the stow life - january 2009

greetings from frosty stow! festivities despatched with & the new year settled into, the flow of email news has resumed & tests the hinterweb's capabilities once more. so its off my jacksy & tippety tappeting to reciprocate with some of ours.

after 9 years of corresponding in this format, this is the retirement edition of the stow life. there are several reasons for this; least of which is that email newsletters are increasingly outmoded in this age of social networking. this very newsletter ceased to be personal when i resorted a number of years back to blind copying it to the growing list of correspondees around the globe, to preserve a small measure of privacy. its been a creative outlet for me & i've immensely enjoyed penning it. as i said to a friend recently on the subject of correspondence, its the story in history (or herstory, if you're that way inclined) that i'm after. other people's, that is. contrary to the law of diminishing returns - because let's face it, my contribution has been infrequent (we'll discount voluminous ...) i got back way more than i gave. your anecdotes, news & views have been pleasurably pored over whilst seated comfortably & more often than not enjoyed with a cup of tea. in much the same way i used to read letters back in the days of snail mail.

there's an altogether more technological reason for a proposed change of format, though. i toyed with titling this edition "h@rvest: a tale of modern derring do". why? you ask. well, if you fancy a tale of true crime do read on ...

in short, spammer determination has won the day. its taken the gloss off email for me anyway. last year my email address was harvested by spammers. its a common enough occurrence, irrespective of the anti-malware precautions one takes, be it firewalls, anti-virus-, anti-spam- or ad-busting. if one uses the internet & has a reasonably busy email address - particularly an enduring one with a 9 year lifespan - its almost inevitable. if memory serves me, authoritative statistics 2 years ago already estimated 90% of all email traffic to be spam.

my predicament first came to my attention when quarantined email from 2 sender addresses appeared in my spam folder. these were from the raona address i use for everyday & a dormant btopenworld domain i last used for business consulting some years back. if neither have yet tried to flog you either porn, penis pumps, viagra, huge breasts, manolo blahniks, replica swiss timepieces or a designer handbag in the past year its probably down to a glitch in spammer technology.

i discounted it as a bit of a joke until my sent emails started bouncing back, rejected by a number of isp mail servers. raona@btinternet's blacklisting is now well underway. its a random & arbitrary process whose pattern i don't fully understand; with some of my emails rejected by some isps sometimes. fortunately (i think?) incoming email to my address seems to be unaffected ... in the past few weeks raona@btinternet appears to be enjoying a temporary reprieve from the technological nous built into the spam mail servers about having exhausted its use. for the time being anyway. be that a cautionary tale.

anyway, under both the avatar raona & my own name i've participated in various social networks & web forums for a some years now. these systems haven't entirely escaped spamming themselves, but do seem to have better safeguards in place than traditional email. they all have some or other form of member communication facility which either mimic or offer alternatives to old fashioned email. so i don't feel completely cut off.

the one generalist social network i've recently made a little more effort with for everyday use is facebook. i'm aware that its usefulness divides opinion, so this is not an evangelising attempt to lure you on to it if you aren't already there. if you are & i've not found you, please feel free to add me as a friend. be gentle if you "poke" me though. i'm not partial to pushing & shoving.

in reflecting on the past year i conclude it has been one of my more memorable ones. that may read somewhat trite, so its apt to qualify it as the step out off the hamster wheel i'm delighted i took. how very satisfying & liberating it has been too. which is not to say that i've all that idle time now that i envisioned whilst in full time employment. on the contrary, its been a challenge to adjust to the non-routine of part-time portfolio working.

with a now virtually unpredictable income of around a fifth of its previous total, i embarked on a spot of domestic social engineering: doing frugal without going without. where previously my indignation at wastefulness could have been described as annoyingly eccentric, the habituation of employing resourcefulness & creativity in utilizing any- & everything has become second nature. that this turn of events dovetailed with the so-called global credit crunch, which has itself dubbed austerity the new black, i'll claim my thrift as fashion. now, if i could just brand it & sell it ...

the enduring british memory of world war ii perplexes & disturbs me. in particular, the glorification of "a good war" in which victory is claimed, irks me. but this credit crunchkin which harkens back to wartime austerity is rather amusing - http://www.fool.co.uk/news/your-money/2009/01/20/the-great-credit-crunch-war.aspx?source=uemfoleml0010038.

whilst i'm loathe to over egg the credit crunchies, its effect has been undeniable. in the two previous years we had more requests to host couchsurfers to the area, & i'm told reliably that the number of ATG walkers dropped considerably last year too. by many accounts the dog grooming sector hasn't escaped (only slightly less so than hairdressing. which oddly enough is the one its performance is commonly benchmarked against ...! in my limited experience, its more comparable with a veterinary welfare service.) the volume of business i've enjoyed has been less than i had anticipated, although adequate for the income i require from it & commensurate with my investment of time in it. that said, i've also responded to local demand for some dog walking & dog sitting, albeit it on a very limited scale.

