A time for us Brits to keep calm and carry on

Nothing stirs the soul like the call to prayer. That shrill voice five times a day summoning Muslims to the Mosque for mandatory worship is both haunting and beautiful.

You don’t need to be a follower of Islam to appreciate the call.

I was christened as a Lutheran (and still have the certificate) but now, more than half a century later, I’m a fully paid-up non-card-bearing unbeliever. It’s not that I don’t have beliefs but they are not along any traditional religious lines.

But having lived within earshot of the local mosque in the UAE for many years, the call to prayer still sends tingles down my spine.

Mind you, I have also been known to go a bit wobbly in a CoE cathedral - and don’t even get me started on St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome or the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque in Muscat.

There’s definitely something about these places and we would be very foolish to dismiss out of hand the people who worship in them – they all have their believers so there has to be something to it, right?

Now before you think I’ve gone a bit soft, let me explain the reason for the preamble.

A Muslim has apparently killed nearly 40 people in an attack on a beach in the Tunisian resort town of Sousse, the majority of them British.

I say apparently as, to my mind, he was not so much a Muslim as a plain, simple terrorist.

Islamic State’s ruthlessness is terrorism on a scale rarely seen before – I’d like to say never seen before but feel certain my reader would correct me.

In the face of such barbarism, people need to keep the faith. If you are not religious, then you must value freedom of speech, education for all, equality for all, freedom of religion and democracy.

And the best way to do this is by showing that we will not be intimidated.

So, in true British style, we must all Keep Calm and Carry On.

Oh dear, I got the deer wrong, dear

I’m starting a new Corrections and Clarifications section on IDGOM following an email I received from my correspondent, RJJ.

RJJ, a world-renowned expert on most things, contacted me to say there was an error in my piece on June 17 (The self-importance of being an admin type).

I said that the deer I spotted by the hedge at Casa Almondo was a roebuck.

It, RJJ, pointed out quite correctly, was a muntjac. Ever helpful, he even sent me the photograph (right) to show what a muntjac looks like. I have to say it does bear an uncanny resemblance to the beast of Suffolk I saw in the garden.

I’d like to thank RJJ for pointing this out. Despite making a living for more than 35 years as a journo, I have never deliberately set out to confuse or mislead my reader. Well, maybe once or twice.

Just to reassure RJJ that I have learnt my lesson, here (below) is another photo of a muntjac (ED: is that correct?).

Now on to more interesting matters. Have you heard the one about the student who bit his lover on her bottom while they were having sex and then ended up with a criminal conviction for assault after she complained to police?

Apparently the 24-year old and his 20-year old on-off girlfriend ended up in bed together after exchanging “flirty texts” on Valentine’s Day.

But the man, who was drunk, ‘went too far’ and became rough, biting her on the neck. Who said romance was dead?

A court heard she then got up and started crying, before he hugged her and persuaded her to come back to bed.

But once under the covers he bit her on the bottom and thigh, leaving a large bruise. At 4.30am, she called a cab home and contacted police.

The woman said: ‘I trusted someone I should not have trusted.”

And she also got back into bed with someone who had clearly demonstrated the nuts and bolts of his love-making. Why on earth didn’t she make her excuses and leave?

I’m old enough to remember when rough sex meant twanging your girlfriend’s bra.

How times have changed.

All Mil needed to do was to send BT a tweet

BT update, number 35b. Kermit, Gonzo and their pals have finally done it – moved a telephone line from one room to another directly opposite across a five foot wide corridor.

Five and a half weeks since BT were first asked to move the line, mission control informs me the work has been completed.

In the interests of fairness, I felt it only right to inform my reader of the miracle in Woodbridge. It works – the phone works.

The really frustrating, and bonkers, thing about the whole episode is the fact that the most proactive, reasonable and empathetic part of the BT empire is…….the social media team.

It wasn’t until I left a comment on the BT UK Facebook page last week that anyone seemed to take the matter seriously.

I got a response within hours, a phone call within days (not brilliant, I hear you say, but miles better than what had gone on before) AND a real sense of urgency.

Of course what I should have done is quickly taught my 87-year old mother-in-law how to use a tablet, set up a couple of social media accounts, post on FB and send a few tweets. Oh, and check BT.com for help, as I was told continuously whenever holding for an adviser somewhere on the sub-continent.

It does make you wonder what parallel universe the staff from the customer services departments of these large corporations live in.

Now I know some oldies are incredibly computer literate. I have one old boy I teach who is 89 and does online shopping, scans photos in, emails and checks out people’s houses on Google Street View.

But he is the exception, not the rule. And the sooner BT wake up to that fact, the better. Of course using smart technology is the future but don’t forget the people who have been customers for 50 or 60 years.

My letter dated Thursday, June 25 will be winging its way to BT tomorrow.

BT’s muppetry continues to perplex & annoy

ONNO. OMG. WTF, BT? CSL. LMAO. GTG.

