The tooth dropped out again today, its been loose since the pink dentist put it back in temporarily (see blog from ten days ago, or so), but today it fell out just when I picked the phone up and started to talk to someone, so now I've got the gap toothed pirate look again until I go back to the pink dentist next Monday and find out what the next stage of the treatment is, presumably it will be something ont he lines of "we have to find some good glue before we go any further".
I also went to the opticians yesterday where he gleefully informed me that it would be in order for me to get a stronger pair of reading glasses, I picked them up today but once again I didn't ask him yesterday how much the new lenses would cost, my account is now £60 lighter.
In ten days the bill for my routine maintenance is standing at £160 and the pink dentist is I fear nowhere near finished yet - didn't we used to have a free NHS service ? I'm sure I remember my parents talking of free health treatment, mind, they also got a pension when they were old enough, am I being ripped off here ?
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Saturday, January 28, 2006
They aren't from Venus, its much further than that.
I confess right up to never having understood women, I never have done, ever.
Which makes it all the more ironic that I should live in a house with a wife and two teenage daughters.
I don't understand any of them, and make no effort to do so.
Today was a fairly average day in our house but illustrates my point very succinctly...
Daughter mk2 (13 years) wants to go to the cinema this afternoon with a group of friends from across the other side of Leeds, they'll meet in the centre but it creates a little problem in that she'll be left on her own when the film is finished until I can get there to pick her up, the wife does not like that idea and refuses permission.
Dmk2 then comes to me and asks if she can go to her friends house after the cinema and I could pick her up from there, this seems reasonable so I agree, I then get bollacked by wife as she really doesn't want Dmk2 to go at all, she doesn't like the friends and wants her back at home before we go out on our pre-arranged Tapas evening.
I'm now in the middle of this argument, stuck where I normally am and trying to apply logic to two females opposing opinions - an impossible task.
Daughter mk1 (17 years) then approaches and asks if she can be dropped off in Leeds when I drop off Dmk2, off course I agree, but she then asks to borrow £40 for some hair extensions. I ask, quite reasonably I think, why she needs hair extensions when she had them done just ten days ago at great cost.
Eyes are raised to the sky inexasperationn and she explains that the false hair has fallen out, in a manner that leaves me in no doubt that I am the idiot around here rather than someone who needs £40 every ten days because they can't wait for their own hair to grow.
I ask how much the beauty maintenance budget is as its only two weeks since she had a complete set of nails fitted and they've all fallen off since, at which point all three females join in the affray and verbal pummel me into submission on the grounds that I am male and cannot possibly understand the intricacies of the beauty budget, I retire to lick my wounds.
Dmk1 finds my retirement hole and asks again for money for hair extensions, as I reach for my wallet I am heard to mumble that if I fund any more artificial beauty aids to my family then I won't recognise them soon at which point Dmk1 storms out of the room, slams the door and is heard to shout "don't bloody bother then" at which point I rejoice and put the money back in my wallet.
In the meantime Wife has devised a plan wherby when I drop two daughters off in Leeds I will take her to Pudsey and the mind-numbingly large Marks & Spencers there in order to buy "a new top and a jacket" for the anniversary "do" that we are attending at a posh golf club in two weeks time - I don't argue as its fruitless.
But out in the hallway whilst waiting for me a huge argument is developing between Wife and Dmk1 who wants new hair money and Dmk2 who wants to change the cinema arrangements again, it culminates with another "well don't bloody bother then" and Wife stomps off this time, at least I haven't become accidently involved in this one.
I take two daughters into Leeds and when I return ask wife if she wants to go to M&S, she's in a big mood now and denies that she ever wanted to, this is just hunky dory by me and I retire to settee to select my afternoon TV viewing, I've saved having to pay Dmk1 her £40 and I've saved having to buy new outfit for Wife, she's also not talking to me through no fault of my own so I am guilt-free, can this day get any better ?
Later on she has calmed down and asks to be taken to M&S to resume the search for "a new outfit" for the golf club "do", I resist pointing out that my outfit for the golf club do will be chosen from a selection of existing clothing topped off with the free tie that I got at Barrie McDermotts testimonial "do" on Thursday night, this would be tantamount to the perfect excuse for homicide for her so as usual I remain silent and obey.
In M&S we fall into the regular and familiar routine of husband and wife shopping for wifes clothing, I trail several paces behind her while she browses the racks, taking things off the pegs, holding them up, putting them back, occasionally asking "do you like this", me replying "yes it suits you", her snapping back "I don't like it", me mumbling "neither do I" as if I really give a flying fook.
But eventually she actually finds a blouse that she likes and a matching military style jacket in a plum colour, this is good news as its only taken 30 minutes to find both items, the bad news is that both items will cost a total of £100, once again I remain silent, I'm walking a very thin line here and one wrong word will result in a three day sulk.
She tries on the jacket, its her size but its too tight across the shoulders, I forget the cardinal rule for once and suggest that she tries on the next size up, she looks at me as though I have grown another head and reminds me that she does not wear that size, she wears the size that she is trying to get into, I am stupid enough to mention that it is just a number and that if it fits then she could tear the label out so as not to remind herself that she's gone up a size, I am lucky that she doesn't hear this.
The day culminates with her buying the blouse but not the jacket, not even the jacket that would fit her, not even when she really liked the jacket and there was a size that would fit her, she didn't buy it because it had the wrong number on the label.
All of which proves once again my lifelong theory that men and women are actually completely different species and its only through an accident of evolution that we have arrived at this point together and that we can actually breed - its rather like the sometimes reported births in zoos of "Ligers" or "Tigons", those freak accidents when Lions and Tigers are left in the same cage and produce offspring, everyone knows it can't and shouldn't happen, they are not even supposed to live on the same continent, but nevertheless it happens and we pretend that Lions and Tigers can live happily together.
Which makes it all the more ironic that I should live in a house with a wife and two teenage daughters.
I don't understand any of them, and make no effort to do so.
Today was a fairly average day in our house but illustrates my point very succinctly...
Daughter mk2 (13 years) wants to go to the cinema this afternoon with a group of friends from across the other side of Leeds, they'll meet in the centre but it creates a little problem in that she'll be left on her own when the film is finished until I can get there to pick her up, the wife does not like that idea and refuses permission.
Dmk2 then comes to me and asks if she can go to her friends house after the cinema and I could pick her up from there, this seems reasonable so I agree, I then get bollacked by wife as she really doesn't want Dmk2 to go at all, she doesn't like the friends and wants her back at home before we go out on our pre-arranged Tapas evening.
I'm now in the middle of this argument, stuck where I normally am and trying to apply logic to two females opposing opinions - an impossible task.
Daughter mk1 (17 years) then approaches and asks if she can be dropped off in Leeds when I drop off Dmk2, off course I agree, but she then asks to borrow £40 for some hair extensions. I ask, quite reasonably I think, why she needs hair extensions when she had them done just ten days ago at great cost.
Eyes are raised to the sky inexasperationn and she explains that the false hair has fallen out, in a manner that leaves me in no doubt that I am the idiot around here rather than someone who needs £40 every ten days because they can't wait for their own hair to grow.
I ask how much the beauty maintenance budget is as its only two weeks since she had a complete set of nails fitted and they've all fallen off since, at which point all three females join in the affray and verbal pummel me into submission on the grounds that I am male and cannot possibly understand the intricacies of the beauty budget, I retire to lick my wounds.
Dmk1 finds my retirement hole and asks again for money for hair extensions, as I reach for my wallet I am heard to mumble that if I fund any more artificial beauty aids to my family then I won't recognise them soon at which point Dmk1 storms out of the room, slams the door and is heard to shout "don't bloody bother then" at which point I rejoice and put the money back in my wallet.
In the meantime Wife has devised a plan wherby when I drop two daughters off in Leeds I will take her to Pudsey and the mind-numbingly large Marks & Spencers there in order to buy "a new top and a jacket" for the anniversary "do" that we are attending at a posh golf club in two weeks time - I don't argue as its fruitless.
But out in the hallway whilst waiting for me a huge argument is developing between Wife and Dmk1 who wants new hair money and Dmk2 who wants to change the cinema arrangements again, it culminates with another "well don't bloody bother then" and Wife stomps off this time, at least I haven't become accidently involved in this one.
I take two daughters into Leeds and when I return ask wife if she wants to go to M&S, she's in a big mood now and denies that she ever wanted to, this is just hunky dory by me and I retire to settee to select my afternoon TV viewing, I've saved having to pay Dmk1 her £40 and I've saved having to buy new outfit for Wife, she's also not talking to me through no fault of my own so I am guilt-free, can this day get any better ?
Later on she has calmed down and asks to be taken to M&S to resume the search for "a new outfit" for the golf club "do", I resist pointing out that my outfit for the golf club do will be chosen from a selection of existing clothing topped off with the free tie that I got at Barrie McDermotts testimonial "do" on Thursday night, this would be tantamount to the perfect excuse for homicide for her so as usual I remain silent and obey.
In M&S we fall into the regular and familiar routine of husband and wife shopping for wifes clothing, I trail several paces behind her while she browses the racks, taking things off the pegs, holding them up, putting them back, occasionally asking "do you like this", me replying "yes it suits you", her snapping back "I don't like it", me mumbling "neither do I" as if I really give a flying fook.
But eventually she actually finds a blouse that she likes and a matching military style jacket in a plum colour, this is good news as its only taken 30 minutes to find both items, the bad news is that both items will cost a total of £100, once again I remain silent, I'm walking a very thin line here and one wrong word will result in a three day sulk.
She tries on the jacket, its her size but its too tight across the shoulders, I forget the cardinal rule for once and suggest that she tries on the next size up, she looks at me as though I have grown another head and reminds me that she does not wear that size, she wears the size that she is trying to get into, I am stupid enough to mention that it is just a number and that if it fits then she could tear the label out so as not to remind herself that she's gone up a size, I am lucky that she doesn't hear this.
The day culminates with her buying the blouse but not the jacket, not even the jacket that would fit her, not even when she really liked the jacket and there was a size that would fit her, she didn't buy it because it had the wrong number on the label.
All of which proves once again my lifelong theory that men and women are actually completely different species and its only through an accident of evolution that we have arrived at this point together and that we can actually breed - its rather like the sometimes reported births in zoos of "Ligers" or "Tigons", those freak accidents when Lions and Tigers are left in the same cage and produce offspring, everyone knows it can't and shouldn't happen, they are not even supposed to live on the same continent, but nevertheless it happens and we pretend that Lions and Tigers can live happily together.
Back on the wagon again ...
I like a beer.
I like the idea of sitting in a pub with good friends and sharing a laugh over a beer, or two, or more.
But beer doesn't like me.
I don't know exactly when it started, it was maybe 15 or so years ago when I noticed that the incidents of hangovers after a Friday night out were becoming more and more frequent, and if I had a few too many then I could guarantee that I would again become aquainted with the toilet bowl through the night.
And so I cut the Friday night drinking down, I started drinking bottled lager, which seemed to help, but soon the intolorance crept back and I was finding that three bottles could start the hangovers again.
