If you dipped your toes into JaJa99 No 152, you may remember I was impaled on the horns of a dilemma when it comes to repositioning my neighbour’s generous gift of unwanted red bricks. The good news is that I have found a small hole in the wall where I can pass the bricks through without damaging them and from there it’s only a short carry to their final destination. I thought it important to share this with you.
Also, further to my “modern language” thoughts, I heard two more new words today, or at least new uses for old words, whilst listening to the BBC World Service at some ungodly early hour. (Why isn’t God around at 3am? Just a thought). They were doing a lengthy documentary on Tik Tok, where apparently (I’ve never used it) there are now thousands (millions?) of people making videos which have considerable commercial value. These people are called “Creators” (God again) and where you have a herd of “Creators”, you also need “Moderators”; people who will check the creators’ creations to make sure the content is acceptable to the few people left who aren’t “creating”. As you may imagine with all these multifarious videos, that needs a lot of “Moderators”. It could even be that I’ve met a Moderator without realising it. I always thought they had something to do with the Church of Scotland (God again!). Another word that’s taken over the airwaves is “pushback”. I’m sure it means something and it’s possible that some of the people who use it may even understand what it means. To me it’s what you do to an aeroplane to get it off its stand and ready for take off. But then I’m just very old fashioned.
Old fashioned and hard of hearing I fear, because nowadays I often struggle to hear what interviewees on the radio are saying. Although it’s just possible it has nothing to do with my poor hearing and everything to do with the execrable quality of the mobile phone lines that they insist on using now. When I was on the BBC Radio Sports staff in the 1980’s we had a phrase that dictated everything we did; Broadcast Quality. That meant that we couldn’t put anything out on air unless it was of the highest audio quality. Very, very occasionally you might use a good phone line or perhaps a slightly dodgy satellite connection from the far side of the world if the content of the piece was so important that it justified the difficulty of hearing. Otherwise everything had to be recorded (or done live) on a proper broadcast quality line, of which the BBC had many, connecting all parts of the country. That all seems to have gone out of the window, along with a few other standards, the passing of which I mourn, not least the ability amongst presenters to speak the Queen’s English or Received Pronunciation as it used to be called. Still, I’m just an old fart and moronic according to my lovely children.
I had the rare pleasure yesterday of witnessing mother (my wife) and daughter play in the same Eastbourne Hockey Club team in a match that I was due to be umpiring, until the opposition showed up with their own umpire and I was rendered surplus to requirements. It did mean I could sit back and savour an outstanding performance by Tiggy. She grows in stature and confidence as each week passes; it’s lovely to see. My whistle-blowing skills were tested later in the day however, for the Men’s 5th XI. It’s largely a team of once highly skilled performers who continue to prove that sixty is the new forty. In my Richmond Hockey Club playing days we had one stalwart who still played aged sixty two which we all thought was incredible. Now there’s a whole team of geriatrics, the oldest of whom is seventy, who would put many a younger team to shame. That’s great to see too.
Alison is about to serve a delicious roast lamb lunch, to be followed by tennis, golf and brick-laying. Life is good in Geriatrica.
ADayInTheStrifeOf 