Has Reading Got Talent?

For the sixth year (since the contest started), I was at Reading's Broad Street Mall with my camcorder filming "Has Reading Got Talent 2013" last weekend.

My job is to record snippets (50 seconds) of each of the 70 - 80 or so quarter finalists acts, a little more of the 40+ semi finalists acts and all of the ten finalists acts. This normally means two full days sat/stood in front of the stage on the Saturday and Sunday...but that's the easy part!

Because the camcorder I use for the talent contest uses DV tape, if I record eight hours of footage that's exactly the time it takes to move it from tape onto my computer ready to edit. Then it takes approximately an hour per half hour of footage to create a first edit, and double that to arrive at a reasonably finished project.

Once the encoding starts, I can add on another day before the footage, in web or DVD format, is ready to go out.

Needless to say I make a huge loss on the talent show each year. The shopping centre simply doesn't have the budget to pay me what the time and effort demands - yet I really don't care!

I enjoy doing it, despite moaning about standing or sitting about all day, despite the job jamming up two computers for almost a week afterwards...

I've worked for Broad Street Mall for over a decade, running their website, filming their events and producing the odd piece of artwork. I like the people and I like being involved.

The centre manager, Steve Fawke, will be leaving soon for pastures new and I for one will be sad to see him go. Having sweated over this years talent show filming and editing I hope the new centre manager chooses to continue with the show and to use my services...

...although I will make one concession, next year I will use my super huge professional camcorder that records onto CF cards.

Bus or Bust

Okay, you need the next bus into town to avoid missing a an important meeting and you’re making your way to the stop, around the next corner. You can hear a commotion going on  - a male and female voice - and it’s becoming clear you’re walking towards it. Sure enough, you round the corner and a fully-fledged row is going on between boyfriend and girlfriend. She’s accusing him of cheating on her and he’s saying he didn’t, but is trying to control her flailing arms, pushing her back against the bus shelter. She’s telling him to get the F**k off and he’s screaming back, right in her face. The whole thing appears to be escalating and unfortunately you are the only other person in sight.

What do you do?

 1.    Continue to the stop and pretend you can’t see/hear what’s going on three feet from you.

 2.   Turn around, miss the bus and the important meeting, all on account of these two idiots.

 3.     Intervene, asking them to realise where they are – and risk them both turning on you.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. What did I do?  I took option 1. – but stood outside the shelter to give them more room.

What happened? They were oblivious to me until the girl pushed the boy into me. Did I react? No! Did he apologise? No. 

In fact, she pushed him again and this time he stepped back onto my foot, at which point I said ‘Ow!’…at which point the girl rounded on me and asked ‘what the f**k was my problem?’

I shook my head, saying nothing. The girl took that, not as a sign of submission but of disrespect and she was about to step forward and hit me when her boyfriend held her arms – and the bus turned up. Relief!

They continued bellowing at each other during the fifteen minute trip and although I managed to sit at the opposite end of the bus and avert my gaze, the girl made to come towards me on no fewer than four occasions, still convinced I was ‘dissing’ her.

I made my appointment but it didn’t go well. I was in the wrong frame of mind. I also had a large scratch on one of my expensive shoes where they’d been trodden on. That was the first time I’ve used a bus in years, and the last. 

Reading buses are great but no-matter how good the transport, the method stinks.

Aggressive Bureaucracy

I bought a moped in 2001. It was a 50cc Peugeot and I wanted it for tripping in and out of Reading. It saved me a lot of money - not having to pay for car parking each time I went to see a client – but before the year was up I was getting busier and busier and having to take more files or equipment in with me and the bike just wasn’t big enough. That, coupled with the fact I gained a free parking concession and the bike became redundant. We moved house at the time as well and the bike went up into the shed.

Life overtook and rolled forward to 2011, whereupon my son turned sixteen. The moped became of interest to him and we unearthed it from the shed for the first time in a decade. Both tyres had rotted, the engine had no compression, (we later discovered the rollers had flattened and the cone gone rusty)… but the bike was otherwise spotless and had just 1500Km on the clock.