And then one hot day in August '98 I came in from work, opened a cold bottle of lager, took a couple of mouthfulls, and a headache started straight away, the bottle went in the bin and I stopped all alcohol consumption.
I stopped for five years, then one afternoon found myself at a rugby match stood behind two lads who weren't really interested in rugby but were very interested in drinking lots of beer - I was transfixed by the beer, like a rabbit in a car headlights I stood drooling at the thought of tipping a cold beer down my parched throat.
And at that point I was bored - its fuckin boring when you don't drink alcohol, I can't explain how terribly, mind-numbingly dull it is to sit in a pub with all of your mates and watch as they sample different real ales, talk about how they taste and enthuse over each and every sip - while you sit there with a little glass of orange juice and occasionally add "mines a bit cloudy" to the conversation.
And so on that fateful day on the way home I bought myself a bottle of red wine on the presumption that if anything would give me a headache again it would be red wine - I had two glasses and I was OK.
Since then I have been a very imoderate drinker, any more then two bottles of lager and I'm really pushing my luck, I haven't re-enacted the nocturnal toilet bowl sessions but I've had some cracking hangovers on just a three bottle session.
And I'm finding something else strange.
I've been good since christmas, haven't had any alcohol since Boxing Day, but on Thursday night I was at a rugby function and on J2O orange all night - had a headache in the morning.
Last night I went out with friends for a (now rare) pub night, stayed on J2O again - I have a headache this morning that two paracetamols won't shift.
Tonight we're all out for a Tapas night, I'm driving so will be on the oranges again but I'm really wondering whether its worth it now if I'm going to be waking up with a headache for the third day running.
So the question is ...
Is it something in J2O ?
Am I developing an intolorence to sugary drinks ?
What the fook am I supposed to drink on a night out ?
Why don't licensees cater for non-drinkers ?
I like the idea of sitting in a pub with good friends and sharing a laugh over a beer, or two, or more.
But beer doesn't like me.
I don't know exactly when it started, it was maybe 15 or so years ago when I noticed that the incidents of hangovers after a Friday night out were becoming more and more frequent, and if I had a few too many then I could guarantee that I would again become aquainted with the toilet bowl through the night.
And so I cut the Friday night drinking down, I started drinking bottled lager, which seemed to help, but soon the intolorance crept back and I was finding that three bottles could start the hangovers again.
And then one hot day in August '98 I came in from work, opened a cold bottle of lager, took a couple of mouthfulls, and a headache started straight away, the bottle went in the bin and I stopped all alcohol consumption.
I stopped for five years, then one afternoon found myself at a rugby match stood behind two lads who weren't really interested in rugby but were very interested in drinking lots of beer - I was transfixed by the beer, like a rabbit in a car headlights I stood drooling at the thought of tipping a cold beer down my parched throat.
And at that point I was bored - its fuckin boring when you don't drink alcohol, I can't explain how terribly, mind-numbingly dull it is to sit in a pub with all of your mates and watch as they sample different real ales, talk about how they taste and enthuse over each and every sip - while you sit there with a little glass of orange juice and occasionally add "mines a bit cloudy" to the conversation.
And so on that fateful day on the way home I bought myself a bottle of red wine on the presumption that if anything would give me a headache again it would be red wine - I had two glasses and I was OK.
Since then I have been a very imoderate drinker, any more then two bottles of lager and I'm really pushing my luck, I haven't re-enacted the nocturnal toilet bowl sessions but I've had some cracking hangovers on just a three bottle session.
And I'm finding something else strange.
I've been good since christmas, haven't had any alcohol since Boxing Day, but on Thursday night I was at a rugby function and on J2O orange all night - had a headache in the morning.
Last night I went out with friends for a (now rare) pub night, stayed on J2O again - I have a headache this morning that two paracetamols won't shift.
Tonight we're all out for a Tapas night, I'm driving so will be on the oranges again but I'm really wondering whether its worth it now if I'm going to be waking up with a headache for the third day running.
So the question is ...
Is it something in J2O ?
Am I developing an intolorence to sugary drinks ?
What the fook am I supposed to drink on a night out ?
Why don't licensees cater for non-drinkers ?
Thursday, January 26, 2006
[Insert Animal Genre] Watch
See this bloke ?
Recognise him ?
If you can get BBC coverage you'll almost certainly recognise him, he infests the BBC like, well like a thing that infests other things very rapidly and completely.
Its Jonathan Scott.
He presents wildlife programmes.
The BBC used to be very good at wildlife programmes, BBC Bristol made them all the time and they always had ducks on them because Sir Peter Scott was always in the background of the programme somewhere and he never missed an opportunity to promote his own duck refuge at Slimbridge.
Anglia TV tried to copy the BBC but they always went to Sumatra or Africa and never showed ducks at all.
Jonathan Scott is the new Sir Peter Scott (makes memo to check if they are related) in that he appears in every BBC wildlife programme which is not a problem, don't get me wrong I have no qualm that Jonathan Scott gets all the wildlife gigs, and lets be honest the BBC do still make a damn good wildlife programme, if you like wildlife programmes then you can't go wrong with the BBC and Jonathan Scott.
But,
He has exclusively developed one really, I mean really, really annoying, bloody well irritating genre of wildlife presentation.
All of the animals in his programmes have to have names.
And in giving them all their own names he turns the programmes into Blue Peter segments, a bit like "Bleep and Booster" used to be, a five minute story so boring that you knew you could safely go into the kitchen to rob the fridge while you mum wasn't looking and still have time for a piss on the way back.
And he is very underhand with it, he slips the names past you so that you don't even notice he's doing it and before you know where you are you're tuning in to tonights episode of "Leopard Watch" wondering whether Titikaka caught that antelope last night and whether her cubs Rumplestiltskin and Pinnochio will get fed before they starve to certain death right there in front of Jonathan bloody Scott and his all-seeing camera.
He very cleverly picks foreign sounding names so that English viewers will believe that all Leopards are born with and use their own name tags, the Leopards in his shows are never called Frank or Mildred, its always a believable foreign name like Umslobogo or Kaka.
This week he's doing it to elephants in Elephant Watch - and thats another thing, he has no imagination when it comes to choosing programme titles, its always "[insert animal genre]Watch" and the programmes follow the same script...
Scene One : Introduce [insert animal genre] family by individual name
Scene Two : Show [insert animal genre] babies in cute rolling in grass scene, think up some cute names like Toto or Frodo, reserve the name Fredo for the stupid one after Fredo Corleone in The Godfather.
Scene Three : Leave first episode on cliffhanger as some mean [insert mean animal genre] comes looking to eat babies
Scene Four : Babies escape by skin of teeth when a baby elephant called Wobbly Ears chases away the mean [insert mean animal genre]
Scene Five : Wobbly Ears and baby [insert animal genre] become friends and go to play at rivers edge
Scene Six : Fredo is eaten on river bank by crocodile
and so on, and on, and on.
Leave it out Jonathan, using the animals Latin nom de plume was good enough for David Attenborough, watch and learn boy...
Customers ....
I never fail to be staggered by the number of ignorant, stupid people who hold down jobs at some very large companies, in fact the larger the company the easier it seems to be for idiots to keep their jobs.
Case #1 ; A customer who has one of our "swipe card" terminals linked to their PC with our software driving it. They were on support up until december but due to their head office wrapping them up in red tape they didn't renew their contract, we billed them for it but the head office returned the invoice with all sort of excuses not to pay it, mainly because they hadn't ordered the renewal.
Normally we'd ring the local site and ask them to sort it out but we had the same problem last year and no-one was interested, so this year we decided to sod them, they are not on support any more.
On monday a lady from the local office rang me to ask if it was OK to move the computer, it wasn't the most stupid question I'd been asked on monday but it came close, she wanted to move it to another desk two yards away, we don't give support on the computer, its not our equipment its theirs, and anyway, they're not on support anyway, I said yes of course you can, I think she was just looking for someone to tell her to do it rather than have to make a decision for herself, but her question was a bit like ringing an electrical retailer to ask if she could move her TV to clean behind the back of it, they'd have said yes too.
Five minutes later she's back on the phone complaining that she can't connect to the swipe card terminal and despite the fact that she's not on support I take her through all the obvious things to check as she's unplugged everything out of the back of the PC in order to move it.
the more the conversation goes on the more I'm convinced that she really does not know what language I'm talking as she doesn't know what the various bits of the equipment are called, it takes us five minutes to establish that shes got an external modem linked to the Pc as well but she doesn't know why, or where it was plugged into.
I suspect that she's managed somehow to get the swipe card and modem serial plugs the wrong way around but because she thinks shes broken it she won't unplug them to swap them around now, we talk some more and she reveals that she's also plugged another cable into a telephone outlet in the wall, which seems reasonable but its not the lead out of the modem its a lead that seems to go into a junction box that belongs to our equipment.
She decides to go get someone from their IT department to sort it out, which to my mind is the last act of a very desperate person as IT departments tend to be the most unhelpful of all corporate bodies, especially if you've just interrupted their game of Super Mario, she hangs up and is gone from my mind.
She rings yesterday, I get the person who answers the phone at our end to tell her that shes not on support and we can't help her unless she calls us out, and as her company is located a 90 minute drive away then shes got at least four hours to pay for.
And of course she doesn't accept this, seems to think its my fault for giving her permission to move her computer six feet in the first place, we hang up, she rings constantly all afternoon but with caller display we don't answer the phone, she's ringing now as I type this and in two seconds she'll get the answerphone like she did 47 times yesterday, but she refuses to speak to the answerphone.
Sometimes I just don't want to help people despite running the help desk.
Case #1 ; A customer who has one of our "swipe card" terminals linked to their PC with our software driving it. They were on support up until december but due to their head office wrapping them up in red tape they didn't renew their contract, we billed them for it but the head office returned the invoice with all sort of excuses not to pay it, mainly because they hadn't ordered the renewal.
Normally we'd ring the local site and ask them to sort it out but we had the same problem last year and no-one was interested, so this year we decided to sod them, they are not on support any more.
On monday a lady from the local office rang me to ask if it was OK to move the computer, it wasn't the most stupid question I'd been asked on monday but it came close, she wanted to move it to another desk two yards away, we don't give support on the computer, its not our equipment its theirs, and anyway, they're not on support anyway, I said yes of course you can, I think she was just looking for someone to tell her to do it rather than have to make a decision for herself, but her question was a bit like ringing an electrical retailer to ask if she could move her TV to clean behind the back of it, they'd have said yes too.
Five minutes later she's back on the phone complaining that she can't connect to the swipe card terminal and despite the fact that she's not on support I take her through all the obvious things to check as she's unplugged everything out of the back of the PC in order to move it.
the more the conversation goes on the more I'm convinced that she really does not know what language I'm talking as she doesn't know what the various bits of the equipment are called, it takes us five minutes to establish that shes got an external modem linked to the Pc as well but she doesn't know why, or where it was plugged into.
I suspect that she's managed somehow to get the swipe card and modem serial plugs the wrong way around but because she thinks shes broken it she won't unplug them to swap them around now, we talk some more and she reveals that she's also plugged another cable into a telephone outlet in the wall, which seems reasonable but its not the lead out of the modem its a lead that seems to go into a junction box that belongs to our equipment.
