Catmachine

In the aftermath of the unrest of the summer of 2011 one might be forgiven for thinking that civilisation is collapsing around our ears and that we are facing the end of days. Except that this kind of doomsaying itself is nothing new and has existed for as long as mankind has been keeping records of it. An excellent article in The Economist put it far better than I could and suggested that perhaps Grand Theft Auto is no more responsible for the moral decline in today's youth than Chaplin's early silents were for the Great Depression . If anything such invective merely demonstrates that if one thing is inevitable it's aging. The old will always disparage the young because they are angry about getting old. The answer to " are you getting old or is it crap? " is invariably " You're getting old ". Or is it? I work at the same educational establishment where years ago I studied for a degree. Back then things seemed so much simpler, so much more bl

Like many infuriating things, it happened on a bus. Perhaps I travel on buses too often these days. Given the attitude of the local bus company and the various ways I have been treated by them over the years from outright lying to abusive emails , perhaps I should simply take my custom elsewhere? Easier said than done. They have a virtual monopoly in the area and on days when cycling is not an option (say when the weather decides to drop lakes on the city from a great height or when I have several errands to run either before or after work) what else am I supposed to do? I usually sit upstairs. This is partly a hangover from childhood where not only is sitting upstairs more exciting but also something that inexplicably my parents never wanted to do, and partly because on the whole there tend to be more seats up there. Perhaps some people experience the same disinclination to climb the cramped staircase as my parents did. Sometimes it gets crowded; that's unavoidable. Somebod