The Rants of Cherry Black

Last night I had the pleasure of being in the audience on BBC Question Time with the man who is probably the nation’s favourite fantasy granddad, David Dimbleby. He appeared in his organic form, as Bio-Dimbleby, rather than his alter-ego The Dimblebot.

The program was being filmed at Portsmouth Grammar School, and in order to apply to be in the audience, I had to fill in a form with my political affiliations and opinions. When asked what political party I support, I listed the not-quite-yet-formed NHS Party, and when I received a call from one of the production team, we had a fairly long conversation about it.

Arriving at Portsmouth Grammar School, we had our bags and selves searched, and were ushered through to the canteen where tea and biscuits were being served. There were two large TVs in the room, showing the news, BBC at 6, ITV at 6.30, and Channel 4 at 7pm. I had emailed my first question the night before:

What do the panel think of these recent judgements made in relation to Twitter? Why are certain people being picked out to be made examples of, and does the panel think that it is fair for someone’s life to be ripped apart because of a tweet that should have probably just been ignored? I’ve received abuse based on my gender and appearance, but it hasn’t been taken seriously, is that because I’m not a celebrity or an airport, or is it more because the threats were obviously not serious?

Along with our tea and biscuits, we were also given a card to write a second question on, so I asked why the NHS reforms had been ignored by the BBC and other media, even though I knew it was hopeless.

Just as Channel 4 was showing footage of an elephant on the rampage in Ireland (!) Bio-Dimbleby appeared and a hush descended on the crowd.

He explained what to expect from the evening and the general format of the evening; while he was speaking, a noise which sounded like barking came from somewhere behind me. Dimbleby asked if there was a dog present, and then told us that he used to have an old Nokia which had a frog ringtone, and he then delighted us all with his frog impression! He also explained the editing process, saying that the show is streamed to Glasgow (I think) where the lawyers cut any potentially libellous content prior to broadcast. He said that they used to edit out any comments about the IRA being murderers, but they eventually stopped because the IRA don’t tend to sue for libel! He’s really funny, and it was almost like a stand-up set.

At about 7.15 we were taken through to the studio, where five people were picked from the audience to be the “panel” for the warm up debate. The purpose of this is to test the mics and the sound quality, as well as getting the audience fired up. So the subject was “Who is to blame for the obesity crisis?” and plenty of questions and comments were fired backwards and forwards. Most people were respectful and waited their turn to speak, but there was one guy in particular who apparently missed out on manners as a child, and kept dominating the conversation; he even interrupted the panel during the recording, which was a hugely prickish thing to do.

Interrupting Bald Man

Anyway, after the fake debate, the people whose questions had been chosen for the broadcast were briefed, and then the real panel came out and took their places. Whilst they were being set up with mics, myself and the girl to my left decided to do a spot of Dimbledancing, just for lols. Dimbleby then went over some ground rules etc, and made a comment about bad language, the monitoring of which he referred to as Countdown Tourrettes. His mic was a bit crackly so that was dealt with, but then even when it had been fixed, interrupting bald man still had to make a comment…

There was another fake debate, this time with the real panel, about whether national service could have stopped the riots. Alexei Sayle commented that national service should be compulsory, but that he thought he’d turned into a reactionary since arriving in Portsmouth. Some people seemed a bit miffed by that, which made it even funnier.

So then the recording started; I won’t go into detail because it was broadcast pretty much in its entirety (with the exception of a naughty word from Alexei) so if you’ve seen it, you know what happened. I wanted to ask questions on two of the points: I was hoping to ask my Twitter Trials question, and also when the subject of Kent Council building a new grammar school came up, I wanted to ask the panel whether they would prefer a new grammar school, or a new Steiner school. I know which I’d go for.

My favourite part of the whole evening was towards the end, when a student pastor (of all people) asked a question about the tax on pasties (I cannot believe that people view this as a more serious matter than the privatisation of the NHS). The panel talked shit about it for a while and then Dimbleby asked Alexei for his opinion, to which he replied that he really couldn’t care less; a reaction which was met with rapturous applause from those of us who can’t see what all the sodding fuss is about.

<3 Alexei Sayle

The camera was aimed in my direction quite a few times, on one occasion I was trying quite hard to not make elbow contact with either of my neighbours- very awkward.

But all in all a very enjoyable evening.