We took it to a specialist and had all the work done. By the end it ran as good as new. I had it Mot’d and insured for my son and was told the MOT would alert the DVLA to the fact the bike was back on the road.

I was very happy for my son, who proudly rode it to and from school.

Then, after ten months of doing so, he called me up at 4pm after school one day in a panic. His bike wasn’t where he left it. He was in a state. By the time I got to him he had recovered enough to enter the office building adjacent to where he parked and asked to view their cctv. It clearly showed his bike being lifted into a van by a DVLA van.

Okay, it took a few moments to register but I realised I hadn’t ever received a notification from DVLA regarding road tax and that I hadn’t done anything about it. (Before anyone starts screaming ‘heard it all before’, ‘Likely story’ and so on, I would add that road tax for the bike was £15. I have two large cars, which incur road tax charges of £490.00 apiece … so I’m not likely to worry about £15 for a scooter).

After making calls, I discovered the bike had been impounded in Reading and by the time we got there it was 4.45pm. I spoke to the man through a Perspex safety window, explaining our problem.

The man, (from here on in and for the purposes of my story called call ‘mister obstructive’), was not very helpful. He told us bluntly we would have to pay a penalty charge of £270 to get the bike back.

I swallowed hard. The bike was barely worth that much but it was my fault I hadn’t taxed it and I was carrying enough cash so offered to pay the fine there and then - but mister obstructive said I couldn’t pay until he saw the bike’s log book.

Of course I didn’t have it on me and asked if I could pay the fine and come back with the log book and collect the bike the next day.

He refused my money saying he couldn’t take payment without seeing the log book so I accepted that – but he went on to say that he was closing at 5.30pm and a further ‘overnight storage’ charge of £100 would apply in the morning. This would make the fine rise to £370 and there was no way the bike was worth that much. I checked my watch and it was five to five. We live across town from the yard and stood virtually no chance of getting home, retrieving the log book and getting back before the deadline but I looked at my sons face and said I’d give it a go.

…So I broke a few more traffic laws!

I keep all my vehicle documents in a box file entitled ‘vehicle documents’! It sits to the right, on the top shelf in my study. I got home, ran inside, grabbed the entire box file and was back in the car inside 30 seconds. Whilst I drove like a man possessed, my son found the log book, MOT and insurance certificate. We arrived at the impound yard at exactly 5.29pm. Mister obstructive tried to push the door shut on my son, who had dived out of the car but reluctantly took the log book and looked at the MOT and insurance.

Then he smiled…and asked to see… a household bill!

I could feel my blood rising but kept it down. I showed him my driving licence and credit cards but he insisted on seeing a household bill. I said, ‘You didn’t mention wanting to see a household bill earlier’.

‘I did’, he said.

‘You didn’t’, my son and I replied in unison… ‘If you had asked’, I went on, ’I could have grabbed a handful of bills off my desk at the same time as grabbing this box file’, waving it in front of me.

Mister obstructive wasn’t having it. He lurked behind his safety screen and simply repeated that he now wanted to see a household bill. Then he smiled and told us it was six o’clock and his payment machine was shut down for the night anyway. He said he could do nothing more until the next day.

 ‘For an extra £100?’  I said. He nodded.

I asked him what would happen if we decided not to pay to get the bike back and were told the DVLA would ‘dispose’ of it, either by destroying it of selling it on.

We weren’t getting anywhere and we were not going to get the bike back there and then. We drove home, dejected.

We spoke about it as a family that evening, explored the internet for advice and decided that the bike really wasn’t worth £370. My son was disappointed but we were actually in the process of buying him a car to learn in so persuaded him not to worry too much. As my wife and I were in London early the next day on business we mentally wrote the bike off.

My wife and I duly spent the next day and night in London but that evening my son called to say he had spotted something on the internet we had all missed the night before.

