the paradigm shift of the end of the school holidays too. My son is back in the classroom, and suddenly my workplace has 95% less children in it, and so the crazy busy rushy time is over, and I think my mind has relaxed and my body has said, "Now is the time to be ill!"
But I think it was mostly down to the barbecue....

RC 8-9-25

...part 2

"Plus," he continued, "supermarkets are profiteering, money-grabbing bastards who continue to raise their prices with no justification, and they get away with it because our government believes that profit is all, and because no-one British would ever stand up against them and refuse to shop there. And I will not be a party to that madness."
But he was talking to himself.
She had left.
To buy groceries.

RC 2-9-24

a quick story

"Why don't you ever eat in supermarket cafes?" she asked.
"Because," he replied, "you have to make your own hot drink, collect your own cutlery, and clear your own plate once you've finished. They get you to do half their work for them and then charge you as if you've been waited on hand and foot by a tuxedo-clad, world-class butler."
"Oh," she said, "I see."

RC 1-9-25