I arrived at Manchester Airport yesterday morning with plenty of time for my flight; I’d never been there before so didn’t know what to expect. It’s quite a large place with lots going on, so I figured it’d be easy to kill the hour before my flight. I had already gone through the rigmarole of separating my washbag so that all my liquids were in separate clear plastic bags, and I had my stuff all ready for inspection at the security area. When I got near the front of the queue I noticed that they had a fairly full-on security gate: there was a turnstile which let you through the initial metal detector, and once you’ve been checked for metallic objects, you are then presented with two glass doors surrounded by illuminated arrows; you then go through the door which lights up. One door leads you to your recently x-rayed belongings, and behind the other lurks a backscatter x-ray scanner. At this time I don’t know if this is a random allocation or if it’s due to Big Brother. Maybe if I’d been one place ahead in the queue I wouldn’t be writing this blog post.

So my turn comes and I go through the turnstile, through the metal detector, and stand in front of the doors, awaiting my fate, and hoping that the right hand door would light up and show me my freedom. Alas. I walked through the left hand door, where a kindly gentleman instructed me to place my feet on the marked circles. I calmly explained that I would rather not. He asked me to stay where I was and went to get a security officer (I’m not certain of her job title). She was a very friendly and not at all threatening lady, who walked over armed with information leaflets on the backscatter machine. I told her that I work with radiation, have spent the previous three years studying it, and that I had plenty of information on how the machines work and the radiation implications. Her body language changed slightly at this and she told me fairly dejectedly that unfortunately there was no alternative, as Manchester Airport do not allow passengers to opt out of the backscatter scanner. She asked me to email the Department for Transport and have it out with them; she said that maybe if enough people made a fuss, something might change. I’ll be honest and admit that I was so relieved to be met with someone so reasonable: I have never been on the wrong side of the law, and certainly never on the wrong side of airport security and I didn’t have the guts to get in trouble with both on this occasion. The conversation was very polite and considered, but she explained that the only way to avoid the scanner would be to not get on the flight. If I had the money I would have probably opted to take the train, but I’m still an unwaged student. I asked if they had any paperwork they could give me to prove that I had been scanned, but they don’t, which seemed odd; all she could give me were some leaflets on the machine itself. Maybe it’s part of the anonymisation process or something.

So I assumed the position, reluctantly. All the while very aware that I was being stared at by other passengers, as the entire charade was being conducted in a glass box in front of the security queue. It was quite humiliating to be honest, I know that assumptions were probably being made about why I was causing a problem, but I really don’t care. What worries me, is that there are no signs on the backscatter machine denoting what it actually is. It’s just two large black boxes which you stand inbetween with your arms in the air. At no point is it explained to you what the machine actually does or is. Is this because if they did, more people would refuse to enter it?

I’m going to do some more research, but for now I’ll leave you with these links:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-15766544

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13990434

http://scrapthescanners.wordpress.com/2011/11/20/disgrace-and-debacle-euro-scanners/

Friday was difficult. The train journey and subsequent flight were an exercise in controlling my breathing so I didn’t lose my shit in public. But it was successful, and I arrived in Manchester without puffy eyes or a snotty nose, so that’s a bonus. I went straight to the hostel to drop my bag off and when I entered the dorm a drinking game was already well under way amongst the Belgian teenagers who were there. Apparently three other people had laid claim to my bed, but as it was the one I had been assigned I decided to be obstinate.

I headed out to the hotel where the conference was being held; luckily the train station, hostel and conference were all within a couple of minutes’ walk of each other. Upon entering the bar it was apparent that the party was in full swing; I spied a few familiar faces and mooched over for a chat. The atmosphere was excellent, everyone was very welcoming and friendly, and I was even recognised by a few folk I hadn’t seen in at least two years. I stayed for a couple of hours, but really wasn’t feeling in the most celebratory of moods so decided to retire at about 10.30.

I got to the empty hostel room and went to bed, only to be woken up an hour later by the drunk Belgians who opened the door, turned the light on and exclaimed loudly “she’s asleep! Be quiet” before bashing around for 10 minutes looking for their booze stash. I went back to sleep eventually, but was awoken again at about 2am to find one of the aforementioned Belgians crouched next to my bed, watching me. Unsettling to say the least. I told him to fuck off as pleasantly as I could, and to his credit he did.

The next morning I got up earlyish and went over for the start of the conference. It was great seeing so many people I recognised, and even more that I didn’t. The first speaker, after the welcome speech, was Deborah Hyde, who gave a fantastic talk about cryptozoology at Portsmouth SITP last month, but this time she was talking specifically about werewolves. It was, quite frankly, excellent. She has such an engaging manner, and the same enthusiasm for her subject whether she’s addressing a conference hall of 400 people, or a pub side room with just 15.

Picking the talks to attend was quite tough, I didn’t really fancy the “god” talks generally; it’s a bit over done in my opinion, and I never feel like I’ve actually learned anything, other than how high my blood pressure is capable of reaching. So instead I picked topics that I felt would actually be educational as well as entertaining. The Pod Delusion Live was excellent, and made (retrospectively) more excellent by the fact that they won an award later on in the evening!

