FISH OUT OF WATER

If you were asked to imagine the audience at a Sandi Toksvig gig in a provincial theatre, you might be thinking in terms of a comfy sort of crowd: couples passing from their middle years towards a pleasant twilight of pottering in the garden, of doing the crossword and of doing their bit on the parish council, in the charity shop or at the jumble sale. Fans of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue and Just a Minute, they take their seats, looking forward to an evening of cosily familiar chuckles. You might spot the odd younger person here and there. Perhaps a dutiful son or daughter accompanying a parent on an evening out. Like young Luke Roberts, chaperoning his mum at Toksvig's gig in Dunstable last night:

But I wonder what Luke really made of the restrained whimsy, the gentle guffaws and the polite decency of his fellow audience members. Wasn't he bored? Didn't it all seem a bit tame and dull? I only ask because the persona presented by Luke's Twitter presence suggests a character whose taste in jokes and whose approach to discourse is a bit at odds with the vibe of an evening with Sandi Toksvig:

WEST HAM: GREAT WIN, UGLY TAUNTS

I'm not about to wade into the complexities of the debate over the use of the word Yid at White Hart Lane.  I have strong views on the subject, but limited time in which to express them right now. Another time, perhaps. In the meantime, I merely present some of what passes for banter in the minds of some West Ham fans.

Almost exactly a year ago, I felt genuine revulsion when a fellow QPR supporter used Twitter to tell the world that the song he'd most enjoyed singing last season was one containing a reference to gas chambers and directed at the Spurs crowd. I was at the match at which he claimed to have delivered this chant and I am pleased to say that I didn't hear it - and didn't hear anything else similar. The words of that one fellow Rangers supporter aside, my Twitter timeline (I follow several hundred QPR fans) has also remained mercifully clear of tweets with an anti-Semitic tone on the occasions my team has played Tottenham over the last couple of years. So it is to be hoped that he was singing alone. Among the West Ham fan base, though, many more people seem to believe this sort of stuff is not beyond the pale. Yesterday's impressive Hammers win has not brought out the best in some followers of the East London club:

MODAL SLYNESS AND YOUR HEALTH

Behold the principal English modal verbs - can/could, will/would, shall/should, must, ought to. They play a significant part in the verbal system of the English language, expressing such concepts as possibility, necessity, permission, obligation, ability and willingness. But when we speak, they are usually very unobtrusive. Only in certain rather marked contexts is the meaning carried by a modal verb strongly emphasised by the main stress in a sentence falling on that verb. In the musings which follow, main stress in sample utterances will be marked by words being underlined.

Consider this unremarkable utterance: "I can be there on Friday." Ordinarily, the word most heavily stressed by the speaker would surely tend to be "Friday", which is the single most important unit of meaning in this sentence. In contrast, the following utterance is a lot less common: "I can be there on Friday."

So let's try to imagine a context in which we might hear this second variant (with the modal verb "can" stressed most heavily). A plausible context would be an exchange like this telephone conversation:

A: "When can you come to the office?"

B: "I should be able to make it on Friday."

A: "Sorry. The line is bad. I didn't catch that. Did you say you can't make it on Friday?"

B: "No, Friday is fine. Friday works for me."

A: "Sorry. This line's terrible. What did you say?"

B: "I can be there on Friday."

In the final utterance, then, the usually unstressed "can" becomes the most heavily stressed word because B's ability to visit on Friday is the matter on which the conversation becomes completely focussed as both participants seek to clear up a misunderstanding.

It took a while to set up this scenario as a plausible context for a modal verb being the most emphatically stressed word in an utterance. I think this adds adequate support for the claim that stress on modals is a highly marked phenomenon in English speech.

Why bring all of this up? Well, it's all to do with a series of adverts that has been running on TV for the last couple of years and which have been bugging me like hell. The specific message varies from ad to ad, but the same jaunty tune and cartoonish rainbow colour palette is used throughout. Listen for the company catchphrase, which is the final utterance in this sample clip:

When picking a slogan, then, Simplyhealth, a UK private health insurance provider, opted for a phrase notable for the kind of marked stress on a modal verb which was discussed above. The phrase is unusual in one other way - it contains a highly marked reworking of the the far more common expression "can't be bothered". 

If someone were to utter the phrase "we can be bothered" (we being the company on whose behalf that person was speaking), I can think of only two contexts in which such a marked utterance could occurs:

1. The company has been accused of not being bothered (to fulfil some important obligation or meet some important standard)
2. The company is seeking to distinguish itself from other parties which can't be bothered (to fulfil those obligations or meet those standards)

I think we can dismiss the first of these suggested explanations for this company's choice of slogan. Sure, the rebuttal of accusations of poor standards or poor service is something that a lot of companies may have to get into at some stage. But it's not very likely to be the core message of a breezy advertising campaign.

