Tag Archives: Bad People

Well, erm, no actually

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Just received an email from someone called Bye Bye (saygoodbye0088@ymail.com) which said:

Andy
Please take your blog off the internet ASAP.
Kindest

That was it. No signature – nothing else.

Well, erm, no actually.

I mean why?

Who are you that you should tell me to take it off?

If you have some beef with it, then please email me. There must be a solution. Indeed, if you’re Serge Bodulovic, then there was a solution a long time ago. I didn’t like that you lied to me and I didn’t like that you did a runner owing me money when I had been nothing but kind, decent and considerate to you. The solution was to get your rich Daddy to pay up. Then this never would have been a problem. I’m still open to a recompense for the damage you caused and the extra work we had to do to clean your filthy mess when you disappeared that night.

If it is you, then why don’t you grow up and do the right thing?

Teachers murder girl!

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As one parent quite rightly said on Twitter, apparently:

‘she should have been safe at school, she was just sat on a bench talking with friends….it could have been my daughter.’

After all, on school days, the parents have no responsibility for their children.

And, in addition, there is no such thing any more as ‘an accident’ but, rather, there is always some person to blame.

I suppose that if it had been a Saturday or a Sunday the headline could have read something like:

Park keepers guilty of manslaughter

or

Council killing children!

The actual headline of this article didn’t really say that teachers had murdered the girl but only implied it.

Girl, 13, crushed to death by a branch as she sat on a park bench after teachers went out on strike

But, then, this is the Daily Hate Mail so, I suppose, what can you expect!

 

If you can’t text then don’t text.

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I don’t like people who insist on talking through a film, even if they are my friends outside the film.

I hate it when people have their mobile phone on in a film.

I hate it just as much when people use their phone at all in the cinema, even if it is in ‘silent’ mode – the illumination of the phone is too bright and distracts me. After all, I’ve paid good money to be there and I want it to be quiet AND dark.

So I would, definitely, frequent this cinema, if I lived anywhere near it.

Good for them.

Can’t see it happening here, though.

Success – or how the mighty have fallen?

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This post was written whilst my blog was ‘off-line’. Probably around the 10th May.

______________________________________________

As you may have noticed, if you are a regular reader and not away in some God-forsaken hole in the middle of nowhere, my blog has been ‘offline’. This is supposed to be because my ISP are migrating to new servers. A message saying so would be nice. As I write this I don’t know if this post will be on a new server, a new ISP, if all the blog posts will be back, if I will have to recreate everything, etc., etc. Later, I find some details on another website. It says all accounts, blogs, everything will be deleted and please do a backup. The backup I find here is from January. I hope I find one from the last couple of weeks – otherwise months will be missing!

I’m actually quite grateful for this delay in being able to post this entry. What I would have posted yesterday (as I write this) is very, very different to what I am posting now. And, sometimes, having time to think things through is much better. And so, on with the post.

One wonders why people continue to base their ideas of ‘success’ on the material wealth and assets of others.

Worse still, success is measured on the ‘appearance’ of these assets or wealth. When, sometime after they are hailed as successful, it all comes crashing down by the slip of an infidelity or by manipulation of figures or the collapse of their business or, even, bad luck, these same people seem to take some joy in that collapse.

It’s a shame really. For those people.

But what is success? How do we measure it? Is it a large house in the country? A nice car, perhaps? A business that seems to be making a lot of money? The number of employees?

Well, I guess that success is measured in different ways by different people.

My maternal Grandfather, in hindsight, seems the only one of my family who had any real sense. To him, happiness and success were to be measured by one’s level of contentment. He advised me the same. I am grateful for that advice.

I ran a company for 20 years or more. Well, two, actually. People, in hindsight, seemed to think I was successful. To be frank, they are quite stupid. That wasn’t success. Yes, I had a nice house, a big car, etc. The outward appearance was one of success. The reality was that it was a success – but not at the time. It was a success because of what it led to.

In retrospect, I should have taken more money from the business. I should have been greedier. But, that’s not a very bright thing to say, really, for if I had done that, I would, in fact, not be me but would have been a different person.

I don’t envy those people that have a lot of money. If it makes them happy then I’m happy for them. If you want to go sailing round the world with your lesbian lover, it’s OK. I wish you the very best. I wouldn’t do it but it’s your choice.

If it gives you some pleasure that, by what I would consider your very warped and shallow thinking, I once was ‘something’ and now I am ‘nothing’, then nothing I can say will change your mind and nor is what you think very important – except to you, of course.