The evening’s entertainment was just great. There was a gala dinner in the main hall, but I couldn’t afford it, so a bunch of us went to an Italian restaurant instead. This pretty much summed up the entire event for me; sure I wasn’t rubbing shoulders with the celebrity elite, but that wasn’t why I was there. I wanted to meet the people I follow on Twitter, and the people who I should be following, famous or not. And I did, to an extent. I’m very aware that I really wasn’t myself and I apologise if anyone felt I was being “weird” but my head was not in the right place this weekend; hopefully my friends can vouch for that. But anyway, we had dinner, and then went back to the conference for the evening, where we were treated with comedy and music, and it was excellent. Paul Zenon had me in agony from laughing, I will definitely be watching out for his next gig.

And then we danced the night away. After chilling in the bar for a bit, I wandered over to the main hall to discover Clio and Malcom leaving, because there had been no nerd dancing! So we fixed that, fairly successfully, even though the music was dire. At one point I figured that a tribute to Bob Holness would be appropriate, so the dance moves were studied (thanks Tom), and I even provided the sound desk with the Blockbusters theme tune, but alas, they couldn’t get it to play. Sorry Bob. We do love you really.

I got back to the hostel room at about 2am to discover everyone asleep, so I decided to be petty and get my revenge. Doors were slammed, lights turned on, and heavy things dropped. Yes I am 12.

Sunday morning I was utterly thrilled to meet Edzard Ernst after his talk about his exploits in CAM. He signed my copy of Trick or Treatment and turned me into a grinning buffoon. His talk was easily the highlight of the whole event for me, he has done so much research into CAM, and suffered for it too. When the Queen’s son is out to get you, and you still continue to fight, I will worship you as a hero.

Another session I really enjoyed was the SITP forum; it was basically a how-to session for SITP organisers, we shared tips, asked questions, and generally got some really good ideas about how to make our groups thrive. Even though Cork’s answer to everything seemed to be “find a castle”. Good for them though, I’m not jealous. Grrrr.

I’ve not gone into great detail on the individual talks, purely because someone with better literary and memory skills will, and also the talks were actually not the main reason for going. It was a wonderful social event, and a fantastic opportunity to spend the weekend with a bunch of awesome folk.

The closing night was great, if a bit odd. A few of us remained, chatting in the bar, and I got talking to a couple who had only been at QEDCon that day. We were having a nice conversation, when it suddenly became hijacked by someone else (I’m not going to say who, as I don’t actually know who they were) and the topic went onto something that I found completely abhorrent, so I decided to make a break for it, leaving the couple stranded with the hijacker. Sorry. Pirate rules. Anyway, we went out for Skeptics in the Curry House afterwards, which was great, and then back to the bar for yet more chatting and socialising. I should probably mention at this point that I had started to lose my voice (due to crying / toothache / etc) on Thursday night, so by this time I was positively baritone, and getting hoarser by the hour. To anyone I met for the first time: I’m normally a few octaves higher. Honestly.

And eventually I had to call it a night. From what I hear the party continued for a long while after I left, and well done to those who survived. I was elated to return to the hostel to discover an empty room- I actually got a decent amount of uninterrupted, unwatched sleep! The journey home was interesting though, but I’ll save that for another blog post.

It’s incredible how one’s current situation can affect even the laws of physics. To paraphrase the famous quote:
“A two hour lecture can feel like a week, yet the week before one’s dissertation deadline feels like two hours. That’s relativity!”

It’s been a shitty couple of weeks; a fortnight ago I had a dental appointment to do the prep for a crown fitting, but the prep work aggravated an infection in the tooth that was otherwise dormant. I’ve spent the last week or so in agony, with the painkillers only taking effect for an hour or so each time. It was so bad last night I went to A&E to beg for something stronger to knock me out. It worked, and I had the best night’s sleep in about a week.

Also, Dusty, AKA Schnauzersaurus Rex, AKA Puppula, AKA Fluffy, AKA D-Dog, AKA Schnaut, has declined somewhat recently.

She’s 14 and 10 months old, which is apparently pretty good, but it doesn’t make the current situation any easier to handle. On Friday afternoon, shortly before I hop on a flight up to Manchester for QEDCon, the vet’s coming round to put her to sleep. While I 100% agree that it’s the best decision- her quality of life has decreased in recent months- that doesn’t make saying goodbye any easier. She’s been around longer than Daisy, in fact I distinctly remember her sticking her head in the bucket containing Daisy’s placenta at the birth. Gross. So after saying goodbye to one of my oldest friends, I’ll be shooting off to a weekend-long social event. Apologies if I’m a miserable bitch.