She decides to go get someone from their IT department to sort it out, which to my mind is the last act of a very desperate person as IT departments tend to be the most unhelpful of all corporate bodies, especially if you've just interrupted their game of Super Mario, she hangs up and is gone from my mind.
She rings yesterday, I get the person who answers the phone at our end to tell her that shes not on support and we can't help her unless she calls us out, and as her company is located a 90 minute drive away then shes got at least four hours to pay for.
And of course she doesn't accept this, seems to think its my fault for giving her permission to move her computer six feet in the first place, we hang up, she rings constantly all afternoon but with caller display we don't answer the phone, she's ringing now as I type this and in two seconds she'll get the answerphone like she did 47 times yesterday, but she refuses to speak to the answerphone.
Sometimes I just don't want to help people despite running the help desk.
Monday, January 23, 2006
Drilling for brains...
Dentist, 9.25 this morning.
Ostensibly to discuss the situation with my crowned tooth, ie is it still glued in place ?
It was fitted on top of a drilled out root three years ago "It'll last forever" the dentist promised and indeed it did last ..... until just before christmas when it fell out just as I was starting a very nice fruit curry in Omars restaurant in Bradford (highly recommended, Omars, not losing a tooth in your curry).
Went back to the dentist before christmas, different dentist to the one who had previously drilled forever up into my head, and after discussing all sorts of wierd treatment plans costing up to £3000 just to replace one fallen out tooth he finally agreed to temporarily glue the old one back in until we reviewed the option in January (theres a blog entry in december somewhere for that appointment).
So today was the review, sat in his big pink chair - I'l say this about this new dentist, since he took over from the previous scottish dentist who confirmed everyones preconceptions about tight scotsmen, he has spent a lot of money in tarting up the surgery, it now resembles a very avant garde furniture showroom in minimalist tones of beige and strangely shaped chairs in the waiting room, and when you walk into the actual surgery room he's got this huge vivid pink couch for a dentist chair which you lie down on, and at the press of a button are swivelled almost upside down whilst tools and shelves and drills and stuff whirr into place just above your head, its work £30 just to ride on his pink lounger chair.
So he tells me that the plan today is to remove the crown that he glued back into place and redrill out the root filling, clean the base of the tooth up and get the root ready for refilling next time - all of which comes as a bit of a suprise to me because the old crown is still glued firmly in place and I'd be happy leaving it at that.
Before I know whats happened he's pressed the button and me and the big pink bed are tilted upside down, the drills and other good stuff are whizzed into position above my face and he's got a needle in my gum and hes smiling down at me "everything alright ?"
He ragged the old tooth out and set about drilling the old filling (which he hesitates to call a crap job but I can tell he's thinking that) out of the root, which having seen the xray I already know is several inches long and stops somewhere just above the bridge of my nose, OK thats an exageration but it feels like the drill goes up that far, its certainly numb all the way up that side of my face.
He's got it all drilled out now and he's filed the old root base down to accept a new crown and after all that he's stuck the old crown back on top of it warning that it might not be as secure this time but when I go back in two weeks time he'll fill the root properly and measure up for a new crown and before I know what has happened I'm actually thanking him for making my face numb and I'm back out in his reception with a new appointment and his receptionist is saying "we'll just take £100 this time..."
Thats not bad pay for half an hours work and I'm left wondering what the next appointment is going to cost, I reckon I'll be lucky to get to the end of all this for less than £500 which is still £2500 less than the treatment that he wanted to do, but where did the National Health Service disappear to all of a sudden ?
Update at 3pm - I've just yawned and felt a crack in the tooth, the glue obviously hadn't set properly and now it wobbles - bollox, I'm not going back though, it'll have to wobble for two weeks, or maybe fall out again.
Ostensibly to discuss the situation with my crowned tooth, ie is it still glued in place ?
It was fitted on top of a drilled out root three years ago "It'll last forever" the dentist promised and indeed it did last ..... until just before christmas when it fell out just as I was starting a very nice fruit curry in Omars restaurant in Bradford (highly recommended, Omars, not losing a tooth in your curry).
Went back to the dentist before christmas, different dentist to the one who had previously drilled forever up into my head, and after discussing all sorts of wierd treatment plans costing up to £3000 just to replace one fallen out tooth he finally agreed to temporarily glue the old one back in until we reviewed the option in January (theres a blog entry in december somewhere for that appointment).
So today was the review, sat in his big pink chair - I'l say this about this new dentist, since he took over from the previous scottish dentist who confirmed everyones preconceptions about tight scotsmen, he has spent a lot of money in tarting up the surgery, it now resembles a very avant garde furniture showroom in minimalist tones of beige and strangely shaped chairs in the waiting room, and when you walk into the actual surgery room he's got this huge vivid pink couch for a dentist chair which you lie down on, and at the press of a button are swivelled almost upside down whilst tools and shelves and drills and stuff whirr into place just above your head, its work £30 just to ride on his pink lounger chair.
So he tells me that the plan today is to remove the crown that he glued back into place and redrill out the root filling, clean the base of the tooth up and get the root ready for refilling next time - all of which comes as a bit of a suprise to me because the old crown is still glued firmly in place and I'd be happy leaving it at that.
Before I know whats happened he's pressed the button and me and the big pink bed are tilted upside down, the drills and other good stuff are whizzed into position above my face and he's got a needle in my gum and hes smiling down at me "everything alright ?"
He ragged the old tooth out and set about drilling the old filling (which he hesitates to call a crap job but I can tell he's thinking that) out of the root, which having seen the xray I already know is several inches long and stops somewhere just above the bridge of my nose, OK thats an exageration but it feels like the drill goes up that far, its certainly numb all the way up that side of my face.
He's got it all drilled out now and he's filed the old root base down to accept a new crown and after all that he's stuck the old crown back on top of it warning that it might not be as secure this time but when I go back in two weeks time he'll fill the root properly and measure up for a new crown and before I know what has happened I'm actually thanking him for making my face numb and I'm back out in his reception with a new appointment and his receptionist is saying "we'll just take £100 this time..."
Thats not bad pay for half an hours work and I'm left wondering what the next appointment is going to cost, I reckon I'll be lucky to get to the end of all this for less than £500 which is still £2500 less than the treatment that he wanted to do, but where did the National Health Service disappear to all of a sudden ?
Update at 3pm - I've just yawned and felt a crack in the tooth, the glue obviously hadn't set properly and now it wobbles - bollox, I'm not going back though, it'll have to wobble for two weeks, or maybe fall out again.
Sunday, January 22, 2006
And so it starts again...
To the despair of the wife my rugby league season started again today, my, it only seems like November since last season finished.
Today was a "friendly" match for Bramley, away to Dewsbury who are a league above us, they lost their grand final last October as did we, apart from that we have nothing in common, they are semi-professional, Bramley are an amateur team, on paper we were in for a hiding.
And on paper we got a hiding, but actually it wasn't that bad, we held them to four points difference at half time and looked very sharp and very keen, unlike last season when the first few games started with a wimper.
The final score was 60-something points to 24 but as the old cliche goes "we can take lots of positives from the game".
More importantly today saw the appearance of the benchcoats sponsored by my company, we agreed to pay for them and have them logo'ed up last April, their principle job being to ensure that any of the substitutes do not get cold whilst sitting on the bench.
It was only after having handed over the money last year that I remembered that rugby league is a summer sport and more often than not players who have been substituted will take off clothing, not put warm padded benchcoats on, hence for the whole of last season my benchcoats were nowhere to be seen.
Today they were in demand, everyone on the subs bench wanted one and everytime they stood up to reveal the back of the coat to the crowd I got my viewing companion to announce very loudly what the writing on the back of the coat said, I think everyone got the point by half time.
The other good point about today was the fact that my companion to the game had managed to snaffle directors tickets from somewhere and so we were guests in their VIP suite and stand - I even made this extend to the car parking by slowing down but not actually stopping for the man on the car park gate who was supposed to charge £2 entry, I simply shouted at him to ask where he wanted me to park, he indicated a reserved spot and then as an afterthought shouted back "are you press", now I never actually said I was a member of the press, I just waved a thumbs up at him and that was good enough, I obviously resemble some poor journalist who probably arrived later to find that he had to pay and that his reserved spot was taken.
A couple of pints in the VIP suite later and all was well in the world, how happy am I that the rugby league season has started again, I now have something to do of a Friday night and Sunday afternoon, and theres nothing quite like sitting outdoors watching the game on a frosty afternoon then picking up a Thai red curry meal on the way home - I hope heaven is like this.
Today was a "friendly" match for Bramley, away to Dewsbury who are a league above us, they lost their grand final last October as did we, apart from that we have nothing in common, they are semi-professional, Bramley are an amateur team, on paper we were in for a hiding.
And on paper we got a hiding, but actually it wasn't that bad, we held them to four points difference at half time and looked very sharp and very keen, unlike last season when the first few games started with a wimper.
The final score was 60-something points to 24 but as the old cliche goes "we can take lots of positives from the game".
More importantly today saw the appearance of the benchcoats sponsored by my company, we agreed to pay for them and have them logo'ed up last April, their principle job being to ensure that any of the substitutes do not get cold whilst sitting on the bench.
It was only after having handed over the money last year that I remembered that rugby league is a summer sport and more often than not players who have been substituted will take off clothing, not put warm padded benchcoats on, hence for the whole of last season my benchcoats were nowhere to be seen.
Today they were in demand, everyone on the subs bench wanted one and everytime they stood up to reveal the back of the coat to the crowd I got my viewing companion to announce very loudly what the writing on the back of the coat said, I think everyone got the point by half time.
The other good point about today was the fact that my companion to the game had managed to snaffle directors tickets from somewhere and so we were guests in their VIP suite and stand - I even made this extend to the car parking by slowing down but not actually stopping for the man on the car park gate who was supposed to charge £2 entry, I simply shouted at him to ask where he wanted me to park, he indicated a reserved spot and then as an afterthought shouted back "are you press", now I never actually said I was a member of the press, I just waved a thumbs up at him and that was good enough, I obviously resemble some poor journalist who probably arrived later to find that he had to pay and that his reserved spot was taken.
A couple of pints in the VIP suite later and all was well in the world, how happy am I that the rugby league season has started again, I now have something to do of a Friday night and Sunday afternoon, and theres nothing quite like sitting outdoors watching the game on a frosty afternoon then picking up a Thai red curry meal on the way home - I hope heaven is like this.
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Also dancing bears...
Oops, forgot to mention the dancing bears in the title of the previous piece.
So, dancing bears then,
Nothing wrong with letting a bear have a dance now and again, especially if it brings in a bob or two, nothing wrong at all.
The bears obviously like the music or they wouldn't dance in the first place and if they didn't dance to the music then they wouldn't have brought themselves to the attention of the bloke who shares the dancing partnership with them.
