Daily Archives: 25 October, 2011

Rufus

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I am a little bit worried, to be honest.

He is old now. He has lots of bumps and lumps. Unfortunately, Dino will keep licking them until they bleed – and so he is full of sticking plaster and bandages.

The problem with sticking plaster and bandages is that the lumps don’t get time to dry out and heal properly.

One, in particular, is causing me some worry. It’s just behind his ear. Last summer, Dino licked it so badly that we had to take Rufus to a vet who cut it out. The lump was checked and was not malignant.

But, within 6 months, it was back. And Dino licked again. However, then it kind of ‘burst’. The smell of the excreted puss was gaggingly awful. But, once cleaned up, it (and Rufus) seemed much better.

Except it came back again.

And Dino licked again.

And so Rufus has a bandage round his neck again.

And for the last few days, the smell is back. And I’ve tried to clean it up, but it keeps excreting ‘stuff’ and so, smelling a lot. So I have to have another go at it tonight.

Unfortunately, he also is suffering from diarrhoea …….again. He was on Dia Tabs for 4 days and now on some oral medicine but it only seems to be working a bit.

And, last night, I thought that, maybe, I should take him back to the vet later this week.

And then I thought that perhaps the vet would say that there was really nothing they could do. And then I thought that it is difficult to say whether his quality of life now is really all it’s cracked up to be. And then I worried that, if I took him to the vets and the vet said that there was nothing he could do, the vet would add that he should be put down now.

And that made me feel really bad.

And, so, I have decided that on Thursday or Friday, I will take him to the vets and, at the very least, ask him for penicillin which may cure the weeping, smelly lump and for certain WILL cure, if only for a limited time, the diarrhoea problem.

And, then, maybe we can keep him for a bit longer.

Do the work and wait ……… wait ……… for the money

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I read this, from the Independant (which I got from Twitter or Facebook or something – I’m sorry, I forget now).

Interns, from what I can understand can expect no payment for any work they do. It is supposed to be treated as ‘work experience’. The problem here is that it rarely leads to a full-time job. Instead, Interns go from one ‘unpaid job’ to another.

It will surely become a problem given the current crisis. With no hope of securing a full-time job – why bother?

Which then leads to unhappiness. Which, in turn leads to restlessness. And then, when there are enough unhappy, restless young people, something is bound to happen, isn’t it?

However, the really damning bit (for me) comes towards the end of the piece, namely:

But it seems that even people hired by the magazine cannot count on being paid. The Independent spoke to one person who was recruited this summer by Flash Art magazine without pay on a two-month trial basis. After a successful trial he continued working but was told there was no money to pay him a month later.

“Of course it’s immoral,” he said. “If they haven’t got the money to pay the staff they need, then they shouldn’t be in operation. But it’s hardly the only company doing this sort of thing.”

The Flash Art controversy followed the magazine’s recent call for new interns for eight to 10-month periods – even though using someone as an intern for more than six months is illegal in Italy.

I have known of other people who haven’t been paid – either for a very long time or at all. Worse still, if you’re on some sort of term contract. I cross my fingers that I didn’t have too much problem getting my money when I was teaching (although there was one, how should I say, ‘near miss’).

Part of the reason it’s like this is the Italian way of thinking. Mummy and Daddy can always take care of you, it seems. And, because Italians have the highest savings rate in Europe (maybe the world?), it is (I guess) assumed you have plenty of savings to tide you over.

I’m sure I would have a much stronger opinion about it if it had ever happened to me but it is wrong, isn’t it? I mean, in a civilised country within the European Union, how can this possibly be right?

It’s a sign of a wider problem. That of not really giving a shit about anyone else [that’s not either family or important to you].

And things that I do, as a Brit, sometimes get misconstrued by Italians. I remember somebody who got a ‘job’ through someone else. They thought it would be a really nice idea to take their new boss to lunch – if the guy were in the area. But the friend who had done the recommendation became something akin to a Tasmanian Devil and the vitriol and hatred that spat from a (normally) very nice, pleasant, Italian woman was more than a little shocking. For her it was this person ‘going behind her back’.

She now lives in the UK. I wonder how she gets on over there – where, to be honest, this kind of situation is not something to be bothered about.

We don’t all have some ulterior motive other than ‘to be nice and respectful’. Here that does not always seem to be the case. Not giving a shit about people seems to be the norm – and it does annoy me a bit.