Fremdscham (noun)

I had a Talking Newspaper today. Which meant I didn’t get to sit in on the full meeting with Paul, our landscape designer. Good job Mirinda could.

Anyway, the design is looking fantastic and, hopefully we’ll have some working drawings soon so Dave the Builder can make a start on the terrace. Paul, our landscape designer, has to design for Chelsea next week so we have to get in quick. It really is going to look something special. I’m hoping it’s all going to be worth the ghastly mess presently there.

Landscape designer aside, it rained today. Off and on, but it pretty much guaranteed that everything was wet all day. I thought all of that nonsense had finished for the year. Mind you, one of the stories I read today dealt with a horrendous storm that struck Alton on Tuesday, flooding the roads and starting a fire in an attic.

Starting a fire in an attic, I hear you ask. Yes, starting a fire in an attic. Apparently there was a lightening strike which ran down the aerial, blew up the TV and started a fire in the attic. Of course, the fire brigade was called and two fire engines turned up to find that someone had already put the fire out. How annoying is that? I don’t know what happened to the TV or whether the insurance covered it. I’m tempted to suggest that it was probably too big for the room and therefore shattered into a thousand pieces…but I won’t. Oddly, it isn’t really a very nice story but, for some reason, it made us all laugh in the studio.

I was reading Alton/Bordon this week with Di (the once upon a time English teacher), Brian the extremely tall and Susan, a woman I’d never had read for me before. She seemed very nice and managed to fit in with my particular brand of insanity in the studio without too much ado. Amazingly, her surname is Everitt. When I asked if it was her married name she said yes. When I told her that my mother’s maiden name was Everitt she asked me where they came from. I said Norfolk, way back and she nodded enthusiastically saying her husband’s family was also from Norfolk, way back. How weird. And no, mum, I have no idea what her husband’s name is.

All in all, the session went very well, with Susan cracking up at one stage while trying to read a piece about children, bunnies and clipboards and me swearing when I managed to get the deaths wrong. Then apologising for swearing. I REALLY hate reading the deaths.

And, of course, I managed to sneak in a visit to Starbucks. While there, I read a wonderful piece about the Dunning-Kruger effect. In essence, these two guys proved that the dumber someone is, the less dumb they actually think they are, regardless of how often they are shown to be dumb. They just can’t discern their own dumbness. And, sadly, it’s not something that can be cured. Given they have no idea that they are very dumb makes it impossible for them to become smarter. There’s a wonderfully funny article from Psychology Today here.

It explains why people swear and insult, when they think they’re making an argument. It’s because they have no idea how but think they do. I now just feel very, very sorry for them. Next time I come across this sort of thing, I’m just going to write “Yet more proof of the Dunning-Kruger Effect.“