BT update, number 27b. Those muppets are beginning to make Gonzo look like Einstein. As my younger relatives would say – WTF, BT?

You (yes, I mean you) may have read my May 30 tirade about BT telling me that June 15 was the earliest they could send an engineer to move the phone line from one room to another across the corridor at Mil’s residential case home.

Not one to make a fuss, I reluctantly accepted this as we had made arrangements for the phone to stay in the “old” room while it was redecorated and refitted for a new resident.

While it stayed plugged in there, Mil could use her second handset in her room across the corridor, so communication with the outside world was still possible.

Well, dawn broke on June 15 and I was hopeful (honestly) that all would be OK by the end of the day.

Boy, am I deluded or what. Needless to say, things did not go smoothly.

They got the first part of the day’s proceedings correct – disconnect the line in the “old” room.

Unfortunately, that was it. No reconnection in the “new” room. If you called the number, you got a ringing tone. But that’s as good as it got – the phone in the room did not ring and when you picked up Mil’s phone to try and call out, there was no dialling tone.

The words “chocolate” and “fireguard”, in no particular order, come to mind.

As you can imagine, the buck-passing continued, and indeed continues as I write.

More work was needed but “we can’t let you know when this will be done”. How helpful is that.

Then it was “the line will definitely be activated between 8am and 1pm on Monday, June 22”. The word GUARANTEE was even used.

Without meaning to sound too much like a pantomime character, all I can is: “Oh no it wasn’t”.

I got a call at 1.05pm today, June 22. Excitedly, perhaps nervously, I answered the phone and heard the magic (tragic?) words “It’s ********* from BT here” (I’ve hidden his name to save him further embarrassment).

“Is it working,” I asked. “No” he said. “But I see from the report that it will be on June 24 – Wednesday”.

So that’s alright then.

I have already written my official letter of complaint and edited my complete record of the various telephone calls I’ve made over the past five weeks (totalling more than four hours so far). I knew being an old hack would come in REALLY useful one day.

The letter is dated Thursday, June 25. Watch this space.

The self-importance of being an admin type

I bet you didn’t know that beneath this somewhat brash and slightly rotund exterior lies a much softer persona. Yep, it’s me – difficult for my reader to acknowledge, perhaps, but it’s true.

To prove the point, here’s a lovely picture, taken last night (June 16) at Casa Almondo in Suffolk.

A little baby Roebuck and mum, happily munching our hedge. Ahh. How sweet.

I won’t spoil the moment by adding a photo of me lighting the barbeque.

But I digress. The focus of my moan today is any person in a fairly menial, but nonetheless useful, position who becomes too full of their own self-importance.

I call the first defendant/defendants – the receptionist/ receptionists at my doctors’ surgery.

I had to pop in last week to have my follow-up Hep. A jab. I’m now covered for 20 years, which is good news as we are planning to visit Scotland soon.

Anyway, I arrived at the surgery to be confronted by three people on reception - one of them on the phone.

All three ignored me for several minutes, with the one on the phone also drinking a coffee and eating a slice of cake.

One of them eventually spotted me (not difficult bearing in mind my alleged slightly rotund exterior – see opening sentence for reference) and asked if anyone was helping me.

I said no - and the coffee-drinking, cake-munching one, now off the phone, said "How can I help".

So full of their own self-importance. I doubt even Shrek’s donkey would have grabbed their attention, jumping up and down and shouting “Choose me, choose me.”

Mind you, they were pure amateurs compared with the people manning the Dubai car registration department back in the good old days when I first had to deal with them.

Make sure you have all documents you need to renew your annual car registration. Check. Do a double check. Check.

Wait for two or three hours in the department, hoping one of the important paper shufflers deems to call you over. No orderly queueing. Just a case of calling forward whoever took their fancy. Choose me, choose me.

When you did get to hand your paperwork over, it would usually be met with a gruff “need your passport”.

Is that copy or original, sir. “Copy”. OK, I’ll come back tomorrow.

Next day, same scenario, same wait. Then you are called forward – the chosen one. Hand over all the paperwork, including a copy of passport.

“Need your passport.” But you said yesterday a copy. “No, need passport.”

Needless to say, I was never caught out again. Subsequent visits saw me take every conceivable document with me – including my 25 yards breaststroke certificate from 1967 – plus a good book.

Oh the fun we had in the sun.

Always finding strength in the family

We’re going through a rough time at present.

We have lost Fil, Mil is struggling to adjust to her new life without him and we have two other serious health issues in the immediate family.

So, not much different from any other clan, I guess?

However, we are lucky. And I mean really, really lucky. I say that because we all get on – very well, in fact – and are always there to support each other.

I generally act as the family admin. assistant (although I do see myself in more of a supervisory role) because one of the advantages of being retired and in a fairly healthy state of mind is the ability to deal with faceless organisations and bureaucracy.