Also, this week I finally finished off my dissertation.

It was essentially written by Monday morning, but I was lucky enough to have it proof read by lots of people so I spent yesterday and this morning making adjustments and re-reading, and this afternoon I had it printed and bound, ready to hand in tomorrow. Following this, I have three weeks of academic time, five weeks of placement… and then it’s all over. Hopefully.

Yikes.

So you’ve probably already heard about the WorkFare furore, mostly surrounding Tesco’s recent advert for unpaid night work. I was quite horrified when I saw it, not necessarily because of the “slave labour” aspect that seemed to have angered a lot of people, but because of the ridiculousness of one of Britain’s biggest commercial companies receiving a government-subsidised workforce. Why should the taxpayer fork out for the wages of staff that Tesco don’t want to pay? I say “wages” whilst fully acknowledging the irony. Job Seekers Allowance + expenses isn’t exactly something a person could live on, a fact which would be cruelly highlighted by making them work alongside people on an actual salary. In fact, I honestly have no idea how anyone survives purely on JSA, I know I didn’t.

Back in 2009 I was made redundant after 6 years of working for the same company. I bloody loved that job, and I met some of my best friends (and some of the worst examples of humanity) whilst working there. It was my first proper job after moving to Portsmouth, and even though I was there to maintain the IT equipment I was given the job title of “marketing assistant” because the company’s owners were troglodytes who didn’t believe in technology and they certainly wouldn’t agree with paying someone a salary to mess around with it. My initial duties were to reboot the servers every time they failed, but that got boring very quickly so I elected to build a new network from scratch- a hugely satisfying task.

There were a lot of major changes to the company whilst I worked there, one of which involved being ditched by the parent which meant that I could finally attain the job title of “IT Support” without offending anyone. Other changes included facing liquidation a few times, and when the administrators swarmed in 2009 it was made final.

My fondest memory of that place was probably my 21st birthday. I was presented with a birthday cake, and then carried from my desk in the office through to the factory, and ceremoniously dumped (as was the tradition) into the test tank (a large tank of stale water); only a fool failed to bring a change of clothes to work on their birthday.

My oddest memories are from the final weeks when we were having to sneak in and out of the building via the fire escape to avoid the bailiff (who had been camping out at the front door) from serving notice to any one of us. Then there was the day they forced entry and changed the locks, so instead of going to work that morning, we all convened in the nearby supermarket car park for a crisis meeting. It snowed on my last day.

The ending of the company was quite messy, and because it was technically bankrupt I had to claim my final month’s salary from the government, via the administrators. I was also told that in order to claim my statutory redundancy pay of £1,349.36 I would have to go and register for JSA (for the first time in my life). Having never been “unemployed” before, this was a hugely alien concept, and I was quite nervous. I walked into the Job Centre, and before I made it through the second set of automatic doors I was almost knocked over by a very angry man who was too busy shouting abuse over his shoulder to look where he was going. I spoke to the receptionist, who was flanked by two security guards (none of whom seemed bothered by angry-man) and she gave me the forms I needed and told me where to wait.

When I eventually got to speak to an “advisor” she issued me with a log book (to enter all my job-seeking activities) and asked about my work experience and what I was looking for. When I told her I would do pretty much anything, she raised her eyebrows and said “Well I’ll put you down for IT roles, and if nothing comes up in 6 weeks, we’ll broaden the search a bit”. 6 weeks?! I didn’t want to spend 6 weeks wasting time when I could be earning money, so I asked her why I couldn’t do less specialised work whilst looking for my ideal job, and she told me that wasn’t how it worked.

I was livid.

I was even more livid when she told me I’d have to quit my college course as it meant I wasn’t “available to work”. At that point in time my highest qualifications were GCSEs, which meant that I was unable to apply for particular jobs, regardless of my experience, so in September 2008 I started an Access course, which is a sort of A-Level equivalent for people like me who might want to do a degree in the future. But apparently these 12 hours a week (9am-12pm Mon & Weds, plus 6pm-9pm Mon) were a huge barrier to my employability and all higher education would have to cease.

I found this completely abhorrent, especially bearing in mind I had just been told that I was to limit my job seeking to IT roles, and that they regarded “job seeking” as “looking through the Situations Vacant section of Thursday’s paper”. I had already fulfilled that week’s job seeking requirements by sending 7 job applications off before leaving home for the Job Centre appointment.

Needless to say, I didn’t quit my course.

