Friday, June 11, 2010
Where are the cuts?
Not percolated through to the pages of the 'Society Guardian' yet, where I found the usual entertaining crop of jobs yesterday. I share some samples. You could, for example, aspire to be a CARAT Senior Practitioner. Small prize for working out what that might be without looking it up or being an employee of a qualifying organisation, as they used to say in the small print for competitions on the back of Coco Pops. Failing that, you could go for Debt Advisor for the Royal Benevolent Society (gardening section). Presumably it is a bit like doing Citizens' Advice but with slightly higher grade customers. Distressed gardeners are probably easier to deal with than the distressed drunks who make up at least a proportion of the Citizens' Advice case load. Then there is St. Luke's Healthcare Grouo who need a chartered counselling psychologist. I learn that these people are private sector providers of mental health services. Didn't know such things existed: you have your BUPA's for whipping out a few varicose veins from otherwise healthy young adults, but nothing at the smelly end of the business. Read all about it at http://www.slhg.org/stlukes/ and you will be pleased to learn that they have their investor in people badge.
But if you cheat a bit and go to http://www.slhg.org, you learn that St Luke's is part of the MILD group of companies which seems to be invisible to the usually all-knowing Mr. G. who can only come up with another subsidiary, the Mild Mining Group. See http://mildmining.com/. All very confusing. Maybe they are not related.
Having done the bonsai at St. Mawgan last week, earlier this week we finally made it to Herons Bonsai, a nursery specialising in bonsai which we had come across at least three times in the last year or so. Interesting place, very much a working nursery rather than a showcase, although they did have some flashy stuff. Some of which involved fancy rocks and some of which involved a bit of landscaping and which reminded me of the stuff we saw at the railway modellers exhibition (see April 24), this despite the fact that the bonsai landscaping was mostly live and the railway modelling was entirely dead.
Talking of dead, I was also struck by a morbid streak in the things. Some of them were mostly dead trunk with a few growing twigs. Dead trunk needing to be painted with some special gear so that it did not rot away. Testifying to a fascination with the chancy and transitory nature of life. A more or less dead tree which might or might not spring into life. A more or less live branch which might or might not spring into life in the spring. Or it might join the ranks of the died back. All very Japanese in fact.
I think I have been cured of the bonsai bug. No chance of my spending valuble time on what looks, at close quarters, to be a reasonably demanding and time consuming hobby. Lots of reels of the wire I had noticed at St Mawgan lying around. Lots of watering and pruning. Maybe I would take a different line if I had a swanky modern house, all on one floor with lots of open courtyards (with lots of round gray pebbles and fat koi carp, of course) and colonnades. The sort of place where such things can be shown off properly.
Nevertheless, I shall continue to look out for their stands at flower shows. The exhibition jobs usually impress.
# posted by Jim @ 6:33 AM 