So Simplyhealth are using this slogan to achieve differentiation versus some other party or parties who can't be bothered. But who can they mean? Well, a look at the Simplyhealth website is not terribly enlightening. The about the company blurb begins with this: In a world where so many people can't be bothered, we're proud to be the healthcare company that can. No specifics, though. Non-botheredness is not a charge levelled at any specific people or organisations.

Two things are striking here. Firstly, the imagined world in which Simplyhealth operates offers an extraordinarily bleak vision -  a world in which brightness, optimism and effort are rare and in which "so many" interactions with our fellow human beings are characterised by apathy and sloth. Secondly, I can't help detecting a nauseatingly smug attitude when a company tries to make out that its key selling point is being one of the rare "bothered" organisations in an otherwise dystopian hell resembling the setting of Mike Judge's Idiocracy.

But I'm being disingenuous. Because I am actually reluctant to believe that the Simplyhealth adverts are really inviting us to believe in world in which not being bothered is the norm in all areas of life. I just don't see the point of that. Instead, and operating on the observation that playing on viewers' fears is a common device when advertising both insurance products and healthcare products, I am minded to infer that Simplyhealth have a much more modest aim in mind. I think they just want you to fear the consequences of having your physical well-being in the hands of those awful unnamed parties who can't be bothered [to look after you properly]. This, then, leaves me rather fixated on the question of the identity of these uncaring and unprofessional brutes. Could they mean rival private health insurance providers? Possibly. But if that were the case, I don't see why they would need to be coy about it. If the intention were to dissuade prospective customers from signing up with the likes of BUPA or AXA PPP, surely the advertising copy would cut to the chase. Something along the lines of "Choosing the right health insurance is an important decision. You deserve the best treatment and the best service. So choose the insurer with the best range of cover options and the best customer service. Simplyhealth: We can be bothered." Job done, right? You've implied that the competition are shit by stating that you're the best provider on the market - a fairly standard advertising format.

No, my belief is that Simplyhealth's reluctance to be clear about just who can't be bothered is down to slyness. My belief is that the suggestion this firm wishes to plant in your mind is that the dear old NHS is staffed by people who can't be bothered. They want to imply it. But they don't want to come out and say it. Not while there exists genuine affection for the NHS and widespread concern about its future.

You don't want to die young because of the fucking NHS, oozes the insinuating voice in your head. You don't  want to expire while abandoned on a trolley by some lazy public sector layabout who can't be bothered to treat you. You're not a peasant. Come on. Don't take any chances. Stick your hand in your pocket and jump the queue. Let the poor be snuffed out in a miasma of waiting lists, poor staff morale and organisational chaos. But not you. You're special. You need Simplyhealth. They CAN be bothered....

Nah. My mind's playing tricks, right? A nice cuddly insurance company wouldn't stoop to dirty insinuations, would it?

NICE LAPTOP, SHAME ABOUT THE SERVICE

When I bought a new Asus Vivibook S200E laptop back in April, one of the things I liked most about it was its power supply. Instead of one of those rectangular boxes (What is that called? A transformer, right?) with two lengths of thickish power cable, my new device came with a piece of kit that looks more like a mobile phone charger. It's light and nifty - a lot less weight and bulk to deal with when dragging the machine around. Unfortunately, though, it quickly turned out to be less robust than it ought to be. Before long, the little blue light on the side began to flicker, signifying an interruption of the flow of juice from wall socket to laptop. Initially not serious, the problem quickly worsened. Before long, I had to waggle the charger in the socket in order to get it to work. As the weeks passed, the waggling got more frantic. Yes, I should have sorted out a replacement long before the damn thing died completely. But you know what procrastination is like, I'm sure. Mañana, mañana...

I'd bought the machine at my local Currys, stumping up for the retailer's cover plan. So the day the charger died, my first call was to the phone number associated with the plan. I was told, however, that to get a replacement charger for a machine still under warranty I would need to call Asus UK. Fair enough, I thought. So far, I wasn't feeling at all irritated. This was about to change.

The fairly unfriendly guy who answered the phone at Asus directed me to an online form. Filling this in proved to be a monumental ball-ache.

The online form from hell
The problem was to do entering the laptop's serial number. This can be found on the back of the machine. It is printed in TINY characters. SERIOUSLY tiny. I actually needed a magnifying glass to read it. No, that's not an exaggeration for comic effect. I had to use an actual magnifying glass... and, no, my eyesight is not that bad.