All this pissing around for £60 a week, because apparently I didn’t qualify for housing or council tax benefit as I had only just lost my job. Sixty fucking quid. And 3 weeks in they cancelled it and I had to go through the application process all over again because I had the audacity to do 16.5 hours temp work! Didn’t make that mistake again.

Luckily for me I managed to find a fantastic IT support job (without the help of the Job Centre) just as my redundancy payment ran out, but my 8 weeks of unemployment taught me a lot about the “benefits” system in this country; the main lesson being that the only way to actually “benefit” is to play the system. I didn’t want to sign on in the first place but was forced to in order to claim my redundancy payment which amounted to just over one month’s wages. If I hadn’t been entitled to any redundancy payment, say, if I had only worked for the company for 18 months, then I have no idea how I would have coped on the £371.65 of JSA I claimed in total.

I’m not trying to sound like a victim at all; as I said, I managed to get a really great job in a lovely company and because it was so well timed, I didn’t go hungry or stupidly overdrawn, but that was no thanks to the Job Centre. I genuinely have no idea how normal people cope in these situations; and I really don’t know how I would have reacted if I had been told to quit my college course so that I could stack shelves in Tesco for £60 a week.

Portsmouth Uni run a free bus service from one side of the island to the other for students living in halls and houses a couple of miles from the main campus. I’ll admit to being lazy most mornings when I have lectures starting at 9 or 10, and I hop on the bus instead of walking the one and a half miles to town.

But it’s always an eye opening experience. The bus stop is usually crowded with about 20 or 30 students waiting there (more if it’s raining/cold) blocking the pavement completely so pedestrians have to weave their way through the forest of people just to get through it. Of course some aren’t quite so reserved; and I really can’t blame them. One morning I saw a woman ram her buggy through the crowd taking everyone’s ankles out along the way, but in fairness to her she had loudly exclaimed “excuse me” before doing so. The pavement there is quite wide so there really isn’t any excuse, other than selfishness, to block it.

Then when the bus arrives everyone surges forward, elbows flailing, and people even use sports bags as a weapon to push their way through. It’s more calm and ordered at a Red Cross aid post than at the bus stop outside Lidl. Once people are on the bus, some are decent and go and sit, or stand towards the back, but others stand in front of the door with their back to it, ignoring those trying to squeeze onboard. They’ll do the same at the other end as well; it’s not their stop yet, so they’ll stand by the door, blocking it for people trying to get off.

This may seem like a really petty thing to moan about, and in itself it is, but I just find this level of selfishness and ignorance astonishing, from people who are, legally, adults. Especially when it’s fairly certain that they wouldn’t act this way in front of their parents.

Meh. Maybe I’m just a boring old person, but I think manners are pretty important, with or without a university education.

No, not the apocalypse (do people actually believe that shit?).

This year will be the end of one way of life and the beginning of another, in theory.

If everything goes to plan, my final exam will be this Wednesday. The following day I’ll be celebrating the end of exams plus Portsmouth SitP’s first birthday (clicky for more info).

The next major milestone comes in March, which is when my dissertation is due in, and I am absolutely terrified. Shortly after is my final clinical placement, and hopefully the last time I’ll be working in a hospital without being paid.

And then that’s it. Finished. No more lectures, exams or presentations. No more staying up til 3am writing essays (I really can relate to Douglas Adams’ feelings on deadlines).

Apparently some people feel scared upon leaving academia; I wonder if this is because they haven’t worked before as I suppose that can be quite daunting. The scariest thing for me was starting the process. Giving up my job was the most unpleasant part of the whole affair, and I’m not just talking about losing a regular salary, although that was quite galling. There’s a certain safety in doing something you know you’re capable of, and you don’t tend to get that when you’re starting from scratch.

When I was learning how to use Linux for the first time, I did so at my own pace, and when it all got a bit much I’d retreat to the safety of Active Directory, something I could configure in my sleep (and frequently did so) which bumped my confidence back up.

There’s not been much in the way of safety or familiarity over the past 2 and a bit years; all of it (with the minor exception of the teeny bit of quantum physics in the first year) has been brand new to me, even down to certain aspects of essay writing (I put my name on the first essay I submitted, not knowing that this was an instant fail- oops!) so it’s been something of a journey.

The “working in a hospital” bit which comes next doesn’t worry me so much; from what I’ve seen, all newly quals start their first jobs like rabbits on a motorway, terrified about their first on-call or theatre case so I’m sure I’ll fit right in. The actual act of getting a job is pretty unnerving though. I had my first rejection last week for my “dream job” at King’s College Hospital. I didn’t expect to even be considered, but still. Sucks.

Anyway, I’m rambling. Back to revision.

