Don't call me, I'll call you....

Part I’ve lost count again.


Well it looks like the day of judgement may be approaching. It certainly sounds like the apocalypse is on it’s way. Substantial chunks of the UK are under water and it appears the lost city of Atlantis might be twinned with Worcester… or anywhere in Somerset. Mind you, it was only a couple of weeks ago that people were kayaking down the main drag in Cork, and Hurricane Darwin has visited itself on large chunks of Ireland, lending new meaning to the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’. There isn’t much news escaping from the westernmost fringes of the Emerald (that would be the green slime from the unremitting damp) Isle.

This is because the infrastructure has all but collapsed. I got a text from my mate, just as her phone battery was on it’s last gasp. No electricity (so no internet), no phone line and a wildly erratic mobile signal. So far, no one knows how much of my house still stands, if any. This has put a bit of a crimp in my plans to advertise it online, as I doubt the prospective guest would dally long in the absence of a roof, with a cataract gushing down the stairs.

Still, perhaps it’s just as well as the site I inadvertently signed up for (I was trying to read the terms and conditions ‘we will help ourselves to whatever we feel like, alter our charges at will and without notification and there’s bugger all you can do about it’… and as it was incompatible with my phone, I seem to have hit the ‘accept’ button) got dreadful reviews.


I’ve been trying to remain upbeat and pretend to be enthusiastic about finishing the decorating (at long, long bloody last… you know that theory of the impossibility of movement? The one where the tortoise and the hare are racing, the tortoise gets a head start, but the hare soon catches up with him, but in the instant he catches up, the tortoise has moved a bit further, so the hare catches up, but now the tortoise has moved on a bit more…and so on and so on? Well that’s what it has felt like!)


To be honest, it’s all got a bit unreal, like watching a film of stuff happening to someone else. Instead of diligently finishing off the bathroom today, I grabbed my camera and a rucksack and headed for the beach. I got some very odd looks from other hardy individuals braving the gales as I stuffed my rucksack full of odd bits of driftwood. I now have a small beach forming in the room I am supposed to have cleared so the new carpet can go down.

I did wonder as I stuffed soggy and occasionally suspicious objects into the bag, why the hell I was doing this. I mean, I’ve been on a two year crusade to clear unnecessary crap out of my life. Then I realised that back in the day when I was pretending to be an artist, this sort of behaviour would have been perfectly normal, laudable even! Oh dear God, does this mean I might be reverting to type??? As I was already there (so to speak) I seized the moment, to the possible concern of anyone who might have been watching. First I plonked myself down at the rather turbulent water’s edge and whipped out my camera (the little one). Not content with taking pictures from a sitting position, I lay on the extremely damp shingle for a better angle.

The dog climbed on top of me (for added comfort and warmth).

Having spent some time writhing around in this approximate position, I got up (having decanted the dog), adjusted my clothing and proceeded down the beach, filling my capacious pockets with stones as I went. I wasn’t intending to re enact ‘The rise and fall of Reginald Perrin’, although it may have appeared this way.

Actually, some of the stones have naturally occurring holes through them and I was collecting these. Why? Don’t ask me, I was pretending to be an artist.
Meanwhile, in the real world…. I am trying to arrange insurance for my house(s). You would think this might be pretty straightforward. I mean, I already have insurance, I just want to change it a bit. So I call my insurance company (once I have blagged the use of a phone, freephone on landline is 14p a minute from a mobile…rinsed again!). After pressing a bewildering number of buttons for a bewildering number of options (for home insurance press 3, then wait an eternity while listening to brain liquefying canned muzak interspersed with ‘we are experiencing an exceptionally high volume of calls, all of our operators are busy, for further (dis)information visit our website which will tell you absolutely nothing useful which is why you are stuck on this bloody call in the first place abandon all hope ye who enter here your call is important to us….).

Eventually what I have to assume is a genuine human answers (a robocall wouldn’t be that unintelligible). Having explained what I would like to do ‘please can I switch my personal home insurance to landlord insurance and by the way I would like to add another property and give you some more of my money’.. I get the equivalent of ‘computer- says- no…!’ Apparently I have to insure my primary residence with them as well. BUT I DON’T HAVE A PRIMARY RESIDENCE! If I move in with Himself, then it’s his insurance, isn’t it? They suggested that he could move his insurance to them… I’m not sure what good that would do, as it still wouldn’t be my insurance. His response to this suggestion was unrepeatable (I told the insurance people this when I generously gave them a second chance) They told me that they would generously charge me £40 to terminate my contract. Now I just feel slightly soiled and no closer to getting on a ferry (although the email offering 30% off has excited my interest).