Although I have to say, that I have reached that level of overall contentment that Bampa told me was the secret of life.

And he was right. So, so right. I hope you all reach (or have reached) the same level.

Today, I have been mostly listening to spam.

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See this?

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It’s a part of one of the spam comments I get in the inbox for this blog every day.

That’s what I was listening to this morning.

It was like spam. All the words were English and all were understandable as individuals but, together, it was like listening to spam.

“I believe in communication”, he says. He does too! He talked.

“I think I’m better than everyone”, he could have said. He was, after all, a salesmen. These people, for me, rate almost at the bottom of any pile or any list.

It reminds me of someone else. It’s not a good memory.

I sit looking at this man and watching his mouth move and listening to the words he is saying – individually – but not hearing them for there is no point to them. They’re all business terms. Strung together in the latest business fashion. The ‘why say anything in a straightforward manner when it can be said in a thousand nonsensical words’. Oh, how I HATE it.

He mentioned the fact that he liked to communicate – A LOT. He didn’t have to. I could tell. I was mostly silent. ‘Communicate with that!’, I thought, triumphantly. After a while he realised that it was not me he should be talking to. Good.

We started at the start. He had his luggage stolen in Paris. I wanted to laugh. Is that so wrong of me? Well, yes, it is but I really didn’t care. I couldn’t place his American accent.

He tells me about all the wonderful things he is doing and all the wonderful companies he is/has been involved with. It’s just like when people reel off the number of famous people they have met or the people they have slept with. It’s not really boasting. It’s just ignorant. The problem is that I am, in an instant, seriously unimpressed.

Later he even ‘drops in’ how many hours he has flown because, in his long life, what he hasn’t done isn’t worth the effort. Probably. Do I show the face of someone who doesn’t care? He may be all for communication but he’s crap at reading people. I don’t care.

But I digress. Back to the beginning. After the Paris bit. After the ‘I like my coffee black because that’s the colour of me inside’ (WTF????). After the ‘I like to communicate’ for the first time. He didn’t rate the Germans, apparently. I nearly said ‘Then you haven’t dealt with the Swedes’, but I didn’t. After all, he likes communication so much that he doesn’t allow the other person to communicate and so I didn’t get the chance.

I ask, ‘Whereabouts in the US do you come from because I can’t place your accent?’

‘I’m from Sweden’, he replies.

I thank God that I hadn’t been able to communicate with him prior to this. And then, again, I keep thinking that I wish I had! You never know, it might have got him communicating a little less.

Probably not, though.

To be honest he’s checking us out. The company he is representing is looking for companies for ‘acquisition’. ‘Acquisition’ – it’s a nice word. Better than ‘Buy so we can take your knowledge/expertise’, I suppose. But that’s what they’re after. Whichever way you look at it, I am NOT the right person for this meeting.

At the first opportunity I get out.

After lunch and a cigarette, I catch him about to leave. I shake his hand. ‘Nice to meet you’, I lie. ‘I hope the rest of your trip is less eventful’, I add. It’s OK. He’s not listening to me anyway. He had complained that the French Police hadn’t wanted to know; hadn’t listened to him.

Or, just maybe, he wasn’t listening to them? For me, the greatest and most important thing in the art of communication is to be able to listen. I guess in his long, varied and full life, he’s missed that bit?

Do you think I may, possibly, be a bit peeved?

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“I’m sorry, I forgot”.

Well, at least it was honest.

“I’m in Venice, at the dentist, so I can’t come”. Well, obviously, since Venice is several hours away.

“I’ll pay double next time”. He treats it as it should be. I like him. Anyway, unlike Monday night, I had no other plans and no one had invited me anywhere where I had said I couldn’t.

This morning was a slightly different thing, as I had suspected it would be.

“M! And Monday?”

I don’t even speak English correctly anymore. Like last night. It wasn’t ‘film card’ but ‘film star’ and yet I understood what ‘film card’ meant and failed to recognise that, actually, it should have been ‘film star’. I have developed this Italian-non-English way of speaking, mimicking the Italians. It is ever-so-slightly annoying.

He was shocked, in any case, to see me. You could see it in his face. The eyebrows arched and a look that was as if he had seen some alien monster was about to eat him.

The excuse:

“Ah yes, I didn’t have my phone, I left it in x.” I can’t even remember what he said as it wasn’t really important.