This weekend was a fairly sociable one for me, usually I’m a miserable bitch who abhors any kind of social interaction, but I went out twice with two separate groups of people so it was definitely a change for me. But I’m not really blogging about my weekend.

The people who know me are probably well aware that I’m not terribly conventional when it comes to “fashion” (amongst other things). I don’t really care what the shops think I should wear, if I like something, and it’s cheap, I’ll buy it. I refuse to spend any large sums of money on clothes/shoes, in fact the most expensive thing in my wardrobe is actually in the boot of my car, and it’s my riding boots (about 70 quid). This means that I tend to buy charity shop stuff and modify it, and any “decent” clothes I fork out for will get worn to death.

I have a favourite colour and it’s quite obvious. Therefore most of the clothes I own (which aren’t t-shirts I’ve bought at gigs) are purple. I just like it, and I don’t think I can carry browns and greens as well as other people can. Plus I have literally no idea what goes with what, so if I stick to one colour scheme at least I can be fairly sure I’m not clashing.

I also actually don’t give a shit what people think about my fashion sense (to a degree, which I’ll get onto in a moment) so if I decide I’m going to go out wearing my New Rocks, a ballgown and a dressage hat, then you can expect to see me wearing my New Rocks, a ballgown and a dressage hat. Equally, I only “dress up” when I feel like it, so most of the time I will be slumming it in jeans and a gig t-shirt.

But why should you care what clothes I decide to wear when going out in public? No really, why the hell should anyone care about what someone’s wearing? Unless it’s actually offensive in its content (and I am very careful not to wear my Rob Zombie t-shirt when I’m around children or the elderly) then what right does anyone have to take issue with someone else’s attire? Sure, if you find someone’s clothing choice funny or whatever, then you and your mates can have a laugh about it, but do you really need to let that person know?

Well apparently the fashion police has its headquarters here in Portsmouth and everyone is an officer of the law. I regularly face abuse when walking around the city, mostly verbal, sometimes physical, and it always bemuses me.

On Friday, I went to the RadSoc (radiographers’ society) Christmas meal at Gunwharf Quays, a shopping and “entertainment” centre in the city. I parked in the underground car park and walked the 100 yards or so up the stairs and across the courtyard to get to the bar we met at. Walking across the car park a girl loudly exclaimed to her friend “is that a tranny?” making fairly sure I could hear her. I kept walking. On the escalator, some lads behind me were laughing loudly and one of them dared another to “go get it‘s phone number”. Walking across the courtyard some drunk arsehole made a beeline for me and stood directly in my path, getting quite close to my face, and asked if I was “looking for business” whilst his mates threw an empty cigarette packet at my head and attempted (but failed) to hit me with an empty beer can.

I just want to point out that none of this is new behaviour. I have experienced it before and I’m certain I will again. What made me feel compelled to comment was my experience on Saturday night. I had always assumed that this was just normal behaviour from the general public, but I was up in Manchester meeting with some of the guys I shared the house with in Nepal, and we went out in Canal Street. I have never been in to Manchester before and I have heard all sorts of stories about how rough it is and what a dangerous city it can be, so I was slightly apprehensive prior to my arrival, but it turned out to be fantastic. No one felt compelled to verbally or physically assault me, the atmosphere was friendly and fun-filled, and I didn’t fear for my safety once. It occurred to me that this should be the norm; people shouldn’t feel scared to walk around merely because of what they are wearing.

I genuinely worry that people who are less flippant than me are being abused in this way whilst walking around Portsmouth, and that they might not brush off these insults and projectiles quite so readily, but I have literally no idea what I can do about it other than leave ASAP.

It also pisses me off that the only place I feel safe is amongst drag queens. Those bitches look much better in heels than I do.

On Friday I finished the practical aspect of a degree module called “Inter-Professional Learning” (IPL). For two weeks every academic year, healthcare students from Southampton and Portsmouth University are bundled together into groups of 10 and given a project to do. IPL “strives to improve communication and working relationships between professionals, and helps them deliver high quality services in increasingly challenging times.” The idea being that if doctors, nurses, podiatrists, radiographers etc work together before they qualify, it will hopefully enable them to work together even more smoothly throughout their careers.

Unfortunately my experience of IPL has taught me very little about other healthcare professions (except pharmacists, which I’ll come to later) and in most cases it has reinforced some stereotypes that I know aren’t true.

For example, all of the medical students I have worked with on IPL have been incredibly self important and made it very clear that they had much better things to do (as if the rest of the group desperately wanted to be there) and in a few cases they even went as far as not bothering to show up. The male med student in the first year showed up on day 1 and day 14, and spent the time in between playing rugby somewhere in Europe.

