pumpkinstrokemarrow

Amid the general gloom in the world according to the DT, there is a little ray of sunshine. Two rays in fact, in the form of job opportunities for the regulation industry. Firstly, on the best available medical evidence (paid for at public service contractor band 9b rates, plus first class travel and subistance), serious consideration is being given to extending the no smoking regulations (themselves tacked onto some other bit of health legislation. I forget which) to cover those miscreants who wear smoke contaminated clothes in public places. As before, this is defined to include any vehicle, including one's own, being used for getting to or from work or in the course of work. Another morsel for the lawyers that write this stuff and the herds of others who enforce it.

Secondly, even more serious consideration is being given to extending diversity regulations to include class. So that, if I get sacked for wearing smoke contaminated clothes at work (for example), I can take my employer to the tribunal on the grounds that he only did it because I went to Eton. Persons of colour were left alone. What is good is that this is a very inclusive proposal. In the olden days, generally speaking, large sectors of the population couldn't play. I couldn't do the one sort of sex discrimation if I was straight. At least I could in theory but it never seemed to work out in practise. I couldn't do the other sort of sex discrimation if I was male. I couldn't do race discrimination if I was white. But now, under these new proposals, anyone can play the class discrimination thing. He did me because he was working class and I came from Eton. He did me because he came from Eton and I am working class. He did me because we are both middle class and he has got quotas to fill. And furthermore, I fully expect class to be defined in some very tricky way which requires the services of zillions of lawyers to test the various tricky angles in court. Justice must be seen to be done.

Much more important though, yesterday was the day for hunt the clock (failed). I had decided that I needed to be able to see the time when watching telly, or when waiting to watch telly, and that the clock sitting on top of the electric fire did not qualify. Thin gold hands on a black ground not visible from six feet. So we decided to take advantage of the dying days of the excellent Kingston shopping bus to hunt the clock in Kingston. Where found that, despite the huge numbers of young people being processed through art and design courses of one sort or another, design has not percolated through to the clock factory. We made a proper hunt of it, visiting Heals, Bentalls, John Lewis and TK Maxx amongst other establishments - but found standards to be poor. Many of the clocks were far too big to put in our extension. Others were ugly. Some looked cheap and some were cheap. We will have to go to the big town to see what can be done there. Or maybe we will settle for a retro alarm clock, with clockwork, and sit it on a nice oak niche to be attached to the wall. Bit like the sort of thing one might otherwise sit a devotional statue or a crucifix in.

Also thought that the designers who designed the Bentall centre were a bit of a mixed lot. You can sit in the shiny new Bentall's cafe on the second floor and look down the length of what amounts to a 20th century version of a cathedral; the differance being that it is devoted to mammon rather than the divine. On the large scale, well done. A big space, long and high, with an impressive roof and with enough variation - for example, in the postitioning of stairs and escalators - to make it interesting. But the detailing very weak, especially of the mock stone cladding. The man - or woman - had no idea at all about that sort of thing. And worse still outside, from where the whole thing is clumsy, big and ugly.

Another bunch of designers had had some fun at the new Holiday Inn which we inspected at Chessington, on alighting from the shopping bus on return. I had noticed it on the way out and thought it rather good for a hotel, with the exception of the porch which was a bit too big - although it did serve to take the eye away from the world of adventure sheds to the side. But now we went inside to find that the ground floor public areas had been zoo/jungle themed. So the porch was lined with bamboo. There were various animal flavoured sculptures dotted about. Various large pot plants. A vaguely zebra flavoured colour scheme; lots of dark wood and leather. All looked rather well in the electric light, although it might have looked rather silly by daylight. Perhaps the place has been arranged so that that never happens.

Now my experience of eating at Holiday Inns has not been that good - boring, adequate and dear. Notwithstanding, we have promised ourselves that we will give the jungle restaurant a go. I wonder if it has caught on as a night spot for the up and coming Chessingtonian youth yet?

In sum, the hunt failed to turn up a clock. But we did buy a thirty year old second hand table, all the way from G-plan, remarkably like the one we have already. And we did buy a hundred and thirty year old Prescott on Peru, in two volumes with five maps. (I vaguely remembered that there was something odd about the chap, so checked with Wikipedia which tells me that he was nearly blind having been at the receiving end of a bread roll when young. At least (A) Huxley was nearly blind for a more respectable reason). And, furthermore, we very nearly achieved a first: buying a book at TK Maxx. A natty facsmile paperback picture book of Egyptian antiquities. About the size of a Penguin paperback but two inches rather than half an inch fat. Name began with T and sounded German but the thing apparently originated in France in the 19th century. Very tempted at £4.99 but managed to restrain myself.