My darling daughter, upon viewing her prospective new home with boyfriend in tow mailed me to inform me that ‘basically he hates it’. Great. Now what was that phrase about looking a gift horse in the mouth? (although in fairness, if someone tried to give me a horse it’s the first thing I would do… why are they trying to get rid of it???).

I have been sent a list of works which she regards as essential. It’s all gone a bit quiet since I told her I had previous engagements and she may be doing the painting herself. It seems to have somehow escaped her notice that I have done nothing but bloody paint and decorate for the last two years.



In other news, the resolution to get up and go for a morning walk has been moderately successful. I have added interest by sabotaging mole traps as I go. Nothing deserves to die for the sake of golf (except perhaps the odd golfer).

Oh dear, what can the matter be...?

Part eighteen and a bit.

Apparently it’s that time of year again. The one where you venture outside and start your spring planting. Well I did purchase a very special vegetable-bed-on legs sort of thing.

This was partly so I can grow tender and heat loving veggies in the suntrap that is my patio, and also it should protect them from my legions of voracious slugs and ravenous rabbits. This is the theory anyway. In practice it remains in it’s box at my mates’s awaiting my arrival. I shouldn’t stress about it really, the weather there has been just as soggy and vile as here. If I had got around to turning up and assembling it, the chances are that it would have either been blown down the hill or be masquerading as a garden pond. There are a myriad of reasons why I have not yet booked a ferry. The obvious one is the weather. I have a new friend on Facebook (although to be honest, if I met him on the street I would probably fail to notice as I haven’t a clue what he looks like). Anyway, he is based on the Isle of Man and has been posting pictures and videos of the near hurricane conditions there.

Laxey Tower by Sue Jones

My ferry passes that way…..

Of course there are many other things holding me up. One is the house I may have bought in Leeds. Although the saga is nowhere near as colourful as the Irish version, it has had it’s moments. I saw this house early in my search, but when I enquired I was told it was under offer. I was granted a viewing anyway, but pretty much wrote it off as unavailable. Then I got a message saying that actually it was available, so I dragged Himself and the daughter along for another viewing. Encouraged by her response, I eventually made an offer. Then I went to Ireland. As absolutely nothing can ever EVER be straightforward, I got a call from the agent to say there was another identical offer on the table and could I let them know by Tuesday what my final offer was. With some difficulty (due to lack of signal) I did this. Then I got a call (Oh God, even more expense, I can’t wait for July when the phone companies are no longer allowed to overcharge you as soon as you cross a border) to inform me that my offer had been rejected.
 Hey ho, back to the drawing board… I pretty much gave up over Christmas and New Year so I was surprised to receive a call one morning informing me that the house was once again available. By now I was getting a little concerned as to why the sales kept falling through. I mean, was it on the verge of collapse? Was the steel reinforcement in the cellar actually an attempt to keep it upright rather than the WW2 bomb shelter we had been told it was?

I cautiously repeated my initial offer, emphasising that it was subject to survey…. After a tiny tiny bit of haggling it appeared we had an agreement… So off I trotted to engage a solicitor and find a surveyor. I’m amazed at how straightforward that bit has been. These people tell me in advance how much it will cost, then they go off and do the job and then I pay them the agreed sum. Wow! Culture shock!!!

AND there was nothing terrible in the survey!

 I’m sure there will be a nasty surprise at some point, possibly the point at which my daughter announces she’s changed her mind and is returning South…