“And the reason you didn’t reply to my texts – even the next day? Just to say sorry or something. Anything, really.” I didn’t say this. I just thought it. I’ve already kind of lost interest in anything he might have to say since it’s all bullshit.

“I’ve bought some books yesterday and I’ve started reading them. I’m going to take my exam at the end of May. After I’ve done some studying …….”

“Yeah, call me”, I cut him off with this.

I’m already screaming in my head.

“BULLSHIT!”

and

“FUCK YOU!”

I don’t say that he’s lost that time. I’ll just say that he only has an hour and a half left. Fucking bastard.

It made me more angry that he couldn’t be honest and say he forgot. That would have been better although a reply to my texts (that I had sent on Monday night) on Tuesday morning would have been better still.

Obviously it’s too much to ask.

But it seems stupid to me since we’re bound to see each other at some point and then, instead of already having covered it, you have to come out with bullshit and be quite horrified to see me. What did he think? He wouldn’t see me? Some people seem quite stupid sometimes. Some people even seem quite stupid most of the time.

Bloody people.

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It has to stop. No, really it does!

I don’t really get angry. I just feel disappointed. I should feel angry but, you know, there’s just too much effort in being angry. And, anyway, it doesn’t solve anything. However, I could be, shall we say, firmer. You could say ‘more of a bastard about it’. And that would be true ….. to some extent.

But, overall, I’m just disappointed – both with the people concerned and with the resulting situation for me.

I don’t know why I do it really. The ‘planning’ bit. Even as I’m doing it I think, ‘don’t do this ‘cos it won’t all work out like this at all’. Still, I do it.

In this case, I’m talking about my students – but, to be honest, it applies to most things. One of them, who has to complete this test before the end of this year or else he loses his degree that he worked so hard for. But he doesn’t work hard enough (in his own time). There are excuses, of course. They are reasonable excuses – he works full time, also runs a business (a nursery) with his wife, has a baby daughter and fights with his wife most evenings. Oh yes, and he’s just bought a new flat which needs work to be done. Not really a recipe for success when the English thing is difficult for him.

So, as he hasn’t worked hard enough, he wants to stop the lessons. This is fine by me. His Monday, hour-and-a-half lessons at 9 p.m. were a real killer for me. It meant not getting to sleep much before midnight, making me have a lack of sleep that is showing in my face as I rapidly approach old age. He says he wants to self-study. He won’t pass his exam ….. even if he does actually take it. But he has no intention of using his degree; it’s too difficult for him to get work in his field without working for a while as an intern (meaning no money – which with all his other commitments is impossible) and he’s unlikely to get an internship at his age (being a few years older than is normal). Anyway, his long-term plans means that he doesn’t really need a degree. He wants to open a tobacconist (he works for the one below my house). You don’t need to be an architect to do that.

And so, he cancelled a lesson a few weeks ago and said he didn’t want to do any more. But he had pre-paid. I said he had two lessons left. And so, he booked for last night and next Monday.

I sit in my kitchen. Everything is ready. Well, I say ‘ready’. I have no real lesson plan. I’m not sure what he wants from the last two lessons. I will play it by ear.

F is packing for Spain and trying to do the music (see post below). He knows the lesson is until 10.30 so he isn’t rushing. He ‘does beauty farm’, as he says. After he comes (which is always after the lesson), we will eat the remains of the Cottage Pie. It is too late, really, but the other option is to throw it away.

I had, previously, rushed round to his place to show him a ‘solution’ that didn’t really work and rushed back to be sitting in my kitchen, with a cup of tea, by nine.

It reaches two minutes past nine. I have a ‘sense’. It’s not a good sense. I decide to text my student. I attach his message which gave the dates and ask ‘Are you coming or have you forgotten?’. I already know he has forgotten or, if not forgotten, chosen not to come.

I wait for no answer and am rewarded.

Ten minutes later, I text again, this time putting a delivery receipt on the text. This one just asks ‘Are you there?’. He’s not. Or he’s ignoring me. Or his phone has been stolen. Or he’s arguing with his wife (again). Or he’s in hospital or dead or something. But his phone’s still working and there is a receipt to say the message was delivered.

I am a little pissed. At least have the decency to let me know you’re not coming? I had turned down a drink with A (who is away the rest of this week) because of my errant student.