The DVLA website made no mention of a £270 fine, but plenty of references relating to a £100 fine and a £170 returnable deposit in lieu of proving and showing a current road fund licence!

So the fine wasn’t £270 as Mister obstructive had told us, it was £100!

Mister obstructive had not told us that all we had to do was buy a tax disc and show it to him. We could have done that.. the bike was MOT’d and insured after all. It would have made all the difference, a £200 fine as opposed to £370. Then we realised that by going up to London the bike would have incurred a second night’s storage fee, an additional £100. This brought the cost back up to £300 and again we had to conclude it wasn’t worth paying for.

We made plans to go back to the yard early the following day anyway to retrieve my sons bike jacket (locked under the saddle), and his helmet, locked to the rear of the bike.

I was going to at least try and negotiate a fair deal, as Mister obstructive hadn’t told us the truth. As a precaution, my son’s mobile phone has a voice recorder app and when we went in we turned it on.

We asked Mister obstructive why he hadn’t told us a large portion of the cost was returnable and why he claimed he had asked to see a household bill when we knew he hadn’t. On both counts we got him – and still have him recorded admitting gleefully that he was ‘not there to make our lives easier’… and ‘it served us right’.

Mister obstructive still wasn’t going to budge though, so we asked if we could retrieve the personal items from the bike. Straight-away we could see my son’s helmet had been ruined - scraped across the ground where it had been pulled away from the rear of the bike. It was completely trashed. Then we saw the bike’s front faring and indictor light had been pulled and broken off. These impound yards have a duty of care and it was clear my sons bike had not been properly handled. 

We decided to take pictures of the damage and asked to see the yard manager to make a complaint. This was the first time Mister obstructive lost his smug confidence and he told us the manager would not be available until the following day.

As my son had to go to school, I went in to the yard on my own the next day. I had my own phone with its version of dictaphone which I tried to use a bit too obviously. Mister obstructive took one look at it and refused to say anything and disappeared into the back office. There was no sign of the manager and I was left on my own, twiddling my thumbs. Then, after ten minutes or so, two uniformed Police officers entered the room; I was in an impound yard and didn’t think it was strange to see Police, thinking they probably came regularly to check on stolen vehicles or something…but when one of them pointed at me I became a little alarmed.

‘We were told someone was kicking off in here’, they said.

‘I’ve been the only one here’, I replied…and was then asked to go outside with them. They asked me if I had a mobile phone, of course I did and I produced it from my pocket. They asked me if I had any pictures on it… a bit odd, but ‘yes, I think so’, I replied. They asked to see them and then studied each one as I flicked through.

I asked them why they wanted to see my phone pictures.

‘That man’, they said, pointing to ‘mister obstructive’, 'has called 999 and said you’ve got pictures of his wife and child on your phone and that you’ve threatened them’.

I nearly fell over! The Police were a bit mystified as well. I was questioned for over twenty minutes before being sent on my way and told not to re-visit the yard. I never got the opportunity to speak to the manager and make my complaint. As I walked away the Police officers were talking to mister obstructive but to this day I don’t know what happened.

Mister obstructive obviously knew I was there to make a complaint about him…I had told him my intention the day before – clever bastard - what better way to divert attention away from a complaint than by making one of his own!

We lost the bike. It just wasn’t worth the hassle. I complained in writing and never got anywhere.

The Police contacted me and said they didn’t know what to think, telling me Mister obstructive insisted to the end that I was out to murder his family…! They simply advised me not to go back.

And yes, we got to the bottom of it. We had moved into our new house a decade earlier - before the bike had been a year old and the road tax renewable. Because it had gone straight into the shed and left there, it had never crossed our minds – as it had with the cars – to update it’s log book, hence any road tax reminders had gone to our old address… it really just hadn’t occurred to us.

No excuses, we were clearly wrong and many will think we deserved what we got...

What do you think?  Sympathy..or none?