The Bells Have Made Me Deaf

My new neighbour moved into the flat above my workshop a couple of weeks ago. Nobody told him that there had been a problem with the lighting circuit up there and the fuse blows regularly in wet weather. The first real rainfall since he moved in happened a couple of days ago and the fuse blew with one almighty bang that even I heard through a 2 foot thick stone wall. Nobody had given him any contact numbers either so my door was the one he knocked. I gave him the landlords mobile number and off he trotted quite content to grope around in the dark for one night.

Yesterday afternoon the electricians arrived to work at the fuseboard which is in my workshop. I left them to it for ten minutes only to come back and find the workshop stinking of cigarette smoke (despite the no smoking sign) and a dinge in the top of my bin from using it as a step to break into the neighbours flat by climbing through his open bedroom window. When I asked them about it, they said they’d got permission but I’m not so sure. He’s been happily leaving the window open since he moved in. Today it’s closed, and who could blame him. With all that, they didn’t find what’s causing the problem either. 90 minutes of total incompetance. Their boss came this morning and fixed it within ten minutes.

I’m hoping my customer has no sense of smell. Laura Ashley pink flowery linen just shouldn’t smell like an ashtray. Thankfully she’s away on holiday and I don’t have to deliver for another week. By then the stink may have gone. Why is it that certain tradesmen are so unreliable and have absolutely no respect for other peoples property or is it just ignorance?

Speaking of unreliable, I’m still waiting for the boiler installer to show up… he said he’d be here yesterday morning.

I was brave this week and purchased a fill of heating oil, thinking… it’ll do nicely as a back up when I can’t be bothered to light the wee stove that I intend to buy in a couple of months while visiting the part of England that does cheapo stoves. So, after waiting in ALL DAY (the office told me he’d be here first thing this morning) the delivery man finally arrived at 5:30pm and filled the tank. I pushed the button to give the boiler a feed of the good stuff it’s been longing for and after five minutes of constipated screeching…. nada ziggily squilch not even a puff of smoke.

My neighbour just happens to be an early retired heating engineer and kindly informed me that it’s kaput. Less than a year old and it’s useless. They just don’t make things like they used to. I’ve had to call the man who installed it and talk softly to his lovely answering machine. I hate answering machines. It’s always an excuse for them NOT to have received your message and be a no show until the warranty has expired (next month) and the whole thing ends up costing money that it shouldn’t.

I’m going to drink some wine for me blood pressure…

I’m not an early riser and never have been but I do get up earlier in summer than winter. At the weekends I tend to lie on for a bit and contemplate life from a horizontal perspective. This morning I was enjoying a balmy breeze of fresh sea air coming through the fluttering curtains all lit up by sunshine. Birds were singing their hearts out and it was one of those relaxing, glad to be alive moments despite still being hefted from the gluttony of yesterday.

Then along came a tractor and spoiled it all. The calm was totally lost and I felt like shouting a string of expletives out the window at the offender. It was Lurch (so called since he lurched himself at me last year and planted an unwanted slobbery kiss on my face - and he does look just like Lurch) come to fix the mower. Well fine… the mower needs fixed but does it really need fixed first thing on a Sunday morning? The grass could wait until after lunch time. Normally he parks the tractor outside the gate but for some reason this morning he brings it into the yard (stone walled yard=amplification) and leaves the engine running. I lie on in defiance thinking he’s there to pick something up and leave. 30 minutes later the engine is still running and I decide to give up and get up. They’re still banging around out there with the tractor coming and going all morning so it’s time to take off and go sit in a field and gaze longingly at Scotland. With my luck they’ll probably be cutting silage today and my secluded sea of grass will be reduced to jaggy stubble.

Britain ‘could be next’ as US businesses seek pay-for-speed scheme

I thought the internet was already layered into fast and slow lanes with broadband and dial up. I remember the time when my internet addiction levied phone charges of around £600 per quarter for unbelievably slow connection speeds even by dial up standards. It was a number of years before an all in package became available here and even longer for broadband to become widespread. I feel I’ve already paid excessively for the development of the services required to power the sort of speed we now enjoy.

Cut the congestion by all means but penalise the people who are causing it not the entire internet.

In Tescos the other day I was confronted by a large woman at the quick checkout. I had a basket rather than a trolley but I hadn’t counted the items in it. She took one look at it and hissed ‘Ten items or less’ with a glare fierce enough to strip paint. There was no queue. The other checkouts were busy while she sat on her backside doing nothing and repeating like a parrot ‘ten items or less, ten items or less squawk’. Rather than argue with her I said ‘Oh alright! Sorry for disturbing you, I’ll go over here and get in the queue’. When I finally got to the checkout my basket had 12 items in it and Ten Items or Less was still twiddling her thumbs.

Wouldn’t it make more sense for Tesco to consider training their staff to have some initiative with the rules or better still, just make the quick check out a check out for baskets. You can only get so much stuff into a basket after all.

A white bear with brown patches shot dead in northern Canada is the first grizzly-polar hybrid found in the wild, DNA tests have confirmed.
Canadian wildlife officials say it is the offspring of a male grizzly bear and a female polar bear.

There have long been stories of oddly coloured bears living in regions where the two territories overlap.

But until now, grizzly-polar hybrids, dubbed “grolar bears” or “pizzlies”, have been found only in zoos.

The hybrid bear was shot last month by an American big game hunter on Banks Island, Northwest Territories, Canada.
Source

Here’s the pic of the proud heroes posing with their prize dead, extremely rare animal. Big game hunters… brave men with guns who brand killing animals unnecessarily ‘a sport’. It makes me sick. What was the point?

I’m fairly disgusted that most of the report into this man’s demise is more to do with the wealth of his family than the horrible circumstances in which he died. He must have been in terrible mental turmoil to have done such a thing to himself.

Of course had he not been from a wealthy family, it may not even have been considered news worthy. It’s a sad reflection on what the public want to read.

Source