Confabulations

I read a story in the Daily Mail the other day about a bridegroom and best man who were stabbed by an angry neighbour because they were playing music too loud at the wedding reception party. Now, this seems like a little bit of an overreaction. After all, wedding receptions tend to be one-offs and anyone who gets angry enough to stab someone over it is probably not right in the head. But I do have some sympathy for those suffering noisy neighbours – having grown up in a peaceful, detached house, my adult life spent living in various flats certainly came as something of a surprise.

There are dozens of possible noise complaints. The upstairs neighbour who has wooden floors and insists on walking around in high heels at all hours of the day and night. The teenager in the next flat along who turns on his gangster rap as soon as he gets home from school, and turns it up loud with his bedroom window open. The person who turns their washing machine on at 3 in the morning. Even having a flatmate with different sleeping patterns can be a nightmare if you have thin walls.

What’s the solution to all this? Well, good acoustic insulation would certainly help but in a lot of cases it can’t be done. It’s hard to convince your landlord you have a noisy flat without measurements to prove it and anyway, some noise like impact noise from shoes isn’t really stopped by normal insulation.

White noise generators are said to help because they drown out the noise of televisions etc, but do you really want to listen to one noise to cancel out another? My solution is to just move. Find an older property with thick walls and live there instead!

The BBC have released a handy stress test so you can find out just how stressed you really are. In these times of economic doom and gloom, especially moving into the so-called “festive” season, many people are feeling the pinch, being pressured at work and generally getting depressed. Interestingly, the BBC’s scale of stress goes from ‘normal’ to ’severely stressed’. There’s no ‘under-stressed’ category for those people who are completely unaffected even by the news they’ve lost their jobs, homes and owe some very nasty men a large amount of money. Because those people exist, even if they’re often classed as ’sociopaths’ and confined to hospital chairs whilst being watched over by mental health professionals.

So what do you do if you find you are stressed? It probably comes as no surprise – you don’t need a test to tell you that you worry about money, could do with working less hours and wince every time you remember someone else you have to buy an Xmas present for. The BBC have a stress guide to help you cope, but if it’s anything like their ’surviving winter’ guide we’re sure it will offer such classics as ‘try to stay calm’, ‘think positive’ and ‘take a deep breath’.

Why is it that when the first snowflakes fall, the UK goes into a sort of snow-craziness of excitement mixed with terror and fearmongering. It’s snowing! Oh no, whatever will we do?! Let’s go out and play, but not before checking for 8-car pile ups on most major roads.

Even the BBC have gone a bit overboard this year – their how to survive winter guide includes such gems as ‘put the heating on’ ‘wear a jumper’ and ‘remember to eat’. Thanks for that.

The thing is, these elderly people who are so at risk during the winter months have survived far more winters than the rest of us. Surely they’re better equipped to know what winter is like – after all, when they were young we used to get a few feet of snow, not just a few centimetres. It’s the youngsters we should be worried about. Those hoodies only provide so much warmth and one cigarette hardly makes a fire, unless they’re into arson.

We Brits love to complain about the weather so it doesn’t matter if it’s a heatwave or a frost – even rain makes the news and lets be honest, it rains most days. Snow is much rarer and the news cover is inversely greater. In fact, people are probably so worried about the dangers of snow that they go out and drive too carefully, causing an accident that could otherwise be avoided. I’m not saying the BBC are completely responsible but they could certainly use a more positive editorial slant. “Snow to cause chaos across country” for example could be rewritten as “Snow to provide fun for millions”.

Just a thought.

OK. So the sun roof fell off my car the other day. On the motorway. This looks like an expensive, insurance-type job. The car’s only worth about 40p, yet a series of mishaps has seen us forking out upwards of 400 notes  a year to insure it. Fixing it again will only add to that burden.

But buying a new car’s going to cost money. And in this desperate economic times who wants to take the chance? All I know is that if I happen to bob somewhere to buy a car (even tax free car) then the staff are going to all over me like lice, because if there’s one set of people faring worse in the credit crunch than internet marketers, it’s car salesmen.

Yin and yang!

Having just moaned on about 3’s data charges, they’ve sent me an email (literally within minutes, and clearly by accident) announcing their new ‘INQ’ phone. It’s your basic mobile phone on a £15 a month contract but with unlimited internet access and is especially geared up for social media. It boasts a “carousel” interfa

ce (which you can’t fucking move for these days since Amazon introduced them) that lets you flip between facebook status updates, Windows messenger and so on.

Could be interesting! And at least it’s one way to get some attention away from the iPhone or the Android.

One question though: what in the name of Merry Hell is ‘INQ’ supposed to stand for/mean.

Ever wonder about how you can be so sure that your medicines or medical equipment used by doctors and surgeons are safe to use? The answer lies in an all-pervasive set of rules and guidelines drawn up by the EU and the Federal Drugs Agency in the USA. These strictures lay out comprehensive rules to govern both the manucture and testing of medical products and involve processes and standards with which any product that comes to market must comply.

Naturally, there are those in the industry who would complain about such matters as being overly-restrictive. it is true that complying with regulations is one of the reasons that medical equipment cost more than, say, South Africa.

Of course, the legislation never stands still. In response to any health crisis or scientific advance, a new swathe of regulations descends upon the industry. This makes running a pharmaceutical company a real headache. You can’t simply stay still while things change around you. Not only will the competition quickly outgun you, but you’ll end up breaking some law or other and be forced out of business.

It’s no surprise that this is one field where consultancy still has enormous currency. In fields where knowledge is general and slowly changing, people are taking expertise in-house. Where the legal requirements are so stringent, people still look to agencies and consulting firms to hold their hands through any changes they need to make. Of course, these aren’t cheap services either. All of which adds to the cost of medical equipment even more!

It’s a wonder we can afford paracetamol, but next time you’re knocking them back after a headache, remember the pharmaceutical consultants who make it all possible!

So Mitch Mitchell has joined the ranks of the dearly departed – finally kicking the bucket in a hotel room on tour, as Rock etiquette demands.

When I was a kid of 15/16, The Jimi Hendrix Experience were one of the bands that got passed down from the slightly older kids via third generation copied tapes. I’ve still got a tape of Hendrix playing Hear My Train a-Comin’ on 12 string acoustic (his only recorded performance on acoustic) and it brings back all kind of memories. The lad that passed it on had the single finest set of burners seen in Yorkshire – great big, well-defined pointy ones that ended about half an inch from the corners of his lips.

But that’s the thing with classic rock – it engenders hair.