Frank LeaversPalma29/11/2019 09:58
TW
1

What would you do for a job if you had the chance to start work all-over again? Would you be like many people and head for the predictable world of IT (whatever that’s supposed to mean!) or something sexy like public relations, marketing and design - where you are expected to wear silly clothes and behave like a bit of a prat. Some of you may even yearn for something dull but straightforward like medicine or the law - or, perhaps being told to p***off on a regular basis as a call centre operator.

Last week we had a new boiler installed at our place and I was fascinated by the two blokes who did the job in a very professional and workmanlike fashion. Now, this got me thinking and although I am not noted for my mechanical problem solving ability, I have decided that there is only one proper job left in the world for people who don’t possess a double first in advanced nuclear physics from Oxford University…and that is plumbing. First of all, your lavatory is not like a newspaper or book. It cannot be digitalised. Likewise there is no App that will miraculously make you squeaky clean and smelling of roses. If you want to smell fresh and scrubbed, you have to have a hot shower or bath. And if you want central heating and clean clothes or water coming randomly out of taps, you need a boiler. This means there is no alternative, you will always need plumbing, which, so far as most people are concerned, is in actual fact, witchcraft. Well, it is to me anyway!

I listen to my household plumbing sometimes burping and groaning and I have not the faintest idea what is going on. It’s the same story when I flush the toilet; I don’t know how that works or where the waste goes or how it gets there. Unlike in the world of laptop computers, though, there are usually a handful of people who actually do know. In the UK they are usually called Mr Stanowski - if not, they will be a mate-of-a-mate who will do the job in a “quick and cheap” fashion and after the remedial work they were supposed to have done, they will have caused your kitchen to flood with doubtful looking, brown water - and you are naturally extremely cross and vow never to employ cowboys again until the next time. Not, at all like the two plumber/blokes from our next village - no, not at all. Can you imagine then, what would happen if you should look to change your career and studied the sorcery and the dark arts of becoming a reliable plumber who did first rate work. Imagine how much you could charge for work like that? Also, think of the job satisfaction. No staring at a flickering screen all day or conversing with morons. You’d be doing the only real job that’s left in the world and think of all those women in their negligees saying how much they enjoy your work - or is that just in a certain type of film? Whatever - it’s what I will be suggesting as a future career option for my grandchildren. Hopefully, they will all become plumbers and I shall be a very proud man.

A READYMADE VEGAN RANT
I’m desperately trying to curb my ‘readymade rant’ inclinations, because let’s face it, with social media being the way it is, the last thing folk want when reading the Bulletin on a Friday is to have to put up with me foaming at the mouth over yet more, meaningless meanderings - via those who see it as their task in life to save us from ourselves. Anyway, enough of all that; It seems that a group of nursery schools, named Jigsaw Day Nurseries, that cares for around 260 under-fours, is thought to be the first in the country to go all-vegan. However, the people charged with looking after these little tots have suddenly - and completely arbitrarily, introduced this measure without asking mum and dad. Apart from risking censure by assuming that there is…an actual heterosexual mum and dad involved here, and I am not just being deeply insensitive in my rigid (and slightly fascist) gender assumptions in terms of parenthood? Nevertheless, what on earth do these classic virtue signallers think what they are playing at? Personally, I couldn’t care less if the aforementioned nursery wants to go vegan and even embrace hot yoga as well, but might it be a good idea to ask parents for their views on this controversial move before they introduce it? Unsurprisingly, various parents have been less than impressed by the nursery’s founder, Claire Taylor’s, view on the matter, as she insists that the decision was - “made with the children’s and the planets future in mind.” Well, that’s big of her - and there’s me thinking that she’s paid to look after those little kids for a few hours everyday and she should leave the parenting bit - to, the children’s parents perhaps!

As one sane and sensible mum observed - “If my daughter wants to be a vegan when she’s older then that’s fine, but I’ll have that conversation with her myself.”

KATIE GOES BUST!
I see that Katie Price has been declared bankrupt after blowing an estimated £35million fortune and still owes up to £800,000 to various creditors. Katie must have spent her money at a prodigious rate, because her income was not insignificant and it has to be said that she was exceedingly generous to various people who worked for her and her children.

Depressingly for her, it appears that she was clobbered financially by her lifestyle choices and the all manner of walking tattoos with whom she married and then divorced on a regular basis. It’s as if her financial advisor was Jeremy Corbyn!