Now "Dancing Bears in Saturday Night Fever" is something I'd pay to see, a dancing grizzly in a white suit and black shirt striking the pose would be something, or dancing bears in "Grease" with another grizzly taking Olivia Newton-Johns role, or "Dirty Dancing Bears" practising in the lake while they fish for salmon.
See how much we lose when we make snap decisions about what is good or bad for animls ?
So, dancing bears then,
Nothing wrong with letting a bear have a dance now and again, especially if it brings in a bob or two, nothing wrong at all.
The bears obviously like the music or they wouldn't dance in the first place and if they didn't dance to the music then they wouldn't have brought themselves to the attention of the bloke who shares the dancing partnership with them.
Now "Dancing Bears in Saturday Night Fever" is something I'd pay to see, a dancing grizzly in a white suit and black shirt striking the pose would be something, or dancing bears in "Grease" with another grizzly taking Olivia Newton-Johns role, or "Dirty Dancing Bears" practising in the lake while they fish for salmon.
See how much we lose when we make snap decisions about what is good or bad for animls ?
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Dancing bears
An item on a breakfast TV programme this morning debated the issue of using live animals in circuses, which raises two questions,
1. Who would go to see a circus that uses dead animals ?
2. Who would go to see a circus that uses no animals ?
Question 2 is probably easier to answer as my imagination just cannot stretch to envision a circus where clowns try to lift a dead horse through a large burning hoop, but actually, just thinking about that I think it could work.
There are circuses that don't have any animals in them at all but apart from a circus of horrors that was doing the rounds last year, I have never been of a frame of mind that would be tempted or attracted by the thought of spending an evening in a tent, sitting on a hard wooden bench, while some people in lycra did handstands or juggled plates in front of me.
When ah wor nobbut a lad the arrival of Billy Smarts Circus was a big deal and we always seemed to go without fail, and without fail the jugglers and handstand experts were by far the most boring bits of the circus, the only thing that us kids went to see were the big cats, the lions and tigers in a cage which was hurridly erected whilst clowns distracted your attention, so hurridly was the cage erected that with hindsight you have to wonder just how well constructed it was and whether or not it would have resisted the most determined of lions - I remember in particular one year when a lion was sitting on one of those big tub things right in front of us, waiting for its turn to jump through fiery hoops, when it turned around to face us and started knawing at one of the ropes that held the cage together. When you're five that is one of the most frightening and exciting things that you can ever see and so of course I still remember it today and still remember standing on my seat and screaming at the lion tamer with all the rest of the kids that one of his lions was going to eat us soon.
The debate on TV today was started by the son of the bloke who starred in the film "Born Free" who believes that all animals circuses should be banned, he runs a charity that reintroduces animals back into the wild and so had a sort of vested interest in the subject.
The owner of the circus in question was putting forward the argument that his animals enjoyed performing in the ring and that they were bred for the purpose and well fed and well cared for, and he may have had a point. What he should also have added was "if you take away the animals then no-one in their right mind would come and watch my jugglers and handstand experts on their own"
But the strangest argument that the circus man had was that his circus was a necessary part of wild animal breeding programmes which was a function and responsibility that I never imagined circuses to have.
The answer is plain for all to see.
Give the Born Free man a job in the circus.
They could form a new company in which animals are breed specifically to be trained with circus skills in order to be reintroduced to the wild in a few years time when crowds have tired of looking at them. When back in the wild these animals would be the main attractions in African wildlife reserves and tourists would pay a big premium to specifically seek out and photograph these particular creatures - its a win/win situation.
The one thing that has always put me off going on a safari holiday to the Masaii-Mara is that there is no guarantee that you will get to see lions or elephants and that when you do it is very likely that they will be lying down in the shade sleeping or munching slowly on a large bush, just imagine how different it would be if you could arrange for the tourists and animals to rendevous in a large clearing and then be entertained by a procession of lions who gladly and happily leapt through hoops, slide down slides and allowed selected tourists to put their heads in their mouths, or to have elephants who willingly let you ride on their backs or jokingly filled their trunks with water and squirted you while you watched the lions.
Sometimes I get such good ideas that my head hurts.
1. Who would go to see a circus that uses dead animals ?
2. Who would go to see a circus that uses no animals ?
Question 2 is probably easier to answer as my imagination just cannot stretch to envision a circus where clowns try to lift a dead horse through a large burning hoop, but actually, just thinking about that I think it could work.
There are circuses that don't have any animals in them at all but apart from a circus of horrors that was doing the rounds last year, I have never been of a frame of mind that would be tempted or attracted by the thought of spending an evening in a tent, sitting on a hard wooden bench, while some people in lycra did handstands or juggled plates in front of me.
When ah wor nobbut a lad the arrival of Billy Smarts Circus was a big deal and we always seemed to go without fail, and without fail the jugglers and handstand experts were by far the most boring bits of the circus, the only thing that us kids went to see were the big cats, the lions and tigers in a cage which was hurridly erected whilst clowns distracted your attention, so hurridly was the cage erected that with hindsight you have to wonder just how well constructed it was and whether or not it would have resisted the most determined of lions - I remember in particular one year when a lion was sitting on one of those big tub things right in front of us, waiting for its turn to jump through fiery hoops, when it turned around to face us and started knawing at one of the ropes that held the cage together. When you're five that is one of the most frightening and exciting things that you can ever see and so of course I still remember it today and still remember standing on my seat and screaming at the lion tamer with all the rest of the kids that one of his lions was going to eat us soon.
The debate on TV today was started by the son of the bloke who starred in the film "Born Free" who believes that all animals circuses should be banned, he runs a charity that reintroduces animals back into the wild and so had a sort of vested interest in the subject.
The owner of the circus in question was putting forward the argument that his animals enjoyed performing in the ring and that they were bred for the purpose and well fed and well cared for, and he may have had a point. What he should also have added was "if you take away the animals then no-one in their right mind would come and watch my jugglers and handstand experts on their own"
But the strangest argument that the circus man had was that his circus was a necessary part of wild animal breeding programmes which was a function and responsibility that I never imagined circuses to have.
The answer is plain for all to see.
Give the Born Free man a job in the circus.
They could form a new company in which animals are breed specifically to be trained with circus skills in order to be reintroduced to the wild in a few years time when crowds have tired of looking at them. When back in the wild these animals would be the main attractions in African wildlife reserves and tourists would pay a big premium to specifically seek out and photograph these particular creatures - its a win/win situation.
The one thing that has always put me off going on a safari holiday to the Masaii-Mara is that there is no guarantee that you will get to see lions or elephants and that when you do it is very likely that they will be lying down in the shade sleeping or munching slowly on a large bush, just imagine how different it would be if you could arrange for the tourists and animals to rendevous in a large clearing and then be entertained by a procession of lions who gladly and happily leapt through hoops, slide down slides and allowed selected tourists to put their heads in their mouths, or to have elephants who willingly let you ride on their backs or jokingly filled their trunks with water and squirted you while you watched the lions.
Sometimes I get such good ideas that my head hurts.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
An ordinary day
I wrote to my finance company with the novel way of rasing money, couldn't be bothered ringing to speak to the corporate frustrated old bag who would field every smart alec remark with a straight bat, so I wrote to them and invited them to view their recent correspondance with great hilarity like I had done and suggested that unless they want to admit that the loony-tunes have taken over their particular bit of the asylum then they could simply drop me a line to confirm that their £25 "lets write a letter for no particular reason" charge would be removed - I await their reply with baited breath, if I get a corporate cow letter in return I shall reply, taking the piss this time.
What a very ordinary day this has been.
Sat in the office all day supposedly updating our support web site with password control so that only those clients who have renewed their support can get on it, but just couldn't be arsed reading through all the guff that explained how to set the password control up.
Took a phone call from a customer that had rung on Monday with a comms problem with some equipment after he'd replaced a server, I suggested several times on Monday that he check the bit of equipment that wouldn't work as it sounded like he'd changed some settings, probably IP address or subnet, he insisted not, I suggested it would be good to check, he said not, I suggested that he check just for a laugh, he said not, I said go on, just for me.....you are getting the drift of this story now aren't you ?
Just to get rid of him I said I'd check out the error logs and ring him back, then forgot about him as soon as I put the phone down.
He rang back today to ask if I'd got anywhere, I asked of he'd checked the settings, he said not, I suggested it would be good to do so, he said not, jesus we started that same conversation again, I said I'd ring our software people and get straight back to him, I put the phone down and emailed them instead then forgot about him again.
I got an email back from our software people, they said check the settings if he's moved stuff etc etc etc, I forgot about him again.
Then he rang back all excited but I butted in and told him I had an answer, check the settings etc etc etc, yes, he said, I just did and they were wrong for our new server, I've changed them and it works now.
Well hey-ho I thought, its a fekkin miracle.
What a very ordinary day this has been.
Sat in the office all day supposedly updating our support web site with password control so that only those clients who have renewed their support can get on it, but just couldn't be arsed reading through all the guff that explained how to set the password control up.
Took a phone call from a customer that had rung on Monday with a comms problem with some equipment after he'd replaced a server, I suggested several times on Monday that he check the bit of equipment that wouldn't work as it sounded like he'd changed some settings, probably IP address or subnet, he insisted not, I suggested it would be good to check, he said not, I suggested that he check just for a laugh, he said not, I said go on, just for me.....you are getting the drift of this story now aren't you ?
Just to get rid of him I said I'd check out the error logs and ring him back, then forgot about him as soon as I put the phone down.
He rang back today to ask if I'd got anywhere, I asked of he'd checked the settings, he said not, I suggested it would be good to do so, he said not, jesus we started that same conversation again, I said I'd ring our software people and get straight back to him, I put the phone down and emailed them instead then forgot about him again.
I got an email back from our software people, they said check the settings if he's moved stuff etc etc etc, I forgot about him again.
Then he rang back all excited but I butted in and told him I had an answer, check the settings etc etc etc, yes, he said, I just did and they were wrong for our new server, I've changed them and it works now.
Well hey-ho I thought, its a fekkin miracle.
Sunday, January 15, 2006
Dear Sir, we've found a new way to make money...
I've got a great letter to write tomorrow, or maybe I'll phone the loan company who have just sent me a letter to tell me that the outstanding balance on my account is £0.00 and they will be charging me £15 for having to send the letter.
I love corporate cock-ups like this, it gives me the opportunity to explain in writing just how fooking useless some of these large corporations are, but in a nice sarcastic way, no foul language, no angry accusations, no threats to go to the nearest TV Watchdog programme, oh no, good old sarcasm wins the day every time.
I can't remember which famous writer (it may have been Oscar Wilde) who penned the phrase "Sir, you have delusions of adequecy" but it often fits the bill when writing kick-arse letters like the one I'm planning.
The funnier thing about these corporations is that they will then try to defend their inadequecies before cancelling their penalty payments instead of just writing "yes we ballsed-up" or laughing with you on the phone, and its usually a middle aged corporate woman that they put on the phone to answer these calls, the sort of woman who seems to have a huge chip on her shoulder because she's not further up the corporate ladder than she feels she should be after 20 years in the company, and maybe she has a point, but shes there to take it all out on you and her lack of humour or common sense makes the situation even funnier.