in amongst the mix of correspondence i enjoyed last year, i endured for a time what became a tide of viral less desirables. in the lead up to the us elections these amounted to unadulterated bigotry bordering conspiracy theory. i felt compelled to respond to the unbearability of the religiously themed pious platitudes imploring me to choke the internet with godly wishes or suffer supernatural consequences. my very limited tolerance for any of the variety of gods you may have tried to peddle was exhausted; one god is one too many for me. depending on the veracity of your righteousness you may therefore have found yourself on the receiving end of my opinion. if so & if you must, its your prerogative to take offence. our secular festive greetings were less personally directed but childishly cathartic. religious belief is one of a number of subjects i take an avid interest in. but its an intellectual one. you're welcome to keep the faith.

callan reached mid-teenhood on boxing day. her hard earned title of teen idle officially became redundant two days before then, when her labour was snapped up by the local cinema - the only cinema, that is. at the bargain price of the (barely) minimum wage for 16 year olds. i'm as reluctant however, to re-christen her teen toiler as she is to admit to rather enjoying the job. this despite trying to avoid being offered it, on the basis that all the other jobs offer higher pay to 16 year olds. to her chagrin, those jobs weren't on offer on this occasion. oh, there is also (only) one perk; free entry to movies. whilst she hardly whistles while she works, she is delighted to be remunerated a sum which affords her some financial independence which she craves. much needed it is too, given that her monthly allowance stopped when she came of age. she has proven an adeptness for withdrawing the modest savings deposited monthly in her name over the past 10 years. i'm hoping the novelty will wear & that she'll be less so when she's toiled for the lucre herself.

her prelim exams start next week. it'll be a tooth grinding wait to see whether her confidence in her abilities is justified. i am hopeful this will be less agonising & tearful than the confusion which accompanied the receipt of last summer's standard grade results. bearing the surname anderson - scotland's most common - & the same initial as her classmate calum, doesn't excuse the qualifications authority's blunder. she seems determined to kill a pre-uni year at college acquiring some more education. or opportunities for socialising even. her leanings are toward the social sciences; politics & law specifically. she was very inspired by the goings on at the scottish parliament on a recent modern studies field trip with one of scotland's more constructive & tireless politicians, jeremy purvis, who represents the scottish borders region we live in. there has been discussion about her seeking an internship - paid or unpaid - to build up some experience, pending the outcome of her higher grade qualifications over the summer.

in pioneering spirit the very parochial scottish borders was the first region to survive britain's digital switchover. the analogue broadcast signal was switched off on 6 october. amid some confusion, the expected drone of whining about change & in spite of extensive publicity in the two years preceding it the deed is done. the plethora of choice about which of the many digibox devices was the hardest for some, whilst once decided, the array of configurations with one's existing household entertainment gadgetry stumped others. the local newspaper carried a lengthy article about valiant campaigning efforts to halt this latest progress. the 11 word headline about the story, starting with "borderers complain ..." was, i thought amusingly verbose. the first two laboured the point. having acquired some sky satellite boxes some years back & availed ourselves of the freesat from sky service, post-switchover we switched to the terrestrial freeview service which stow is now eventually able to receive. by this stage well into thriftiness, i freecycled our sky boxes for freeview boxes. if you're unfamiliar with the worldwide grassroots freecycle movement, i encourage you to give your local group a try. prepare to be amazed at the stuff that changes hands.

indulged in any culture of late? i look forward to your reviews. we've long subscribed to lovefilm's dvd rental service for a lengthy list of must see movies. phil is skeptical of some of my choices, dismissing them as arthouse or artless. very convenient it is too to slob it out in the comfort of one's home. phil, callan & i took ourselves off to the festival theatre in edinburgh to be enthralled by derren brown performing illusions & psychological trickery. he's very funny, even better in the flesh than on the tellybox. if you're unfamiliar with his work & enjoy oddity his blog is a good intro - http://derrenbrownart.com/blog/.

on the reading front, which has been a little neglected of late, a handful of more memorable reading:
* rory stewart's unorthodox insights about his walk across afghanistan in 2002 in his travel memoir the places in between.
* the cartoonist martin rowson's beautifully written & very funny family memoir stuff.
* & sticking with martin rowson (i'm a convert) - his short, sharp polemic the dog allusion. for god lovers curious about their beliefs, if they can tear themselves away from holy books. its also has a chapter about dogs ...
* joe bageant's oddly titled but scarily serious deerhunting with jesus. a phil acquisition whose title caught my eye. it got a decent review in the sunday times too. it drew me in to the very last page. extremely insightful about american politics; left & right both.
* joe bennett's where underpants come from. his quest to understand the new china, from the perspective of all the stuff it produces for the rest of the world's consumption.

its now 7h30 & pitch black outside. a teen is stirring in the next room. i'm looking forward to spring. the dogs look forward to another half hour under the duvet.