Saturday, 17 May 2008

I have no Idea what I am doing here

Tuesday: Regional Freight Forum. Dreading it for months because I had volunteered an agenda item, upon which I had to speak and do research. Managed to make it to Taunton, and even to the venue. Finally came to my bit and the research paid off and resulted in support and advice from the forum. Only mild colouring (red). I even networked a bit afterwards instead of sneaking off. I must learn to lock away this shyness business.
Wednesday: Deaf Awareness Training (How does that link with Tuesday? Dont ask me). Which was very informative and entertaining. I can now spell my name in BSL. The faciltator was deaf and also a trained actor which made for great deaf comedy, mainly fairly bawdy. BSL is really not like English, and even American Sign Language is different from BSL (how weird is that?). American and British Sign Language (or Dutch or French or anywhere else) users dont have a common language. What an opportunity missed for a worldwide deaf language). However, Sign language is very flexible, any old gesture that looks like the activity will do for a verb (or so we were told). You have to use your hands, your mouth, your face and your body. I like the phrase for "bullshit": lay your right forearm over the left forearm (hands touching opposite elbows), right hand fingers 1 and 4 raised like horns, left hand hand fingers moving in and out like a 5 fingered octopus.
Thursday: Oh, have I got to go to work? Clearing up emails, Shopmobility stuff, proofreading the Local Transport Plan for it's re-publication in English, eliminating the greengrocer's apostrophe's (see what I did there?), putting sentences into normal non jargonised language.
Friday: substitute for the Boss at Regional Assembly Transport Technical Group in Exeter in the morning. Went to County Hall before discovering it was at the Civic Centre. Jargon, bullshit, rubbish, losing the will to live lalalala I'm not listening and then off at lunchtime to Gravesend for the weekend. I think I once went through Gravesend. I know nothing about it. But we have friends who insist on living there.

3 comments:

Andre Veloux said...

Lets be honest LH, a big wad of text with not a single line break starting with the words "Tuesday: Regional Freight Forum" isn't going to get your readers going is it!!!?

Plymothian said...

It got me going :D

NigelH said...

Yes, I saw what you did there... And I noticed where else you did it, you naughty boy!