I think I'll ring them tomorrow instead of writing.
I love corporate cock-ups like this, it gives me the opportunity to explain in writing just how fooking useless some of these large corporations are, but in a nice sarcastic way, no foul language, no angry accusations, no threats to go to the nearest TV Watchdog programme, oh no, good old sarcasm wins the day every time.
I can't remember which famous writer (it may have been Oscar Wilde) who penned the phrase "Sir, you have delusions of adequecy" but it often fits the bill when writing kick-arse letters like the one I'm planning.
The funnier thing about these corporations is that they will then try to defend their inadequecies before cancelling their penalty payments instead of just writing "yes we ballsed-up" or laughing with you on the phone, and its usually a middle aged corporate woman that they put on the phone to answer these calls, the sort of woman who seems to have a huge chip on her shoulder because she's not further up the corporate ladder than she feels she should be after 20 years in the company, and maybe she has a point, but shes there to take it all out on you and her lack of humour or common sense makes the situation even funnier.
I think I'll ring them tomorrow instead of writing.
Friday, January 13, 2006
How much will a dog eat ?
Just how much will your average dog eat before he finally admits that he's eaten too much already ?People, meet Jake (left).
He is a Golden Retriever and he lives with us and has done since he was a twelve week old puppy, he's now nearly 8 years old. He doesn't like plastic carrier bags, gunshots, vacumn cleaners, going for walks, barking, guard dog duties, dog toys that squeak or infact any sort of dog toy, or those large green cable TV junction boxes that stand and hum at the end of every street around here - I don't mean that they smell, I mean that they hum gently in the background, Jake doesn't like the tune they're humming.
He does like mealtime and sleeping and he likes being the centre of attention.
He has barked maybe five times since he came to live with us and each time that he has barked he scares the life out of me, I think he scares himself too because the last time he barked was at a magpie in the garden and he ran straight back inside with a daft look on his face as if to say "did you hear that, I did the woof thing again". The magpie sat on the shed and pissed himself laughing.
We bought him from a genuine gamekeeper way up in the genuine Yorkshire Dales who lived on a genuine country estate, Jakes pedigree reads like a "who's who" of famous gundogs, it lists eight generations of gundog champions and both his parents were working Retrievers, the gamekeeper let Jake out into a field behind his house when we went to collect him and as he ran through the head-high (to him) grass he pointed out how he was stopping to sniff the air every few seconds, "its in his breeding see" he explained, "our Labradors sniff the soil, Retrievers are air scenters, he'd make a good gun dog him, but he's shit scared of guns"
And that had sealed Jakes fate, all his brothers and sisters were already being trained to fetch dead birds back to their masters, Jake had run away and hid back in his kennel when they fired a shotgun near him, even now on a Sunday he won't go outside because a farm two miles away holds clay pigeon shoots and he can hear the faint popping of the guns.
And so he came to live with us, he comes to work with me and sleeps under my desk all day and when we come home he sleeps all evening in front of the fire, then I let him out into the garden late on and he has a piss and a shit and then comes in and sleeps all night at the bottom of the stairs, its a tough life but its in his breeding see.
We had a burglar come and kick the kitchen door down last December, came in at one in the morning and stole my wallet and mobile phone, Jake was sleeping in the kitchen that night, I heard the door being kicked down and came straight downstairs to find the burglar gone and Jake standing at the back door looking out, he turned to me and looked with a "what the fuck was that" expression and when the police came he let them fuss over him then looked sheepish again when they asked if he'd barked at all.
Anyhow, to the eating question.
He's been staying at home recently instead of coming to the office, well it saves him having to wake up for a few minutes to get in the car, and when Jodie gets in from school at 3.30pm she usually feeds him his two scoops per day of Pedigree Complete Meal.
Two scoops is all he's supposed to have, it says so on the bag, two scoops for lazy Retrievers, all the nourishment they need it says, don't feed them more than two scoops though because they'll get to be fat bastard dogs it says on the bag, so we only feed him two scoops.
Except that I didn't know that Jodie has been feeding him as well as part of my routine is to feed him, so I come in at 6pm and I feed him two scoops as well, and this has been going on for a month or more now.
So tonight before I fed him I asked him if he'd been fed already, he just sat and stared at me waiting for a word he recognised in that way that all dogs do, they only understand a few words of human and yet they look at us so intently as though they are hanging onto every word you are saying.
I mentioned the magic word "dinner" and his eyebrows shot up and his tail started involuntary wagging, I asked again if he'd already had his dinner and he got more excited, I gave him his dinner and he wolfed at it as though it was yesterday since he'd last been fed, which it should have been.
Then Jodie walked in and said she'd already fed him and he just looked up with a big smug smile, no wonder he's piled the beef on since I stopped taking him to work with me.
So how much do you think a dog would eat before he stopped and said he'd had enough ?
I reckon that if you dropped Jakes 15kg bag (nearly a months supply) of Pedigree Complete Meal on the floor and it split open then he'd eat all of it without stopping, it'd take him maybe half an hour to eat it all but I reckon he would, and if you dropped another bag on the floor two hours later I reckon he'd have a good go at that as well.
Its in his breeding, as long as it didn't make a bang when you dropped it.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
It smells a bit around here
The diet continues.
Four days in and cutting out lunch hasn't started to work yet, at least its not yet reflected on the daily weighing scales, there is time though.
Replacing lunch (we Northerners call it dinner of course but I'll revert to Lunch so as not to confuse the namby-pamby in the South) with fruit is my masterplan, so far this week I have eaten an apple, a banana and a pear for lunch washed down with a cup of coffee.
The total effect so far has only been to increase the emissions of flatulent gaseous vapours during the afternoon, and its starting to whiff a bit in the office, I blame the pears.
Which isn't what the Queen did on one state occasion during the visit of President Obasanjo of Nigeria. Her Maj and His Presidentship were in an open carriage being transported to St Pauls for a sing song of a Sunday evening when one of the horses directly in front of the President let rip with a huge rasping fart.
An embarassed silence ensued until The Queen suddenly cleared her throat and turning to the President said "I am most terribly sorry President Obasanjo".
The President, diplomatic to the end replied "Thats quite alright your Majesty, to be perfectly honest I thought the horse had done it"
I still like the old ones.
How much do farts weigh anyway, if I go for a walk and get rid of some juicy ones will it make a difference on the scales ?
Four days in and cutting out lunch hasn't started to work yet, at least its not yet reflected on the daily weighing scales, there is time though.
Replacing lunch (we Northerners call it dinner of course but I'll revert to Lunch so as not to confuse the namby-pamby in the South) with fruit is my masterplan, so far this week I have eaten an apple, a banana and a pear for lunch washed down with a cup of coffee.
The total effect so far has only been to increase the emissions of flatulent gaseous vapours during the afternoon, and its starting to whiff a bit in the office, I blame the pears.
Which isn't what the Queen did on one state occasion during the visit of President Obasanjo of Nigeria. Her Maj and His Presidentship were in an open carriage being transported to St Pauls for a sing song of a Sunday evening when one of the horses directly in front of the President let rip with a huge rasping fart.
An embarassed silence ensued until The Queen suddenly cleared her throat and turning to the President said "I am most terribly sorry President Obasanjo".
The President, diplomatic to the end replied "Thats quite alright your Majesty, to be perfectly honest I thought the horse had done it"
I still like the old ones.
How much do farts weigh anyway, if I go for a walk and get rid of some juicy ones will it make a difference on the scales ?
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Barries moment of glory
The latest painting in pastels - Leeds Rhinos Barrie McDernott in a famous pose after scoring the try that turned the game in Leeds' favour in the 1999 Challenge Cup Final at Wembley.
Back to school tonight...
It was school interview night tonight, the night when parents were invited into school to interview their childrens teachers and find out just what it is that teachers do these days during the few weeks of the year that they stand at the chalk face and talk out loud to 13 year olds who don't want to listen.
Both parents are supposed to go, all of the teachers assemble in the school hall, sat at a small table each with their name displayed, you are given a list of your childs teachers and you are alloted a time at five minute intervals in which you can sit down and interview them.
This would work out fine if you had eight teachers to see and eight consecutive five minute intervals in which to interview them, it would be even better if they could all sit in a line and you just move your chair down the line every five minutes.
But of course its never like that.
I was presented with my list of eight teachers last night and told that I would be going on my own as my wife and daughter had an appointment at the nail salon tonight, so much for the parental "team" involvement as the school like to describe our partnership in Jodie's education.
When I looked at the list tonight I realised that I'd been stiched up - the first appointment was at 5.05pm, the next at 5.15pm, then the next at 5.55pm - forty minutes to kill in a school hall between interviews, already in that instant I knew that I was not going to hang around for forty minutes.
So I turned up at 5.05pm and saw the first teacher who, as it happened, was Jodies form teacher, the one who is supposed to be responsible for her mentoring this year although he doesn't actually teach her inany classes.
I say "he" but when I walked in the hall (full of parents hustling around the place, squeezing into the rows between the interview desks), I assumed that he was a "she", don't know why but I did, so I walked up and down the aisles of desks ignoring the males and looking at the name badges on all of the female teachers.
Of course I couldn't find him and was just about to head for the door and home again when I spotted his name on a desk, "she" was a "he" of course, and he looked just like Uncle Fester from the Addams Family, just like Uncle Fester.
We spoke for five minutes, we'd seen Jodies school report at the weekend so he didn't tell me anything that was new, the only thing that he could advise me on was that she sometimes came to school with her tie not fastened properly and at the end of the interview that was the only nugget of information that I had managed to extract from him, how pleased I was that I'd driven all the way to the school and given up my evening just so that I could check her school tie in the morning.
I couldn't leave it at that so when he asked if I had any more questions I brought out the parents killer question - homework, you're not giving them enough homework. He promised to check Jodies homework diary and give her more thus consigning me to her "bastard dad" log tonight, its great being a parent when you have the power to do things like that.
So after Uncle Fester it was the music teacher and then the forty minute wait. The music teacher was nowhere to be seen, the desk with its name tag was there, but not the music teacher thus extending my wait for the next interview to forty five minutes.
I did what anyone else would have done - I left the building and drove home, sod the rest of them, I knew what they were going to say anyway, "she needs to focus more, she's easily distracted, she can work very hard but messes around too much" and more of the same.
I came home, ate a bar of chocolate that I found in the fridge (turned out to be Suzannes) and waited for the glamour girls to come back from the nail salon whereupon I berated the school and its interview nights and put the blame on the teachers who didn't turn up and how I'd waited for nearly an hour to see anyone, I think I've got away with it.
Both parents are supposed to go, all of the teachers assemble in the school hall, sat at a small table each with their name displayed, you are given a list of your childs teachers and you are alloted a time at five minute intervals in which you can sit down and interview them.
This would work out fine if you had eight teachers to see and eight consecutive five minute intervals in which to interview them, it would be even better if they could all sit in a line and you just move your chair down the line every five minutes.
But of course its never like that.
I was presented with my list of eight teachers last night and told that I would be going on my own as my wife and daughter had an appointment at the nail salon tonight, so much for the parental "team" involvement as the school like to describe our partnership in Jodie's education.
