Posts

I wonder how on earth it happened?

"Outlaws" is overstating it a bit. I get that it's necessary to use that word in the headline for the awful and obvious in-law/out-law gag, but at no point does poor old Barnet Council say that mother-in-law jokes are against any rules.

Saying "look, be aware that some people might not get this sort of joke and think you are having a pop at them. We're telling you nicely so that you don't have to learn by being told angrily or possibly violently by an irate customer," isn't really the same thing as skipping through our cultural heritage with a big sprinkler of BAN.

Maybe it's just the sheltered life I've led, but while I've seen a handful of bar fights I've never actually seen anyone attempt to use a glass as a weapon. Glass-related injuries while drunk, certainly, but that's not the same thing.

I can see the point of plastic cups for festivals and events where people leave their empties on the ground, forget to take them with them, and loads of people are wandering about not watching where they step. But again, that's not weaponry.

If you were going to remove everything that *might* be a weapon from a bar, you'd have to lose all the stools, fire extinguishers, darts, pool cues, and depending on the bar between 10% and 80% of the clientele.

Although part of me is wondering if there actually is a bar somewhere designed along Wacky Warehouse lines. That could be fun.

That sofa is weighted with the blood of the innocents!

Every supplier I am hiring has made their business accessible, but then, that's why I've chosen them.

So on the day, I will be accommodated like never before. As you say, from start to finish. But this will largely be because (to borrow phrasing from Stavros) the cheeky ******* ******* *****s have already been eliminated.

During the planning process, however... ugh. I think it's bugging me more because it's such a huge thing. Like, if I'm trundling along and I want to go for a cup of tea and have to go past ten inaccessible cafes before finding one I can get into, that's not such a big deal - a pain in the backside and a personal insult, yes, but it's not the end of the world. Whereas the wedding has rather more emotional importance.

Could part of it be pester power? By the sounds of it you opened just in time for the summer holidays, whereas now it's a bit more dismal, fewer people are in 'holiday mode', and I'm sure I'm not the only person who is financially bracing for Christmas.

I think I was most gobsmacked by business attitudes when shopping for my wedding dress. Usually I've found that people's willingness to accommodate me is directly proportional to the amount of money I'm likely to spend, and dresses ain't cheap, so I was quite hopeful.

I phoned every wedding dress shop in a 10 mile radius to ask if they had wheelchair access. One did. A couple of others came out with some bizarre stuff including:
- well, we can get a wheelchair into the front of the store, but not the changing area. Would that be okay? Er, no.
- the only thing upstairs is the sale rail, but that's okay, because you'll only be up there five minutes. (???)
- there is a step, but it's only little. How little? Ummm... oh, it's two steps, about 5 inches each. That is not a little step.
- BOSS?!? I'VE GOT A WHEELCHAIR ON THE PHONE!!! (WTF? It's a clever bit of tech but it doesn't have my phone conversations for me.)

The cake was taken, however, by the shop who:
- claimed to be a listed building and exempt from access legislation.
- but were unwilling to give me their full details so that I could check that with English Heritage, what a surprise.
- suggested I should persuade a bridesmaid to carry my (rather heavy, powered) wheelchair up their steps.
- on being told that wasn't going to happen, got sniffy and told me "well if you're not prepared to make an effort, you won't get a wedding dress, will you?"

Not from them I won't!

(I'm pleased to report that I did manage to find and purchase a stunning dress, now all I have to do is not put on too much weight over Christmas.)

I don't know about 'famous', but one I heard recently that resonated for me was:

"It is worth remembering that the time of greatest gain in terms of wisdom and inner strength is often that of greatest difficulty."
- His Holiness the Dalai Lama

HHDL has a twitter feed, @dalailama, which never fails to bring a little bit of peace and serenity to my day.

I think that maybe since we are mostly smaller businesses, there are many people who fill that role for their company but don't have it as an actual job title.

I got stung by this on my personal account - basically it got almost everyone who was viewing on Twitter's own web page, as the trigger for it to fire (and retweet itself to everyone on your list) was a simple mouseover rather than a click.

A little reminder to anyone who was affected, to manually check that your antivirus software is up to date and then run a full scan right away.

Apparently the first version of the exploit was fairly harmless and just did something stupid to the display of the twitter web page, but because it spread so rapidly and it was fairly simple to see how it worked, several more versions went out that had rather nastier payloads.