The form duly completed, I hit send. A few minutes later I received this email:

OK. So the issue had to be the 4th character, right? According to the email I had entered the number zero. So I filled out the whole form again, swapping that zero for the letter O. I hit send. Minutes later, I received the same email again. I kept messing around with different combinations, filling in the form a further SIX TIMES and receiving a further SIX rejection emails, all the while starting to doubt both my eyesight and my sanity. I got there in the end, having turned the air blue in the process.

The emails had kept banging on about a possible letter 'O'/number '0' issue. The actual problem, it eventually became clear, was that the letter 'D' is pretty much indistinguishable from the letter 'O' on a tiny Asus serial number. Oh, that business about the number zero having a line though it? NOT FUCKING TRUE!!! 

So, some tips for the good folks at Asus:

1. Increase the size of the serial numbers printed on the back of the laptops
2. Design an online form which does not allow the user to hit send if the FORMAT of the serial number is not correct (i.e. don't accept numbers where letters are required and vice versa)

Clear and friendly communication, please

So once I'd cracked the crazy Asus number puzzle, I got an email telling me about what was going to happen next and issuing something called an RMA number. A very poorly written email, that is.

For one thing, there was a lot of blahblahblah about Asus needing to to determine whether my laptop was still under warranty and even more blahblahblah about the charges which would follow if it wasn't. This made for a long, rambling email droning on about stuff that didn't apply to me. This could be avoided by sending the email AFTER the question of the warranty is resolved. My suggestion here: send a short, snappy email simply detailing the collection process to those whose machines are still under warranty; send a different email with all the stuff about proof of purchase etc. to those whose machines are not under warranty.

In these emails, there is also a lot of stuff about the dire consequences that follow if you're not at home when collection is attempted. But no mention is made of how and when the details of the collection are to be communicated. Light on information but heavy on threats. It's not a pleasant way to address a paying customer. Asus really ought to take a look at the customer-friendliness side of this and also spend a few pennies on a half-decent copywriter.

Currys and the 18-mile wild goose chase

Buying the laptop in the first place at my local branch of Currys? Perfectly painless. Good service, in fact. The service I got at a branch 9 miles from where I live, having been sent there on a wild goose chase? Yes, that was fine too. Nice guys. But the fact I got sent on an 18-mile round trip that was a complete waste of time and petrol? Well, that was a pain in the arse.

This fool's errand came about because I decided that 5-7 days (as advised by the unfriendly email from Asus) without my laptop working was going to cause major inconvenience. I resolved, then, to identify and buy an additional replacement power supply for my machine.

When I called Currys about buying an additional charger, I learned that I could not buy a like-for-like replacement. But I could buy a 'universal' charger which would work just as well.  I was pissed off to learn that one of these costs almost sixty quid. I could, however, reserve one over the phone and obtain it for the "online price" of "only" forty-five quid. Then it turned out that my local store did not have one in stock. Hence the need to head to a branch located 9 miles from home. Let me be clear: I clearly stated the manufacturer and model number of the laptop concerned and was assured that the item I was reserving would be suitable.

But when I got there, none of the fittings supplied with the the supposedly 'universal' charger would fit my Asus machine. The chaps in the shop dug out another 'universal' charger. This was also no good. So, I'd spent time and money pointlessly because Currys don't provide their telephone agents with a definitive list of which power supply products work with which laptops.

So I got by without a laptop for the several days it took for Asus to pick up my machine and then send it back along with a new charger. Oh yeah... I did have to send the whole machine back even though it was obvious only the charger was faulty. Just as well I didn't waste even more money on an extra charger, I guess... 

Rant over

This is the first time this blog has ever done the outraged customer thing. But while the laptop itself is actually pretty good, customer service at Asus UK is lousy enough to get me writing.

But why write all of this in a blog post? Surely one can just complain directly to Asus. Well, no. Not easily, anyway. Asus UK prefer to receive feedback via a form whose layout doesn't give one much freedom to write in detail. The only other option, suggested to me by the marketing person who operates the Asus UK Twitter account, is to send a letter via snail mail to the company's Hemel Hempstead HQ. What I wanted was to send an email. I was told that this is not possible. Which is  shame. Because I feel that Asus UK would benefit from some fairly detailed remarks about the flaws in their after-sales care and the clarity and tone of their communication. If someone there reads this: cool. If someone there takes any of this into account: even better. For anyone else reading this - if you're thinking of buying an otherwise decent Asus laptop, bear in mind that supposedly universal chargers may not work with it and remember than getting a faulty power supply unit replaced can be a colossal pain in the hole.