When I looked at the list tonight I realised that I'd been stiched up - the first appointment was at 5.05pm, the next at 5.15pm, then the next at 5.55pm - forty minutes to kill in a school hall between interviews, already in that instant I knew that I was not going to hang around for forty minutes.
So I turned up at 5.05pm and saw the first teacher who, as it happened, was Jodies form teacher, the one who is supposed to be responsible for her mentoring this year although he doesn't actually teach her inany classes.
I say "he" but when I walked in the hall (full of parents hustling around the place, squeezing into the rows between the interview desks), I assumed that he was a "she", don't know why but I did, so I walked up and down the aisles of desks ignoring the males and looking at the name badges on all of the female teachers.
Of course I couldn't find him and was just about to head for the door and home again when I spotted his name on a desk, "she" was a "he" of course, and he looked just like Uncle Fester from the Addams Family, just like Uncle Fester.
We spoke for five minutes, we'd seen Jodies school report at the weekend so he didn't tell me anything that was new, the only thing that he could advise me on was that she sometimes came to school with her tie not fastened properly and at the end of the interview that was the only nugget of information that I had managed to extract from him, how pleased I was that I'd driven all the way to the school and given up my evening just so that I could check her school tie in the morning.
I couldn't leave it at that so when he asked if I had any more questions I brought out the parents killer question - homework, you're not giving them enough homework. He promised to check Jodies homework diary and give her more thus consigning me to her "bastard dad" log tonight, its great being a parent when you have the power to do things like that.
So after Uncle Fester it was the music teacher and then the forty minute wait. The music teacher was nowhere to be seen, the desk with its name tag was there, but not the music teacher thus extending my wait for the next interview to forty five minutes.
I did what anyone else would have done - I left the building and drove home, sod the rest of them, I knew what they were going to say anyway, "she needs to focus more, she's easily distracted, she can work very hard but messes around too much" and more of the same.
I came home, ate a bar of chocolate that I found in the fridge (turned out to be Suzannes) and waited for the glamour girls to come back from the nail salon whereupon I berated the school and its interview nights and put the blame on the teachers who didn't turn up and how I'd waited for nearly an hour to see anyone, I think I've got away with it.
Journalists, they don't just make it up do they ?
I only ask because of a radio interview I heard last night - it was on the radio.
A well known journalist with a national newspaper has his own evening show on BBC Radio Leeds and last night he was interviewing a not so well known chicken expert about the impending doom and end of the world scenario that is bird flu.
By the way, I'll not name the well known journalist with the national newspaper because I quite like his radio show, it has the only amusing content broadcast by BBC Radio Leeds at the moment, but his name, for instance, is not Martin Pelner, oh no, its something completely different.
Anyway, this well known journalist with a national newspaper, which may or may not be The Guardian, and who is certainly not called Martin Pelner, was intent on whipping up major panic and hysteria across West Yorkshire by predicting the end of civilisation as we know it when we all catch bird flu in a couple of weeks.
The not so well known chicken expert went to great lengths to advise that only 150 people in the whole world were known to have contracted bird flu, and only half of them had died.
The well known journalist.....oh bollcks, it was Martin Kelner ok ?
Martin Kelner wasn't going to let the chicken expert off the hook so easily, "half of the people died ?" he exclaimed in alarm, "thats potentially millions of people in West Yorkshire who will die when bird flu hits us"
Once again chicken man asserts that its really, really hard to catch bird flu, I mean really, really hard, in fact he went on to explain how you could catch it if you really really wanted to and it basically involves kissing the chicken, hard, lots of times, you need to take a chicken as a lover and really breath in its germs before you'll catch its flu.
None of this impressed Mr Kelner at all, he wanted to stick with his "Half of West Yorkshire wiped out" headline, he'd probably already written the story just in case he was one of the ones to be wiped out.
"Thats all well and good" Mr K continued, "but when someone does take a chicken as a lover and then catches its flu, then, then it will spread like wildfire won't it ?"
"No" said chicken man, "no Martin, like I've already said, you can't catch bird flu from people, you only catch it from birds, so if you took a chicken lover then only you would get the flu, I won't catch it from you"
It went quiet for a while,
"So basically the whole of West Yorkshire has to take a chicken lover in order for half of us to be wiped out then ?", Martin sounded very disappointed.
"Yes Martin"
"Shall we play some music ?"
A well known journalist with a national newspaper has his own evening show on BBC Radio Leeds and last night he was interviewing a not so well known chicken expert about the impending doom and end of the world scenario that is bird flu.
By the way, I'll not name the well known journalist with the national newspaper because I quite like his radio show, it has the only amusing content broadcast by BBC Radio Leeds at the moment, but his name, for instance, is not Martin Pelner, oh no, its something completely different.
Anyway, this well known journalist with a national newspaper, which may or may not be The Guardian, and who is certainly not called Martin Pelner, was intent on whipping up major panic and hysteria across West Yorkshire by predicting the end of civilisation as we know it when we all catch bird flu in a couple of weeks.
The not so well known chicken expert went to great lengths to advise that only 150 people in the whole world were known to have contracted bird flu, and only half of them had died.
The well known journalist.....oh bollcks, it was Martin Kelner ok ?
Martin Kelner wasn't going to let the chicken expert off the hook so easily, "half of the people died ?" he exclaimed in alarm, "thats potentially millions of people in West Yorkshire who will die when bird flu hits us"
Once again chicken man asserts that its really, really hard to catch bird flu, I mean really, really hard, in fact he went on to explain how you could catch it if you really really wanted to and it basically involves kissing the chicken, hard, lots of times, you need to take a chicken as a lover and really breath in its germs before you'll catch its flu.
None of this impressed Mr Kelner at all, he wanted to stick with his "Half of West Yorkshire wiped out" headline, he'd probably already written the story just in case he was one of the ones to be wiped out.
"Thats all well and good" Mr K continued, "but when someone does take a chicken as a lover and then catches its flu, then, then it will spread like wildfire won't it ?"
"No" said chicken man, "no Martin, like I've already said, you can't catch bird flu from people, you only catch it from birds, so if you took a chicken lover then only you would get the flu, I won't catch it from you"
It went quiet for a while,
"So basically the whole of West Yorkshire has to take a chicken lover in order for half of us to be wiped out then ?", Martin sounded very disappointed.
"Yes Martin"
"Shall we play some music ?"
Monday, January 09, 2006
Its all English to me ...
In the news today is a government inspired poll of the population of England to nominate cultural icons that define "English" - Scots and Welsh need not apply because apparently their heritage is full of evocative icons, presumably drunks and sheep, in that order.
The "one million pound, two year poll" is seeking something, the ultimate thing that says "I'm English" to foreign visitors, nominations include the red London buses that were recently scrapped for new ones, the hymn "Jerusalem", Holbeins portrait of Henry VIII, and Punch and Judy.
Bollocks.
To be English is to love losing at sport, we like winning, but we love losing. Australians can't understand it, they don't have "losing" in their sports repetoire but we love a sporting loser, when the Olympics come to London in 2012 we'll have an opportunity to showcase to the world how to lose gallantly at everything you do - at the last Olympics in Athens our womens marathon gold star, nailed-on, dead cert for a gold medal had to stop for a shit halfway around the course and lost by a huge margin, did we hate her for it ? No we got the Queen to give her a medal anyway just like Muttley always demanded a medal from Dick Dasterdly in "Catch the Pigeon", see, we don't need Olympic medals, we've got a Queen who'll give you a much bigger medal than the Olympic ones anytime you ask her.
To be English is to enjoy bad weather and rejoice in the fact that wherever you go abroad the weather is always better and when you get home its always great to tell your friends "ooh the weather was scorching, frying eggs on the pavement we were, oooh it was lovely" whereas the truth is that you fekkin moaned about how hot it was for the whole fourteen days that you were there, you couldn't wait to get back home to England where you know for a fact that if its too warm one day you just wait for ten minutes and it will start to fekkin rain again.
To be English is to love complaining about our greatest national institution - The National Health Service. Walk into any hospital anywhere in England with a broken finger and someone will bandage you up and send you on your way, no questions asked, no bills charged, no insurance policies checked, you don't need any of that crap, they just make you better and ask you to leave, you can't even force them to take money off you, they don't do it for money they do it for love, and yet all over England you'll find people complaining about the National Health Service saying things like "she had to wait for eight days on a trolley in a corridor before a doctor would see here, and when they examined her she was dead", well maybe she did die on a trolley waiting to see a doctor but at least it was fekkin free, no-one sent a bill to her house for the use of the trolley did they ?
To be English is to sort everything out over a "nice cup of tea". If we'd had our way over Afghanistan and Iraq we wouldn't have joined in with Bush's shooting parties, no we'd have invited them all around for a nice cup of tea and talked about it, told the Talibhan not to be so naughty the next time, asked Saddam to let those weapon inspectors into his Weapons of Mass Destruction Compound, go on, just for us, be a good lad, do you want more sugar in that, is it milky enough, yes, ok then, would you like a fancy cake then, Mrs Heckmondwike made them fresh this morning.
To be English you tolerate the Scots, patronise the Welsh, secretly hate the French but smile at them anyway, treat the Spanish like five year old children and mock their attempts to speak English when in fact its you that are visiting their country, grasp every opportunity to remind the Germans that they once voted for Hitler whilst ignoring the fact that we once voted for Thatcher, you have to put lots of milk in everything you drink, cover all your food in thick gravy or tomato ketchup, covet American takeaway food whilst telling everyone how bad it is for you and you don't want to get fat like those Yanks are and yes I'll supersize that please and no I've changed my mind make that two portions of fries with my burger, you sing the theme tune to Skippy the Bush Kangeroo every time you meet an Aussie and you ask every Kiwi you meet if they've got television over there yet, every time you walk into a bar you cannot leave until you are drunk especially if you are under 25 years of age, and it is impossible to board a plane at any airport in England unless they have to carry you on from the bar along with your 25 bottles of duty free gin and whisky and the first thing you ask the stewardess when the plane is off the ground is "give me a vodka love", we kill each other in shops to buy clothing that we don't need at prices that our parents would have had heart attacks just thinking about and yet we moan like hell when we get the stuff home and find its all been made in sweat shops in taiwan and what ever happened to our British clothing industry, we paid billions of pounds in the 1970's to establish our own oil fields out in the North Sea and one of the biggest oil companies in the world is British and yet we have the most expensive petrol prices in the world and we never bat an eyelid when it costs £50 and more to fill our normal sized petrol tanks, thats $75 (and the rest) to you Americans, no wonder you never travel any further than London when you come here its like pouring gold nuggets into your tank...
...and theres more, much more, but that will do for now.
The "one million pound, two year poll" is seeking something, the ultimate thing that says "I'm English" to foreign visitors, nominations include the red London buses that were recently scrapped for new ones, the hymn "Jerusalem", Holbeins portrait of Henry VIII, and Punch and Judy.
Bollocks.
