Just Like Kat's Guitar

Oh Ruin - Just Like Kat's Guitar from Carolina Petro on Vimeo.


I spent all day yesterday in a meeting sitting next to someone who stank vaguely of  piss. As the day wore on, I started to doubt myself and wondered if it was, in fact, me that stank vaguely of piss. I resorted to trying to take surreptitious sniffs of myself , which was a bit undignified. After a while, he went to the toilet and the aroma went with him, so I was able to reassure myself that it wasn’t me. I still worried that others in the vicinity would think it was me though.

The chap had another quirk; he kept falling asleep. He would wake himself up with a snore, then, 5 minutes later his breathing would become deeper and he would be away again, until another snort would wake him up. Maybe he was pissing himself in his sleep.

Well that was another day to remember in this feast of football yesterday wasn’t it? I know that tournaments like this can be slow burners, but bloody hell, the pilot light hasn’t even been lit yet. I am told that I should be more sophisticated, and appreciate the defensive arts as much as the attacking arts, but the game is about scoring goals. Besides which, watching a master of the defensive arts go toe to toe with a master of the offensive arts (Moore v Pele, anyone) is not quite the same as watching two drab teams play pat a cake with one another.. It’s not a feast, it’s a famine. In fact, it’s not far off being a fucking funeral!


At least Maradona remains mildly entertaining.

Robbie Earle has been sacked by ITV for giving his comp tickets for the Holland v Denmark game away, between 30 and 40 of them. Also, the tickets went to a bunch of girls dressed in orange, who were subsequently removed from the stadium, as they were deemed to be engaging in illicit marketing of a beer. They could have just made them remove the offending articles.

Why the devil does Earle need all those tickets? Do all the pundits from all the nations get that many? That must be thousands of tickets given away for every game. Half the crowd must be made up of friends and family of mediocre broadcasters.



The Pernice Brothers have a new album out, possibly the best one they have done, which is very high praise indeed. Joe Pernice used to write a very interesting and funny blog, but it has gone, however, the news section on the Pernice blog is very good and isn’t simply made up of anodyne press releases. I highly recommend that you read the announcement that the new album is out.

I bump into people around and about and they ask why I don’t blog about work anymore, and I say that I found out the hard way that it is a risky enterprise, but I had a bit of an interesting in week the other week so, for anyone daft enough to be interested in my working life, here it is:


Monday: As usual, arrive early, and mentally prepare myself for the emotional rollercoaster ride that is a Monday morning; listening to the team relate the various joys and woes that they have experienced over the weekend. Discussing the latest injustice perpetrated upon the nation by Simon Cowell. Complaining that it is only Monday. The day passes quietly, paperwork, chat, tea, cake, biscuits, chat, paperwork.


Tuesday: Team meeting. That’s the morning gone. Afternoon spent fielding calls from local police officers and elected representatives who are outraged that one of our service users should be living in their community. The year is 2010. We may not be as enlightened as we like to think we are.


Wednesday: There is a bit of a panic on. Someone has phoned the office. The father of a service user has died and there is pandemonium at the house: a slight complication being that the service user had been arrested for assaulting a neighbour the day before. I don’t know the man, who doesn’t actually get any support from us, but I am tasked to go and see what is happening. The man is on the doorstep as I arrive, various surly looking folk are hanging around nearby. I introduce myself and in we go. The mans father is in the middle of the room, in his wheelchair. Stone dead. I struggle to recall the bit of training that advised how to deal with such situations. I conclude that I must have been off that day.


Thursday: It had been agreed (long before the complaints started coming in) that the man the police don’t approve of would benefit from an SVR20 assessment. I arranged a visit, just to introduce the health colleague who would be doing the assessment. It started well enough, then it all kicked off. Mayhem. He asked me to take him back to prison. As much as I would love to have such power, I had to explain that I couldn’t do that. His carer then explained that she did not care what I could or couldn’t do, (I paraphrase) he had to leave her house, immediately. It had all become rather delicate and strange looking people kept appearing, having a mutter, and then disappearing. My health colleague looked equally amused and bewildered. 


We managed to extricate ourselves from the situation, then hit the phones, trying to find a provider who could meet this chaps very complex needs at very short notice. Amazingly, we found a provider, only slightly out of county, who was prepared to at least visit that day . Went back to the house, with potential provider, only to find it was all peace and harmony and to be told that there was no way on this earth that I was going to force this man to leave his home against his will


Unfortunately for them, a court of law has told him that he must reside at a place where this department sees fit, for his own safety and the safety of others, but, finding a provider prepared to take him on has been difficult. So, having found a provider who is prepared to work with him, and who I know has the skills to work with him, I insist that we start the process. The panic is over, but I leave with the feeling that I am off the Christmas card list. 


Friday: It is generally acknowledged within the office that I have endured a bit of a week, but, rather than sympathy, I am subject to a fair bit of gallows humour. When I arrive in the office there is a resuscitation dummy laid out on the desk, with pennies in its eyes, and that is about as sensitive as the humour gets.  It may seem callous, but we have to be so sensitive to the needs of others that it is good to allow ourselves a bit of irreverence in the relative safety of our own office. It can be catharctic.