LIVERPOOL'S "JEW HUNTER" TURNS SHY

Hoping to follow the photographed antics of someone who enjoys adding horrible captions to the photos he takes of Orthodox Jews walking the streets and going about their business? Well, I'm afraid I have bad news. A Liverpudlian exponent of this particular form of sinister behaviour is now restricting his Twitter output such that only his couple of hundred followers can keep track of what he likes to call "Jew Hunting".

Whether the mention of his bizarre leisure pursuits on this blog was the reason for Adam Roberts's sudden coyness is open to question. Perhaps he was more concerned by the interest shown in his antics by the Anti-Semitic Tweets blog, the contents of which ought to be self-explanatory.

A spot of pig wrestling

Twitter continues to delight and amaze. It offers a power akin to telepathy. A form of x-ray vision, if you will - one can peer through the skulls of complete strangers, often located many miles away, and see enough of their thoughts to work out something about the characters within. The very considerable downside of this facility is the resulting (and ever-strengthening) conclusion to which you may arrive: that way too many people squander the wonderful power of the human brain on narrow, dismal and fearful ideas.

Take Adam Roberts of the Fazakerley district of Liverpool, for example. When in Manchester, Adam likes to drive around taking photos of Orthodox Jews in their frummer finery. He describes this activity as "Jew hunting". He then tweets the pictures, accompanied with hashtag commentary suggesting that his attitude to Jewish people is not an especially positive one:

A very quick glance at Adam's timeline reveals that he is a fan of Swedish house DJ Eric Prydz. Forgetting, not for the first time, George Bernand Shaw's warning about wrestling with pigs, I thought it might be fun to spar with Adam for a few minutes:

@adamrob3rt5 You know how you're a fan of Eric Prydz? He's Jewish. Are you going to "hunt" him? @antitwemitism
— this is my england (@thisismyengland) September 8, 2013

In the ensuing battle of wits, Adam's anti-semitism turns out to be as flexible as his bullshit is risible and as his fibs are transparent:

CHECKING UP ON AN OLD FRIEND

AFTER MANY WEEKS OF HAVING NO REASON TO BE THERE, THE FOOTSTEPS LED LAST WEEK BACK TO THAT BIT OF WALL WHERE THIS BLOG'S OLD FRIEND STU BAGS DOES HIS THING STREET-ARTWISE. THE ANGLE OF THE SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS WERE DOING NO FAVOURS, BUT WE CAN SEE PAST THAT TO NOTICE THAT STU IS CURRENTLY PAYING HOMAGE TO THE VARIOUS IMPORTANT WOMEN IN HIS LIFE:

ERSATZ EASTERN SPIRITUALITY AS DECOR

THAT MAN STU: STILL AT WORK

a thought occurred a little while ago: WHY NO WORD FROM STU BAGS? but who STU? well, until the spring of this year, it was my good fortune to be working in an office very close to where Camden-based street artist STU BAGS keeps obsessively returning to the same chunk of wallspace. this blog has explored his work there on-and-off since May 2011, when his mysterious use of the phrase THERE IS NOTHING TO SEE HERE first came to my notice.

now, more than two years later and using some very clever trickery, STU revisits that phrase:

UPDATE 26/8/2017 - VIDEO GONE! NAUGHTY STU! LINKROT!!

Bulgaria: ignore the guidebooks?

Consider this quote from a guidebook which accompanied me on my recent holiday: "Exclusive, fashionable and upmarket, Albena is as well equipped and efficient as Bulgarian resorts come." 

The small volume concerned, (Bulgaria Black Sea Resorts: Thomas Cook Pocket Guide - first written in 2007 and updated as recently as 2011) was authored by someone (a certain Debbie Stowe) who has surely never visited the place described in the passage above. Or possibly Ms Stowe attaches unconventional meanings to the words "exclusive", "fashionable" and "upmarket".

There is nothing wrong with Albena. The beach is long, wide and sandy, lapped by warm and shallow waters. The roads and paths connecting the various hotels, restaurants and other structures are tree-lined and pleasantly shady. But exclusive? Fashionable? Upmarket?