Until this year, all of the social work students in my group have been paranoid and defensive, an attitude which can’t have been helped by the introductory lecture we had at the beginning of the first IPL which basically reminded everyone that people always blame social workers when a child is hurt or killed. I’m sure this was meant to be helpful, but it put my group’s social work student into a really foul and indignant mood.

The nurse from IPL1 was an alt-med nutter who insisted that humans don’t need vaccines as homeopathy is a much more effective and safe method of protecting yourself. Terrifying.

So yes, I am cynical about the effectiveness of IPL in its mission to improve communication and attitudes within a multi-disciplinary team. Especially bearing in mind I had the best IPL-like experience anyone could wish for whilst living in the Pokhara house; working, resting and playing with healthcare professionals from all over the world. I learnt more about what nurses and doctors do in that month that I have done over the duration of my entire degree so far. I was hugely impressed by their knowledge, and I really enjoyed our dinner conversations about the day we’d just had.

Last year on IPL2 I did actually learn a fair bit about pharmacy, but it had nothing to do with IPL itself. It was in the car journeys to the placement site, where the pharmacist and I had many really interesting conversations about the legal side to the profession, as well as discussing the vast amount of mathematical prowess required.

I follow a few medics on Twitter; some are students, some are long-qualified, and some have only just registered with the GMC. They all regularly provide me with really interesting information about their profession and healthcare in general, and there’s even a Twitter journal club where papers are reviewed and critiqued by anyone with an interest.

I have never felt compelled to stay in touch with any IPL group member once the sessions have finished, but this weekend I’m driving over 500 miles for a reunion with my Pokhara housemates (those on this side of the Atlantic anyway).

I suppose what I’m saying is that healthcare workers and students need to be personally interested in engaging with each other, as no amount of forced role-playing or ice breaking sessions will achieve a truly cohesive working environment. It is a sad fact of life that some people are content to go through their lives with the bare minimum of effort and interest, and I guess that’s why IPL has to exist. But at least those people will never become public health bores like me.

:-/

The Boring Conference is a one-day event dedicated to the boring, the mundane, the obvious and the over-looked. Nothing interesting, worthwhile or important will be discussed at Boring.

(If you’d prefer not to read nearly 1,500 words of my drivel, but would like to know about Boring 2011, have a look at these.)

Yesterday I went up to London Village (Bethnal Green, in fact) for Boring 2011. I didn’t know there was a Boring 2010 until the day after it had been held, so I wasn’t going to miss out this time. Oh no.

I started off the day in the correct manner by inadvertently sitting near the most boring man on the train, who talked at his wife for the duration of the journey IN THE QUIET ZONE NO LESS about some business deal with “the Israelis” that had apparently come very close to falling through but in the end after a lot of blah and blah it was eventually finalised and that’s why he had to stay late at work on Friday. Sure. That’s why.

Why is it the more dull the conversation, the more compelling it is to eavesdrop? Is it because I can’t believe someone could be so vacuous and so I’m waiting expectantly for the exciting M Night Shyamamananamamalananan twist at the end? No. It’s because I’m nosy.

Another thing I should mention: wearing New Rocks and a dressage hat is a sure-fire way to get 4 seats to yourself when on public transport, but it’s also a successful strategy for having both insults and projectiles thrown at you on the walk to the train station at 8am on a Saturday. But I’m used to it now, and my skull was appropriately protected.

So I got to London and made my way to York Hall, a leisure centre which has been around since 1929 and with the exception of Boring 2011, is now a place where people can pay money to watch men hit each other until one of them gives up or loses consciousness.

The queue at 10.20am was impressive, so I joined it.

At 10.49 I finally gained access to the inside of the building and also the running order for the day.

Yeah, that’s right, I bought a ticket for an event called “Boring 2011″ with no prior knowledge of who would actually be there. I had heard rumours of Ince and Goldacre so was disappointed to see them missing, but I got over it pretty quick. Especially when I opened my free swag envelope and found Haribo and badges.

The host, James Ward, opened the event with a rather self-conscious intro, followed by his talk on the early years of Which? magazine. The first ever Which? magazine covered the subject of electric kettles, reviewing three models by GEC, Russell Hobbs and Swan. Adjusting the price to match today’s inflated costs, the most expensive one (the Swan) ends up 30 quid more expensive than the fanciest water-boiler on offer at Argos, leaving enough cash to buy 14 boxes of Yorkshire Teabags. One of the highlights of this talk was the description by Which? magazine of the frequent toppling of cereal boxes as “maddening” . That and the cameras on sandcastles (you had to be there).

