Wednesday 26 September 2018

Management Dream



Notes:

- First day as  a new manager
- Big HP office glass box in the middle. Decided not to bags a desk, but hover between the exposed space, with light, near the corridor, and the cave-like space in the middle. Hoping to have us moved some where better.
- Asked team to come up with agreement on what to use for rotas & scheduling by lunchtime - if they came to blows, I'd be excused as it was a first day
- Decided to order printers - discussed options like fan-fold, holes, considered noise - thought it a good plan to find out about my budget, learn how purchasing worked, and find out how noise-averse our neighbours were, and, by this means, who they were, and whether they'd help us move somewhere else.
- Went to find out about site meetings -- delighted to find a manager who said there were several a day, but kept a jar filled with minutes from all those worth knowing about, about six rolls of minutes - said he kept it fairly up to date
- My manager away, broken leg, skiing accident
- Leave out the bit about kangaroos and needing a seprate kanga-bog for the little ones
- Wondered whether to take my team out to lunch, it being the first day, thought about whether it'd be the canteen or local pub, realising either would set all sorts of precedents,. Decided to suggest the canteen, but allow myself to be persuaded the pub would be a better idea, as long as it was informal and not me taking everybody out. The excuse of leaving that to my manager, when he came back with his leg in plaster, seemed sound
- Had wondered if I should start clearing up the area and bags a desk, or if I should find where facilities was and see if they could help (unlikely on the first day, but I'd learn who'd given them the best bribes last year). 
- I wasn't quite sure who my team was, there were various people floating about the area. I hoped that lunch and the group task would sort it out, more or less.

On the merit two-dimensionalality

If you left your tennis racquet out in the rain, without its press, you learnt that being three-dimensional is not always a blessing.

My last tennis racquet was made of ultra-light metal, and strung with plastic, nylon, I think, so you could keep it in the bath, and it'd still work. It didn't even have a cover.

Two books that I prized greatly as a child were volumes I & II of 'How things work'. I think they were a present. I'd have thought they might have been from my mechanically minded uncle, but I think they were more probably from my parents, or brother. Probably my brother.

My uncle once gave me a set of chest-expanders for Christmas. I had no idea that anybody would use such things voluntarily, and still don't understand people who do. I was so disgusted that I didn't, fortunately, probably, even think about how the springs could have been adapted into a trebuchet.

'How things work' were wonderful books. Volume I rather better than Volume II, which seemed something of an afterthought, but they didn't explore the medical, surgical or veterinary worlds much, so there wasn't anything about the making of tennis racquets and what went on at the cat-gut factory. I looked, specially, so I know this, and still don't know if they use(d?) machines or people who were very good with scissors.

Wikipedia tells me they use sheep or goats, rather than cats, something that'd have been hard to find out then. This aside in wikipedia has me wondering 'Lean animals yield the toughest gut', so, if you're going to use somebody's guts for garters, make sure he's not too skinny.

Technological improvement is a wondrous thing, but, somehow, it seems sad that boys of today don't have a chance to think of the relative merits of the four-screw press over the fast-release lever press for racquets, or to wonder what happens at the cat-gut factory.

Thursday 20 September 2018

Plagiarism dream

Told by a fellow student (or senior student, or lecturer) that the professor and head of department have a heard an accusation of plagiarism against me.

It turns out that it isn't. I'm accused of having a book on (by?? - it's a dream, maybe my unconscious doesn't know Socrates didn't write any books) Socrates prominently displayed in my room, but not to have read it - hardly plagiarism, hardly a crime. I protest that there's nothing wrong with that, then the accusation is spelt out in more detail. I've told people about things in the book, as if I've read the book, whilst I've still been reading through it - keeping one chapter ahead of the class, as it's known. This, too isn't a crime.

However, I'm delighted to realise that both the prof. and the head of department (It's not sure why there's an heirarchy here, you'd expect it to be one and the same person, unless it's an aspro) have believed the accusation, believed it is wrong, and also known how it's done. So, I think, in the dream, must have been guilty of it themselves.

On waking I wonder how such a strangely convoluted dream could come about, and how I'd not thought that the lecturer, prof., and head of department may not have done it themselves, but encountered other students that had done it.

Anyway, I clearly felt better to be vindicated, at least in my own mind, and, in the dream, flew (well, an extended floating jump) from the back, at the top of the tiered lecture theatre down to the front in a series of triumphant, sweeping dance-like descending stages - slowing my descent by touching the side-wall, or panelling on the side-wall.

Saturday 15 September 2018

The bunny gardener

The Bunny gardener.

We’d only been waiting a few minutes, when I saw the large, white rabbit walking purposely up the hill, along the pavement, towards us, unaccompanied.

I was with my brother in the small, trim garden. The others had gone ahead to chapel, and, if there was time, we were to join them. I think we were in Wales, at the house of a relative - though not an aunt, as she didn’t look like any of our three aunts. It was a very quiet Sunday morning with nobody about.

The bunny came into the garden, gave us a nod, and started to take care of the most obvious chores, nibbling off a dying branch from one of the rose bushes and dragging it to the heap in the corner that was clearly going to be the bonfire later.

Then he came to look at the provisions we’d laid out for him, clearly satisfied with the milk, carrots and, I think, oatmeal. Then he gave a start, almost gave us a disapproving look, and started looking through one of the bags we’d brought the provisions in with the air of somebody not expecting to find anything.

It suddenly came to me, I remembered out instructions. I said:

‘I’m so sorry! I realise that we didn’t get the mutton kebabs. We’ll get some as soon as we can, and have them ready for you when you come back on….’

‘..Wednesday’, my brother said. I’d not remembered the day.

The bunny stopped looking, and went back to gardening. I don’t think he could speak, but, if he had, it’d have surprised me less than him arriving on his own.

It was, we’d learned, a standard arrangement, you got hold of the bunny, through a ‘phone call, and he turned up at the stipulated time, getting on with the job happily, and extremely efficiently, wanting only to have the right provisions. 

Unusually, he was a carnivorous rabbit, at least to the extent of mutton kebabs.

We went inside, leaving him to work, deciding, without much regret, well, without any, actually, that we were too late to make chapel. We settled down to wait, after having made a note to get the kebabs, and, a few minutes later, everybody came back from chapel.

It was a most vivid dream. The rows of houses, with small front gardens, on each side of the road curving downwards are sharp in my memory, as was the garden of the house itself, with somewhat fussy brick flowerbeds in front of the chocolate-boxy house. It was the chapel, and the general atmosphere, that made me think it must be Wales, though it was very certainly much to smart and affluent to be sad Rhymney.

I’m no fan of dream interpretation, since, more often as not, cigars are just cigars and bunnies, rabbits.

I also know that other people’s dreams are of very little interest, only our own dreams fascinate us.

Still, since this was one of the more outrĂ© dreams I’ve ever had, I thought I’d write it down, whilst I remembered. 

I know why, particularly, I wasn’t keen on going to chapel. When I went, with my mother, in Rhymney, when eleven, I wanted to sing the familiar hymns, but found the hymnbooks impenetrable, being written in Welsh. 

We’ve never had rabbits as pets. I know no bunnies. So I’ve no idea why I dreamt of the bunny gardener, but I’m pleased that I did. Peculiar as it was, it was a most peaceful and pleasant dream.

The oddest thing about it was that I thought it odd that the bunny came to us unaccompanied, usually, in dreams, you don’t question that sort of thing.