Slaughtered

Had a stroke of luck on my journey in by car today. I had decided to go the most direct A52 route and not through Ilkeston because the traffic had been so light recently. Then, as I was coming through Bramcote, I heard on radio that a car had broken down on the A52 at Ockbrook and they were now queuing all the way back to the M1 junction. So just in time I turned right and went through Ilkeston after all. Got to work on time but suspect I wouldn’t have done had I not heard that on the radio.

Needed to be on time today because I had an important project meeting this morning. A couple of people from a new customer of ours had travelled some considerable distance for this meeting. I quickly began to wonder why they had bothered. The meeting could have been over inside ten minutes but we manage to pad it out to around ninety minutes by talking about the weather, football etc. but basically we had little to discuss, as they could not answer any of our questions. At least we have now found out whom we can email those questions to.

Some people just have to do meetings, you know this is going to be the case when their job titles contain too frequent use of the words 'Business', 'Manager' and 'Analyst'. You just know that they've been swallowing textbooks for breakfast rather than corn flakes. Luckily the Business Analyst was female, blonde and attractive (nice eyes, not that I noticed), so the meeting wasn't too arduous. However she has clearly got too much time on her hands. We shall be able to sleep easy tonight in the knowledge that we will have the most comprehensive project plans and schedules, even before we've decided on what the project is.

Somebody who has been making use of her time outside work is a teacher who has been barred from working at an Oldham school after a picture of her pursuing her outside interests appeared in a newspaper. Parents complained, worried that her actions might cause their innocent sons to have the sort of dirty thoughts that all teenage lads minds are full of anyway. The pupil's fathers were presumably a but miffed because Miss Crolla is the kind of teacher they would have liked to have seen bending over in front of class to pick up some stray chalk when they were at school.

The Killers played the Arena last night. I didn't go but I did read a review of it this morning. Apparently it was a good gig but it seems that the Arena is just as disgusting as ever. The chap who wrote the review moans about the combination of tanked-up lads who can't have sense talked into them, and an absence of adequate security. He wasn't amused when some drunk behind him decided to join in 'This River Is Wild' by relieving himself on all and sundry.

I'm sure I've now put L off the Arena for good. Not that I was planning on going there anytime soon and that fact has just ensured it.

Did you know that prior to their recent two gigs in Nottingham the last time The Killers played Nottingham was supporting British Sea Power. Wish I'd seen that.

Get home and go off to dog class with Doggo, which again goes well. Get home and L serves up this murderously hot curry which I'm sure will cause me some painful experiences in the loo tomorrow.

Then we watch BBC3's new 'Kill It, Cook It, Eat It' programme in which participants are invited to watch animals being slaughtered in an abattoir. I'm not sure what the motive of the programme makers is. Probably just ratings but if that was the case I'm surprised they didn't make it more gruesome than it was. Certainly on the evidence of the first program on beef they don't appear to have put anyone off meat, the process came over as all very clinically efficient and performed by skilled staff. Vegetarian and TV presenter Rani Smith didn't do her cause any favours by refusing to watch and therefore removing herself from the debate.

It was, actually, all very interesting. Although the cooking and eating of the meat afterwards was all rather pointless as meat is never consumed that quickly and isn't at its best at that point either. The part I wanted to see was the butchering of the meat to know more about what cuts are what but you didn't see that.

Next up is lamb, and then pork which I imagine is a bit more gruesome as they electrocute pigs. There was apparently supposed to be a fourth on poultry but this hasn't been scheduled. It either's been binned or wasn't made in the first place. Sounds suspicious to me.