I decide that I will charge him this anyway. Stuff him. Unless he has a really good excuse like he’s in hospital. Or his daughter is, or something. Then I couldn’t do it. There’ll be some excuse, for certain. Also I had told someone else they couldn’t have a lesson at that time. Goddamn them. Bloody people.

But this keeps happening. People cancel. At the last minute. Now I have to be upfront about this. I have to set rules. It will make me seem like I am a money-grabbing bastard. But so be it.

As I found when running a business before, rules only need to be brought in when people start taking the piss. And so it goes.

It’s bloody people that are the problem!

I don’t like you, your program or anything you’ve had to say.

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I’m trying to imagine it ……. but I can’t.

Let me give you a scenario. There is a discussion program. Say, a part of Channel 4 news, or Panorama, or Question Time. Many bad things are said about David Cameron (let’s say about his ‘special’ relationship with Rupert Murdoch). There is a Conservative MP on the panel.

Then towards the end of the program, David phones into the program. They put him through, live, on air.

He calls the program vile and despicable. He says that the program is full of lies disguised as the truth. He says of the ladies on the panel that they are only so-called ladies. David gets quite angry.

The presenter say something along the lines of ‘You may be my Prime Minister but enough of the offending by you. You are a boor – rude, uncivilised, etc”. David then demands that the Conservative MP leaves the ‘brothel program’. The MP, quite rightly, doesn’t leave.

Can you imagine? The Prime Minister, bringing himself so low as to call a program whilst it is being transmitted? Being oafish and more like a petulant child, in front of his mother because his brother or sister has just accused them of doing something nasty?

No, of course you can’t. It would mean, after all, the end of any respect for him. I mean, to phone in in the first place? But then to argue with the presenter and basically do some name-calling – unbelievable, right?

Only, as we are in Italy, that is, more or less what happened, except, of course, replace Cameron with Berlusconi. It really would be hilarious if he wasn’t the leader of Italy. The shame of it all. And I would like to apologise if I got the gist of this wrong – but I don’t think I did. Please feel free to comment with any corrections to my understanding.

Update May 2015 – The video I had here is no longer available.

Euronics – yes! Darty – never, never, never again!

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I never did like Darty. Or Marcucci or whatever they were called before.

We bought our television from them when we first came here. It was the first ‘electrical’ shop we saw. They were, to be honest, quite unhelpful. As were their fitters. When part of the ‘system’ broke down I went back to the shop to try and find a fix. The staff were unhelpful, to say the least.

Then Darty took them over. I went back there, hoping that a change of ownership would improve the staff. It didn’t. I suppose it would have been like Fortnum and Masons taking over Woolworths – nothing could have been done about the uselessness of the staff. And so, nearly always, I go to Euronics and, over the last few years they have had quite a bit of business from me.

Not only are the staff at Darty unhelpful but they are also very rude …….. to me. I am mindful that it might just be me, though. Several people have mentioned going to Darty. I always try to avoid it. F suggested we look for irons at a Darty store at San Babila (as we went that way anyway). It wasn’t difficult. I wanted a fairly cheap iron and I wanted a Phillips since the last one had lasted so long.

I’m not really what you would call a ‘shopper’. I go in, see something I want and buy it. Unless I need a specific thing and am unsure, I don’t ask. I didn’t even know that this Darty store existed in San Babila! It’s not a real surprise for they have taken one of the entrances to the Metro and you enter into the shop that way.

Ah well, this is San Babila. Perhaps this will be different?

We go in. We find the area for irons. We see the Phillips brands on display. There isn’t much of a sale going on but there is one which has about 10 Euro off. I want that one. We check the boxes below and find the right model. OK, good. I find some new arial cable as well. We go to pay.

I pay but I think to myself that it is slightly more than I thought it would be. I check the receipt. The price is the original price and not the sale price. I call to the lady. She continues to walk away and ignore me. A man near her looks up. He looks like the store manager. He deigns to come over to help me. I explain that the price of the iron is wrong as it is shown at a reduced price on the shelf.

We go over together (including F, of course). As we start down the aisle, he asks a girl who works there about it. She also continues walking away from him, shouting over her shoulder that it was only the green one that was reduced. It was reduced because there is no box. I shrug and say OK, I’ll take the green one.

The girl switches direction and goes to get the green one from the display. As we walk to the cash desk, F gets involved.

I don’t understand all he has to say. There’s something about the ‘customer is right’ and that something is ‘not good education’ (our equivalent would be ‘not good manners’). This comes from both F and the ‘manager’ – to each other. There is some talk about giving us our money back. The argument is fairly short (a couple of minutes) and quite heated. The manager goes to a till and gives me money.

