Beads and bead-related...

Beading is currently my new craze... not sure whether it's the scent of the glue or what, but I find making paper beads quite addictive. It's getting too hot to go our much so indoor activities are more appealling. Plus, I had a rush of blood to the head, accompanied by a rush of money from the pocket, at the Global Village this year, and bought lots of beads and semi precious stones to work into jewellery.
Then a friend who is an absolute beading fiend, found all these amazing shops in Dragonmart...
For those who don't know the Plague Pits of Mammon -- sorry, I mean Dubai -- Dragonmart is an enormous wobbly warehouse on the outskirts (insofar as Dubai, which has no centre, can be said to have outskirts.
Dragonmart is different from the average Mall in that it is entirely Chinese, mainly tiny little stalls and shops with names like Modern Appliance Trading Co (which sells, as you'd expect from the name, frilly baskets). Basically it is a cross between a souk, a Shanghai slum and the very biggest mound of tat you have ever seen or imagined in your life multiplied by ten.
Wander round there for five minutes and you wonder just how deep the Chinese tat mines can possibly be. Lots of shops sell beading suplies and what the jewellery trade rather bafflingly calls findings (the bits of wire, catches, spacer beads, etc that you string your beads on or use to stop them falling off the chain. I plundered.
Making paper beads, though, requires very little equipment - just toothpicks, glue, something to stick the toothpick into (I was using half a potato at first, but I've since acquired an old piece of polystyrene which does very well), scissors and paper. Thin magazine paper is good, but I've also had some fun with wrapping paper. I get pretty stuck on experimenting with shapes and colours. So far I've made two necklaces and a pair of earrings from paper beads and have dozens of beads in various stages of completion on the go.

In theory...

Recently I exchanged a number of emails with my supervisor and the Human Resources person where I work, which resulted in a deeply philosophical conundrum.

The background to this is that I am leaving in June as I don't want to renew my contract here, but have accrued 16 days of leave that I am due.

First, I wanted to know what would happen about that leave I'm owed.

Instant and very clear answer from HR. I will be paid in lieu. Great.

Next I wanted to know if I could take a single day of that leave during the semester. There is one working day coming up when (for that day only) I have no teaching. I also won't be required for exams or for marking sessions. Could I take that single day off?

The HR person said "Certainly, if your supervisor approves it."

The Supervisor said "It's unprecendented and it can't be done."

I said "OK, but HR seem to think differently."

Supervisor replied "HR was talking theoretically about institution policy. Honestly I've asked "higher" and "higher" says it can't be permitted."

I thought of emailing Supe to elucidate the difference between a theoretical policy of yes which always in practice comes in as a no, and an actual and admitted policy of no... but I decided not to.

Just as well.

I'm pretty sure Supe doesn't see there is one.

(It occurs to me to hope that the payment in lieu will not merely be a theoretical one...)

A roof over my head

Been very quiet for a while. Partly work and then holiday in England, during which I was offline for a massive 12 days (and saw the sun once, for half of a morning). Then back at work and job hunting - ah dear. I may just have possibly ever so very slightly mistimed my resignation, as the job market is pretty poor at the moment in my target areas and lots of people I would like to work for not hiring. Hey ho... Will be attending the job fair at TESOL Arabia next weekend and hope there will be a couple of possibles.
In the meantime, work on the tiny hovel in England has restarted and moved into phase ... what is it now? Phase 97? 324? I've lost track. Anyway, after the stripping of the carpets and the cleaning which was more like archaology, and tearing out the hideous fireplace, and putting in the woodburner, and new windows, and new doors, and a new boiler, and central heating, and underpinning the walls... we're now getting a new swing-a-rat kitchen and swing-an-undersized gerbil bathroom, yippee yiy yay!
Naturally as things get replaced or improved new defects occur - I was alarmed by a leaky roof blackened with mould, and news that the roof over the bathroom (a flat roof cobbled together in the 80s) was in a bad way. So we're getting a sedum roof put in (aka a living roof or a green roof), which I've thought was a great idea ever since I heard of them. Basically the roof is planted with a dense carpet of small plants that don't need that much care, so that instead of yet more tarmac - bad for runoff and flooding - there is at least something busy photosynthesising away. It won't reverse global warming, but it is quite a nice thing. Pity I can't grow veg on it (not strong enough for any depth of soil - the roof I mean, not me) as our garden space is the size of a tablecloth.
So it looks likely that come July I'll be back in the UK and jobhunting at a bad time, but I will have a niceish house to do it in. Count blessings... ONE.

Gruesome

I grew up a Roman Catholic, in a London parish attached to Ealing Abbey, a Benedictine foundation. The Abbey also runs a school, run and taught by monks and lay teachers, where all 3 of my brothers went, and where my father taught History, Classics and advised on careers.

In recent years one of the monks (a former head of the junior school) was accused of sexually abusing boys, suspended from serving, and investigated by the police. Dom David Pearce was found guilty and jailed for 8 years. The Charity Commission has investigated and criticised the Abbey for its handling of the case - you can find the report here:

http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/investigations/inquiryreports/benedicts.asp

I remember Father David well - and remember that my brothers and their friends disliked him greatly. Perhaps now I have some idea why that was!

