Welcome to my

 

What’s the deal with…? Section

 

Every few days I post a new one for people to read and understand.

 

Today’s topics are:-

Boscastle

Bluetooth Headsets

 

What’s the deal with Bluetooth Headsets?

 

I got my new mobile phone recently, and the salesman on the other end of the phone was trying to persuade me to buy a Bluetooth headset. I already have one but timewaster that I am I felt the need to waste his time. I asked him what I would need a Bluetooth headset for. A Bluetooth headset is an ingenious device that allows you to use your phone without wires over a specialist wireless service called Bluetooth. As long as you are within 10 metres of your phone the sound is crystal clear.

 

I then went on to explain to him that it would be of no use to me as I am a cyclist and not a driver, to which his response was, “oh, it’s great if you’re a cyclist! You no longer need to pull over to the side of the road to answer a call. Real convenient like.”

 

Right, OK. So I need one hand to put it on my ear, one hand to answer my phone, one pair of eyes to see my phone, one pair of eyes on the road, two hands on the crossbars and one hand to turn the thing on. So, if I had five arms and hands and four eyes, not including the pair I already need in my arse to see the transit van that’s about to run me down, then yes, it would be very, very convenient.

 

Now hold on, a device on which you can make a telephone call, without wires, with fairly good quality… I’ve already got one of those, it’s called a mobile phone, and you don’t need to be within ten metres of anything to use that.

 

In actual fact wearing a Bluetooth headset then only serves one purpose, as a status symbol. However, through my cynical eyes, the only purpose it serves is as an advertisement to the yobs down the road that it is worth mugging you as your phone must be good if the peripheral dangling from your ear is anything to go by.

 

What’s the deal with Boscastle?

 

I’m not much of a philosopher, but my understanding of things is that, every now and then God deals you an extremely bad hand. That’s when you pick yourself up and dust yourself off, brace yourself and prepare for the next challenge. That’s life.

 

A friend of mine has recently been down to the south-west at around about the same time as I did last weekend. We discussed what we would be doing. We didn’t meet up as he was staying in Newquay and I was staying in Plymouth. We discussed what we were doing on our respective visits. I was seeing family he was just on holiday.

 

I called him on Monday saying I could see the new Eurofighter plane flying majestically over Plymouth. Soaring, ducking and weaving with unbelievable displays of aerobatics as it pierced the Plymouth sunrise sky line. The naval parades of different nations marching through the streets of my naval hometown, each displaying an ambience and charm and bringing its culture forth in a pleasant and diversifying way. He told me though that he’d been doing something far better. He went to Boscastle for the day.

 

This surprises me. I’ll be frank, I cannot get to grips with it. By the way if you don’t know the Boscastle story, Click Here.

Anyways, after what’s happened it is now within the top five tourist destinations in Cornwall. Hold on, that can’t be right. It has a flood, due to not building good flood defences, it gets partially swept into the sea, and now it’s a huge tourist destination? All the villages in Cornwall must have been saying in church the next week “Please Lord deliver us a flood, so that we may see riches upon riches.”

 

It does have the museum with the largest collection of witchcraft materials in Europe. The witchcraft museum however, you’ll be sad to know, survived in tact.

 

The day that the floods came HM Coastguard reported that they managed to rescue 55 people. All of them escaped without injury. That is worthy of applaud as it is a truly remarkable feat, the men who did that were braver than I ever could be. What is even more remarkable is that the BBC managed to fly in 35 to Boscastle by “other means”. I want to know who organised that, so I can hire him as a project manager.

 

By the way, take this piece of advice from me. It was a poor, boring Cornish village before, now it is a rich, boring Cornish village. If only everyone was able to profiteer from disaster in quite the same way.

 

What’s the deal with Bush (George W.)?

 

On the subject of profiteering from disaster, did you know that his approval ratings were the lowest of any American President (with the sole exception of Richard Nixon) since records began, prior to September 11th 2001.

 

Nope, I’m not even gonna go there.

 

I’ll be back in a few days with some fresh material.