I’m not after plaudits and I didn’t get a late surprise from the Queen’s Birthday Honours list, although a gong would sit nicely next to my trophy for being a member of the team that were runners-up in the Bishop’s Stortford, Stansted and District Football League, Division 3 cup final in the 1973/74 season. My dad is so proud of me.

But I mention it to emphasise how important it is for families to stick together, keep in regular contact and help out, however and whenever they can.

All this reminds me of a case earlier this year of an elderly man from Enfield who left his £500,000 estate to a builder after cutting out his cousin and two family friends who were expecting to inherit.

They claimed the “private and quiet man” did not know what he was doing in leaving his life savings to a builder friend and asked a Judge to revoke the final will in favour of the previous one.

One of the two family friends said she and her brother had been close to her ‘uncle’ but admitted they saw less of him after their mother’s death.

Her brother, who said he saw Mr Butcher two or three times a year, commented: “My uncle had lots of friends and still came to family parties.”

Ah – such a close knit family.

Or so it seems until I tell you that the body of the elderly gent was found in his home two months after he died in March last year.

For once I’m speechless.

We should tear a strip off these travellers

I guess you will have heard about the 24-year old British woman who has been arrested in Malaysia for posing naked on top of a sacred mountain?

It all sounds a bit bonkers really. After all, it was just a bit of a lark, a prank, a right-of-passage escapade – but one that could end with a young woman in jail.

“She’s pretty scared and quite upset,” said her father. “We really hope they don’t try to make an example of her.”

Well, sorry dad, but I hope they do. I’m not suggesting she should languish in a hellhole prison cell (they are all hell holes outside the UK, aren’t they?) but made an example of – definitely.

You see, I’m getting tired of people misusing the world. By that I mean inexperienced young people not bothering to prepare for a trip to some exotic destination.

In my youth, a visit to Southend on Sea was an adventure.

Abroad meant the Isle of Wight.

Not a great change in culture there, then.

Nowadays, in the words of that great sage Del Trotter, “the world is your lobster, Rodney”.

But as the world has opened up and a gap year means extensive travel in far-flung places rather than some waiting job in south Devon, people seem to be heading off without any preparation.

A’levels, degrees, doctorates, whatever, don’t guarantee common sense.

So, young peoples of the UK, DO SOME RESEARCH.

You spend all your life with a smart phone glued to your ear so use the bl**dy thing to check out your destination on this t’internet thingy.

You may find customs and traditions a bit quaint and outdated but they should always be respected.

Or perhaps buy a decent guide book – and READ IT, don’t just look at the pretty pictures.

In our Dubai days, it was an imprisonable offence to live with someone if you were not married. It still is, I believe. OK, that didn’t stop people doing it but at least they didn’t shout about the situation.

Unlike our naked mountain girl, who probably posted photos of herself on Insectgram or Tracebook or Twatter or some such.

Now tribal elders in Malaysia have called for the case to also go before a native court.

“To appease the mountain protector, the 10 western tourists who stripped and urinated on Mount Kinabalu should be fined 10 head of buffalo, according to local customs,” said Tindarama Aman Sirom Simbuna.

He said the fee was more than the usual fine of 10 chickens or one pig.

“According to local beliefs, the spirit of the mountain is very angry.”

Now that’s what I call proper justice.

Why sticking to yours guns usually pays off

When I was a mere lad, in blogging terms, I had a rant about potholes (February 24). I mentioned, just in passing you understand, that I’d damaged a tyre hitting a pothole on a back road in Suffolk one dark and rainy night and was attempting to get recompense from the County Council, which is the agency responsible for that particular road.

Well, I filled in all the forms, submitted my claim for £99 and sat back to await the arrival of the cheque.

I was fairly confident as the pothole in question had been reported and was on the council’s rather impressive pothole reporting tool online.

However, after about a month I received a letter from the council’s insurers, informing me that they were rejecting my claim as it was “not reasonable to expect them to know about, and repair, every pothole in the county”.

I replied, saying the pothole in question was one the council DID know about, and that “it was only reasonable to expect them to pay me for my new tyre”.

Two weeks later a cheque arrived.

It just goes to show, yet again, that we, the great unwashed, must never roll over if we think we are in the right.

I would guess that the council sends the standard rejection letter out to all claimants. Many will let matters rest there.

And for those who won’t let sleeping potholes lie, they know a payment of under £100 is cheaper for them then a long-running game of letter ping-pong.

The following month, on March 2, I wrote about the World Cup in Qatar and the Premier League and FA’s response to the tournament starting earlier and the knock-on effect on domestic fixtures.

It was headlined “Selling football’s soul to the highest bidder.”

Three months later, with all that is happening at FIFA, only minor changes are needed to make that headline relevant today.

Take the soul out.

Which is something that football’s governing body is doing quite nicely.