Saturday, September 03, 2005
Read and learn stuff...how to poach an egg I was surprised by the winning technique. Reckon I'll try it soon as this is a topic I have studied before and yet not mastered. I asked friends, friends that can cook, checked on the internet and yet I still couldn't do it.
Friday, September 02, 2005
White men find, Black men loot.
For those of you that think America is one big rich united nation, here's your proof, it's not! They're not bothered about the poor people, especially the poor black people. They spent all their cash already on other stuff. I mean I know this is an unprecedented natural disaster in the US but the response to the Tsunami was ten times better than this and the Tsunami was ten times worse. Why are other nations having to offer aid to the US who have more food, and resources than anyone else? It's only a few hrs in a plane to major metropolitan areas or a even by boat. The federal government have shown their true colours a little too blatantly as they should be sending evacuation vehicles en masse to the area regardless of cost. I think the sheer size of the US is affecting the reaction as people are viewing it as a remote problem down in the ghetto and is something to just watch on the news. If this happened in New York or LA you can bet that everyone would be safe by now.
Laugh or sympathise...it's up to you
A few years ago when I lived in Armley I was upstairs in the bathroom taking a leak when I started to feel quite faint. Before I could do anything about it I woke up on my back with the bathroom window smashed and my trousers round my ankles. I'd blacked out, fallen forward and nutted through the glass, then fallen back onto the ground with a fairly hefty thud. I remember hearing people rushing upstairs and thinking, crap, I'd better get me kecks back on sharpish. Well anyway, it just happened again but this time I nutted the wall and the cistern but didn't black out fully. Feel a bit queasy now but obviously I figured it was amusing enough to document for future use.
A few years ago when I lived in Armley I was upstairs in the bathroom taking a leak when I started to feel quite faint. Before I could do anything about it I woke up on my back with the bathroom window smashed and my trousers round my ankles. I'd blacked out, fallen forward and nutted through the glass, then fallen back onto the ground with a fairly hefty thud. I remember hearing people rushing upstairs and thinking, crap, I'd better get me kecks back on sharpish. Well anyway, it just happened again but this time I nutted the wall and the cistern but didn't black out fully. Feel a bit queasy now but obviously I figured it was amusing enough to document for future use.
Monday, August 29, 2005
Arena Crew
Working at the Leeds Festival is no easy gig. I did three 8 hr shifts on the external gate to the camping ground. My first shift and first ever experience of doing this was on Thursday when they opened the camp ground at 9am. I was the supervisor of four lovely scottish girls from Aberdeen and a couple of "floaters" from i don't know where. They were all great and we had the people flowing in nicely. It was so busy that the time went by quite fast and before too long we had the queue down to a 5 min wait. The main problem for me as supervisor is I had to hear all the blagging and also send the people who'd made genuine mistakes packing. I was a bit too soft a couple of times but I'm a sucker for intelligent audacity. Two girls were giving me a story about how their tickets weren't going to be ready until tomorrow but they had letters showing that they had made the purchase. I wasn't letting them in but then they said we could just get our friend in there to bring out two tickets and you can't stop us from going in. Strictly speaking I could have stopped that as I had several mean security guards to back me up but as it was so busy and they were taking up too much of my time I let them "sneak in". The best thing was seizing the stuff that people tried to sneak in. At first I felt sorry for people as we confiscated their 24 bottles of Stella but after a few hrs it became fun to watch their faces drop and their shoulders sag on the news that the heavy assed crate of beer they had just dragged half a mile across the parking area was to be taken away or taken back to the car. The intelligent ones dropped out of the queue and went and transferred it all into plastic but the dumb ones let Security take it.
Day 2 was the shame shift but as pretty much all the weekend campers were already on site it was pretty quiet.
Day 3 was my night shift and was quite different to the day shift. I was given 3 skinny little students as my stewards for the 1 - 9am shift. This wasn't a problem for the first 4 hrs as I had a very keen security guard with me. He was very keen on enforcing the rules to their entirity and made several people leave that I probably would have let on. He wouldn't even let people round the corner to get water. It was good job he was keen though as he was with 2 Chinese guys who were more interested in trying to sleep than doing any kind of enforcement. I discovered that at these events the security staff work incredible hours. Over four or five days they can only get about 12-16 hrs off sometimes. They're only supposed to do 12 hr shifts but some of them are doubling up because the money is so good. They then go and get 4 hrs shut eye before doing the same again. Anyhow, the highlight of my security career was at about 5am when a fight broke out at my gate. My security guard had wondered off into the car park so I had to handle it myself. I tried to break it up verbally but it was an irate girl attacking a guy absolutely screaming with range. I pushed them apart and told her to walk away but she charged at him (through me) swinging punches. I pushed her away again and shouted "walk away" at her and moved the guy away from the gate. As I was trying to direct him away he said "don't touch me" and pushed me. This was a mistake as the full caffeine security who drive round in Land Rovers in packs wearing full military fatigues saw this and charged up in their vehicle. They chased him into the car park and I couldn't really see what they did to him. I saw the fella with his shirt off and I think he got ejected from the site. I must admit it was a little bit of a buzz and certainly made the night shift more memorable. It's crazy what kids will do to see a rock concert. I had one young lad probably under 18 who arrived at 3 am and wasn't allowed in. He'd been dropped off by his friends and had nowhere to go but we couldn't let him in either. He ended up sleeping under a tree in the car park until I let him in at 7am an hour earlier than I was supposed to. The last 3 hrs of the shift from 6-9am were absolute torture. I think it was because it became light and my body got confused. I felt quite sick for a couple of hours and if I sat down I kept having those 1 second narcoleptic moments. I ended up spending 95% of the shift standing up whilst my 3 student friends did the opposite. When the shift finally ended I was so happy and drove home to sleep. I was so tired the next day that I didn't go back to the festival at all. Now one day later I still feel a bit odd but I think I made the right decision as I've saved £130 and got to see a few new bands and some old ones. I'm not sure I'd do it again unless I had a friend with me but I did have some good conversations with other stewards and it was good to get out of the house and out of the car. If anyone wants to sign up for next year let me know!
