Archives for January 2005

on 11 January 2005 at 02:12

Picture in the attic? Ok, you lost me again.

Friar Tuck

on 11 January 2005 at 05:39

But everyone knows that men become more fascinating as they age, while women become, well, older. Take me, for instance.
So maybe less smugness is in order, hmm?

Friar Tuck

on 11 January 2005 at 05:46

Beth, it’s a reference to The Picture of Dorian Gray

Kathy

on 11 January 2005 at 15:40

Isn’t that fun?! All my husbands students think he ‘robbed the cradle.’ They’re surprised when they find out I’m only 9 months younger than he is!

stroppycow

on 11 January 2005 at 22:59

I can’t believe he denied it.

Mikeachim

on 11 January 2005 at 23:05

Hm. Yes. Mixed messages. Either way, it sounds like you look good, so I don’t think there’s cause for worry…. 🙂

on 12 January 2005 at 18:07

Thanks Bobble.
Beth, I am honoured to have a BOB finalist comment. Have been working my little fingers to bone voting for you. FT, is correct re attic pic.
FT,less smugness from whom?
Well, Kathy, mine is a year younger than me, so even better. Ha ha.
Ahem, yes Stroppy, I know.
Mike, you are kind and good.

Syntax

13 January, 2005
Posted in: Princess

Wow, this working business can wear you out.Â Not the actual working bit which is delightful (please note that honeymoon phase continues unabated) but the getting there and getting home and the dropping off at the creche (NOOO, MAMA, nooo, waah, waah) and the picking up (humph, Mama eh?) and the putting to bed and the collapsing afterwards. I am away from Monday to Thursday next week and poor Mr. Waffle will have to do it all on his own. Oh dear.

But to cheerier matters. The Princess’s assault on language is gathering force. She now speaks in complete sentences, but her syntax is horribly mangled. “Princess, the piano, play?” “Princess, the toast!” “All gone, the yoghurt”, “Hop hop all fall down”. I blame her father.Â And the French. He says that her sentence structure is Latin. It’s difficult to know who to blame for that.

Comments

Friar Tuck

on 13 January 2005 at 23:23

I’m with Norah. All evidence points to Princess being related to Yoda, the Jedi Knight.

on 14 January 2005 at 13:13

Farque …. a polyglot, she is.
And I blame the Pope. But then, I blame him for quite a lot.

on 15 January 2005 at 10:53

Aah, I knew I’d heard this language before somewhere, Norah, you’re a genius. FT, you have spotted Norah’s genius. Pog, don’t we all? You should talk to FT about his views on this matter…

Friar Tuck

on 15 January 2005 at 18:28

What makes you think that my views on that matter are very different from Pog’s?
Besides, I think the Vatican may have bugged my Internet connection. I’ve got to be careful what I say.

on 16 January 2005 at 13:36

FT, that’s what I meant..

on 17 January 2005 at 11:30

See? The Pope is a bugger. I knew it.

on 21 January 2005 at 22:38

Har di har pog.

Early photo

13 January, 2005
Posted in: Mr. Waffle, Princess

The tasteful layout provided by twentysix doesn’t draw attention to new photos quite as vigorously as Mr. Waffle would like – no flashing lights, no rotating 3D letters. So here’s a tasteful pointer: there is a new photo over there.

Comments

UndercoverCookie

on 14 January 2005 at 11:50

Now, as her mother, I am sure you think Princess is utterly gorgeous…
well you’re right: she is. Â

Beth

on 15 January 2005 at 00:10

What a doll!Â

belgianwaffle

on 15 January 2005 at 10:54

Jack, under where it says new photos. Are you back or just visiting?
Cookie, you are a kind cookie.
Beth, thank you! Â

jackdalton

on 15 January 2005 at 18:01

I knew that!!! It was a joke, see? Just visiting – life is gone mad 🙂
And just visiting Jardin Botanique et environ too, as it happens….Â

poggle

on 17 January 2005 at 11:52

Purty …. Â

belgianwaffle

on 21 January 2005 at 22:39

Thank you, your pogness.

May I help you Madam?

15 January, 2005
Posted in: Belgium

Belgium is not a consumer paradise. The shops are closed on Sundays. They do not open late.Â And I like that.Â I find Sunday shopping/24 hour shopping and all these things a bit depressing.

However, I have my limits.Â The Belgians do not believe in customer service and I do not like that.Â The motto of the Belgian shop assistant is “the customer is never right”.Â The flagship service in this regard is provided by the Innovation department stores (this service extends to their website which I cannot find using google – yes, I was going to put in a link for you, but they stymied me, they are so thorough).Â All of the employees in Inno, as it has rebranded itself for hip young things, are ladies over 60.Â All of them have a gimlet eyed stare.Â All of them have lots to chat to their co-workers about.Â They see their role as threefold 1) to depress pretentions in customers 2) to dash any hopes that customers might have that they might eventually be able to pay for goods and leave 3) to discuss the appalling decline in modern manners.

While the Inno group leads the way in customer service, other smaller outlets contribute their mite also. Consider, if you will, these two vignettes from the past week.

I went to a jeweller on the swanky Avenue Louise to get a watch repaired.Â As I waited to be served the couple in front of me asked the gimlet eyed, elderly and bejewelled shop assistant whether she stocked silver bracelets.

She gave them the gimlet eye and said firmly “No, we don’t stock silver jewellery.Â You will find that no high quality jewellers do.Â It oxidises too easily.Â Good day to you.”Â They departed, quashed.