F is incensed. He explains all to me. Apparently he was not happy about me having the iron without the box and the instructions. He didn’t feel that it was right that is came without a box. The staff (including the manager) couldn’t have cared less what he thought. So he got me my money back.

He says he is pleased that he’s found out that they are not good. He will never shop there again. I explained that I knew this and never used them. He asked me why I hadn’t said anything and I explained that I thought it could just be me, being a foreigner and all. I was actually quite pleased that, with not a hint from me, he had ‘found out’ that they are crap.

And so we go to Euronics. This is out of our way. We ask someone about the cable as we cannot see it on the racks. The guy says that they have run out of the cable we want but there is a shop down the road that will, probably, have some. We find the iron section. I pay a few Euro more than the full price at Darty for the same iron. But I am happy with that as I feel Euronics, where the staff are always so helpful and the service is very good, deserve to have the money that Darty have lost.

I am now doubly sure that I won’t use Darty again, in future. F certainly won’t. All for the casual, unhelpful rude and indifferent attitude of the staff. So, don’t go to Darty, people. Go to Euronics instead :-)

In spite of everything, I hope he cheers up a bit.

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The alarm goes off at 4, as I had set it. I reset it for 10 past. But, as I have actually made the appointment, I get up within 5 minutes and get ready and go.

I arrive. He doesn’t recognise me from yesterday. I am, after all, wearing exactly the same coat, scarf and hat as yesterday. He is, to say the least, quite a miserable barsteward.

I give him my surname. He finds the appointment. I give him my phone number. He mistake a nine for an eight. I know my Italian pronunciation is not good but for goodness sake, otto and nove could not really be confused. I decide he is quite stupid really.

He tells me that if he doesn’t phone me that I am to come back before 7 (when they close).

I walk away, happy that I am, at least, doing the something that I should have done a month or more ago.

About 6 he phones me. I walk back to the place.

He is there. Some car is jacked up, without wheels. He gets inside. A man standing with him (who I realise is the car owner) wants something from inside the car. Between them they retrieve it. They speak some more and the man goes away. He starts swearing in Italian. The man has, obviously, pissed him off. I smile at him as if I understand what was going on. ‘Stupid customers’, I thought. He doesn’t smile back. I guess it’s not a good day for him.

I pay for my tyres and he gives me my keys. I have already seen my car and noted that, where they had parked it, there is a car blocking my way out. I ask him if he knows the car that is blocking it. Begrudgingly, he comes out and looks. Well, now, that’s a surprise, it is one of the cars in for a tyre change. He realises and retrieves the key to move it. We walk to the other side of the street and he goes to move the car but before he gets in, I notice some ‘packages’ on my back seat. I question him about why the tyres are not being stored in their storehouse – as we had talked about yesterday. He is not happy. He mumbles something and moves the car that is blocking my way out and then returns to the ‘shop’.

I follow. I don’t know what the hell is going on but I ain’t moving nowhere. He comes out and crosses the road. He gets out the tyres and puts them in the warehouse. This is not done with any joy. In fact, he is using the same swear words that he used with the last customer. At times like this I do wish my Italian were better – just so I could say something really sarcastic to him. This new law must have given them so much business and yet he is not happy about it! I imagine nothing makes him happy, really.

I go into the office with him. He takes down all my details. I ask if I need a receipt or something to prove that I have my tyres in their storehouse. Apparently not. He has all my details and that’s enough. I say I will come back in March. He suggests April is OK too. I set the date in my calendar on my phone. I set it for March because, if I am like I usually am, it will take me a few weeks to build up my courage to go back and go through all this shit again.

On the bright side, I have tyres and don’t need to worry about snow. Yay!

I hope that he cheers up a bit too.

I go to pick up F to go and get the lasagne. We were so impressed with the one for Christmas we have bought the same for New Year. It’s for 6 people so will last three days and it was truly wonderful. So creamy.

We talk about the fact that I have met P (a neighbour on my floor that knew F at the time when he was working in the shop). She has two dogs. She is staying home on New Year’s Eve for much the same reason as we are. The dogs don’t like fireworks and people go a bit crazy, here, with them. We agree that we shall invite her round for dinner. We have champagne, good wine, the lasagne, antipasto stuff and then the zampone and lentils. I will also do mashed potato (because F likes that). What more could you ask for?