R's rue

 I last volunteered for Samaritans nearly seven years ago. Despite excellent supervision and training the calls eventually took their toil and I felt I lost my empathy with some callers which, as anyone in the trade would tell you, is the first sign of burnout. I resigned and was happy to go Another sign of burnout. In my years working for the charity, one call will always stand out with me. It kind of haunts me, even to this day and can still move me to tears if I think about it carefully enough. It was from a young teacher, I will call David. David had had a difficult year. His work had been stressful and many of his class had not achieved the grades that he and they had wanted. He felt a failure, isolated and miserable.  He also, more importantly, felt responsible . He was sat in his car, near a beach, somewhere in the UK  He had no discernible accent and I could hear seagulls crying nearby. He was drinking from a quarter bottle of Rum and had, he told me ,...

AI means Artificial Intelligence. We have all heard about it but now through Microsoft Image Creator we are seeing evidence of AI in action. It is getting closer to our everyday lives. I was telling my daughter about it and she sent back some amusing images that were also created with the aid AI but obviously not Microsoft Image Creator. They made me chuckle. Here's Mr B.Johnson cleaning a staff toilet. At last he has found a suitable niche in this complicated world... Here's another former prime minister, Ms L. Truss, working behind a bar... And here's Britain's obnoxious right wing Home Secretary Suella Braverman shown on a migrant boat... Meanwhile back in  the real world, this afternoon we enjoyed a lovely Sunday dinner at Frances and Stew's new house. Frances had made the dessert without the aid of Artificial Intelligence. It's an Easter-themed fruit pavlova... from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/puQWf5m

  Pull up your knickers and tighten the bra straps  Another fairly bland post is on its way. Roger went missing this morning. He was politely waiting to jump into Bluebell to go on his morning walk and poof ! he was gone. He has only mastered jumping into the footwell of the car by the way, and can’t quite compute the slightly bigger jump straight on the driver’s seat. But I had turned my back for a gnat’s crotch of a second and he had vanished. The lane was empty . He’d gone off like a rocket, so I checked up into the village towards the main road  first…nothing then down the lane to Trendy Carol’s …. not a sign.  I was beginning to worry. The main road is lethal for a dog of Roger’s IQ and so I drove around the main village calling his name. Not a sausage. So I drove down the lane again , parked outside the sheep gated field and called him. Still nothing. I was beginning to get worried. Lambing time is no place for a dim dog to be roaming lost in f...