On a bit of a roll, I went in search of a replacement for my beloved old PowerBook G4. This is where things got a little tricky. I looked about and sought advice. Most unusually I got no input from Himself as Macs are not his thing (he can go on for hours about the stability of linux and the cost of the software and… but he can’t actually use one, so he’s been uncharacteristically quiet). I thought I would save a few pence by buying secondhand, I mean, there should be some ok stuff out there? Right? So I trawled Preloved (I can’t stand the suspense of ebay auctions and getting outbid at the last millisecond). Having singled out a few promising candidates I set to enquiring about various particulars. Of course, by the time Party B had got back to me so I could compare with Part A’s item, Party A had sold theirs….  After some hassle and agonising I made an offer on a likely looking MacBook. I arranged to pay cash and pick it up in a couple of days… When I inquired of SellseverythingDave when was the best time to turn up, he (eventually) informed me that it had been sold to someone else. So much for an agreement! So, with a large wodge of cash, my plans for the weekend comprehensively buggered and no bloody laptop I began looking for another one as I stomped and swore my way around the golf course with the dog on out early(ish) morning walk. As luck would have it, there it was, the perfect laptop (no, not on the golf course!!), I tried to phone the number, but kept getting a message to say it couldn’t be connected. Slightly odd, but Kerry20 had been a member since 2009, perhaps she had just forgotten to update her number. I mailed and some hours later got a reply. It all seemed perfect, so I paid up (Paypal of course) and messaged her with a delivery address (Himself’s) as she was in Willenhall having made an abortive trip from South Shields to deliver the laptop to what turned out to be a fake address, hence it was back on offer. Huh? Excited as a kid on Xmas eve I sorted all my stuff out and headed for a meeting about a sailing trip, which turned out to be with a statuesque (6’4”) post op transsexual (I’d put my foot right in my mouth when I spoke to her on the phone and asked for her name, saying she clearly wasn’t the Alison on the advert…. Whoops). The following day I messaged Kerry again… only to discover that she had deleted her half of our conversation… This did not bode well, and sure enough, the laptop failed to materialise.

In an effort to assuage my stress and frustration at being forced to hang around Himself’s waiting for a laptop I knew would never arrive, I engaged in the displacement activity of frantic cleaning.
Anaglypta begone!

The little bedroom has been stripped and denuded.
Hey presto, you can see the floor in the bedroom!

Abracadabra, the livingroom no longer has tumbleweed blowing amongst the discarded magazines!

Look mum, I found my rat!

Alacazam! The bathroom is white again (and you don’t stick to the floor or the bath anymore)!

Ok, this is just an example, not the real thing... honest!

AND typhoid and botulism are definitely not living in the fridge And the distressing smell has been banished….

Likewise... really!

Unfortunately none of this actually improved my temper, which was growing steadily more murderous.

I contacted Paypal and started the ‘some thieving bastard has stolen my money’ process. I’m now thoroughly disillusioned and disenchanted with humanity in general and Preloved in particular. I still don’t have a functioning laptop, but I’m significantly more cynical. I still had the wodge of cash though (despite the best efforts of Himself and my daughter to eat and drink it). I couldn’t decide whether to get the camera I’d been drooling over anyway, or not to bother as this poor old laptop would never be able to cope with the huge files….

I lurched between the depths of despair (lying cheating bitch….) and a mad desire to cheer myself up with a new toy. Eventually I decided I wouldn’t let the bitch win, why should she be allowed to spoil everything? With this as my justification Himself and myself sallied forth to the local camera shop, where they had very persuasively convinced us both of the merits of this particular camera some weeks earlier. Of course Himself won’t rest until he has exhaustively researched all possible avenues (not to mention blind alleys and dingy cul de sacs). So rather than purchase the camera at the time, we spent a long, long time ploughing through endless reviews. If, at the time, I made impatient noises and suggested that I might just go and get it, I was dissuaded by his admonitions,  delivered in his best paternalistic manner.

We entered the camera shop and the persuasive bloke spotted us straight away, beaming and rubbing his hands… I sidled up to him ‘ummm, that camera deal, could I have it but with the 200mm weatherproof lens please?’ ‘Er, sorry, we don’t have any’.. “huh???’ ‘Let me ring our other shop…. Er, no, they don’t have any either… and they were end of line, so we won’t be getting any more… but I can sell you the newer version for another couple of hundred on top…?’

I stomped out muttering under my breath about prevaricators and procrastinators.

In a small act of revenge I annexed his laptop for several days while I attempted to find an alternative. After some time I had a result (which owed more to instinct than diligence), My cynicism had paid off a bit though, I spotted an excellent offer (online), but being naturally mistrustful and suspicious I phoned the shop to check, and sure enough, the offer had expired two days previously. Next….

When I finally struck paydirt I hopped in the Landrover and drove through a snowstorm across the Pennines to this place http://www.ukdigital.co.uk/

I’m pleased to say they went a little way to restoring my faith in human nature (just a little way mind, I’m not that easily swayed).

So now I have a lovely new camera, but right now I can’t show you any of the pictures for the reasons stated above….