To be English is to love losing at sport, we like winning, but we love losing. Australians can't understand it, they don't have "losing" in their sports repetoire but we love a sporting loser, when the Olympics come to London in 2012 we'll have an opportunity to showcase to the world how to lose gallantly at everything you do - at the last Olympics in Athens our womens marathon gold star, nailed-on, dead cert for a gold medal had to stop for a shit halfway around the course and lost by a huge margin, did we hate her for it ? No we got the Queen to give her a medal anyway just like Muttley always demanded a medal from Dick Dasterdly in "Catch the Pigeon", see, we don't need Olympic medals, we've got a Queen who'll give you a much bigger medal than the Olympic ones anytime you ask her.
To be English is to enjoy bad weather and rejoice in the fact that wherever you go abroad the weather is always better and when you get home its always great to tell your friends "ooh the weather was scorching, frying eggs on the pavement we were, oooh it was lovely" whereas the truth is that you fekkin moaned about how hot it was for the whole fourteen days that you were there, you couldn't wait to get back home to England where you know for a fact that if its too warm one day you just wait for ten minutes and it will start to fekkin rain again.
To be English is to love complaining about our greatest national institution - The National Health Service. Walk into any hospital anywhere in England with a broken finger and someone will bandage you up and send you on your way, no questions asked, no bills charged, no insurance policies checked, you don't need any of that crap, they just make you better and ask you to leave, you can't even force them to take money off you, they don't do it for money they do it for love, and yet all over England you'll find people complaining about the National Health Service saying things like "she had to wait for eight days on a trolley in a corridor before a doctor would see here, and when they examined her she was dead", well maybe she did die on a trolley waiting to see a doctor but at least it was fekkin free, no-one sent a bill to her house for the use of the trolley did they ?
To be English is to sort everything out over a "nice cup of tea". If we'd had our way over Afghanistan and Iraq we wouldn't have joined in with Bush's shooting parties, no we'd have invited them all around for a nice cup of tea and talked about it, told the Talibhan not to be so naughty the next time, asked Saddam to let those weapon inspectors into his Weapons of Mass Destruction Compound, go on, just for us, be a good lad, do you want more sugar in that, is it milky enough, yes, ok then, would you like a fancy cake then, Mrs Heckmondwike made them fresh this morning.
To be English you tolerate the Scots, patronise the Welsh, secretly hate the French but smile at them anyway, treat the Spanish like five year old children and mock their attempts to speak English when in fact its you that are visiting their country, grasp every opportunity to remind the Germans that they once voted for Hitler whilst ignoring the fact that we once voted for Thatcher, you have to put lots of milk in everything you drink, cover all your food in thick gravy or tomato ketchup, covet American takeaway food whilst telling everyone how bad it is for you and you don't want to get fat like those Yanks are and yes I'll supersize that please and no I've changed my mind make that two portions of fries with my burger, you sing the theme tune to Skippy the Bush Kangeroo every time you meet an Aussie and you ask every Kiwi you meet if they've got television over there yet, every time you walk into a bar you cannot leave until you are drunk especially if you are under 25 years of age, and it is impossible to board a plane at any airport in England unless they have to carry you on from the bar along with your 25 bottles of duty free gin and whisky and the first thing you ask the stewardess when the plane is off the ground is "give me a vodka love", we kill each other in shops to buy clothing that we don't need at prices that our parents would have had heart attacks just thinking about and yet we moan like hell when we get the stuff home and find its all been made in sweat shops in taiwan and what ever happened to our British clothing industry, we paid billions of pounds in the 1970's to establish our own oil fields out in the North Sea and one of the biggest oil companies in the world is British and yet we have the most expensive petrol prices in the world and we never bat an eyelid when it costs £50 and more to fill our normal sized petrol tanks, thats $75 (and the rest) to you Americans, no wonder you never travel any further than London when you come here its like pouring gold nuggets into your tank...
...and theres more, much more, but that will do for now.
Sunday, January 08, 2006
The Everest one ...
Nearly finished, this is the Everest painting for a close friends 50th birthday present, he's due back from base camp any time now where he's spent the weeks since before christmas, including the actual day of his birthday.
Didn't take too long to do this one in pastels at A3 size and I've just got a bit more detail to put into the rocky bits before it can be fixed and then mounted.
Then its back to rugby players portraits...
Saturday, January 07, 2006
You sir, are an idiot...
It never fails to annoy and irritate the hell out of me to watch TV documentary programmes such as "Airline" or "Airport" and see people turn up late or without passports and expect to get on flights, its just not good TV anymore, it was funny the first time it happened to see a frequent seasoned business traveller get turned away from check-in while he went purple with apoplexy, but its just not funny when its on every week.
Everyone knows the score, everyone knows that you have to check-in at least one hour before your flight, most infrequent travellers still stick to the old two hour check-in rule, but it seems that the more often that you fly, the closer to the "desk closed" deadline you have to make it until one day you are two minutes late and you get to meet Leo, the fay desk manager who takes no shit from anyone.
But even though he takes no shit, Leo is still too nice to these people who, lets be honest, are wasting his time by arguing that they should be the exception to the rule and that the flight should be delayed just for them because they have a no-interest meeting in Glasgow in two hours time.
When I reach the dizzy career heights of Richard Branson or Stelios (and I'm currently 27 rungs behind them) then my check-in staff will be trained to be very rude to these people in order to make sure that next time they book with, and annoy, a different airline, something like ...
"Sorry pal, you're late, check-in is closed"
"But it can't be, the motorway was closed, my dog died this morning, I couldn't find a car park space"
"Tough shit pal, I'm out of here"
"Wait, wait, you can't do this to me I have to be in Glasgow for a sales meeting in just two hours, I must get on that flight"
"Hey loook pal, I couldn't give a monkeys chuff about your sales meeting ............... unless ......"
"Yes, yes ?"
"......unless, you don't sell chocolate do you ?"
"No we sell paperclips, we're the biggest paperclip manufacturers in Europe and all our European heads and our CEO are going to be there, and so am I, GET ME ON THIS FLIGHT NOW" [bangs fist on desk]
"Look pal, get the fook off my desk and get the fook away from my face, in fact get the fook out of my airport, you're late, its your fault, theres nothing that I want to do to help you, if you sold chocolate then you'd be on your way to the gate right now, but paperclips I don't need, now can you see those two big guys over there, the ones in black suits with the earpieces, yes those ones, those two are Carlos and Frankie and if you give me any more shit I'm going to ask them to come over here and rip another hole in your arse, do you understand me ?"
"Shall I try BA then ?"
"Whatever"
Everyone knows the score, everyone knows that you have to check-in at least one hour before your flight, most infrequent travellers still stick to the old two hour check-in rule, but it seems that the more often that you fly, the closer to the "desk closed" deadline you have to make it until one day you are two minutes late and you get to meet Leo, the fay desk manager who takes no shit from anyone.
But even though he takes no shit, Leo is still too nice to these people who, lets be honest, are wasting his time by arguing that they should be the exception to the rule and that the flight should be delayed just for them because they have a no-interest meeting in Glasgow in two hours time.
When I reach the dizzy career heights of Richard Branson or Stelios (and I'm currently 27 rungs behind them) then my check-in staff will be trained to be very rude to these people in order to make sure that next time they book with, and annoy, a different airline, something like ...
"Sorry pal, you're late, check-in is closed"
"But it can't be, the motorway was closed, my dog died this morning, I couldn't find a car park space"
"Tough shit pal, I'm out of here"
"Wait, wait, you can't do this to me I have to be in Glasgow for a sales meeting in just two hours, I must get on that flight"
"Hey loook pal, I couldn't give a monkeys chuff about your sales meeting ............... unless ......"
"Yes, yes ?"
"......unless, you don't sell chocolate do you ?"
"No we sell paperclips, we're the biggest paperclip manufacturers in Europe and all our European heads and our CEO are going to be there, and so am I, GET ME ON THIS FLIGHT NOW" [bangs fist on desk]
"Look pal, get the fook off my desk and get the fook away from my face, in fact get the fook out of my airport, you're late, its your fault, theres nothing that I want to do to help you, if you sold chocolate then you'd be on your way to the gate right now, but paperclips I don't need, now can you see those two big guys over there, the ones in black suits with the earpieces, yes those ones, those two are Carlos and Frankie and if you give me any more shit I'm going to ask them to come over here and rip another hole in your arse, do you understand me ?"
"Shall I try BA then ?"
"Whatever"
Thursday, January 05, 2006
The quest for a sensible call centre continues...
Its day two of my quest to transfer all of my standing orders from my now defunct mortgage account to my brand sparkling new current account and once again I run into red tape inspired difficulties...
This morning I received two letters from companies who I pay money to every month advising me that my old bank has advised them that I've kicked them into touch with relish and that now they won't be paying my standing orders anymore.
This is OK by me as I now have contact numbers for two of the accounts that I couldn't trace yesterday, so feeling rather smug and with my new account details stuck to the monitor in front of me I ring the first one - an insurance company.
We go through the usual name and address rubbish and then the lady asks me for details of my password, I tell her I didn't know I had a password for an insurance policy, a small insurance policy at that, she's adamant that I do and that she can't go any further until I tell her it, I tell her I haven't a clue.
She then asks if I've got the policy number, I tell her no but I have got a letter from her company asking me to contact them for details of my new bank account, I explain that all I want to do is make arrangements to pay money to them, she asks if I know how much the policy is worth, I tell her that I don't have that information with me but all I want to do is set up another standing order - she can't help me she says, ring back when I've got my security question answer, I hang up cursing her fekkin company and its security questions and decide to wait until the next payment is missed and they write again, my reply in writing is going to fester for another month and it will be a classic among the "fuck off" letters that I've written in the past.
So I ring the second company who have written to me, its a credit card company, I go into the automated system and wait for seven minutes before talking to a human.
They ask me for my name and address rubbish as usual and then ask me for two details from my password.
I can't remember it.
I hardly ever use this account online and I've got the password written down at home, but I'm in the office.
I guess what the password might be but i'm wrong. I explain that I'm not trying to scam them and that all I want to do is make arrangements to pay money to them, but they are having none of it, no password, no standing order setting up.
I slam the phone down again and shock everyone in the office by asking out loud how fekkin hard can it be to pay money to people and how the fekkin hell can a scam work if you're a stranger paying money into someone elses account.
This task of changing accounts is proving tiresome and may yet test my patience to the limit, I try again tomorrow.
This morning I received two letters from companies who I pay money to every month advising me that my old bank has advised them that I've kicked them into touch with relish and that now they won't be paying my standing orders anymore.
This is OK by me as I now have contact numbers for two of the accounts that I couldn't trace yesterday, so feeling rather smug and with my new account details stuck to the monitor in front of me I ring the first one - an insurance company.
We go through the usual name and address rubbish and then the lady asks me for details of my password, I tell her I didn't know I had a password for an insurance policy, a small insurance policy at that, she's adamant that I do and that she can't go any further until I tell her it, I tell her I haven't a clue.
