Poetry - August 2021

Gold Rush

A magical day in Tokyo looms
As the gold medal rush starts
With no families there to support them
The athletes are in our hearts
They push themselves to the limit
Knowing the best will only do
Breaking personal bests along the way
And maybe getting a medal too
It was the more extreme sports
Where Great Britain did well
Such as BMX racing
Where the lactic acid expiry was hell
And mountain biking with style
Showing the rest how it's done
Whilst the BMX freestyle
Just looked like so much fun
It goes to show you can't reply on one sport
To try and get all the glory
The athletics was in the main a failure
And injuries didn't help their story
As for the rowing, a rethink needed
Because of the medals seeming never
Funding was dropped for other sports
But they pulled themselves togerther
So maybe there's a lesson to be learned
That you can't have a medal given to you
Still need to work really hard
And those that do will come through.

(So many good gold medals for Great Britain at the Olympic Games - and I am sure at the Paralympics too incidentally. It goes to show -work hard, you'll win. Not do so, not so good.)

Apple's Anarchy

So Apple decide to change some features
Not sure if they consulted with vendors
So now a fair bit of software doesn't work
Despite a user's best endeavours
It transpires it's classed as malware
For those working from home
They cannot connect to their VPN
And so to the office they must roam
Eventually the truth came out
That the new update did break the thing
And the vendor scrambles for a solution
Where more co-operation would bring
A more coherent success rate
And keeping faith with the Mac side
But instead users and admins feel betrayed
Because Apple's anarchy isn't on their side.

(Change is good - but change without getting key vendors - not so. Witness the M1 chip and not briefing Adobe on it to make Creative Suite work correctly, for example.)

Avanti's All About Money

In the early days of my travelling
Often between Manchester and London
Virgin Trains would get me there
And the fares would be fair to get down
With an advance structure meaning offpeak
Was affordable for all to go
But since Avanti have taken over
It's all about the profits that they show
I'm not surprised since First are involved
Their track record with buses isn't great
All the things they've done since takeover
Just really made the passengers irate
Changing the ticket website over
Was an unmitigated disaster
With people being pending charged many times
For ticket emails never appearing thereafter
Then there was discount scheme withdrawals
Which meant football fans travelling for less
It was handled ever so badly
Leaving to the site even being more of a mess
Now on a Sunday afternoon to head back up North
It's twice the price it was a couple of years ago
You won't be getting passengers back on board
If the profits are all you are about on show
So for me I'll be taking alternative routes
As their customer service isn't very funny
It reflects the whole ethos of the company
In that public transport is all about money.

(I have to say since Avanti have taken over the West Coast rail services, it's got worse instead of better, with the focus on profit instead of passengers. An absolute shame Virgin were excluded as the service was always good with them to be fair..)

The Clangers

They went round making silly noises
But were affectionately quaintly cute
They looked like little mice in space
They were the Clangers and they were ace!

(Who doesn't love them?)

Poorly Cat Haiku

Brian has been sick
His cat food isn't his fave
Please just get well soon.

(I don't like it when Brian the cat is poorly!)