World gone mad

Do you remember when you were a child? Playing on your scooter, push-bike or strap-on roller skates outside the house? Round and round you'd go for hours. Mum and Dad had told you where you could go to and you daren't go beyond those limits.

My brother and I were allowed to go over to the woods. A small crop of trees on the edge of a playing field across the road from our house. He was allowed to go into the field with his friends and play football while I was to stay in the woods, climb trees (yes, I climbed tress) or made Mud Pies.

We would be out of sight of Muv and/or Dad for hours. Muv would be inside cooking up a storm or out in the back garden tending the veggies, while Dad would be servicing the taxi.

Just to prove how crazy the world has become a woman, Tammy Cooper, has been arrested for letting her children (aged 6 and 9) play in the cul-de-sac outside her house unsupervised. Shock horror!

I wouldn't want to be the neighbour that reported her to the police for abandonment.

Is the world really such an awful place now that a mother can't watch her children from the kitchen or the comfort of a lawn chair? Do we really have stand over our children 24/7?

I'm so glad I was given the chance:

- to play in the mud without being told, 'get out.'

- to learn the hard way that sticks do not make good imitation cigarettes. I fell over and landed on the stick injuring the back of my throat.

- to learn, never borrow a bike from a kid you just met and ride it really fast down a hill, because the brakes may not work. Cue fat lip, grazed knuckles and scabs covering the right side of the face.

- Stinging nettles hurt a lot when you fall from a tree into a patch.

- and don't jump into the deep end of the pool when you can't swim, it get really ugly real quick until that 10 year old saves you.

Kids have to learn lessons. They only get some lessons when they go out into the world. The front garden and safety of the cul-de-sac you live in is the very edge of the world and needs to be explored when you're in running while crying distance from home.

The police need to question the intentions of the neighbour and how they reacted. Surely when the woman you've come to arrest approaches you because she's seen you arrive it's clear she hasn't abandoned her children in her own front garden.

Charges have been dropped and Tammy is going after the police by suing them. Only in America?






Picture borrowed from here, I had nothing to do with creating it!

Noise

Whilst enjoying my Nam Pho yesterday I witnessed an injustice. It didn't spoil my day (nothing could have done that yesterday, I was far too chilled out) but once again it made me wonder about the way society lets parents and children get away with almost anything.

I have often given thought to the way parents let their young ones wander and get underfoot of other shoppers. Or how a pram is a licence to run toes over with no apology. How a pregnant woman, no matter how big her 'bump' is, gets the seat over the injured or aging. I may or may not have voiced my concerns here in the past, but I feel I had to tell this tale. It left me in a mild guppy like state until I stepped onto the bus.

As I said, I was enjoying my Nam Pho (with thinly sliced beef brisket) when a group of six twenty something’s came in and sat at the table next to me. They were laughing and joking, and having fun as a group of people do when lunching together socially. Behind them was a couple with a pram, occupied by a baby. I have no idea how old it was or what sex, it looked like a wrinkled prune, and I was thankful when they took a seat as far away as possible from me.

The twenty something’s took a little while to order as they where having fun, chatting and laughing and continuing the fun they were having when they came in. Eventually they ordered. As they where ordering the baby started to cry. Actually cry was being kind, it was screaming. Mum tried bouncing it up and down on her knee before putting her boob in its mouth. That didn't work, so dad tried the knee bobbing up and down thing. That didn’t work either. Neither did the dummy or the rattling keys.

Meanwhile the twenty something’s had resumed having fun after the momentary quite of ordering.

After about five minutes of screaming baby and the boisterous group, I was feeling glad that I could see the bottom of my bowl. The screaming was starting to pierce my ear drums.

What happened next, astounded me. The waitress walked up to the group and said, loudly, so she could be heard over the baby.

'Could you keep it down please, you are disrupting our other diners.'

At no point in the proceeding or follow five minutes did anyone approach the family with the screaming baby.

Protection Racket

Recently my mother instinct kicked in. Not the part that make me want babies (thank god!), but the bit that make me want to protect something good and innocent.

Sally, sits two desks away and one six foot divider from me. Or I should say DID, until she had her employment ‘Annulled’ yesterday in what can only be described as a kneecapping.

She started with the company in February as a contractor. She preformed well (I presume, I don’t work with her) and was encouraged to apply for her job as a permanent member of staff. She applied, jumped through hoops in three interviews (standard for this company) and was told that her ‘start’ date was at the beginning of May.

It started alright! Her new manager started giving her a hard time; emails every two minutes, keeping a log of her attendance, talking to her like she was a piece of sh*t, telling her, her work is wrong, but not what’s wrong etc. She’d have a go in front of other staff members, but NEVER higher management and worst still when higher manage was notified, she did nothing. I have no idea whether Sally’s work was good or bad, but nobody deserves to be treated like I have heard and witnessed.

Anyway…I’m currently incensed by the injustice of it.

Yesterday at a meeting disguised as Probation Action Review Meeting (I went as independent witness) she was handed a document stating how crap she was and how good Manager is. She was told to leave the building and hand in her badge. When she said she wished to leave the meeting and got up to go, Manager turned to HR and said ‘see, this is what I have to put up with’. HR said nothing. I resisted pinning her to the wall, as I have wanted to do for a couple of weeks now.

Today, I have heard the Manager, Higher Management and lower Staff talking about Sally, in a very negative and whole inappropriate way by slagging off her work.

Now, as a contractor I have to watch myself because the slightest rumour or nastiness about me could result in my contract being terminated. So I now have to keep my head down, my ear to the ground and protect my ample arse at all costs.