She then asks if I've got the policy number, I tell her no but I have got a letter from her company asking me to contact them for details of my new bank account, I explain that all I want to do is make arrangements to pay money to them, she asks if I know how much the policy is worth, I tell her that I don't have that information with me but all I want to do is set up another standing order - she can't help me she says, ring back when I've got my security question answer, I hang up cursing her fekkin company and its security questions and decide to wait until the next payment is missed and they write again, my reply in writing is going to fester for another month and it will be a classic among the "fuck off" letters that I've written in the past.
So I ring the second company who have written to me, its a credit card company, I go into the automated system and wait for seven minutes before talking to a human.
They ask me for my name and address rubbish as usual and then ask me for two details from my password.
I can't remember it.
I hardly ever use this account online and I've got the password written down at home, but I'm in the office.
I guess what the password might be but i'm wrong. I explain that I'm not trying to scam them and that all I want to do is make arrangements to pay money to them, but they are having none of it, no password, no standing order setting up.
I slam the phone down again and shock everyone in the office by asking out loud how fekkin hard can it be to pay money to people and how the fekkin hell can a scam work if you're a stranger paying money into someone elses account.
This task of changing accounts is proving tiresome and may yet test my patience to the limit, I try again tomorrow.
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Speak to me, I'm a computer...
Have spent all morning today in the office ringing around various service providers to tell them that I have changed my bank account and could they please change their direct debit details.
Without fail every one of the dozen or so utlilty companies that I called used an automated answering service with anything from four to twelve different key strokes required before you got to speak to someone.
The best of them though was British Gas who not only use a system to get you (finally) through to a person who can take the details, but they actually use the computer on the other end of the phone to talk to you and take all of the information, instead of pressing buttons it uses voice recognition and you have a conversation with a computer that goes something like ...
Computer : "If you wish to report a fault say "fault" now, if you wish to speak to accounts say "accounts" now..."
Me : "Accounts"
C : "If you wish to query a bill say "Bill" now, if you have any other queries say "other" now"
Me : "Other"
C : "If you wish to request a meter reading say "meter" now, if you have any other queries say "other" now"
Me : "Other"
C : " If you wish to set up a mandate say "mandate" now, if you have any other queries say "other" now"
Me : "Mandate"
C : "Pardon"
Me : "MANDATE"
C : "If you wish to set up a new mandate say "New" now, if you wish to change an existing one say "existing" now "
Me : "Existing"
C : "Pardon"
Me : "oh for christ sake"
C : "Pardon"
Me : "I said EXISTING"
C : "The question asked was If you wish to set up a new mandate say "New" now, if you wish to change an existing one say "existing" now"
Me : "PUT A FEKKIN OPERATOR ON"
C : "The reply has not been recognised you will now be diverted to an operator"
(muzac)
C : "All of our operators are busy right now, if you wish to wait say "wait" now or hang up and try later"
I waited and waited and at 30 second intervals the computer interrupted the muzac to inform me that I had at least another five minutes to wait and would I like to use their automated voice recognition system instead, I do hope it wasn't really listening to my answers because it will go home tonight with a migraine and sit in a darkened room moaning to its computer wife that its had a really bad day at the call centre, these humans can be so rude you know.
Without fail every one of the dozen or so utlilty companies that I called used an automated answering service with anything from four to twelve different key strokes required before you got to speak to someone.
The best of them though was British Gas who not only use a system to get you (finally) through to a person who can take the details, but they actually use the computer on the other end of the phone to talk to you and take all of the information, instead of pressing buttons it uses voice recognition and you have a conversation with a computer that goes something like ...
Computer : "If you wish to report a fault say "fault" now, if you wish to speak to accounts say "accounts" now..."
Me : "Accounts"
C : "If you wish to query a bill say "Bill" now, if you have any other queries say "other" now"
Me : "Other"
C : "If you wish to request a meter reading say "meter" now, if you have any other queries say "other" now"
Me : "Other"
C : " If you wish to set up a mandate say "mandate" now, if you have any other queries say "other" now"
Me : "Mandate"
C : "Pardon"
Me : "MANDATE"
C : "If you wish to set up a new mandate say "New" now, if you wish to change an existing one say "existing" now "
Me : "Existing"
C : "Pardon"
Me : "oh for christ sake"
C : "Pardon"
Me : "I said EXISTING"
C : "The question asked was If you wish to set up a new mandate say "New" now, if you wish to change an existing one say "existing" now"
Me : "PUT A FEKKIN OPERATOR ON"
C : "The reply has not been recognised you will now be diverted to an operator"
C : "All of our operators are busy right now, if you wish to wait say "wait" now or hang up and try later"
I waited and waited and at 30 second intervals the computer interrupted the muzac to inform me that I had at least another five minutes to wait and would I like to use their automated voice recognition system instead, I do hope it wasn't really listening to my answers because it will go home tonight with a migraine and sit in a darkened room moaning to its computer wife that its had a really bad day at the call centre, these humans can be so rude you know.
Monday, January 02, 2006
and then reality bites your arse...
The local breaking news during the afternoon of New Years Eve was of the tragic death that morning of St John Ellis, a name that probably will mean nothing to a lot of people but for rugby league fans the world over the former Castleford winger will be well known.
Always a difficult player to stop with the ball in hand he was the sort of player you loved to hate as an opposition fan in the same way that you temporarily suspend all of your "normal" feelings when you're in a ground supporting your team and "hating" all of the opposition players who are better than yours.
When outside of the ground and in reality again you admire players of his like, not just because they are playing professionally a game that you would not have the balls to play yourself, but because almost without exception they are all very approachable and very nice blokes off the field, which is something that you cannot say about many overpaid professional soccer players.
Singe was 42 years old and into coaching after retiring from the playing game, and was taking his team, Doncaster Dragons, on a training session when he collapsed with a massive heart attack from which he could not be rescued, apparently he was extremely fit and always led his training seesions by example rather than by shouting from the sidelines, all of which makes the incident even more freakish, although not unique in our sport.
I've been thinking about this tragedy since hearing the news at 3pm on Saturday afternoon, death always seems so random when it occurs to the under 50's and it scares me that I do nothing to maintain any sort of standard of fitness other than pay a subscription to a gym that I rarely use, maybe this new year is the time to do something about that.
Ironically this follows just two weeks after I heard about a former neighbour in his early 40's who has just had a pacemaker fitted, for as long as I've known him he has been perhaps the fittest person I have known, he is/was a keen cyclist and uses his bike everyday to cycle to work which involves at least one very steep hill climb, he fell walks too and was just about to start a walk when he collapsed and was rushed to hospital where he was diagnosed with a heart problem and had the pacemaker fitted - apparently it is not unknown in people like him who have been super-fit all of their lives to find that as they grow older their naturally slow heart rate (normally the sign of an athlete), does not adjust to rapid changes in acivity as quickly as it should - it makes me almost glad that I have been a lazy bastard all of my life so far and is also giving me second thoughts about doing a 70 mile charity bike ride in June of this year.
Always a difficult player to stop with the ball in hand he was the sort of player you loved to hate as an opposition fan in the same way that you temporarily suspend all of your "normal" feelings when you're in a ground supporting your team and "hating" all of the opposition players who are better than yours.
When outside of the ground and in reality again you admire players of his like, not just because they are playing professionally a game that you would not have the balls to play yourself, but because almost without exception they are all very approachable and very nice blokes off the field, which is something that you cannot say about many overpaid professional soccer players.
Singe was 42 years old and into coaching after retiring from the playing game, and was taking his team, Doncaster Dragons, on a training session when he collapsed with a massive heart attack from which he could not be rescued, apparently he was extremely fit and always led his training seesions by example rather than by shouting from the sidelines, all of which makes the incident even more freakish, although not unique in our sport.
I've been thinking about this tragedy since hearing the news at 3pm on Saturday afternoon, death always seems so random when it occurs to the under 50's and it scares me that I do nothing to maintain any sort of standard of fitness other than pay a subscription to a gym that I rarely use, maybe this new year is the time to do something about that.
Ironically this follows just two weeks after I heard about a former neighbour in his early 40's who has just had a pacemaker fitted, for as long as I've known him he has been perhaps the fittest person I have known, he is/was a keen cyclist and uses his bike everyday to cycle to work which involves at least one very steep hill climb, he fell walks too and was just about to start a walk when he collapsed and was rushed to hospital where he was diagnosed with a heart problem and had the pacemaker fitted - apparently it is not unknown in people like him who have been super-fit all of their lives to find that as they grow older their naturally slow heart rate (normally the sign of an athlete), does not adjust to rapid changes in acivity as quickly as it should - it makes me almost glad that I have been a lazy bastard all of my life so far and is also giving me second thoughts about doing a 70 mile charity bike ride in June of this year.
New Year Ramblings
Phew, what a start !
New Years Eve was spent in the Company of Five, five old friends and their wives who we have known since all of us males were very small and would play football together on the local cricket field (when the cricketers weren't looking) - thats over 40 years now and we are all looking at our 50th birthdays this year.
The Company of Five can be expanded to a dozen or more if needed but the five couples meet every month at one or the others house for a chinese meal and beer, so New Years Eve is usually more of the same.
Our children are now very quickly becoming very grown up and only one of the ten kids who could have been there (and would have been in the past) chose to attend this year, they've all got agendas of their own now.
3.30am I turned the disco lights and music off, seven hours of music from the 60's and 70's and a huge amount of wine and beer had made for a very succesful NYE, as had the spanish tapas that our host for the night had prepared, and at midnight we all drank a toast to one missing member of our regular party who is currently residing at base camp at the foot of Everest, being on a 14 day hike in that region.
Its was his 50th birthday treat to himself and he celebrated that day last week somewhere in the shadow of Everest, he returns next week and is having a belated party for us all so part of the NYE evening was spent discussing what his prezzie should be, I was nominated to paint a picture for him in the same way as I did for his 40th so started yesterday on an Everest sized pastel painting of Everest, I hope he likes the place and is not hating it by now.
Maybe when its finished I'll finally have a go at posting a picture of it.
New Years Eve was spent in the Company of Five, five old friends and their wives who we have known since all of us males were very small and would play football together on the local cricket field (when the cricketers weren't looking) - thats over 40 years now and we are all looking at our 50th birthdays this year.
The Company of Five can be expanded to a dozen or more if needed but the five couples meet every month at one or the others house for a chinese meal and beer, so New Years Eve is usually more of the same.
Our children are now very quickly becoming very grown up and only one of the ten kids who could have been there (and would have been in the past) chose to attend this year, they've all got agendas of their own now.
3.30am I turned the disco lights and music off, seven hours of music from the 60's and 70's and a huge amount of wine and beer had made for a very succesful NYE, as had the spanish tapas that our host for the night had prepared, and at midnight we all drank a toast to one missing member of our regular party who is currently residing at base camp at the foot of Everest, being on a 14 day hike in that region.
Its was his 50th birthday treat to himself and he celebrated that day last week somewhere in the shadow of Everest, he returns next week and is having a belated party for us all so part of the NYE evening was spent discussing what his prezzie should be, I was nominated to paint a picture for him in the same way as I did for his 40th so started yesterday on an Everest sized pastel painting of Everest, I hope he likes the place and is not hating it by now.
Maybe when its finished I'll finally have a go at posting a picture of it.
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