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Humanity’s greatest achievement
By Will 2 months ago, No Comments; be the first!
“Cricinfo and the Major League baseball site, mlb.com, are two of humanity’s greatest achievements.”
It’s a fair comment from Andy Zaltzman (yes, it was made with tongue firmly in cheek).
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An ugly world
By Will last year, at the end of November, 3 Comments »
Regulars will know of my propensity to rant about life’s annoyances, so for those who don’t enjoy them, you might best switch off now because I’ve a cracker here.
Me and a colleague went to our local (where, incidentally, I had my first ever pint as a spotty teenager) for a post-work beer this evening. Popped outside for a cigarette where we saw this pensioner in his 70s fall/trip/collapse on the pavement outside. Several people surrounded him and heaved him up, and it turned out he was clearly worse for wear and possibly a little senile. So we parked him inside the pub on a chair as he couldn’t stand up, and I sat down for a chat with the old bloke. He was blotted but harmless and obviously lonely, ranting about his wife (”she watches TV for hours and hours“), and after 10 minutes I made tracks.
But not before chatting to the barman to ask him if he’d keep an eye on the old guy. “But,” he stuttered, “people will think we served him”. I assumed he was joking, but he said it again. “It doesn’t look very good, you know?”
I was utterly flabbergasted. “So if a 70-year-old man collapsed on the pavement, you’d do nothing to help?”
“No, I’d leave him be. Nothing to do with me,” he said.
I was speechless and a little bit mortified that anyone can be that inhumane. Especially someone lucky enough to be working in this country. Who cares if people think he was getting drunk in their pub? Fortunately another barman who had half an ear on our remarkable conversation agreed (as any normal person would) to look after him, and as I left another bloke sat down with the old drunk to make sure he was ok.
Staggering, if not altogether surprising, and pretty depressing. Hot tip: don’t fall over outside The Ram in Hammersmith or you might be trod on by a foreign barman.
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