taking the rough with the downright abrasive

Even discounting the use of the child's tricycle as an instrument of unnervingness in The Shining there's something odd about abandoned tricycles. It's probably the noise plastic-wheeled things like this make when pedalled erratically along a hard surface, especially when the junior pilot doesn't quite have the control to pedal at an even speed. It's possibly the nails-down-a-blackboard-esque sound of little tiny stones squeaking and scraping underneath the wheels.

One might think that someone able to spell "facilitator" (it being one of their employment-functions) would be able to spell "qualitative", especially in an information-reporting and data-collection sort of department where the word must have to be thought of at least once a day (if not actually written or spoken). One might reasonably expect that such a facilitator would at least know what the word meant. When they don't it becomes extremely hard to treat them seriously. Their facilitation approach was somewhere between the standard treat-like-primary-school-children enthusi-voiced milksoppery and adhesion to the Business Acronym-Lexicon Liking System Abetting Concealment of Knowledge school of believing that people are still impressed by acronyms which doesn't even spell other proper words (ideally one with some connection to the explanation). The acronym-system they were using was anything just another technique of attempting to improve something by breaking a large process down into chunks which needs a useless acronym as much as it needs a logo or patron saint. At least no post-its were involved and only four sheets of flipchart paper were consumed, mostly with reasonably tightly-packed writing after the primary-school-teacher big rounded letters of the facilitator were replaced with the proper writing of boss², who also demonstrated remarkable restraint by saying "Sorry, I'm going deaf in my old age" when they really meant "One of you speak; the rest of you shutthefuckup". A follow-up meeting will take place in a couple of weeks' time to which it will be necessary for me to contribute more for which I shall probably stick to my normal technique of dealing with people who talk when someone else is attempting to speak by freezing in position when interrupted until they shut up. It doesn't get what I need to say said any more quickly but it does highlight the rudeness of the butter-in.

With that meeting taking up half the morning, another taking up most of the afternoon after a pitifully small lunchwalk and doing some of the work the meetings prevented me from completing in the late afternoon after the second meeting there wasn't much early evenng to speak of in which to pop out for a quick run amongst the midges and to eat a limited but quick tea of Coco Pops® before popping back out (passing a car which had mounted and destroyed one of the keep left signs at the Hope Park Terrace/Crescent junction in a manner probably causing little harm to the driver but probably lightly mincing the underside of their car, especially during the dragging-backwards-onto-the-tow-truck process which I didn't have time to stay and watch) to meet some people in a pub to chat about stuff and things. Most informative and enjoyable. so much so that I left slightly too late to buy something for the morning's breakfast or to get any backup pictures in case the few from earlier in the day weren't any good.