Archdruid, this has to stop!!
I'm really putting my foot down this time. Ever since yesterday's Star Trek service, the Archdruid has been referring to the lower-ranking Beaker People (and I include myself in this - or, rather, I don't but the Archdruid does) as "Redshirts". The implication being that she thinks we're expendable and unimportant - stock characters with no significance except to be used to move the plot forward.
And thinking about it, I realised that many of us are treated in such a way all the time. We are reduced to shallow, one-dimensional characters, identifiable by at most a couple of traits. So this blog is "cut" in such a way as to suggest that Marston Moretaine is dim and incompetent. Drayton Parslow is dim and power-mad. Young Keith is dim and yet surprisingly technically competent. And I - I, dear readers, I am portrayed as a boring accountant.
Archdruid - we are not "redshirts". Or, though we may be to you - we are not to ourselves. We are the centres of our own universes - we do not merely orbit yours. In your imagination, we may have red shirts on, existing solely to further your objectives - we are simply obstacles to be overcome, or cannon-fodder to be pushed into your schemes and consumed. Or we are just to be disregarded. But in our world we have goldy-coloured shirts. It is you who drift on the edges of our universe - one day you will wander off out of our orbit, like the red shirt you are, and no longer matter. Just another redshirt wandered off into an unknown and unimportant destiny.
I, for example - you may think I am just an accountant - one who is interested solely in train-spotting, cycling and beer drinking. But you misread me. For am I not also an experience Java Developer? You see the additional horizons opening before me already. I am not so hot on CSS, I'll give you that - if you want colour and light and images on your website I'm not your man. But I can craft you a red-hot persistent Java object.
And you dismiss me as someone who cycles to train stations, watches some trains and then drinks a pint of warm beer before cycling back. Which, of course, I am. But there is so much more to me. I love trams, and steam rollers, and the film Shirley Valentine.
I must stop now. I realise I have probably not only gone too far in challenging Archdruid Eileen, but also given her a certain amount of material to use. But Eileen, before I hear the swish of the Slazenger of Doom, remember - there would be far less sadness in the world if we all remembered that everyone wears a gold shirt in their own lives.
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And thinking about it, I realised that many of us are treated in such a way all the time. We are reduced to shallow, one-dimensional characters, identifiable by at most a couple of traits. So this blog is "cut" in such a way as to suggest that Marston Moretaine is dim and incompetent. Drayton Parslow is dim and power-mad. Young Keith is dim and yet surprisingly technically competent. And I - I, dear readers, I am portrayed as a boring accountant.
Archdruid - we are not "redshirts". Or, though we may be to you - we are not to ourselves. We are the centres of our own universes - we do not merely orbit yours. In your imagination, we may have red shirts on, existing solely to further your objectives - we are simply obstacles to be overcome, or cannon-fodder to be pushed into your schemes and consumed. Or we are just to be disregarded. But in our world we have goldy-coloured shirts. It is you who drift on the edges of our universe - one day you will wander off out of our orbit, like the red shirt you are, and no longer matter. Just another redshirt wandered off into an unknown and unimportant destiny.
I, for example - you may think I am just an accountant - one who is interested solely in train-spotting, cycling and beer drinking. But you misread me. For am I not also an experience Java Developer? You see the additional horizons opening before me already. I am not so hot on CSS, I'll give you that - if you want colour and light and images on your website I'm not your man. But I can craft you a red-hot persistent Java object.
And you dismiss me as someone who cycles to train stations, watches some trains and then drinks a pint of warm beer before cycling back. Which, of course, I am. But there is so much more to me. I love trams, and steam rollers, and the film Shirley Valentine.
I must stop now. I realise I have probably not only gone too far in challenging Archdruid Eileen, but also given her a certain amount of material to use. But Eileen, before I hear the swish of the Slazenger of Doom, remember - there would be far less sadness in the world if we all remembered that everyone wears a gold shirt in their own lives.
I thought for a moment you were announcing that you were an Arsenal supporter. Then I realised that a Train Spotter would not do that, he would be supporting Clapham Junction United.
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