She turned to me.Â I asked whether they repaired watches. “Yes” she said “but what kind of watch, it may not be worth your while paying for repairs to a cheap watch” and she snorted audibly as she looked me over.Â I handed over the watch.Â She looked at it in some surprise “that is a good watch, yes, I suppose it is worth repairing…”

And this from just yesterday, when Mr. Waffle went out to get a vid from our local video rental shop. The shop has this stupid rule that you must queue up to return your video; you can’t just put it in a pile or in a box or something, oh no you must hand it to a shop assistant.

Mr. Waffle witnessed the following:

Woman comes running into shop and heads to top of the queue and puts two videos on the counter. Severe assistant says to her that she must go to the back of the queue. Woman says “look I’m just returning and I’m very badly parked” and runs out of the shop while the shop assistant shouts after her “that’s it, you’re barred”. Mr. Waffle is baffled.

Mr. Waffle is still in the queue and another woman tries to return a video by leaving it on the counter. Shop assistant tells her she has to go to the back of the queue. Woman protests feebly, she’s badly parked etc. (a common complaint in Belgium). Shop assistant says ferociously “either you go to the back of the queue or I’m rescinding your membership; I’ve already expelled two people today”.Â Good grief.

Comments

Friar Tuck

on 15 January 2005 at 22:46

BTW, is this what you were you looking for Inno?

Auntie M

on 16 January 2005 at 09:37

Sounds like the “customer service” in France, except that cutting the line would probably be expected and allowed if the store owner knew the person.

stroppycow

on 16 January 2005 at 10:56

My friend Kim would probably have said something along the lines of “now that you mention it, it is a good watch and it is used to service with a smile, I think I’ll take it to a higher quality jellewer where the staff don’t feel they have to belittle the customer”.

on 16 January 2005 at 13:39

FT, quite, can’t get anything when I try to click on your link – further proof, if proof were needed of the nature of Inno.
Hi Annie, sounds fab…
Stroppy, your friend Kim sounds VERY brave, most impressed.

Friar Tuck

on 16 January 2005 at 22:05

Actually, there was a problem with my html. I’m better with a quill pen and inkpot, you know. The URL was www.inno.be. Worked for me, but maybe they’ve designed it to work only for people who do not actually live near one of their stores.

on 17 January 2005 at 11:51

I think you should save stroppy’s comment for future use …..

on 21 January 2005 at 22:39

FT, I would check, but I know it would disappear on me.
Pog, yes, it’s good that, isn’t it?

Security

16 January, 2005
Posted in: Reading etc., Siblings

Those of you who have been concentrating will know that my sister lives in the US. Her important job involves her flying to Mexico next week, business class whereas mine involves me flying economy to a ludicrously less glamourous location, but this is just a bitter digression.

We were chatting yesterday and she told me that her (American) bridge partner and his (American) girlfriend went out for a drive last week and they stopped to take pictures of a beautiful sunset with the girlfriend’s Christmas present, a snazzy new digital camera. Silhouetted against the sunset, romantically (we have to take their word for this) was an oil refinery.Â As they were going to drive off, they were stopped by the police who asked for their driving licences. They opened the window and handed them over. Then they were asked for the car keys. They handed them over and the police wandered back to their car with these items. The bridge partner was a bit distressed by this as his car has electronic windows and they were open and it is cold in the North of the US in winter, I understand. But he didn’t like to protest. And as his car windows were open he was able to hear the following dialogue:

Policeman to radio: Will we take them in for questioning at this time?

Radio: Cackle, cackle

Policeman to radio: Ok, not at this time.

The policemen returned to the car, gave them back their keys and drivers’ licences and wiped their photographs. Then they said “your details have been passed on to the Department of Homeland Security and you may be called in for questioning in relation to this incident any time over the next 12 months but you are now free to go”.

I’m only glad my sister wasn’t there, she’d probably be deported by now.

And does all this not chime rather depressingly with the extract below from December’s LRB?Â“The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben does not want his fingerprints taken and, unlike like most European critics of the evil empire, he has been willing to forego an academic visit to the United States in order to prevent it happening. What is at stake, he explains, is the Â‘new Â“normalÂ” bio-political relationship between citizens and the stateÂ’. Fingerprinting makes Â‘the most private and incommunicable aspect of subjectivity .. the bodyÂ’’s biological lifeÂ’ part of the system of state control. […] For Agamben, fingerprinting is not just a matter of civil liberties: it is symptomatic of an alarming shift in political geography. We have moved from Athens to Auschwitz: the WestÂ’s political model is now the concentration camp rather than the city state; we are no longer citizens but detainees, distinguishable from the inmates of Guantanamo not by any difference in legal status, but only by the fact that we have not yet had the misfortune to be incarcerated Â– or unexpectedly executed by a missile from an unmanned aircraftÂ [this] political developmentÂ is not, according to Agamben, peculiar to the United States under the Bush presidency. It is part of a wider change in governance in which the rule of law is routinely displaced by the state of exception, or emergency, and people are increasingly subject to extra-judicial state violence.

Comments

on 17 January 2005 at 11:54
(
Comment Modified) Mr Agamben is, depressingly, absolutely right ….
See UK ID cards: The Chief Constable for the Manchester area, who is pro, said in justification of his support for the scheme something along the lines of: ” for instance, just look at this weekend when there is a street festival – I have no idea who is in the city.”
Well, forgive me for wondering why the f**k it’s his business to know where I am at any time at all?

Beth

on 19 January 2005 at 02:08

Cross my heart we aren’t all psycho freaks – just the ones in power at the moment.

on 21 January 2005 at 22:38

Pog, it’s all very depressing.
Beth, I know, especially the bloggers clearly..