Working at the Leeds Festival is no easy gig. I did three 8 hr shifts on the external gate to the camping ground. My first shift and first ever experience of doing this was on Thursday when they opened the camp ground at 9am. I was the supervisor of four lovely scottish girls from Aberdeen and a couple of "floaters" from i don't know where. They were all great and we had the people flowing in nicely. It was so busy that the time went by quite fast and before too long we had the queue down to a 5 min wait. The main problem for me as supervisor is I had to hear all the blagging and also send the people who'd made genuine mistakes packing. I was a bit too soft a couple of times but I'm a sucker for intelligent audacity. Two girls were giving me a story about how their tickets weren't going to be ready until tomorrow but they had letters showing that they had made the purchase. I wasn't letting them in but then they said we could just get our friend in there to bring out two tickets and you can't stop us from going in. Strictly speaking I could have stopped that as I had several mean security guards to back me up but as it was so busy and they were taking up too much of my time I let them "sneak in". The best thing was seizing the stuff that people tried to sneak in. At first I felt sorry for people as we confiscated their 24 bottles of Stella but after a few hrs it became fun to watch their faces drop and their shoulders sag on the news that the heavy assed crate of beer they had just dragged half a mile across the parking area was to be taken away or taken back to the car. The intelligent ones dropped out of the queue and went and transferred it all into plastic but the dumb ones let Security take it.
Day 2 was the shame shift but as pretty much all the weekend campers were already on site it was pretty quiet.
Day 3 was my night shift and was quite different to the day shift. I was given 3 skinny little students as my stewards for the 1 - 9am shift. This wasn't a problem for the first 4 hrs as I had a very keen security guard with me. He was very keen on enforcing the rules to their entirity and made several people leave that I probably would have let on. He wouldn't even let people round the corner to get water. It was good job he was keen though as he was with 2 Chinese guys who were more interested in trying to sleep than doing any kind of enforcement. I discovered that at these events the security staff work incredible hours. Over four or five days they can only get about 12-16 hrs off sometimes. They're only supposed to do 12 hr shifts but some of them are doubling up because the money is so good. They then go and get 4 hrs shut eye before doing the same again. Anyhow, the highlight of my security career was at about 5am when a fight broke out at my gate. My security guard had wondered off into the car park so I had to handle it myself. I tried to break it up verbally but it was an irate girl attacking a guy absolutely screaming with range. I pushed them apart and told her to walk away but she charged at him (through me) swinging punches. I pushed her away again and shouted "walk away" at her and moved the guy away from the gate. As I was trying to direct him away he said "don't touch me" and pushed me. This was a mistake as the full caffeine security who drive round in Land Rovers in packs wearing full military fatigues saw this and charged up in their vehicle. They chased him into the car park and I couldn't really see what they did to him. I saw the fella with his shirt off and I think he got ejected from the site. I must admit it was a little bit of a buzz and certainly made the night shift more memorable. It's crazy what kids will do to see a rock concert. I had one young lad probably under 18 who arrived at 3 am and wasn't allowed in. He'd been dropped off by his friends and had nowhere to go but we couldn't let him in either. He ended up sleeping under a tree in the car park until I let him in at 7am an hour earlier than I was supposed to. The last 3 hrs of the shift from 6-9am were absolute torture. I think it was because it became light and my body got confused. I felt quite sick for a couple of hours and if I sat down I kept having those 1 second narcoleptic moments. I ended up spending 95% of the shift standing up whilst my 3 student friends did the opposite. When the shift finally ended I was so happy and drove home to sleep. I was so tired the next day that I didn't go back to the festival at all. Now one day later I still feel a bit odd but I think I made the right decision as I've saved £130 and got to see a few new bands and some old ones. I'm not sure I'd do it again unless I had a friend with me but I did have some good conversations with other stewards and it was good to get out of the house and out of the car. If anyone wants to sign up for next year let me know!
