Friday 16 October 2015

Money, money, money...


2 hours ago I was bombarded with about fifty 'posts' trying to sell me movie downloads, and I cannot find a way to get rid of them, let alone get Google to get rid of them for me. I think they emanate from Indonesia, as I once had an attack like this before.

The worst thing about them is that I have to trawl through them all to find your genuine posts, and there is no 'delete' facility that I can find. Now that Google has taken away the ability to allow us to block individuals (this one is called 'Richard', although I think it is many more than one) the bastards can do what they like. Can anyone help me sort this out please? Weaver?!

Over on Facebook, Shawn has asked all her friends if they have ever heard of 'Christmas Adam' to describe the day before Christmas Eve. I certainly haven't. They have put the decorations up over most of Bath, but this year my eye is drawn to the tell-tale signs that outside contractors were used to do this. Each component has a plastic tag on it which says, 'BATH'. The fitters are a bunch from somewhere up North, and they spend weeks traveling around the country working nights, putting up all the festive crap.

High up on Lansdown Hill, there is a council graveyard with all the Summer flower arranging supports stacked up and rotting alongside all the old, pre-digital Winter decorations. These date from the good old days before out-sourcing, funded by the businesses of Bath in conjunction with the Chamber of Commerce - if such a body still exists.

We are supposed to ignore the lights until they are actually switched on, and this happens as soon after the Memorial Day march as is deemed decent - i.e. just after November 5th and the fireworks. Last year they were supposed to be turned on by Sir Cliff Richard, but then he was accused of buggery by the Witch-Finder General, so they made do with a boy band that nobody had ever heard of, let alone buggered. The year before we had Mary Berry pulling the switch. Nobody in their right minds could ever accuse her of buggery, or at least I hope not. Bake-Off would never be the same.

I have just looked up to be shocked by the sight of a seriously bright, fluorescent strip of red running alongside the grandstand of the Bath Rugby field over the river, and it clashes horribly with the subtle Autumn colours of the trees in front. It took me a while to realise that it is a massive bank of LED advertising board, probably for a match tomorrow.

I tried to photograph it to show you, but the lurid red shows up as a pale cream in the picture (see above). This must be some effect of the different frequency of LED light which I had not understood. There is a sinister side to this lighting after all!

What happened to sport for sport's sake, and non-commercial Christmases? Did the latter ever really exist after Dickens? Cromwell? Anyone?!

13 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. A trifle rich, coming from you?

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    2. My miserable posts reach a high crescendo of happiness for me.

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    3. Ah. I thought you were doing something else when writing.

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  2. Tom - there doesn;t seem much to smileabout in your post today - I agree with Rachel. Why you think I can help you with those posts I can't imagine. My knowledge of how computers work stretches little further than the end of my fingers. If I get an unwanted e mail from somebody I have never heard of I don;t open it I just delete it - at which point it goes into Trash. Every few days Icompletely delete everything in trash.

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  3. Here's the thing - sometimes Evil People will hijack a person's disused old blog that you used to follow. Mouse over the hypertext of the offensive material in your reader list to see the origin blog name of the feed. It will show up at the bottom of your screen probably. If it looks like a blog you used to follow, simply unsubscribe from it. I have instructions on how to do that on my blog post, how to unfollow someone on Google Friend Connect. I had to figure it out because I had the same thing happen. Good luck. It's extremely annoying!

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Mel. I think I have done that in the past, but I will follow your instructions again as soon as I have the energy.

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    2. I wouldn't bother as they go away after a while. It happened to me a few
      months ago and I just scrolled past them until I reached the blogs I genuinely follow. It was irritating but then they suddenly disappeared. I didn't understand the language but I surmised that it was Indonesian or similar.

      As for Christmas - I pretty much hate it now. I loathe the incessant media advertising to purchase, purchase, purchase. I wish it were just for little children who haven't been corrupted by greed. For adults it should just be about jolly get togethers and family time. But unfortunately I know from my legal time that Christmas is often about angry disputes between warring couples. Dickens knew all about that.

      Of course I usually don't see my children and grandchildren over the holiday because they all live on the other side of the world. So for us it is Dickensian. Breakfast champagne while we open affectionate gifts followed by .Skype chat with whoever is awake on alpha centauri.

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    3. Yes, I seem to remember that the last lot disappeared on their own. I didn't do Christmas until the grandchildren turned up, having given it up aged about 18. Now they are adults, this may be the first time in 23 years that I don't do it again.

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  4. No doubt Bake Off contestants will now be in high demand for light-turning-on ceremonies, supermarket openings, and the singing of national anthems at Rugby matches. Such is life.

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  5. Hi Tom, I have had that. In the dashboard under comments, you should be able to select them and delete them or send them to spam en masse?

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