What makes it more appalling and baffling is that he continued to abuse after he was suspended and under police investigation. I can't imagine what he was thinking (was he mad? was he addicted? did he think he was immune?)

It also seems pretty clear that the Abbey did not do enough to protect young people in their care, and that they need to sort themselves out. The Abbot apparently apologised during Mass to the parishioners, but I wonder whether lessons have actually been learned.


A personal sideline on the story - and a terrible warning, if you like - is that David Pearce had himself been a pupil at St Benedicts. He left the 6th Form intending to become a dentist, but my father, who was his careers advisor, made the following note about him: "priest?"

For years after my father's death, my mother mentioned that as an example of my Dad's wonderful insight....

Arrghhhh!

Of course if Pearce had gone on to become a dentist and abused young lads from that position of trust, the profession of dentistry would have been horribly tarnished instead.

Err... yes... ahum... hi there

Been very quiet for a long time - variations between nothing to report, and oh-Lordy-so-much-going-on-it's-the-last-thing-I-can-do-to-blog-about-it.

Well, that's holidays for you.

I'm now back in the UAE, back at work, and no less busy than ever. A bit fitter and thinner (marginally) and taking steps to become more so. Back behind a screen more often, as well.

So there will be more to come.

Some of it might even be good.

Watch this space, as they used to say on telly.

Meanwhile... back at the farm...

While all this has been going on, back in my home country we're having an election.

Not the kind of election most people get excited about, where you might have an outside chance of changing the government. Nor the kind of election that it seems from away over here my compatriots would rather enjoy at this stage, with greedy, self serving MPs swinging from every lamppost.

No, it will be one of those elections people don't normally bother to get out of bed for. Except tomorrow, I rather think they will.

We (or rather they, as I missed my registration) are voting for local government councillors and members of the European parliament... I'm ashamed to say I don't know who my MEP is. This sort of thing would normally attract a turnout of about 20% of the electorate, in a good year. Tomorrow I hope it will be massive. The opinion polls don't really know how to read it: bad for Labour, the party in power (a massive recession followed by a huge scandal... lovely!) but possibly also bad for the Tories (umm... what's different about them on policy?... errr....).

One curious thing over the last 20 years or so is that there has become essentially no difference in policy between the two main parties: both agree with more privatisation, even of social services like the NHS, deregulation of business and financial services (and we now know how well that has worked out) and increasing authoritarian control.

We haven't, so far as I am aware, ever had a national debate about whether we wanted these things (in fact I seem to recall all parties insisting that they were NOT trying to sell off the NHS, the London Underground, schools, the Post Office, while all the time the creeping tides of privatisation lapped ever higher around them).

But where there is no difference in belief, parties have to compete on their competence and honesty. Nobody's debating what the government should do, just whether party x or party y will manage to do it without leaving top secret information on the 7.15 train to Waterloo, and without vastly enriching its MPs at public expense.

The Labour party has failed on both counts, but the Conservatives have been equally corrupt, and show no signs of being any more efficient.

So it's an interesting election all right. I wish I was there.

Playing God with the Mogs

Roxy's kittens are thriving and rampaging around the house.

While still feeding them milk, Roxy celebrated the kits' near-independence by ... going on heat and rampaging around the house singing her eerie love songs. I suppose that, having made a rather good job of bringing 4 healthy moglets into the world, she thought now would be the time to start another 4, and another, and another.

We thought otherwise. She was scragged, bundled into one of the shiny new cat carriers we've got, and delivered to the vet under protest.

He's a good man, our vet. Very critter-oriented, it took 3 visits before he made eye contact with us primates. All the same, we felt like murderers.

She was at the vets for 3 days, during which the kittens wandered about looking anxious and deprived. We did much the same.

Yesterday we brought the poor mog back, complaining loudly. Her flank has been shaved and painted blue, with a neat row of staples pinning her wound together. I sat in the back with the cat carrier open and stoked her head all the way home. At first she was just cowering and moaning (especially on the roundabouts - not surprising given some of the driving we could see), but as we got into our neighbourhood she stretched her neck up to peer through the windows, and I would not be surprised if she recognised perfectly well where we were.

Once indoors she was immediately surrounded by the kittens, who sniffed her, kissed her whiskers, stroked their tails along her flanks, and licked her ears. She licked them back. It was so clearly an affectionate reunion that we felt, if anything, even more guilty for taking her away. The next thing was that she lay down and fed them... at least, they all sucked away frantically and, apparently, we satisfied.

She is obviously aching and rather cranky - tends to crouch and moan, and walks stiffly. This will pass. But she has also lost some of her trust in us, and is not happy having us pick her up. She cowers when we come close, which is upsetting. It seems that she is afraid we will grab her, stick her in a cage, and whisk her away to a strange place where people do painful things to her.

The worst of it is that we will, on Sunday, when we take her back to have the staples taken out.

Poor Roxy.

She'll get over it, but I'm not sure whether we will.