Tim Steiner was next with a talk on hand dryers which was not only not boring but also quite funny. He discussed the evolution of hand dryer technology over the years, with photographs, as well as the single biggest issue surrounding hand dryer development: noise. He spent a few hours in an acoustic laboratory with his own personal Dyson Airblade (jealous? I know I am) and was upset by the noises produced. To me, this talk epitomised the entire event. Perfect.

Chris TT travels a lot and therefore experiences a lot of different toilets. He catalogues his favourites and any notable ones that he encounters, including the disturbing urinals at a Dundee metal club which are shaped like a lipstick-wearing mouth.

Matthew Crosby originally wanted to present a talk on hand dryers, but as the other guy actually owns an Airblade he lost out to him. So instead he told us all about his Nando’s live-tweeting and how it has affected his life. He said he felt like he was trapped in a chicken-based Bourne Identity as strangers would send him tweets about Nando’s, usually saying that they themselves were dining in one of the restaurants and were surprised not to see him there. On one such occasion, he was actually on his way to the Nando’s in question but upon receiving the tweet he changed his direction.

Galit Ferguson chronicled the reorganisation of Budgens in Crouch End. Perfect.

Jon Ronson (buy his books, he is excellent) was invited to look at Stanley Kubrick’s photograph collection after the director died. What he found was over 1,000 archive boxes, which were full of photographs, mostly taken by his nephew, Manuel Harlan. Photographs of everything from doorways to room interiors, with a 6m panorama of an entire road; an early form of street view created using a ladder, a camera, and a lot of time and patience. I bloody love Jon Ronson.

Ever considered cataloguing everything you eat and drink over the course of a year? Peter Burnett did. In fact, he did it twice because the first go didn’t take place over the course of a calendar year. He didn’t read the whole book to us, just some selected portions.

After lunch, it was maths time with Toby Dignum‘s lovingly presented talk on the square root of two. And occasionally his cat. Did you know that there was such controversy over  that when Hippasus of Metapontum discovered that it couldn’t be expressed as a fraction, he was murdered? Awesome.

I’ve never seen the Hugh Grant film, About a Boy, but thanks to Leila Johnston I don’t need to. She has identified the key filming locations used, mapped them, and visited and photographed them. She explained that instead of being a romantic comedy, it is a French-style film about ennui. Very apt.

Future Portsmouth SitP speaker, Matt Parker spoke passionately and in great depth about barcodes, including the more fancy and modern QR codes. He demonstrated his party trick of being able to predict the last digit of a barcode when given the preceding digits, as well as explaining ASCII for those who were previously unaware.

Greg Stekelman (The Man Who Fell Asleep) proved his love for the London Underground, or more precisely, the Victoria Line. He detailed each line, with key facts, celebrity endorsements and personal anecdotes, and I was enthralled.

Helen Keen explained the connection between NASA, Nazis and Satanists (clue #1: the name) and told us that there were no boring shuttle flights. I believe her.

Will Barratt talked about the Loebner Prize  which is awarded to the most convincing computer generated conversation. He noted that the most convincing tends to also be the most defensive, paranoid, or boring.

Rhodri Marsden hates small talk. He’s rubbish at it. He tends to ask questions like “what’s Wigan like then?” or when asked about his recent adventures, he talks about having an anal blood blister lanced.

There was another break, after which Josie Long talked at length about her Alternative Reality Tour. I love Josie, but she did go on a bit, and it didn’t seem particularly relevant or well targeted and I noticed people nearby getting a bit tetchy.

Not quite as tetchy as during Mark Stevenson‘s talk though. He was absolutely fantastic at Portsmouth SitP recently, and is a lovely bloke, but yesterday’s effort didn’t really work, in my opinion. It was an incredibly aggressive and sweary piece about “why cynicism is boring” but it didn’t fit with the theme of the event, and apparently a few people even walked out. It’s a shame really.

Richard DeDominici made me laugh a lot. His talk was in the Pecha Kucha format and was about health and / or safety. Including the sharp edges at the holocaust memorial (very dangerous during icy weather) and the application of those bobbly strap-hangers they used to have on tube trains, to be used in Tokyo during earthquakes.

Felicity Ford treated us all to the sound of the coffee machine near her office. A machine whose noises are more pleasant than its coffee. She went on an audio odyssey, recording the vending machines of the British Isles, and she shared a small part of it with us.

Finally Adam Curtis delighted the audience with a story about his colleague, Andrew, who was cataloguing “the bits in between BBC TV programmes” going back 60 years. There was an amusing interlude featuring Michael Parkinson and Robert Redford, where Parky incorrectly states that the name “Lena” backwards spells “anal”.

Overall it was a brilliant day, but disappointingly, not at all boring.