To visit Albena is to rub shoulders with working-class folk from around Central and Eastern Europe. Decent enough people to be sure. But nothing about the sunbathers and swimmers of Albena screams exclusivity. Quite the reverse, in fact. Presumably, the genuinely poor of Bulgaria and other CEE counties cannot afford a week or two in this Balkan sun trap. But Albena has a kind of Butlins vibe to it - a regimented factory system providing budget holiday opportunities to people of relatively modest means. The hotels are large and numerous. The place seems to be divided up into different zones, with groups of different nationalities having booked accommodation in different hotels. One place we pass seems to be occupied entirely by Romanians. Poles seem to predominate in a hotel complex a few hundred yards further on. Then we stumble across what appears to be a Slovak enclave. This is mass production applied to the business of taking a break from work.

Albena: signs in Romanian

OK, so it's not exclusive. Is Albena fashionable, then? Something or somewhere can easily be fashionable without being exclusive, right? So is Albena fashionable? Perhaps it is. But only if pot-bellied Russian dads working the too-small banana-hammock swimwear look have become arbiters of European fashion. Only if matronly mums (with big perms dyed extraordinary shades of burgundy or tomato soup) are achingly hip these days. OK, so it's not exclusive or fashionable, but has Albena somehow achieved upmarket status? Again, the answer must be no.

Our one proper exploration of Albena ended with a stop in something billed as a supermarket. But it was nothing of the sort. Instead, I was reminded of the stated-owned (or cooperative) shops in which I used to buy my groceries in Poland in the early 1990s. A hangover from the pre-1989 centrally planned economy. I remember them well. The goods were kept behind counters staffed by variously indifferent or slightly hostile ladies. Choices were limited and, at busy times, queues grew restless and impatient. It was a very good way to accelerate my learning of basic vocabulary and transactional language. I was briefly transported back in time to those long-ago shopping experiences on entering Albena's so-called supermarket, so similar was the appearance and atmosphere of the shop. Nothing upmarket about it.

Nowhere in Albena, in fact, did the eye rest on anything one might reasonably describe as upmarket. I wandered into a hotel lobby to use the ATM there. The place looked clean and reasonably well-kept. But upmarket? No.

The budget look and feel of everything was pervasive - from the slightly run-down condition of pavements, fences, benches and the like to the extreme shabbiness of a small Luna Park area offering tired-looking dodgems, roundabouts and fairground games.

Albena: cracked and weedy

It was in search of such kid-friendly stimulation that we had wandered into Albena in the first place. The junior member of the family is currently in the throes of an absolute mania for thrill rides and the like. So much so, in fact, that as we explored the area around our temporary bolt hole in south-east Europe, we were incessantly reminded of how much more exciting the planned post-holiday trip to Chessington World of Adventures was going to be.

Along with roller coasters and their ilk, our son maintains a special place in his affections for mini-golf and crazy golf. So we sampled both courses on offer in Albena. Not to put too fine a point on it, both of them were shit. The first one we tried was comically bad. The greens were made of thin pieces of metal and were almost all unplayable. Very weird indeed. On the upside, I really enjoyed the Balkan folk music booming from the little hut where the clubs were handed out. I do dig that kind of thing. 

Mini-golf, Albena

None of this is meant as a piss-take. I'm not sure that every west European visitor to a place like Albena would see it for what it is - a pretty decent holiday option for the people to whom it caters. But that's what I saw in Albena and it pleased me to see it. Because I can draw on memories of being in places most of whose residents would surely appreciate what this Bulgarian resort has to offer.

Almost twenty years ago, I spent ten months living on the edge of Osiedle Świętokrzyskie, a vast housing estate on the north-eastern fringe of Kielce, a middle-sized Polish city. While I know that conditions there have improved for many people in the years since I last saw the place, I understand that the standard of living for many more of my former neighbours remains well below what we are used to here in the UK. As I walked around Albena in the sunshine, I found myself thinking that the place would seem like a very attractive holiday destination for many of Kielce's residents. No sooner had that thought popped into my head than I saw evidence of Kielce folk having visited - a sticker bearing the name of Kielce's main professional football club. I also thought a little about Lovech, the seemingly waning Bulgarian city which we had visited on our way from Sofia to the Black Sea coast. Lovech, too, I thought, must be home to many people for whom a week or fortnight in Albena must seem like a very welcome prospect.

No complaints, then, about Albena. It is what it is. Long may it continue to offer what it does to those who enjoy the place. But that Thomas Cook guidebook? That really is a piece of crap. Its description of Albena is so inaccurate as to beg the question of how the hell it was written. My money is on a copy and paste job from something issued by Bulgaria's state tourism authorities. Given that our Thomas Cook pocket-sized Sofia city guide also contained some strikingly poor descriptions of major sights in the capital, I would urge all readers to treat that company's guidebooks with extreme scepticism.

Korona pany!