Friday 10 January 2014

Wiki irony? Wiki deadpan?

Reading the Wiki page for the US/UK counterculture of the 1960s, we come across this item:

The availability of new and more effective forms of birth control was a key underpinning of the sexual revolution. The notion of "recreational sex" without the threat of unwanted pregnancy radically changed the social dynamic and permitted both women and men much greater freedom in the selection of sexual lifestyles outside the confines of traditional marriage. With this change in attitude, by the 1990s the ratio of children born out of wedlock rose from 5% to 25% for Whites and from 25% to 66% for African-Americans

Which does strike me as funny - intentionally or otherwise. I don't think the following precis is unfair:

Sex "without the threat of unwanted pregnancy" permitted people much greater freedom in the selection of lifestyles outside marriage. Thus the ratio of children born out of wedlock at least tripled.

Not sure how much more obvious I can make it.

Wednesday 8 January 2014

Tony and Toni

My town has it's own bus company, that hasn't been subject (yet) to a takeover by one of the bigger operators. That's probably quite something in this day and age. A fellow I know called Tony worked there for most of his life.

I hadn't seen him for a while but he came to chat today as I busked - this is one of the reasons why I so love what I do,  surely one of the most pleasantly sociable jobs in the world. He'd worked with that same company for for 42 years - 42 years - most or maybe all of his working life. People used to do this sort of thing. He perhaps went to work there as a boy of 18 - maybe 16. Was his first job to make people tea, and endure the jokes of the older drivers? He himself was a driver for a while.

He was promoted, a step at a time, and worked in all areas. As a manager he seemed keen to muck in when someone was ill, or something needed doing. Once we phoned the company for news about one service and it was he who answered the phone "Yes" he said "we're running a service, if you can call it that"  Nowadays, we live in an age of cover-my-ass experts, but he was so gloriously tactless - saying things that noone would ever dare to say now. I like to think that the reason he got away with it was because he was what people are pleased to call a 'character'. Whenever I saw him there was always something going on around him - usually laughter.

I was rather pleased today, when he came to chat. "42 years" he said as he turned away, "so many memories" I watched him go, and wondered about this. I've never been able to stand even 10 years in one job. When I did I saw the depths of human small-mindedness. We were all so bored - yet here was a man who made the best of his work with one company for all those years.

As I watched him walk down the street with his wife, I wondered why more people couldn't be like Tony. But then I guess if they were, he wouldn't have been so special.

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I tend to have coffee in town several times a week - sometimes as much to warm up as anything else. It's always a small latte and it's always in the same coffee shop, where Toni works. She's occasionally made my coffee for a few years now. She's pretty, of Italian ancestry (but speaks with no accent), and unfailingly friendly and kind.

I don't know about you, but that she stays so polite every day seemed like an achievement worthy of note to me.

Toni is leaving her place of employ tomorrow. I bought her some flowers - something I rarely do - with a note inside. I didn't tell her, in it, how much her kindness has meant to me. It wouldn't do, I think, to tell her how much I love her, and how I'll miss her.

I don't know what sort of love it is. At my age, perhaps one ought to. But there it is, and she's leaving. How I am going to find another person like this, I do not know. It's a feeling I'm accustomed to. Some people leave a big hole when they move on. I hope I see her again. Soon.